Northwest Seed and Pet seeing increase in vegetable seed sales

SPOKANE, Wash. — Gardening is becoming more popular now, not because prime growing time coming up, but because of the pandemic. Northwest Seed and Pet says it saw a big increase in sales for vegetable seeds in March.

President Bob Mauk, of the seed and pet store, says business has slowed down just a little bit from March because there aren’t as many seeds for people to buy anymore.

Mauk said the store has been so busy, it’s had to repack some of their own seeds to put on shelves.

“We spend our winter packaging seeds and we pretty much figure out what we’re going to need for the season,” he said. “This year we missed it by a lot, so we’re just doing, continuing to repack some things that have sold out.”

Normally, the store will have 35,000 pounds of seed potatoes and by the end of planting season in June, they’d have some leftovers. However, Mauk thinks they’ll sell out of seed potatoes within two weeks.

Looking at the numbers, he said sales increased about 40 percent in March over the last.

“A lot of first time gardeners, a lot of people said they hadn’t gardened in years, people were coming back and doing it,” he told 4 News Now.

To be busy and open, Mauk said it was a “mixed blessing.”

Mauk says their suppliers can’t restock seeds right now either because they’re so busy and low on seeds, too.

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