Territorial Seed Company was bought from founder Steve Solomon in 1985, have greatly increased their business over the past 30 years, but never deviated from the original course set by Steve. Their first catalog was written in the fall of 1979. Running a regional seed company responsibly means screening thousands of varieties in the global market to find the highest quality, most suitable varieties, so Steve grew into a serious testing ground in summer and winter, basically consisting of comparative plots. There is clay in the garden and less than a gallon of water comes out of the well every minute. Territorial Seed Company grew rapidly, and within a few years, there were 100,000 mail-order catalogs a year and hundreds of thousands of copies of Steve Solomon's 1981 nature gardening book, "grow vegetables in the west."