Seed Saving Season

My kitchen is piled high with seeds drying on screens and sheets of newspaper at the moment, along with the end-of-season glut of imperfect peppers and tomatoes. We had our first killing frost on Friday night, and everything that needs to be kept warm and dry is now crammed into our tiny seven-hundred-and-something square foot house. Being surrounded by seeds feels very comforting somehow, though. All of that potential under one roof.

Tithonia

Look out for lingering pollinators

Red Zinger hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa, also known as red sorrel or roselle) drying for seed and tea

















Texas Sage seeds drying (although why I bothered, I don't know - they self-seed so prolifically that saving seed is really gilding the lily, so to speak...I'll have some seed to give away and trade).

Zinnias

Calendula

Zinnia seeds drying on a screen

Those beautiful Red Zinger calyxes again

On Fullness

Onion seedlings

Life has been incredibly full since the beginning of 2010 - and consequently my posts here at the Milkweed Diaries have become become woefully sparse.

My Real Job (working with nonprofits and political campaigns) has been at full throttle since the first week of January, a rude awakening after a relatively sleepy 2009. I'm not complaining though: income is a wonderful thing.

Adding to the fray, I worked as a cook at a Permaculture Design Course in south Georgia for two weeks last month, sharing kitchen duties with my kitchen co-conspiriator and dear friend Puma, cooking three meals a day for 30-60 people using local and regional in-season foods. Though I didn't blog about this Great Cooking Adventure, I did chronicle the experience on facebook.

And then there's Red Wing Farm, our homestead garden that has very quickly grown to market-garden proportions. We're selling at two tailgate markets this season, hosting our first farm interns this summer, teaching classes on the farm, and ramping up our production fast and furious with an eye toward both Christopher and me being able to quit our day jobs.

Lettuces, mustards, and kales growing in the unheated hoophouse

Homemade heat table for seedlings (salvaged lumber + gravel + heat tape) with tatsoi & bok choy growing in a raised bed underneath

Christopher has been in non-stop construction mode, building the first section of our duck and goat barn, a heat table for our hoophouse, and various other structures and contraptions, and I've been prepping beds, making soil blocks, and planting seeds. Thousands and thousands of seeds. And stepping up plants. Thousands and thousands of plants.

Tomato seedlings

Cardoon!

Our Starting from Seed class planting peas in the garden

Life is good. And full.

So apologies in advance, dear readers, for the less frequent posts in the next few months. I promise to post images as often as I can of what's going on on the homestead, in the garden, and in the kitchen.

You can also follow Red Wing Farm on facebook, where I'm posting more frequent albeit briefer updates.

In the meantime, here are some images of recent goings on at the farm...Happy Spring and good gardening to all!

Seed Sources: Let the Seed Hunting Season Begin!

As is typical for me on a drizzly day when I am looking for ways to procrastinate, I have been thinking about next year's garden. There is no better time than a cold, rainy day to sit inside by the fire thumbing through seed catalogs, either of the paper variety or in the vast seed catalog of the internet.

I came across this amazing list of heirloom seed sources while searching for heirloom pea varieties that we could grow for dry split peas. It's a detailed and dense listing of seed sources, including quite a few I had never heard of. One exciting example: The Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center -- a nonprofit organization that preserves Southern Appalachian heirloom varieties. Don't let their very low-tech-looking website deter you from exploring their bean catalog and checking out their articles on Southern Appalachian heirloom seeds. They apparently steward more than 300 bean varieties, including quite a few "Greasy Bean" varieties!

This is the sort of thing I get fired up about. If you can't relate to excitement over greasy beans, consider this: some experts say there is no commercial source for genuine heirloom greasy beans. Greasy beans are a distinct type of bean with a long Cherokee heritage. They have been a staple of the Southern Appalachian diet for countless generations and still maintain cult status in the mountains of western North Carolina. There are varieties specific to certain hollers, families, and communities that have never been grown outside those small circles. Bean seed experts and mountain old timers will tell you that true greasy bean seed is only available through seed swaps, passed from hand-to-hand by gardeners and farmers, and from people and organizations dedicated to preserving family and community heirloom seeds from this region.

I love growing Southern Appalachian heirlooms, particularly varieties that can be traced back to the indigenous agriculture of what is now western North Carolina. These are plants cultivated by pre-colonization Cherokee people and their ancestors in these mountains for thousands of years.

On a practical level, these varieties have an advantage in my North Carolina mountain garden because they are cultivars that evolved over generations to thrive in this particular spot on the planet, with its specific climate and conditions. On a more abstract level, it feels like a restoration or a homecoming of some sort to grow these seeds in this place. These are plants that came from here, and that were treasured, cherished, valued as part of the living wealth of communities in these mountains for thousands of years. Planting them in the soil of the Swannanoa Valley, where people have grown food for thousands of years, just feels right.

If you are growing in the Southeast, I recommend Southern Exposure Seed Exchange as another a great source of heirlooms from our region. If you're growing elsewhere, find the old timers and seed stewards that are saving seeds that came from the place you live. Wherever you find your seeds, if you've never saved seeds before, consider saving seed from at least one plant in next year's garden.

More on greasy beans here: What are Greasy Beans and Why Should You Care?

A Meditation on Gratitude: Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash

I love it when heirloom varieties are named after one of the people in the line of seed-saving gardeners who passed down the seed. It always feels like an opportunity to give thanks for all of the growers of food that came before us.

Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash (a couple of which are pictured in my grateful hands above) is such a variety. We grew this lovely winter squash this year, described by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange as a "family heirloom from Thelma Sanders in Adair County, Missouri." Southern Exposure introduced the Thelma Sanders squash in 1988, and now its available from a number of sources, including Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Seed Savers Exchange.

Thelma Sanders has been our favorite squash this summer. With its lovely teardrop shape and caramel-cream colored skin that develops faint freckles as it ripens, its luscious and smooth pale orange flesh, its creamy texture and subtly sweet flavor, Thelma Sanders has stolen our hearts.

As we've savored the taste of this beautiful and delicious heirloom, I've been filled with gratitude for Thelma and all of her seed-saving predecessors who gave us this particular squash variety. With each mouthful, I imagine my circle of gratitude widening to include all of our seed-saving, plant-growing, earth-tending ancestors.

So here's to cultivating gratitude, appreciation, and thanks-giving as we cultivate our gardens: Thelma Sanders, Presente!

~~~

"Presente," which literally means "here" or "present" in Spanish is used in some parts of Latin America as an expression to invoke, honor, or celebrate the presence of someone who is not physically present. Being involved with Latin American solidarity and peace and justice movements over the years, I learned the expression "Presente!" as a way to give thanks for and honor an ancestor, a martyr, or a person whose spirit or memory is being evoked with respect and appreciation. It often seems an appropriate expression when holding a fruit or vegetable whose very existence can be traced to specific people's stewardship of living things.

Moon and Stars in Virgo

We grew the beautiful heirloom watermelon "Moon and Stars" this year (pictured above getting ripe in our garden). The speckles on the rind really are like stars in the sky, and coming across a melon in the garden somewhere that the rambling vines have ended up is like stumbling on a little galaxy.

We sliced one of the Moon and Stars melons open this week with some friends and feasted on the luscious and juicy pink melon flesh.

After we had eaten our fill of watermelon, we made watermelon mead with the leftovers, saved the seeds for next year, and cut up the rinds for pickling in brine.

For the pickling, I used a teaspoon of salt per cup of water and pressed the rind slices gently to squeeze out their juices, and submerged the rinds in a big glass cookie jar. The brine is starting to cloud up and get bubbly, so fermentation is definitely happening.

Looking for brine-pickled watermelon rind recipes online, I discovered that this Southern/Asian fermented delicacy is known as an aphrodisiac. I'll report back what I learn about the love-inducing properties of fermented watermelon rinds once the pickling is done!

Watermelon mead

Next year's Moon and Stars watermelons

All in all, it's a lovely watermelon that I heartily endorse. We got our seed from Fedco, but Seed Savers Exchange and other companies offer it as well.

Hurrah for "Moon & Stars!"

Seed-Saver's Heaven

Bean seeds changing hands at the Seed Swap.

Last week, CF and I were up in Charlottesville, VA for the annual Heritage Harvest Festival sponsored by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Monticello.

Friday we spent time at the Tufton Farm, where the Center for Historic Plants does its amazing work. Then we took a seed-saving tour through the vegetable, herb, and flower gardens at Monticello, where we had a chance to harvest and take home seeds from heirloom varieties growing there.

Saturday we went to workshops with some of my seed saving heroes (a talk on saving seeds from heirloom plants by William Woys Weaver being the highlight for me) and communed with gardeners, seed savers, plant-lovers, garden nerds, and others of our ilk.

The big seed swap on Saturday was amazing, and worth the trip in itself. Like most seed swaps I've participated in, it was more of a gift economy than a swapping or bartering economy. There were some extraordinarily generous big-time seed savers there, like Rodger Winn (at left in the photo above), who grows dozens of heirloom beans for seed and had a whole table filled with beans for sharing. I brought Hibiscus sabdariffa (the red zinger hibiscus) and Calendula seeds to offer, and we came home with a big pile of little envelopes full of future vegetables, herbs, and flowers.

It was a really wonderful event--I'm posting a few more photos here to give more of a sense of it, and I have a slideshow up on Picasa with lots more photos as well. The festival happens every year...maybe I'll see you there in 2010!

View of the vegetable garden at Monticello

Pat Brodowski, the vegegable gardener at Monticello scooping out tomato seeds . . .

. . .and discussing saving bean seeds.

Cleome and Kiss-Me-Over-the-Garden-Gate at Monticello

Hyacinth bean arbor at Monticello

Debbie Donley, the Monticello flower gardener, talking flowers and seeds.

Cherry tomatoes for sale at the festival

The gift economy in action.

Some of the seeds we brought home. . .

. . .and some more!

More of my photos from the festivities are on Picasa.

Blight-resistant tomato varieties

Orange Banana tomato ripening in our garden, despite advanced late blight.

This growing season has provided a fabulous opportunity to find out which tomatoes can produce under awful conditions. In other words, it's been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for tomatoes, so we got a chance to see what varieties can survive the perfect tomato storm.

We planted 19 open-pollinated tomato varieties (almost all heirlooms) and one hybrid variety, and almost 100% of the plants have been decimated by disease. We had the wettest May in recorded history, followed by heat, early blight, more rain, and late blight. Fortunately for us, we got our plants in late, so we missed a lot of the wettest weather. Even so, the late blight has taken a crippling toll.

Now the good news: some of the heirlooms do seem to be able to produce, albiet significantly smaller yeilds, despite the blight.

Here are the survivors:

Flamme tomatoes from our garden

Flamme (also called Jaune

Flammé):

A French heirloom that produces small (egg-sized), round, orange tomatoes. We purchased Flamme seeds from Tomatofest.

The plant is very productive, and the fruit is sweetish with good tomato flavor. It is not as juicy as the big, fat heirloom slicers, but is still good for sandwiches and fresh eating, and great for sauce, salad, and salsa.

It could be that its just the sheer productivity of this variety that helps it outrun the blight, but it does seem to also have a bit thicker skin and lower moisture content, which I think helps keep the tomatoes from rotting.

Cream Sausage tomatoes from our garden

Cream Sausage:

This is a favorite tomato of ours that we grew last year, with excellent flavor and texture and beautiful, creamy pale yellow skin.

Cream Sausage, also called Banana Cream, is fleshy and sweet, great for cooking and eating fresh. We used lots of these last fall in salsa-making.

We ordered the seeds for Cream Sausage from Baker Creek and Seed Savers Exchange offers it as well.

Orange Banana:

These are fat, juicy, flavorful orange paste tomatoes (pictured at the top of this post). They are great for drying, eating fresh, and using in salsa and tomato sauce. They have a really excellent sweet, tomato-ey flavor and a lovely texture.

We grew and loved these last year, and ordered Orange Banana seeds this year from Baker Creek.

Honarable Mention: Cherry Tomatoes

For sheer profusion of fruit and rampant growth, cherry tomato plants cannot be matched. Their fast and furious growth and abundant fruiting allow them to outrun blight. We use cherry tomatoes for drying, cooking, and salsas, and eat tons of them fresh straight from the plant.

Sungold ("the dessert tomato" as my friend Kathryn calls it), and Black Cherry, a very tasty variety which we are growing for the first time this year, have been kicking out the tomato jams in our garden. The cherry tomatoes started fruiting early and are still producing heavily. The plants are blighted, but they hardly seem to notice. At this point in the season, they are sprawling all over the place with that boisterous cherry tomato spirit, and you can pluck a Sungold from almost anywhere you stand in our garden.

~ ~ ~

Next year, we're going to try growing all but the cherries under cover in the hoophouse, but in the meantime I'm grateful for the tough tomatoes that can survive a rough season like this summer.

Pushing the Babies Out of the Nest

Saturday and Tuesday we had our first plant sales with seedlings from the hoophouse.

Saturday was a leisurely all-day affair at our home -- friends came by to visit and pick up plants, and we sent hundreds of babies to their new homes in gardens in Asheville and environs. MT, LJ, KT, and LK stayed for much of the day, along with Sadie the dog, and we all weathered a brief thunderstorm together up under the porch roof.

Butternut Squash seedlings

Heather R. and her friend Beka win the prize for Most Harrowing Yet Triumphant Journey to the sale, surviving an encounter with a snapping turtle in the driveway with all unscathed. 

Red Ursa Kale

We ended up selling quite a lot of starts despite or perhaps because of the relaxed atmosphere. And we bartered some too, trading plants for plumbing and broadforking hours, both sorely needed in these parts.

Edmondson Cucumbers

Burgundy Okra

Waltham Broccoli

The aforementioned visiting.

Lettuce

Herbs

Tuesday we had a smaller, more business-like evening sale at the WWC garden.  We packed up a bunch of flats and trucked them over to the college garden just next door for a sale for students, faculty, staff, volunteers, and other college-related folks.  It was a gorgeous evening and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with the WWC community.  There were numerous gardening tips exchanged, and a number of customers took their babies directly from the sale to their community garden plots and put them right in the ground.  Quite satisfying for everyone involved.

Scenes from the WWC plant sale:

It is surprisingly not hard at all to see the babies go after all of these weeks of nurturing -- perhaps because I know they're all finding such fabulous homes and because I'm READY to let go of the responsibility of all of these thousands of tiny plants!  

So thanks to everyone who took home seedlings, and happy gardening!