Meet the growers! -
An interview with Seed and Soil Maine founders - Ben and Betsy Samuelson.
-Written by Simply Nuggets.
Seed & Soil - who are they?
(seedandsoilmaine.com) is a family-run homestead seed company and outdoor cannabis nursery in Monroe, Maine (Midcoast/Waldo County area), operated by Ben and Betsy Samuelson.
They specialize in cannabis seeds and plants adapted for Maine’s short, cool, humid outdoor season, while also growing herbs, flowers, vegetables, garlic, providing worms and compost, honey, and other farm products. A true “working Farm!”
Their tagline is “Grown Under the Sun, Moon and Stars.”
They emphasize hardy, vigorous, pungent genetics selected in native soil with minimal inputs, with deep focus on environmental sustainability, seed-saving, and sharing.
Founders background -
• Ben Samuelson: Holds a Master’s in Horticulture from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (thesis related to microbial response to biodegradable mulch/compost). Background includes work with soil/compost expert Dr. Elaine Ingham and experience producing seeds. He has spoken publicly about outdoor breeding, autoflowers, “Quicks,” and Maine-adapted genetics.
• Betsy Samuelson: Strong seed-work experience and over fifteen years of experience as an organic farmer, with family connections in Humboldt County, California. She handles much of the herb/flower/vegetable side and farmstand. They married on October 14, 2018 (Betsy grew the wedding flowers ).
• They worked a season at the Humboldt Seed Companys “Mothership” farm in 2019, then produced organic feminized seed in a joint venture in British Columbia - Canada around 2020 during early regulation there.
After that they moved to Maine, obtained adult-use licenses, and built their own operation!
They are proud affiliates of Humboldt Seed Company and adapt many of those genetics through outdoor selection in Maine.
About the Farm -
• located in Monroe, ME on a retired New England dairy farm of ~130 acres, cannabis cultivation is done in a narrow floodplain with ~3 feet of rich silt loam over glacial sand/gravel—the soil is enriched by a century of manure spreading.
• they operate a tier 4 Adult-Use Cultivation license allowing ~20,000 sq ft (or about half an acre of cannabis canopy) + Adult-Use Nursery. The cannabis nursery is 21+; cash/check only. But there is also a 1 acre veggie farm that they sell produce out of as well as vegetable and flower seed.
• Their cultivation method is fully outdoor breeding and production in native soil under natural light. They evaluate large populations (thousands of plants and 100+ accessions yearly) and only elite performers that handle Maine conditions with minimal intervention make the cut for seed.
ALL plants on the farm are seed-grown. And the predominant focus on the farm is seed saving.
They even make their own compost (manure, wood/hay waste, bones/viscera from neighbors) and potting mix!
The interview -
On a beautiful August afternoon in Monroe Maine, I have the pleasure of sitting down with Ben and Betsy Samuelson, here is how that conversation unfolded.
Opening / Personal & Origin Story
1. Can you walk us through how you and Betsy went from Humboldt Seed Company in 2019 (and the Canada seed work) to building Seed & Soil here in Monroe?
Betsy: It was actually our third date. We were at Dr. Elaine Ingham’s compost farm in California and I said, “if we have a business together, we should call it seed and soil. Because his passion is soil and my passion is seed.” I was doing all this seed saving work and advocacy stuff. And so seed and soil was born.
Simply Nuggets: so the name and the vision came along before everything.
Ben: When we left Humboldt to go to Canada, our desire was always to relocate and start our own farm. We asked a bunch of places, and looked at the cost of entry, how much debt we would have to take on. Maine economically made sense and most aligned with our desire to be in a clean environment.
Betsy: Knock on wood, but we are not going to have any crop dusting here ever, the natural topography does not allow for it. You never know, but I don’t believe it’s going to happen. And people care about those values. furthermore, organic farmers are supported here! You have in our neighborhood, a lot of young organic farmers that are making it work. People are happy to pay for vegetables. You know, and It’s really refreshing.
2. What drew you to Maine specifically, and how has the short-season climate shaped the way you approach breeding and growing?
Ben: I mean it’s the environment. The land price and ease of access to a completely recreational market for cannabis… It was cannabis that afforded the farm vision, not really the other way around. We wanted to be farming for a living. Cannabis was how we realized that we actually might have a shot at it. and that brought us to Maine!
I’m from Texas originally, so the cold winters and shorter season was kind of scary to me. And also like learning about weed in California, I thought, “wow, we’re going to really have to sort through the varieties and see what actually works.” Same thing happened with tomatoes.
Betsy started with over 100 tomato varieties and now we have 15.
Betsy: Someone told us- “if you can grow vegetables in Maine, you can grow them anywhere!” But regarding auto flowers, it was just very clear from the first season that what could finish in a California season was not going to finish here.
We realized really early on that we were basically in the Humboldt County of the east Coast. Some people have been growing in our neighborhood for 70 years, but we found them all to be very humble still. Cannabis was always accepted here. And, so when we came here, we wanted these guys to have stuff that works and is good and finishes on time. And so people were a little bit hesitant at first about Autoflowers around here but we have converted a lot of people!
Ben: Also there was room for actual improvement in auto. Like if you’re going to show up to the photo scene and try to be a breeder and do relevant work, it was kind of like “good luck.” You know, there was a little bit of room for water hash… maybe a lot of room.
Really getting new flavors into washers that really yield. That’s a great little niche for, like improvability.
But like if you’re just going to go and try to like be a star breeder and win cups with like something that’s mind blowing.
It’s not low hanging fruit, but there were not a lot of people doing autos. So was like that was really compelling to me.
3. Ben, you have a Master’s in Horticulture with a focus on soil and compost. How does that scientific background show up day-to-day on a fully outdoor, native-soil farm?
Ben: I was just really excited about it because it links to us wanting to be farmers before we wanted to be weed growers.
A lot of the crops that I used in my thesis work, we needed to simulate an organic row crop vegetable production system. So that’s what we did, and that’s the style of growing that I wanted to partake in. we wanted to grow these plants the same way you’d grow cabbages.
Betsy: Or peppers! Just direct in the ground seeding. So oftentimes with cannabis, people will have their paper towel method, or whatever they’re preferred germination method is. And so the propagation part of it is so tricky. people are paying so much for a seed and so we are treating it like it is just so precious. We are vegetable gardeners by trade and we want people to be able to just put the seed in the ground and have it grow.
That was one of our earliest big successes is in Canada. We tried to direct sow around 300 seeds the first time and only had like five come up. But we were committed to the goal and threw various rounds of testing, we were able to get that number way up. So we have just been starting our seeds in the ground from the very beginning!
Philosophy & Outdoor Approach
4. You emphasize growing “under the sun, moon, and stars” in the farm’s native soil. What does that actually look like in practice, and why is it non-negotiable for you?
Betsy: I have been devout about environmentalism, and so in some states it’s almost necessary for people to grow indoors. But I think a lot of the industry kind of could be better from an environmentalism standpoint by transitioning to outdoors at the same time.
Ben: My answer to that question is - one of the quick tests for whenever I ask myself “is this something that I am doing on mission?” Would be- “is this going to make it easier for a home gardener to succeed?”
And I just think that anybody with a vegetable garden can grow weed in our neighborhood, in their garden, the same way they treat their other plants!
5. How does the history of this land (being a retired dairy farm with that manure-enriched floodplain soil influence the plants you end up selecting?
Ben: I will say that our field, It gets hit by frost so early, it’s a frost pocket because it lays really low on this on the land profile. So it has ruined a lot of later hand pollinations. In that sense it does skew our selections towards earliness.
I think that just having a good soil. Cannabis likes a rich soil. It does a lot better when it’s, you know, well fed. So this land has helped us with, I think, just generally being successful.
I don’t know about the land directly affecting selections.
6. You breed with large populations -outdoors - using minimal inputs.
What advantages do you feel that gives your genetics compared to more controlled indoor or greenhouse programs?
Betsy: We want the novice to feel like they can do this, and a big part of that, is that the seed needs to be able to thrive.
We want to provide people with really high quality seed. And a lot of cannabis breeders do not follow what could be considered industries standards. Well, because there are no standards for seed germination or for seed quality.
But we like to think that we are or what should be expected.
7. What’s your take on the idea that seed is stronger when it has to “battle” real environmental stress?
Betsy: Yeah, we don’t coddle our babies.
Ben: I think there’s sort of seed health and then there’s genetics, and they’re sort of separate. So if a plant is, like, really battling and it’s struggling, seed health can be impacted.
But the genetics behind it, the plants that are well adapted shouldn’t be. Be suffering so badly that when they finish off their seeds, they can be unhealthy seeds.
Betsy: And seed has memory.
If there’s a wet season and a seed thrives, the offspring will remember that. A great story I like to tell is with my garlic -
in Nebraska, there was two years of flooding, and we had grown seven varieties of garlic.
And my variety that I keep, lived through that.
And then there was one year of drought, and they also lived through that.
And then we had a garlic virus, and it lived through that too.
And so this garlic, I mean, there’s a guy I’m sending it to in Hawaii next week. You know, it can grow anywhere.
And that’s what we want for all of the seed that we produce.
Breeding & Genetics (Core of Their Work)
8. Tell us about the “Quicks” — those photoperiod × autoflower hybrids. Why have you leaned so hard into them, and what do they unlock for Maine growers?
Ben: Okay, so right from the jump in 2021, we had an auto photo F1 in reg that we knew that we were going to be working with to make the raspberry parfait auto.
That plant in the field was stunning. Everybody that was coming in in September, even, like, early September, they were like, “whoa, what is this” Because it’s showing its stuff so early. And anytime we would embark on an auto breeding project, we get to see that F1 generation. And they continued to be good and early.
I had heard about the quick thing, or some people call them fast versions. And once we kind of earned a couple autos that we really put the work in and did those introgressions, I was like, why wouldn’t we start a couple projects in fem, release the seed as quicks?
And it’s kind of like we’re already starting auto projects all the time, and people want earlier finishing gear.
Betsy: The smell, and the flavor profiles that you get in the, quicks in that, for me, that’s where the magic is. I want that juiciness, you know, All the whole range of smells. And I don’t want anything bland.
Ben: There are bland autos that don’t hold their terps after they’re dry. That was something that we saw in autos a lot. And we can go through and read the notes on a whole breeding chamber of autos, and it’s like they’ve all muted out or flattened. And so we. We keep a dry smell note, and we’ve actively gotten better about breeding that out.
9. How do you balance selecting for unique terpene profiles and bag appeal with the hard requirements of earliness, mold resistance, and outdoor vigor in Maine?
Ben: I think you just said it. It’s like rank one is the hard requirements that you said, but ultimately the nose guides it.
Betsy: So, if there’s two that smell both really good, but one has better nug structure, I’m all about the better nug structure every day because I know that the people that are going to be growing the weed, They want those big nice nugs.
Simply Nuggets: I’ll tell you what, all of the autoflowers that I saw down there looked great! they where thick. I didn’t see any scrawny little plants. I didn’t see anything that smelled like hay. I mean, it was very beautiful, every row that I was looking at. You’re doing your job for sure.
Ben: Well, that is a really good anecdote with where the raspberry parfait was in the 1202 line. That was my favorite for the nose, but it had some structure issues.
Betsy made her selection for, the overall best plant in that chamber. And to me, my overall best plant was the one that smelled amazing because to me, that smell was so good that it outweighed everything else.
But the result is that we worked those lines. Sometimes if there’s traits spread across a line or population or whatever that you wish they were all in one plant, you got to keep breeding it.
So we’d never leave something behind that smells absolutely amazing just because of problems, even problems of resilience or whatever. Because I think that with a plant, you can always find the most vigorous plant and step that into the environment and breed resilience back into the line.
Practical Growing & Advice
10. For home growers or new outdoor cultivators in the Northeast, what’s the single most important piece of advice you give about starting from seed versus clones?
Ben: Well, I think specifically about seeds versus clones the answer is, it depends on your personal goals. If you want to have your setup like an engineer and dial stuff in and have lots of controls, Cloning is for you. Cloning is really fun because it’s a quick feedback loop. You know, you see roots pretty quick, but if you like to see different things then seed is for you.
Betsy: I’d say use a heat mat, set it to 70°F And yeah as much as I am not a fan of the paper towel method, it does work. For the beginning, of course, I would recommend the paper towel method because you can watch it. That’s how we do germ testing for everything. And always put it in a bag and not shut the bag tight.
11. You grow everything from seed and don’t offer clones. What are the real advantages of seed-grown plants in an outdoor system?
Ben: They just get bigger and they’re healthier, on average. Case by case. Sometimes it’s not going to be that way. But I can’t tell you how many people come back from past years and they’re just like “your plants are so huge!”
Betsy: Seed has memory, you know? seed has memory of what it went through and what it strived to become there. And it always wants to do better, just like us. Right?
But clones, if they like had a history, it’s still there, it’s still alive. It’s just not expressed in the baby plant. And so you’re more likely to have those problems show up.
Ben: Plants like cannabis, there is like a phase in the life cycle of the plant where it’s like a teenager, it’s not reproductively there yet. And so you can pop seeds anytime in April or even the end of March or earlier than the end of March- but in at least at our latitude, a seed that’s gotten wet in April, it’s not gonna taste that short spring day light and try to start to flower on you.
But if you get a clone, it’s like always under this long light and when you do introduce it to the real sunlight or even if you’re like in a greenhouse, if it starts getting natural day length in April, there’s a really good chance that it’s going to try to flower.
12. How do you handle the classic Maine challenges — late springs, humidity spikes, early fall cold snaps — both in the field and in the genetics you release?
Ben: The less we do, the better we help our seed be adaptable to it.
Diversified Homestead & Business Side
13. Seed & Soil is more than cannabis — you produce vegetable, herbs, and flower seed, garlic, worms, compost, AND run a farmstand!
How do the non-cannabis parts of the farm feed into (or balance) the cannabis breeding work?
Ben: I mean, trying to think of the synergy operationally. I mean, the honest one is that we get to have a lot better tools for the veggies because cannabis is a real viable business right now.
But, I don’t know, we do often consider how our time over in the vegetable garden is not generating as much revenue. You know, I belly ache about that sometimes when I’m not doing anything energetic. But, we’re farming because we want to farm. And we’re growing weed so that we can grow all these vegetables.
And I’m a novelty seeker. So, getting into the tobacco is so exciting. Because I don’t think that tobacco has ever in all of western culture or at least European culture, from early colony days all the way to present Ben a crop that people just grow for themselves. If you’re American or British, who was home growing tobacco? Nobody. Like, this was a product that was only created commercially. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And there’s not an active community about it. But how many people like to smoke blunts!?
14. What does a “successful” season look like for you beyond just good seed yield or flower quality?
Ben: That would be, just balancing it with the needs of our body and family.
One thing I’m really proud of is, you hear a lot in the weed world. I don’t know - it’s probably just an epidemic of just like marriages falling apart and families that are kind of on the rocks or whatever, but we do, I think, integrate the whole thing well. Like, it feels really good in our family. I give enough attention to my wife and kids. We’re all together a lot. We address problems that we have, and we’re trying our best and getting to experience the plants.
That’s what a successful season looks like right now.
A couple years ago, you would have asked me and my answer would have been, “how much debt did we repay?” that would’ve been my measure of it. But now it’s not that.
15. Running a Tier 4 adult-use nursery and cultivation site as a family operation with young kids — what’s the reality of that balancing act?
Betsy: The reality of it as we cannot bring the kids beyond the fence at all, it is entirely illegal for them to go across that line. But in my opinion, it’s like how could you be a farmer and not have your kids be part of the farm!?
It can be very inconvenient, but we are big rule followers. we have asked about them changing the legislation.
Ben: It feels like growing plants is growing plants. So when we get to take our kids into the vegetable garden, it’s like we’re glad that we get to share it with them and that we don’t have to go off someplace to work. Our work is probably less obscured from our children than most.
Looking Ahead & Closing
16. What’s exciting you most about the 2026 catalog or the work happening in the field this season? Ben: The greenhouse we are currently building, mint jelly auto crosses, my personal tobacco crop, and the team.
Ben: The greenhouse we are currently building, mint jelly auto crosses, my personal tobacco crop, and the team.
Growing as a manager is my real work right now. we actually just saw this on the last payroll period that there’s 2.8 full time jobs worth of hours worked.
That’s not including us. I remember when it used to probably be something like four hours.
Betsy: The stuff that I’m excited about is, honestly, it’s taken me years.
This is our sixth year farming here and our eighth season growing weed.
So I would say, l am happy. I’m proud of the autos that we’re producing and I’m excited to see what comes next year.
And as far as my side of things. I am excited to be doubling my garlic crop next year, I always plant 50 pounds and it always sells out, so this year I’ll be planting 100 pounds. I might start wholesaling to a few grocery stores, and I’m also very excited to be growing the flowers for my friend’s wedding!
17. If someone listening is thinking about growing outdoors in Maine (or a similar climate) for the first time, what three things should they focus on?
Ben: It’s so dependent on what and where are they growing. Like, if they’re on their porch, you’re growing in a container. Get a really high volume container because the plants drink a lot. Like, here’s a little tip, if you’re going to sew directly into the ground, if you have a spot where weeds grow really tall, that’s a good place to grow your weed. Like if you’ve got seven foot tall weeds, it will do good!
Simply Nuggets: So selecting your location and your container size really important?
Ben: Yeah, for sure.
Simply Nuggets: What else? Give me two more.
Ben: Watch the weather around harvest time. If you’re outdoors, it’s better to take it a little bit early than try to get through a bad weather event.
And the bad weather is like, a little drizzly. And then temperature swings, real warm, then cold. That’s the type of stuff that gets the mold to come out. you don’t have to harvest the whole plant either, you can hedge your bet and just harvest, your main buds and leave your lowers they will take longer to develop anyway.
Simply Nuggets: Awesome, one last answer.
Ben: Another thing is if you’re trying to develop a palette, take your plants separately and even like harvests off of the same plant at different times.
Put those into different jars. Like, you don’t bulk it because then you’re losing those finer notes that you could be picking up on. That’s a fun thing that I have.
18. Looking five or ten years out, what do you hope Seed & Soil’s impact on Maine growers and the broader seed community looks like?
Ben: The broader seed community is what we have thought about. This is one thing that we’ve thought a lot about, but we haven’t mentioned it yet, is that seed saving in cannabis is a really special scene. If you where compare it to anything else, because most commercially relevant crop species have been bred so hard by universities and industry and that’s sort of to be expected. But in cannabis the entire progress of this crop has been done by individuals who are passionate.
Betsy: I’m passionate that seed needs to be in the hands of the people. And the way that the seed system and the food system gets consolidated is that it becomes in the hands of the few.
And people breed fem on fem on fem. And people don’t have access to regular genetics and they can’t fucking make their own stuff. Like, we have got to keep the seed in the hands of the people. And that is our mission.
How can we get our hands on their seeds without a roadtrip to Maine?