Columbia River Seed works with multiple companies and Columbia Basin growers to propagate proprietary cool season grass species. Our focus and specialty is Kentucky bluegrass, although we contract perennial ryegrass (both turf and forage) and fine fescues (hard, creeper, sheeps). The Columbia Basin possesses an ample crop rotation providing us access to high quality center pivot irrigated seed production. Columbia River Seed closely works with our production fields and is able to provide a high level of information and access to your production fields. The geographical area we primarily work with is the lower Columbia Basin, which encompasses both North Eastern Oregon and South Eastern Washington.

Our climate and cultural practices facilitate fall planting of cool season grasses and a full harvest the following June. Our latitude Washington production 46° latitude and Oregon production 45°50” latitude, day lengths(almost 16 hrs at the longest), average growing degree days (western states regional climate center) and available water make our region ideal for seed production.

Harvest
Growing

 

Columbia River Seed offers custom seed cleaning in all Cool Season turf species. Kentucky bluegrass, Perennial Ryegrass, Fine Fescues and Tall Fescue are all welcome for your custom seed processing. Columbia River Seed has a line dedicated to small seed (e.g. Kentucky bluegrass) and a line dedicated to long seeds (e.g. perennial ryegrass). We also have two small lines that are dedicated to seed stock processing and specialty seeds. We are centrally located in the lower Columbia basin, with good access to I-82 for convenient receiving and shipping. We are competitively priced and take pride in stewardship of your seed. We are set up to receive your bulk seed in belt trailers or converted 28ft pup trailers. We look forward to serving you.

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Columbia River Seed has made a large commitment to our industry and ourselves with the Seed Stock program we have developed. Multiplication of breeder, foundation and registered seed of multiple species is our focus. We strive to give our industry and our growers the best mechanical and genetically pure seed available. The CRS seed stock program first harvested seed in 2004 by Tyler Sorenson. Tyler raised our 2005, 2006 and 2007 crops as well. Tyler left us shortly thereafter to go to Brazil. Jory Iverson took over the program in 2008 and has continued the high level of performance of our program. We contract with companies to propagate their genetic material and as well as propagate our own varieties. Space and Availability is limited each year, so planning your needs is important. We fall plant all of our seed crops and harvest them the following June. Most are grown on an annual basis; we try where possible to keep plantings two seasons; however it has not been the norm.

We have the ability to propagate Kentucky bluegrass, hard fescue, sheep’s fescue, perennial ryegrass, and some reclamation species. Our focus is breeder seed and registered seed production. Foundation seed production can be done on a limited basis, however isolation requirements have been cost prohibitive in our production scheme. We try to keep minimum plot size to one acre. There are situations where smaller plots can be incorporated.

We here at CRS feel that high quality seed stock is imperative for our industry. Seed stock is expensive to raise, harvest, process and buy. However, the cost of not having high quality starting product is at times immeasurable. This is the reason we have made the long term commitment to provide this service to ourselves, our customers and our industry. For information on production with our seed stock program please feel free to contact us.

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Beginning the fall of 2003 we planted observation plots and have every year since. We are attempting to achieve many goals with our observation plots. They are 4’ by 22’ plots planted in 4 rows by an Almaco push planter at a rate equivalent to 5 lbs/acre, seeded the third week of August every planting season.

1. We plant all of the Kentucky bluegrass seed stock we have planted in commercial fields.
2. We plant multiple known cultivars of Kentucky bluegrass for comparisons.
3. We plant multiple experimental cultivars from many different commercial turf grass breeders.

After planting we evaluate emergence and while the plants are vegetative we observation, sward width, sward density, and genetic color. As the growing season matures disease observations are the next step. Powdery mildew and stem rust being the primary disease pressures that we will see and take note of. Next is relative maturity dates, we will note experimental cultivars against much known varieties. The last step is making judgments about the harvestability characteristics of experimental cultivars against known cultivars. We evaluate seed size, seed quantity, cotton or no and relative harvest dates.

Our climate and cultural practices facilitate fall planting of cool season grasses and a full harvest the following June. Our latitude Washington production 46° latitude and Oregon production 45°50” latitude, day lengths(almost 16 hrs at the longest), average growing degree days (western states regional climate center) and available water make our region ideal for seed production.

Contact us here