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!

Let the Seed Starting Rumpus Begin!

Last week we started just over 2,000 onion, leek, and shallot seeds, plus a few cardoons and a couple of heirloom varieties of celery. And after just 24 hours, the sprouting began! Within five days, all of the seeds had sprouted.

This time last year, our onions and celery took weeks to sprout. Why such fast germination this time around?

First, we followed Eliot Coleman's advice and did not cover any of the seeds, but left them all sitting on top of the soil exposed to the air. According to Coleman, this allows the seeds to have much better access to oxygen, which is critical for germination.

Second, rather than heating the air we're using a propagation mat to heat only the soil in which we're starting seeds. (Ours is a Pro-Grow mat, available here). This is a much more energy-efficient way to ensure that seeds have what they need to germinate, since soil temperature, rather than air temperature, is the critical factor in germination time. Soil temperature without a heat mat will be 10-20 degrees lower than ambient temperature, so you would have to get the air temperature up to 95 or so and keep it there to maintain the 75 degree soil temp ideal for germination for most garden vegetables. The heat mat prevents temperature fluctuations (a big problem in our passive solar hoophouse) and allows you to keep conditions just right for the short period of time needed for germination. Then you can move the plant babies off the mat into a less controlled environment once they're up and growing.

Third, after our experience starting our winter greens in soil blocks rather than black plastic cell packs, we decided to do most of our germination for the Spring in mini-blocks. These 3/4 inch homemade blocks allow us to fit somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,300 seeds on the germination mat. So we germinate seeds in the soil blocks, and then step the babies up into bigger containers without bottom heat. It's a far more efficient and speedier system than starting seeds in cell packs in the hoophouse, which was our old method.

The eventual goal is to have a well-insulated unheated greenhouse where we can start seeds on the propagation mat, but for now the plant babies are growing just fine in our kitchen. We'll have onions in the ground in early April if all goes according to plan...til then, it's so heartening to see the tiny plants curling up from the soil. Spring is coming!

Heirloom Torpea Rossa onions (also known as Torpedo Red Bottle onions) sprouting.

Welcome Sun!

Left: Newgrange passage on Winter Solstice

In honor of the Winter Solstice today, here's a video that gives us the opportunity, albiet in 2x3 inch form, to witness a Winter Solstice event created by neolithic farmers:

http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/Solstice2007/ (click "view the archive")

The video shows the sunrise on Winter Solstice at Newgrange, a beautiful neolithic structure in Ireland engineered to observe and honor the Solstice.

More about Newgrange here:

http://www.knowth.com/newgrange.htm

I have been lucky enough to spend time at Newgrange several times in my travels in Ireland over the years. It is awe-inspiring -- the structure is 5,000 years old and its design is brilliant both technically and artistically.

Sidenote for you natural building aficianados out there: its a south-facing bermed structure with a living roof that hasn't leaked in all those thousands of years.

Newgrange is a beautiful symbol of the winter solstice, and resonates deep, deep down for me -- maybe it's molecular, maybe it's the collective unconscious.

Winter Solstice has always been a significant time for my family -- sometimes full of joy and other times marked by profound grief and loss.

It is the longest night, a time to notice and know darkness, a time to honor the dark, a time to honor the dead. It is a time to sit with the painful and the difficult things, with loss, with despair. It's the dead of winter.

And: it is the birthday of the sun--the birthday of light in the midst of the darkest time of year. A turning point, the return of the light, a time of transformation, a time of hope, and a time of rebirth.

In many ancient traditions, Winter Solstice is a time to honor the way that life emerges from death, light emerges from dark in the cycles of the natural world. A time to look forward to Spring and Summer and the bright, hot months when everything will be in fruit and flower, imagining what will come to be.

Solstice morning on the farm

For gardeners, this time of year is a time of planning the garden, deciding what seeds you will plant, what food you will grow. On a metaphorical level, the Winter Solstice is a time for the same sort of setting of intentions, dreaming, imagining good things to come.

The seed is a beautiful symbol of the Winter Solstice to me -- a tiny dormant thing, seemingly lifeless but full of potential, full of life that will sprout, grow, bloom, and fruit as the cycle continues. Today, I will excavate some vegetable seeds from the jars where they live in the back of my fridge, and lay them on my altar, imagining all of the growing things to come!

~~~

More on Winter Solstice traditions:

• Waverly Fitzgerald on the Winter Solstice
• http://www.candlegrove.com/solstice.html
• http://www.religioustolerance.org/winter_solstice.htm

Seed Shopping, Seed Saving, and Seed Sovereignty

"In Hindi, seed is bija or 'containment of life.' . . . Seed is created [by plants] to renew, to multiply, to be shared and to spread. Seed is life itself."

-Vandana Shiva, February 2009

"We now believe that Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics). This level of control is almost unbelievable."

-Neil Harl, agricultural economist, Iowa State University

Above: processing and sharing seeds at a seed swap last winter

'Tis the season of seeds. Seed catalogs arrive daily in my mailbox with their titillating images of flower and fruit. The seed catalog season kicks off just when serious withdrawal is beginning to hit and we are desperate for a fix -- grey overcast skies and icy temperatures sharpening the craving for the summer garden's sensual pleasures.

With seeds, as with most things that we value, the profit motive corrupts and predatory capitalism corrupts utterly. The most egregious example of this corruption is the Monsanto corporation. It is mindboggling to imagine what Monsanto has done: they have taken the wholesome, life-giving, generous nature of the seed and hoarded it, pressed it into ownership, and manipulated it for profit.

The idea that the genetic material in seeds could be "intellectual property" belonging to a corporation violates everything I hold sacred. But it is not only plant-loving dirt worshippers who should be concerned about what Monsanto is doing. A recent AP article explains: "Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes." Read the full article here.

In terms of food justice, the issue of who owns the means to produce food is critical. For gardeners and farmers who care about seed sovereignty, food justice, the future of food, and the sanctity of seed, the question quickly becomes how to avoid Monsanto. Far easier said than done. Monsanto is everywhere. Especially in the world of seeds. Let me repeat one of the quotes with which I began: "Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics)." Shopping for seeds and trying to avoid Monsanto is like shopping for anything else and trying to avoid "Made in China."

Seed may be organic, heirloom, and sold by a hippified little seed company, and still be ultimately sourced from or owned by Monsanto. I discovered a while back that Monsanto seeds were being sold in a number of my standby seed catalogs, including Territoral Seeds, Cook's Garden, Burpee, and Johnny's. I wrote a post [which you can read here: "Are Monsanto Seeds in YOUR favorite Seed Catalog?"] including a link to a thread on Freedom Gardens with information about all of the seed companies that carry Monsanto seeds--this discussion on the forum is very informative and contains a ton of factual information about which companies and which varieties are coming from Monsanto, and what we can do to avoid buying them.

My number one recommendation for seed shoppers looking to avoid Monsanto is this:

Fedco Seeds.

Fedco, a consumer- and worker- owned cooperative company that carries a staggering variety of heirloom and open-pollinated seeds as well as plenty of modern hybrids, made a decision three years ago to drop all Monsanto varieties from their catalog. This was a major risk, given that their largest supplier at that point was Seminis, which had just been acquired by Monsanto.

Fedco has a great overview of how and why the company's owners (workers and consumers) made the decision to eliminate Monsanto seeds, and how they've implemented it here. Their explanation of their seed sourcing policy is really worth a read -- they assert that "too many of us have allowed seed to become just another industrial input rather than a life force" and offer a thorough, studied view of the seed industry as a whole and how to make ethical seed choices.

I highly recommend Fedco as a seed source -- not only do they guarantee no Monsanto varieties and no GMOs, but their prices are significantly lower than most other sources. Sometimes they will sell a variety for a third of the price of some of the big corporate-owned companies like Seeds of Change (now owned by M & M Mars).

Seeds changing hands at the Heritage Harvest Festival.

Seed exchanges by their nature refuse the paradigm of corporate seed ownership. Even better than buying from Fedco is exchanging seeds outside the money economy all together, or buying from individual seed savers.

From local seed swaps to the grandmother of them all, Seed Savers Exchange, seed trading networks are an excellent alternative to Monsanto. Seed Savers Exchange publishes the incredible "Yearbook" -- a listing of seeds available for sale and trade from thousands of members all over the world, and also has a nice, glossy catalog that can compete with any seed catalog garden porn, if you're into that sort of thing (I am). Another small company that I recommend is Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, which is particularly great for gardeners in the American South wanting to grow heirloom varieties from our region.

If you are going to buy from companies other than these (I still buy a few things from Baker Creek, for instance, a militantly anti-GMO heirloom seed purveyor) make sure at the very least that the company you're buying from has signed the "Safe Seed Pledge" assuring that your seeds will not contain GMOs. The pledge was created ten yeas ago by a group of seed companies led by High Mowing Seeds and states:

"Agriculture and seeds provide the basis upon which our lives depend. We must protect this foundation as a safe and genetically stable source for future generations. For the benefit of all farmers, gardeners and consumers who want an alternative, we pledge that we do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants. The mechanical transfer of genetic material outside of natural reproductive methods and between genera, families or kingdoms poses great biological risks, as well as economic, political and cultural threats. We feel that genetically engineered varieties have been insufficiently tested prior to public release. More research and testing is necessary to further assess the potential risks of genetically engineered seeds. Further, we wish to support agricultural progress that leads to healthier soils, genetically diverse agricultural ecosystems and ultimately healthy people and communities."

One final thought:

In the face of growing corporate ownership of seed genetics, saving and sharing seed is a radical act of resistance, and an embodiment of the world we want to create. My mantra is: buy seed now if you must (I must), and save and share seeds as much as humanly possible!

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?

Tiny Plant Babies

This morning while Christopher was inside getting dressed and ready for a day of office work, I was up at the hoophouse, giving him updates on the babies via 2-way radio.  "We have collards!" I shouted into the walkie-talkie.  "Lots of broccoli!  Lettuce!  More kale!"  

C. radioed back: "It's magic."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As promised, baby pictures:

Lettuce!

Kale!  

Broccoli!

The First Sprouts!

The first of the babies are showing their heads: a dozen or so red ursa kale and dino kale seedlings have emerged!

Photos tomorrow.  I'm too tired today from planting somewhere between 30 and 40 more flats of flowers and herbs in the past two days.

Just when you think you have enough seeds...

Christopher, LJ, and MF tucking in seeds.

The whole world seemed to be swimming with seeds on Saturday. With help from our friends MF and LJ, Christopher and I mixed up four wheelbarrow loads of starter soil and planted 3,500 vegetable seeds.  An old friend from out of town arrived midway through the seeding frenzy, and pitched in to tuck in some pepper seeds.   As the day flew by and the seed packets kept on coming, I was beginning to feel that I had crossed some sort of threshold -- going beyond ordinary gardening passion into certifiable gardening madness.  I had clearly gone way beyond overboard with the seed catalogs.

It rained most of the day, and when the rain let up for a bit I walked down to the river with my old friend and her partner.  Our boots made sucking sounds as we mucked across the wet river valley, down past the pond and through bramble thickets to the banks of the Swannanoa River. The river was swollen and beautiful, and as is usually the case when there's been a big rain, trash was scattered along the water's edge, having washed down from somewhere upstream.   

I bent down to gather up the pieces of trash at my feet, and picked up a piece of plastic about the size of an index card.  I was about to tuck it in my pocket when I noticed words printed on the plastic: 

Cosmos flower seeds.  

Plant these seeds and watch them grow!  

The piece of plastic was actually a seed packet from a promotional event sponsored by a business association.  The packet was still ziplocked shut, and the seeds inside looked perfectly dry.  

Just when seeds were spilling out into every corner of my life, the river had brought me even more seeds!  

The gift of seeds from the river felt like a blessing on our day of planting.  I took it as a reassurance that the abundance of seeds in our lives was a powerful goodness.  I'll scatter the cosmos seeds in the garden later this Spring, and see if they turn out to be viable after a trip down the Swannanoa River from who-knows-where!  

Waiting for the first seedlings in the hoophouse to show their bright green heads, I am feeling deeply grateful for community, for growing things, and for unexpected gifts.

~~~~~

Mixing starter soil using the fabulous Sugar Creek Farm recipe ... the masks are to avoid breathing particulate minerals and dust.

Filling the cell packs.

Pepper seeds.

This is almost all of the flats full of seeds...I think we did another 7 or 8 trays after this shot.

Invoking Spring

The snow is melting today, pussywillows are beginning to bloom, and the redwing blackbirds have returned.   The expectation of Spring is so thick you can taste it!  

It feels like time to summon Spring.  

 

Invocation

by May Sarton

Come out of the dark earth 
Here where the minerals 
Glow in their stone cells 
Deeper than seed or birth. 

Come under the strong wave 
Here where the tug goes 
As the tide turns and flows 
Below that architrave. 

Come into the pure air 

Above all heaviness 

Of storm and cloud to this  

Light-possessed atmosphere.  

Come into, out of, under  

The earth, the wave, the air. 

Love, touch us everywhere  

With primeval candor. 

May Sarton

1912-1995

Presente!

Seed Potatoes

Purple Peruvian, a very old fingerling potato variety available from Ronningers.

I just placed our seed potato order from Ronninger's Potato Farm.

Ronninger's offers an amazing variety of reasonably-priced seed potatoes, including certified organic and also what they call "naturally grown" which they describe as follows: "These are grown the same way as our certified organic potatoes, however, to save on time and costs, they were not inspected for their organic status."

Our 40 pounds of seed potatoes will be shipped on March 1, and we'll plant them in mid-March. 

Here are the varieties we're growing this year:

• La Ratte  
  
• All Blue
  
• All Red  
• Carola  
• Early Rose  
  
• Garnet Chili
• German Butterball
  
• Huckleberry
  
• Maris Piper
• Yukon Gold
  
• Purple Peruvian
• Rose Finn Apple
  
• Ozette

So the first of the 2009 seeds have been ordered--to paraphrase Maurice Sendak, "let the garden rumpus begin!"

Are Monsanto seeds in YOUR favorite seed catalog?

The various and sundry evil deeds of Monsanto have been thoroughly documented and much discussed in a variety of media over the past decade. The sprawling corporation is an agent of harm in so many diverse and horrifying ways that their name has become synonomous in many circles with profit-driven destruction of living systems.

Monsanto is considered by some to be the single most unethical and harmful investment possible. They are known, among other things, as the corporation that sues farmers for inadvertantly growing food contaminated with gene drift from Monsanto's GMO crops. If Monsanto's genetically modified seed cross-polinates with a farmer's crops, the farmer becomes a victim of GMO pollution, and then to add insult to injury Monsanto sues the farmer for theft of the corporation's intellectual property. The absurdity is almost laughable if it weren't so scary.

If you need any MORE evidence of Monsanto's evil: they are the world's leading promoter of "frankenfoods" - genetically modified food plants, as well as so-called "terminator technology," Roundup, Roundup Ultra (sprayed indiscriminately in the drug wars in the Andes and Colombia), and Roundup Ready plants. They are also the proud owners of rGHB, the bovine hormone that contaminates most commercial milk and dairy products. I could go on.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Monsanto seeds are being sold in a number of my standby seed catalogs, including: Territoral Seeds, Cooks Garden, Burpee, Johnny's, Shumway, and more. Here is a great thread on Freedom Gardens with information about all of the seed companies that carry Monsanto seeds--this thread is a really informative discussion with lots of factual information about which companies and which varieties are coming from Monsanto, and what we can do to avoid buying them.

For more information about why we should avoid buying them, here is the Fedco Seeds backgrounder on Fedco's decision not to carry any seeds from Monsanto subsidiary Seminis. I will be buying all of my seeds from Fedco, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), Baker Creek, and Seeds of Change this season. Southern Exposure, Baker Creek, and SSE are always my main sources, but this year I'm cutting out any catalogs that do business with Monsanto.

"No to Monsanto" crop circle cut in protest of Monsanto by farmers in the Phillipines.

Image courtesty of Vanity Fair

For more information on the evils of Monsanto, and organized resistance to their actions and policies:

"Millions Against Monsanto" campaign of the Organic Consumers Union

"Monsanto's Harvest of Fear" Vanity Fair article, May 2008

A great post on Monsanto from "We don't buy it", an excellent blog about "one family's quest to quit buying new stuff."

And finally, here is the fabulous Vandana Shiva on Monsanto and intellectual property:

"When seed, for example, becomes patented by Monsanto, when a farmer saves seed on their own land--a duty in an ecological world view--that saving of seed is now an intellectual property crime. It is treated as theft. And it fact it is because of this extremely outrageous action that I started to save seeds. . . .Seed exchange is treated as theft. If I give you seed so that you can grow a nice vegetable in your garden, that is treated as theft of intellectual property.

But what is worse: . . .when your genetically engineered seeds are introduced, you know, they hybridize, they pollinate, so they contaminate with the genetic traits. Now in environmental law, when I spread pollution, I must pay. . . .But when you have patents on seeds, when the genes spread, you don't have to pay, you in fact own the other person's crop now. This is what happened to a Canadian farmer called Percy Schmeiser. It has happened to 1,500 American farmers who have been sued by Monsanto after Monsanto contaminated their crops."

~Vandana Shiva

Seed Swap!

  

Last night we hosted a seed exchange for gardening friends, and a fabulous time was had by all.

Seed saving and swapping is an ancient tradition, one I imagine must go all the way back to when humans first began to cultivate plants for food and other uses.  Seeds have been valuable commodities in many cultures, and I see seed circles like the one we had last night as a way to envision and begin creating a culture that again values and appreciates seeds as critical to sustaining life. I see sharing seeds as an act of hope.

Last night, as friends gathered in our home bringing offerings of all kinds of seeds of beloved plants, I imagined our little seed sharing circle as part of a long chain of  seed history.  These tiny little bits of plant matter spread on my coffee table contained the potential for an array of medicinal and culinary herbs, flowers, vegetables, and fruits that enrich and sustain our lives.  Many of the plants that will grow from these seeds have been cultivated and stewarded by our ancestors for millenia.   Sharing seeds is a way of connecting with community, with our ancestors, and with the web of life on the planet.  And it's also fun.

As we pored over the assembled packets, jars, and bags of seed, we drank a variety of home ferments -- blackberry mead, quince mead, and crabapple scrumpy -- and talked about gardening, food, politics, and all sorts of other things.  Once the seed frenzy was over, we feasted on a meal of all-local foods, a topic for another blog post sometime soon.  

Once everyone had unloaded their seed offerings, there was an amazing array of vegetable, flower, herb, and native plant seeds. Everyone left with lots and lots of seed and no one spent any money. Hurrah!

Some highlights were: bronze fennel, milkweed, and angelica from Jeanie; salsify, paw paw, cockscomb, tulsi basil, nicotiana, and Tennessee vining pumpkin from Dana Dee; and all kinds of amazing flower seeds from Shane, including an heirloom edible black hollyhock variety called "The Watchman" and some very enticing zinnias, asters, columbines, and canterbury bells.

We also processed a bunch of saved seeds from the garden, including marigolds and Mexican sunflowers, and the much-loved hibuscus sabdariffa - red sorrel - the "red zinger hibiscus." 

If you are interested in swapping seeds, the most grassroots way to go is to get a group of gardeners together in someone's home. Locally-grown seeds are going to be better adapted to your growing conditions than ones from far away, and don't require cross-country shipping.  Visiting with other gardeners as you share seeds gives you the chance to learn about different varieties, and I always come away from local seed swaps with valuable tips, ideas, and stories from fellow seed swappers. Often I discover plants I never would have found in a seed catalog, and seed swapping enables me to try out a few seeds of a new plant without having to buy a whole packet of seeds.

In addition to local seed sharing gatherings, there are also regional and national networks of seed swapping, and a number of online seed swaps.  You miss out on the conversation and community by swapping seeds online, but you do often have access to a much greater variety of seeds.

Here's a link to a list of some seed exchange networks and here are a few good online swap sites:

• National Gardening Association Seed Swap
  
• Old Farmer's Almanac Seed Swap
  
• ThriftyFun Seed Swap
  

Finally, if you want to get involved in the biggest seed swap out there today, you can join the Seed Saver's Exchange (SSE).  Members receive the Seed Savers Yearbook with thousands of listings from people all over the US (and a few in other countries) offering saved seeds for sale or trade.  I highly recommend becoming a member of SSE for anyone interested in heirloom seeds, food security, gardening, or food history.  Just skimming through the Yearbook is a valuable way to learn about the incredible diversity of cultivated plants available to gardeners--far beyond the very few varieties that make it to supermarket shelves today.

Sharing seeds is one small but powerful act in the big project of creating sustainable community. Seed networks are part of a culture that values life, a way of living that honors traditions of the past and imagines a verdant future.  I'm grateful to be connected to the web of seed savers and gardeners and plant lovers out there digging and cultivating and sowing and harvesting plants handed down for generations.  Long live the seed swap!

Vegetable husbandry, succession gardening, and prayers for rain

The late corn that Bud and LJ and I planted is coming along, though getting a bit choked by it's overzealous bean sisters. It's raining a little today (HALLELUJAH!!!) and I'm hoping the rain will give the corn the boost it needs to outgrow the beans a little.

Since it's such a small patch of corn, we'll have to hand-pollinate at some point soon. I'm excited for our first adventure in vegetable husbandry/wifery, which is far less daunting than the livestock equivalent.

Meanwhile, we harvested a bunch of carrots and beets over the weekend (see below), some of which we enjoyed shredded last night in a delightful salad with white beans, wild rice, sunflower seeds, parsley, celery, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar (plus salt and pepper for those of you who want to try this at home).



The rest of the beet and carrot harvest is either fermenting in one of the various crocks crowding our kitchen counters, or in cold storage (aka the fridge) to last, we hope, until the next round of roots are ready.

We're direct seeding carrots, beets, radishes, and mustards now for the fall--the photo below is C. mulching a carrot/radish bed we sowed on Saturday with heirloom French Breakfast Radish and Scarlet Nantes Carrot seeds.



The idea is that we'll keep sowing beets, carrots, and radishes every few weeks until the weather gets too cold--succession planting so that in theory we should have root crops to eat and share for a good while to come.

In the meantime, I am holding out hope for an long, steady downpour today (it's just a drizzle at this point) for our garden and all of the plants and animals, including we human animals, that are so desperate for rain after so many months of drought.

Let's have some RAIN!!!

Dirt farming

Last weekend we made supercharged dirt...seed starting mix for our fall starts.

Shannon and Rain and DCT joined us, and we ended up with a WHOLE BUNCH of plant babies.

We used a recipe that we learned in a class we took earlier this spring at Sugar Creek Farm (see below).

Above: Screening peat moss through hardware cloth...

Below: Mixing by hand and squeeeeezing to see if it's wet enough yet...

Top: DCT on hose duty...

Bottom: Hands getting dirty...

Joe Allawos’ Starter Soil Recipe

Thanks to CF for putting this together

This is the recipe we learned from farmer Joe Allawos from Sugar Creek Farm for making soil for starting seeds. It makes about a wheelbarrow load of seed starting mix, or enough for about 20 flats. We ended up with 218 4-packs (salvaged cell packs from Dogwood Hills and elsewhere) or a whopping 872 starts!

Ingredient Volume Purpose

Peat moss 6 gallons Retains water, provides good drainage

Compost 3 gallons Provides nutrients

Perlite 3 gallons Drainage, air and water retention

Vermiculite 3 gallons Soaks up water and nutrients and holds them in the mix until the plants are ready to access them

Lime (pulverized, not pellitized) 1 ½ cups Neutralizes the Ph

Greensand 1 cup Contains all the micronutrients and improves disease resistance

Dried blood 1 cup Protein and Nitrogen

Colloidal phosphate 1 cup Phosphorous

Azomite 1 cup Clay that contains all the micronutrients

Directions

1. Lay hardware cloth across the top of a wheelbarrow. Take chunks of peak moss out and put onto the hardware cloth, breaking it up and pushing it through the hardware cloth to sift it. Do this with all the peat moss.
2. Add the lime.
3. Add water and mix it all up with your hands. Wet it enough so that you can squeeze a few drops from the mixture.
4. Add the perlite. Wear a mask! Spray it down with water as you’re pouring it in to cut down on the dust.
5. Add the vermiculite. Definitely wear a mask! Spray it down with water as you’re pouring it in to cut down on the dust.
6. Add the greensand, dried blood, colloidal phosphate and azomite, then mix it up with your hands.
7. Put the hardware cloth back on the wheelbarrow and sift the compost through into the mixture.
8. Mix thoroughly with your hands.
9. You’re done!

Note: for flowers and nightshades, remove dried blood from the recipe.

We planted lettuce, cabbage, kale, chard, brussels sprouts, onions, leeks, bok choy, cauliflower, broccoli, and probably some things I'm forgetting. We'll direct seed carrots, radishes, beets, and some other things for the fall garden, too.


Planting seeds...































The flats full and planted...


































And a few days later:

The babies emerging....