The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon December 1st, 2009

Because I am on the mail and email list of every seed company in creation, I am spending a lot of time trying not to read plant variety descriptions.  You see, I have other things to do.  But it is hard.  Seed catalogs are porn for garden people like me – I find myself beginning to enter into wildly unrealistic fantasies, in which I am harvesting bushel baskets of okra, and drooling slightly.  It isn’t very attractive, but it is kind of fun for me.  I want to curl up with a cup of tea and a pile of catalogs and let my imagination take me away.

But since I have told myself that I have to finish setting up the new blog before I do so, I will.  But I didn’t say anything about not indulging in discussions of varities with my readers.  This, of course, is important work, and wholly justifiable.  Heck, I might even nobly help improve someone’s tomato or carrot harvest if we do this.  It is all for you folks, really.

Ok, maybe not, maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to talk produce, but I do have to do a blog post, and I really do want to hear what you’ve all had good luck with.  So here are some of my favorite varieties, up here in the cold, wet northeast.  I’d love to hear what you’ve tried that you really like – do include your location and planting zone when you do it, so that we have a sense of the conditions of your garden.

On the subject of hybrid vs. OP/heirloom, btw, I have a general preference for the OP veggies, but no real objection to the judicious use of hybrids.  The reality is that for my climate, a number of hybrids are better than the OPs – I simply can’t get lots of really good bell peppers with even any of the cold hardy OP varieties.  That doesn’t mean I don’t grow and save seed from the OPs – I just separate them in the garden, and don’t plan to rely on the hybrids if times ever got really tough and I couldn’t afford or acquire more seed.  My general rule is that I grow a hybrid only if it offers me something no OP variety can, and if I want the crop in the long term,  I also save seed from an OP variety.  If I can’t do both, I keep the OP.  But I find I usually can – for example, I sometimes grow a hybrid sweet corn – but only after a bumper year of my preferred pop and dry corns, when I’ve got plenty of saved seed.

So you’ll see some hybrids, but a lot more OP varieties.  As with everything, YMMV.

We’ll start with the tomatoes:

Unlike everyone else last year, I didn’t get the blight.  It still wasn’t much of a tomato year, though – we had 26 inches of rain in June, and everything was stunted.  It was cold until late July, and we had another 14 inches of rain in July.  Still, tomatoes that did well in the crappy weather we had deserve their praise.

Paste: Orange Banana was the clear winner in productivity, but I still prefer Opalka and Polish Linguica for taste.  Linguica didn’t do well in the cold and wet, but Opalka was respectable.  Orange Banana is pretty good, though.

Slicers: My beloved early Glaciers came through like champions, producing early and often, despite disgusting weather.  Prudens Purple and Pineapple did ok.  Jaune de Flame didn’t do well at all, and neither did the Brandywines.  Taxi was respectable early, but petered out.

Cherries: The one hybrid tomato I always grow is Sungold – there’s nothing like it.  There was an OP variety circulating, but it just isn’t as good.  Sungolds mostly shrugged off the weather – in fact, I got a respectable crop even from a garden area I’d totally abandoned because of heavy flooding early on.  Black cherry also did well, with little cracking.  Be My Baby Cherry was really tasty, although not super-productive  The rest cracked constantly due to the wet conditions.

Peppers - it was just plain a crappy pepper year for us.  The ones that did best were planted late, actually, they missed the worst of the rain and coolth. 

Heirloom: Albino bullnose is not my favorite pepper, flavorwise, but it is a reliable and solid producer, and not bad.  It has shrugged off bad conditions every year to go on and do well.  The only other real success in this category was Amish Cheese, which was extremely tasty and productive.  Chinese giant was passable, although very late, and are my favorites for flavor and size.

Hybrid: Sunbell and Flavorburst did pretty well for me. 

Hot: Terrible hot pepper year, even for those in pots.  I’m a pepperhead, and I like my peppers with good heat – not a great set of choices.  Serrano de Sol did ok, So did Early Jalapeno, for a fairly kind definition of ok.  Long red cayenne and Fish were passable.  The habaneros totally tanked, as did most of the other peppers.

Potatoes: Some scab this year, because of the wet, but not a terrible year.  Russian banana fingerlings were extremely plentiful, Purple Peruvian shrugged everything off, and Green Mountains did the same.

Eggplant: Surprisingly, it wasn’t a bad eggplant year – I have no idea why, since it should have been. Italian White produced very nicely, and has become a staple.  Those little tiny ones “Hansel” and “Fairy Tale” did very well, and I think I’m going to sell the plants, but I just have no use for such tiny eggplants myself – I don’t have time to sit around stuffing midget veggies.  Pingtung Long did fine, as did Rosa Bianca, so I’ll stick with them.

Carrots: Not a bad carrot year, even given the wet.  Dragon did extremely well, was very sweet and my kids loved it. This was our first attempt with it.  Oxheart gave its usual solid performance. 

Turnips: We had the best turnip year ever.  I realize this is not something most people would consider a delight, but I like them.  Purple top white globe did very well, as did Japanese White.

Beets: This was the year of the Yellow Intermediate Mangel – they are delicious, easy to grow and did very, very well.  Rote Kugel was a close second.

Broccoli: We really loved Purple Peacock – tasty and successful.  Umpqua was a nice, reliable performer. Romanesco did well and was yummy, despite taking up space all year.  Blue Wind, an early hybrid, came in nice and early when it was raining all the freakin’ time.

Peas: Alderman did very well for us, as did Sugar Ann.  Blauschokkers did terribly – almost no soup peas this year.

Corn: We had a nice harvest of Northstine Dent corn, planted on the late side and it did very well.  It is the best tasting meal corn I’ve ever eaten, even if not the heaviest yielder.  We ate the Black Aztec in the green stage, because it was pretty clear it would never have matured all the way, given the rain.  Tasty, but I wanted it more for grain than green.

Cabbage: Was slow to size up, but Early Jersey Wakefield did well enough, and January King and Glory of Enkuizen did great for me.

Kale: They all did fine.  My favorite for flavor is Lacinato, my favorite for texture is White Russian.  But I’ll eat any kale or collards happily.

Beans: Not a great bean year.  The red noodle beans did very badly, which was a pain, since I love them.  The asparagus beans did ok, but not up to previous performances.  The dry beans didn’t all get dry enough – Mrocumier, Hutterite and Jacob’s Cattle did the best.

Green beans: The bush beans were late, but finally did pretty well. I got a good harvest out of Royalty Purple and Benchmark.  The poles weren’t as good this year, but Northeaster, Fortex and Blue Lake did ok.  I tried growing Genuine Cornfield up the corn, but it just didn’t work well this year – too much wet and cold early on.

Cucumbers – Well, there’s something that mostly liked the weather.  Poona Kheera remains a major fave, while Northern Pickler did very well.

Ok, I can’t remember what else I planted .  How about y’all?

Sharon

• seeds
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Sharon April 15th, 2009

A while back I got an email from a guy named Ken Greene, asking if I knew about his enterprise – the Hudson Valley Seed Library.  I didn’t, actually, and I was just plain thrilled to hear that it existed.  Their farm and seed catalog are dedicated to preserving seeds with historical ties or specific adaptations to our agricultural region.  And I can’t think of a more valuable project.

I was lucky enough to run into Ken Greene and the Library’s founder, Doug (whose last name I was told and can’t remember, and can’t locate on the site – sorry!) at the Schenectady Greenmarket a few weeks ago, and I got to not only introduce myself, but also see their seed selection, including the flat-out stunning seed “art packs” that they sell some of their seeds in, showcasing a local artist’s works.  I took home a packet of Hank’s X-tra Special Baking Bean in a gorgeous package, and now I just have to wait for the soil to warm up enough to plant them.

I have two intentions in this post.  The first is to draw attention to their work, and membership to their seed library.  Their work is incredibly important – for most of us not lucky enough to live near a major seed company, finding really local seed sources is tough – and even if we do live near a seed company, often most of their varieties were grown a long distance away.  The commitment of the HVSL to growing out seeds locally, and choosing ones that are particularly well adapted to our region is deeply important – it isn’t just one resource, in some sense, seeds are the master resource of any regenerative future.  As Vandana Shiva writes in _Earth Democracy_,

“The seed, for example, reproduces itself and multiplies.  Farmers use seed both as grain adn for the next year’s crop.  Seed is free, both in the ecological sense of reproducing itself and in the economic sense of reproducing the farmers’ livelihood.

This seed freedom ia major obstacle for seed corporations.  To create a market for seed the seed has to be transformed materially so that its reproductive ability is blocked.  Its legal status must also be changed so that instead of being the common property of farming communities, it becomes the patented private property of the seed corporations.

The seed is starting to take shape as the site and symbol of freedom in the age of manipulation and monopoly of life.  The seed is not big and powerful, but can become alives as a sign of resistance and creativity in the smallest of huts or gardens and the poorest of families.  In smallness lies power.”

If you have seed orders yet to place, and live in this general region, I would encourage you to order through them.  If you are a small local farmer, perhaps you might raise out a seed crop for this wonderful project.  Even if you don’t garden, consider supporting them and donating their seeds to local community gardens.

But not only do I want to support this wonderful project, but I want to encourage other people to think hard about establishing local seed libraries, seed saving cooperatives and small seed companies.  We are at the beginning of a fundamental shift towards home agriculture – we see it in the garden on the White House Lawn and in the rising sales of local seed companies.  We see it in the sheer number of people who are recognizing that an access to food that depends on jobs in the public economy represents a vulnerability.

Having access to safe, affordable and most of all, adapted breeds of seed that thrive in your climate and location is a first step in gardening.  Seeing those seeds multiply in your own garden from year to year is the first step in gardening as a means of saving money – when you realize that two lettuce seeds tucked into an old yogurt container provide you with a large salad and a thousand more seeds, you begin to see the hope of real economic growth – the capacity to enrich without theft from the future. 

Fundamentally, seed is not an industrial product – it is a living thing.  It is easy to say “oh, I want to grow Black Brandywine” and order seed from a company that got its seed from a farm somewhere.  But the truth is that two strains of Black Brandywine, one grown out in a long, warm growing season in Missouri and another in a cool short one in Minnesota, will have fundamental differences.  Save it long enough, and your strain of tomato or bean will become something genetically distinct from the one you obtained, as the plants genes work to adapt to the conditions it finds.  We have become accustomed to seeing seed as something that can be standardized and produced like a factory product – but it is not – seed is local, seed is specific to its place and time and circumstances.  And thus, there is no way to get the best possible results from an industrialized agriculture that treats all places as though they were the same and all seeds as though they were destined to the same future.

I think there is no doubt that saved seed, whether bought or traded, will be a large part of any hopeful future.  So I would encourage those with the power to do so to invest their time and energy in supporting institutions like this one, and national and local seed saving groups.  And I would encourage you all to learn to save at least one or two varieties of seed, to trade and share them, and perhaps to establish local seed libraries that can hold the seed, the site of so much possibility, resistance and bright hope, in its right place of honor at the center of our communities.

Sharon

• agriculture , local interest , seeds
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Sharon February 10th, 2009

I’m mulling over what corn to grow this year.  I want it to be open pollinated, and in the green stage, sweet, probably as sweet as a moderate hybrid.  I’d like it to have good cold soil emergence, a quick maturity date, but a good extended harvest in the green stage.  I want something with a good bit of genetic diversity and an interesting color – green, red, or multicolored.  In the dry stage, I’d like it to parch superbly, grind into delicious cornmeal and also pop into delicate, light popcorn.  It should be easy to shell, but have a good, tight husk to keep out earworms, tolerate wet, cold, dry, hot and variable conditions, and produce a heavy crop, with five or six ears to a plant in dense plantings. 

Just in case you don’t realize it, that list is, well, insane.  That is, no one will ever breed a corn with all of those qualities – it isn’t possible.  The hard coating that makes a popcorn great means that in the green stage, it is never as tender as sweet corn.  On the other hand most corns as sugary as present day hybrids would never make good flour – they would mold instead of drying.  There are corns adapted to hot, cold, variable, wet and dry conditions – but not all at once.  There are some that can tolerate quite a range of conditions, because they’ve been selected for that quality – but that means that other qualities probably weren’t as high a priority.

And yet, if you read garden catalog copy, you might get the impression that the perfect corn or tomato or bean is out there, without compromise. It isn’t totally my fault that on some level I’m still looking for the perfect corn, rather than one whose compromises I can live with – just listen to the catalogs trumpeting “Most exciting introduction in human history!  Better than the domestication of the potato!  This melon stores for seven months at room temperature, perfumes a room and is delicious even after being on the compost pile for 3 weeks – the molds growing upon it are a traditional delicacy!”  Ok, maybe I exaggerate just a little – but not much.

If it were just seed varieties that had this problem we could all shrug our shoulders, but in gardening and farming, the “I want it all” disease tends to permeate our lives.  We want our gardens to be full of a huge variety of annual and perennial crops and have no weeds at all.  We want to emphasize calorie crops in a survival garden and also emphasize high value fruits and vegetables to save money.  We want to raise every animal imaginable – a couple of llamas, goats, a cow, five sheep, ducks, of course, chickens, bunnies, oh, and bees and maybe some pigs….

And all those ambitions are doable – I even know people who do them all.  But most of us, with limitations of space and time are probably going to find that we have to compromise.  For example, a lot of us want to be able to live off our gardens if times get tough – that means growing dense calorie crops – dried beans, nuts, root crops and some small grains.  The thing is, these crops take up space in our garden – and right now, most of us can buy these items pretty cheaply.  On the other hand, lettuce, basil, tomatoes, raspberries, peaches…these are not so cheap per pound.  So do we emphasize high value crops, or do we emphasize calorie crops?  Or do we compromise?  If you’ve got all the space and time in the world, you probably can grow all your potatoes, beans, corn and sweet potatoes, and also all the raspberries and lettuce you want.  But what about those of us on smaller plots, with less physical ability or time?

Well, you might need to cut your produce bill right now more than you need to prepare for TEOTWAWKI.  Or you might feel like you enjoy growing beans, corn and sweet potatoes enough that you are content with that priority.  Or maybe you have just one bed devoted to those crops, just so you know how to grow them if times get tough, while you mostly grow tomatoes and lettuce.

You want an enormous subsistence garden with no weeds, right?  Well, there are things you can definitely do to resist weed pressure – sheet mulching, not disturbing the soil.  But unless you’ve got nothing to do but hoe, the bigger the garden, the more likely it is that you’ll have weeds – while the lambsquarters can’t sneak past you in a 4×6 raised bed, you’ll find that your 1/4 acre garden has quite a few sneaky places for crabgrass to grow.  And it might be possible that you do want to do something besides hoe.  So guess what – welcome to weedland.  I remember visiting Old Sturbridge Village and being told by a gardener that they are constantly criticized for letting the weeds go in their gardens, and are often told that this couldn’t have been a common practice, because, after all, people relied on their gardens.  But in fact, the gardeners there observed that it was quite the contrary – weediness was normal, and as long as the weed pressure didn’t undermine the harvest too much, it wasn’t worried much about. 

Want a forest garden?  Great, that’s a terrific project.  Just remember, though, you’ve now decided to emphasize perennial plantings, which means that even if you scatter in annuals, you’ll probably have to wait a while before major production.  That’s not the end of the world – time passes faster than you think.  But it is worth remembering that your harvests won’t get large for a while in many cases, and that most perennial crops are fruits, nuts and greens  – you probably won’t be getting most of your primary calorie crops from that garden unless you eat a lot of Jerusalem artichokes.  Nothing wrong with that – just worth remembering that there are tradeoffs everywhere.

What about animals?  Well, again, if you live on a farm, love animals and want to, you can have a lot of them.  I know someone living on 5 acres in quite a dense suburb who has more animals on her lot than I do.  But you have to want that – and it has to be a priority.  And the time, energy and feed has to come from somewhere.  Then you have to find a market for the animal – or arrange to butcher it.  Or accept that you have 143 pet rabbits .

It isn’t that I’m trying to discourage anyone from practicing polyculture, or from diversifying – quite the contrary, what I absolutely don’t want to see is everyone specializing in just one item and growing it over and over again.  We live in a society with far too much specialization.  The fact we’re generalists is, I think a virtue.  But even generalists often find that they have to pick and choose.  And anyone who tells you that their strategy doesn’t have any prices is selling something.

Maybe you can do it all – you are young, healthy, have a strong back and a lot of energy.  Great – enjoy it.  But even that’s a choice – you’ll be devoting your life to growing food. Now I can’t think of a better project for some people – but other people have other callings, and they need to to find ways to grow food that don’t take so much time and energy.  The world needs more people who grow food, especially full time – but it also needs teachers and musicians and nurses and carpenters who grow food on the side.  Someone with less time who wants to grow all their own food may need to change their diet to emphasize easily produced crops, or they may be able to say “ok, I’m content to produce half my meat and all my vegetables – and that’s enough.”  Knowing when to say “enough” is important too.  Now what is enough today may not be tomorrow – so being prepared to shift gears is important.  But we have to live with one foot in the future, but the other still in our present. 

The first project of garden design is dreaming, but the second is shaping your dreams to fit your life.  Most of us will have to choose between the perfect garden for the future and the perfect one for today, between animals and resources, between crops and varieties.  And every time we choose we give something up – and get something back.  The trick is to figure out what you really care about, and make sure you give up mostly things that don’t matter much to you, and that you get back the things that matter most – most of the time.

I think I’ve found my ideal corn – black aztec.  It is a corn that is sweet in the milk stage – not as sweet as most of the hybrids, or quite as tender, but tasty.  You’ve got to move fast to get it then, but we can do that.  It handles our cool, wet climate well, and as I save seed, it gets better adapted to my garden.  At the meal stage, it is sweet – not quite as sweet as my favorite dry corn “northstine dent”, but better than that as a green corn.  It is beautiful and tasty, and makes lovely cornmeal.  And for popcorn, well, I grow a second variety just for popcorn.  And when the corn passes the milk stage, I go down the road and buy sweet corn at my local farmstand.  It is almost perfect – although I’m still probably going to try another variety this year, simply because I can’t resist the temptation of finding something even better.  But even if I do, I won’t fool myself that I have it all.   Just enough for me and my needs.

 Sharon

• garden design , seeds
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Sharon December 12th, 2008

Ok, this week we’re going to concentrate on storing two things fairly basic to sustainable food systems, bread and seeds.  Or rather, we’re not going to store bread, we’re going to store the components thereof – flour, yeast and salt.  With water, that’s really all you need to make good bread.  And flour is often on sale this time of year – I recently saw 5lbs of bread flour as a loss leader for $1.99.

I generally recommend that people who make their own bread a lot store whole wheat and grind it themselves with either an electric or a manual grinder.  I’m not going there today, in a quickie, but if you eat a lot of bread, and want to store a large quantity of whole grains (because as we all know, white flour isn’t very nutritious), it is wisest to store wheat and acquire a grinder.  The following posts might be helpful – the first describes storing whole grains of many sorts:

http://sharonastyk.com/2008/07/17/the-storage-life-of-grains-major-and-minor/

The second covers grain grinders:

http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/18/tools-part-ii-grain-mills/

and this one discusses whether you really need one:

http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/26/what-do-you-really-need/

But today we’ll assume you are simply going to buy flour.  If that’s the case, you shouldn’t buy more than a six month supply of whole grain flours – the reason being that they go rancid.  The oils in the grains are no longer very good for you.  Some people find that they taste awful, but some people actually can’t tell when grains are rancid, or aren’t super sensitive to rancidity, so you might not know, leading you to eat things not so great for your body.  So generally speaking, you don’t want to buy more whole grain flour than you can use in six months.  After that, use white flour (but not bleached – that’s bad for you too). 

Yeast stores for six months to a year in a cool dark place, but longer if you freeze it.  I buy 1lb packages at BJs and freeze several.  Salt stores forever – if you preserve food you might want to get some that isn’t iodized – kosher or pickling salt.  But you also might want to buy a few packages of iodized salt, since that can help with thyroid issues.  Or leave it out, and eat kelp.

If you don’t have yeast, or can’t replace it, you can make sourdough starter, and use that to leaven bread.  Crunchy chicken has a link here to a basic sourdough starter: http://www.thecrunchychicken.com/search?q=sourdough

If you’ve never made your own bread, it can be a little intimidating – the easiest recipe I’ve seen is this one, also at La Crunch’s site: http://www.thecrunchychicken.com/2008/10/do-you-need-to-try-no-knead-bread.html.  But don’t be overly intimidated by the idea of kneading – it is actually a lot of fun. 

For those with gluten or wheat issues, you’ll want to find a good gluten-free bread recipe that works for you, and be able to store the ingredients.  Anyone out there want to post one in comments?

Ok, now let’s talk seeds – which are really part of food storage.  Plus, seed catalogs are the best remedy to winter ever – it is no punishment to have to look at them. 

Generally speaking, you want to order seeds from a catalog specializing in open-pollinated (so that you can save seed) varieties suited to your area.  That doesn’t mean you should never use any hybrids – but you might not want to depend on them for your primary crops. 

The part about your area is important – a seller that does variety trials will be able to give you useful advice here.  And if they buy their seed locally (almost no sellers buy all their seed locally, so be aware of that) it will be particularly adapted to regional conditions and climate.

If you live in the Northeast, here are my favorite seed companies:

Johnny’s Selected Seed is the company I grew up with – I used to steal the catalog from my stepmother’s mail pile and look at the pictures as a teenager.  They are terrific – not cheap, but the quality is extremely high, and they breed some neat things.  Not to mention that when Rob Johnson retired, he sold the company to his own employees.  This is a good company, and they deserve your bucks:  www.johnnyseed.com

For small scale gardeners, Pinetree seeds is terrific - they say their packages are for smaller gardeners, but quite honestly, often the packages are just as big as any others, and much cheaper.  Plus, the catalog is a fun read – even though I’m not a small garden I look forward to it every year, and order quite a lot of things that I don’t need a ton of from them.  www.superseeds.com

Fedco I’ve already mentioned – they are a coop, have the most fun seed catalog ever, and really do a lot of work to make their recommendations useful.  They also one of only a few companies I know of in the seed trade to completely drop all varieties held by Seminis, which was purchased by Monsanto – which, after purchase promptly began dumping open pollinated varieties and stripping our seed heritage.  They too deserve your money for taking a principled stand www.fedcoseeds.com 

Unfortunately, most of the other companies do buy some seeds wholesale from Seminis – which means it is very hard sometimes to know if you are inadvertantly putting dollars in Monsanto’s pocket.  You can call the company and ask where their seed comes from, but some places won’t tell you – honestly, this is one of those cases where we all do the best we can.

High Mowing Seeds http://www.highmowingseeds.com/ is another one I recommend. They grow all their seed locally (to their Vermont area) and while they are expanding their hybrid offerings (unfortunately more and more emphasis is on conventional hybrids, rather than the exciting and unusual varieties they used to emphasize), offer an alternative to Seminis by growing out many of the classic OP varieties, including Waltham Broccoli and Long Pie Pumpkins. They have good prices, good service and they sent me 25lbs of buckwheat within a week of my order. What more can you ask for (full disclosure – the family that runs it are somehow connected to the church my mother and step-mother attend, which is how I got my first copy of their catalog, but I assure you my alliegence is purely to their seed) from a seed company?

In the Southeast:

I feel very kindly and fond towards Baker Creek Heirlooms – their catalog and range of varieties is huge, and even though they aren’t specifically oriented towards my climate, the huge range of OP seeds means that I’ve found some favorites there.  I made my first order from them when the founder was a teenager, operating out of his bedroom – he’s now grown and married and still running it.  I wouldn’t go a season without ordering from them – among other things, they have the best selection of sweet peas ever.  www.rareseeds.com 

Southern Exposure seeds is something I haven’t used much, but I hear wonderful things about their seed if you live in the South – they are based in Virginia www.southernexposure.com

I’ve ordered some varieties also from Monticello, which maintains the varieties of seed actually grown by Thomas Jefferson, or as close as they can get.  Many are flowers, but they have some interesting vegetables as well, and how else could you get this close to history? http://monticellostore.stores.yahoo.net/plants—seeds-seeds.html

For Southwesterners:  I can’t say enough good things about Native Seeds/SEARCH which operates out of Arizona which emphasizes regional native seed varieties.  I wish more of it would do well in my area http://www.nativeseeds.org/v2/default.php

Seeds of Change is sort of the Industrial good guy. They have a very polished catalog, and lots of wonderful varieties. They are not local to me (NM), but I like them anyhow. I’m not sure I totally trust anyone who has a line of processed foods, but they also do a lot of neat plant breeding, and have a great book section. Italian White eggplants produce very well for me here in upstate NY, and Golden Giant Amaranth is both beautiful and a delicious and nutritious grain crop. Their prices are high, and their bulk selection isn’t great, but they are worth a look. www.seedsofchange.com.

For the Pacific Northwest, the obvious leader is Territorial Seeds www.territorial-seed.com.  I like them, and I’ve had good results using varieties adapted to their region in the Northeast.  I will say that I’ve had difficulty getting good information from their customer service over the years – they have declined to reveal the source of seeds, are sometimes slow to send things out,  and when they listed two varieties I had seen elsewhere as hybrids as open-pollinated, I was pleased to think that someone had stabilized them, and then  called and was reassured that yes, they definitely were open-pollinated varieties.  Well, oops, no they weren’t.  Their prices are also high – too high to give mediocre customer service.  But they do provide an important service in their region, and offer some varieties you won’t find anywhere else.

 Other Northwestern options are www.saltspringseeds.com a tiny company I’ve ordered from and liked and the wonderful Northern CA Bountiful Gardens Catalog. Bountiful Gardens is a terrific small seed company that is run in part by John Jeavons, the person who has most devoted himself to figuring out how to feed the world in small spaces. Not only do they have great seed, but they are a great cause. They also have a remarkable variety of compost, fiber and other uncommon crops. For those of you in northern CA and the Pacific NW, this is probably the place to buy, but all of us can get some wonderful things from them. http://www.bountifulgardens.org/.

For the Midwest, there are two wonderful options. 

Sand Hill Preservation Center, run by the amazing Glenn Downs, is devoted to preserving heirloom breeds of poultry and seed. They are a single family operation, and you have to wait your turn for things. But if you can get things from them, you should. They are well worth your dollar, and virtually everything they offer is produced on farm. While you are picking out seed, don’t forget to check out the chickens and ducks – I definitely want some Marans. They do not take internet orders, and they are picky about how things work. But that’s ok – they are such a good cause that we just have to get over ourselves and wait politely for this tremendous gift they are giving us. http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/ Don’t forget to say “thank you” for keeping our heritage alive and our food more secure.

And, of course, in a class entirely by itself, is Seed Savers Exchange, at www.seedsavers.org. You can buy seed from them directly, and they have a wonderful selection. Even if you don’t save seed, you should become a member – the Seed Savers Exchange has been losing members, and more and more people are the only repositories of a particular kind of tomato, or green, or millet or pea. The Irish potato famine and the corn blight of the 1970s should be evidence to us that relying on one particular crop is unbelievably dangerous – we need all the genetic diversity we possibly can get. The people at Seed Savers are keeping our heritage, our history and possibly our food security alive, and they need you at the very least to join up and give them money. But why only do that? Because the very best place to get seed is not from a catalog at all, but from your own garden, or your neighbors. So join seed savers and consider maintaining one or two or 20 varieties of seed yourself. Grow them out year after year, and save a little to trade to others. This is good practice for yourself, and enhances your own security – after all, if you ever couldn’t get seed, having some at home is a big thing. But most of all, it is a way of your participating in the provisioning of the earth.

Are you planning to save seed from a number of crops?  Here’s a piece I wrote on designing a simple, beginner’s seed savers garden that saves seed from the easiest crops: http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/08/a-seed-savers-garden-part-i/

If you have more seed than you’ll need, you’ll want to store it properly – here’s how:

http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/19/storing-seeds/

Happy breadmaking and seed selecting!

 Sharon

• food storage quickie , seeds
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Sharon March 19th, 2008

One of the essential elements of growing your own is having enough seed – as y’all know, this is a big subject for me this month.  One of the most important ways of staying secure is knowing how to store seed so that it will stay viable as long as possible.

 So, if you want to store seed for more than one year, you have several options.

 1. Keep them in a cool, dark, dry place. 

-This will enable your seeds to have about the usual storage life.  The estimated storage life of seeds is listed here.  I would note, however, that this is one of those YMMV things – I’ve had no trouble keeping spinach seed for several years, for example.   If you have a fridge, are very, very careful not to let them get moist (use silica gel and package them carefully), you can keep them in the fridge.  Me, I’ve got way too many seeds for that.

 2. Vacuum Pack Them

- Lack of air exposures will extend the seed’s life a bit.  You can buy pre-canned and vacuum packed seeds or pack them yourself with a food saver or a straw.  Remember, they still have to be cool and dark.  This should add at a minimum one year to their lifespan.

3. Freeze them.  Thanks to Pat Meadows for explaining how to do this to me.

-Obviously, this only works while the power is on, but will substantially extend the life of your seeds while the freezer is working.  I keep and use too many seeds to do this with all of mine, but I plan to use this technique for short lifespan seeds, such as onions, parsley and parsnips.

 Pat double packs her seeds in two layers of plastic, and before using them but after taking them out of the freezer, allows them 24 hours to come to room temperature before opening the packages, so that any condensation forms on the outside of the packet, not where it could hurt the seeds.

 Before you do any storing, however, make sure that any seed you grew yourself is completely dry and ready to be stored. 

And remember, never plant all your seed if you can avoid it – even the best gardeners have crop failures, and the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.  The reality is that seed varieties are lost all the time – it is never wise to assume that there will always be more of a particular variety.  So save a little extra, and store it carefully for next year.

 Sharon

• Classes , Food Storage , seeds
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