Saturday, January 21, 2012

The sun did shine, the plants did grow....

And we did finally harvest our seeds.

The descriptions won't be ready for a while but I can give you a basic list of what we should have available at the Seedy Saturday event and at the Spring Farmers' Market.

Tomatoes:
Black Cherry
Uncle Joe's
Glamour
Perron
Kalinka
Bison
Early Annies'
Black Krim
Amish Paste
Ferris Wheel
Tante Bethe's Pinks
Scotia
Pietroboni
Heinz 1439
Tante Bethe's Paste
Black Prince
Polish Linguisa
Gardener's Delight Cherry

Lettuces:
Grand Rapids
Feuille de Chere Blonde
Tennis Ball
Paris Cos White
Cimmaron
Crisp Mint

Peas:
Tall Telephone
Homesteader
Amish Snap
St. Hubert's Soup
Kent Blue
Golden Sweet
Duke of Albany
Green Arrow

Beans:
Black Valentine
Montcalm Kidney
Hopi Black
Purple Peacock
Beurre de Rockencourt
Brown Trout
Blue Coco
Royalty Purple Pod
Frijol En Seco Pinto
Contender
Improved Golden Wax
Pisarecka Zluteluske Wax
Red Valentine
Pencil Pod Black Wax
Dragon Tongue

Some things are going to have to change this growing year. 2011 was the first year I planted seed production plants out at the farm instead of at the house. It is quite different. The lettuces need to be planted closer to home and I just need to get out there more often. The poor lettuce seed is still awaiting winnowing, can you do that inside? Hmmmm..... well I'm not doing it out in the freezing rain so it may have to wait the final stage of cleaning till spring.

The worst joke on us was having all of our straw mulch sprout into thick plantings of oats. What had been planned as a way to reduce our weeding time actually increased it dramatically!

The peas turned out really well and we enjoyed munching on the various types. Our favourite? Let's just say the 'Amish Snap', they are all mine, no one can have any seed ... or pods. Mine.

The beans, well since we never really did get the water into their section, when I say 'drought resistant' or 'performs well in drought conditions' it's been proven. Some of the varieties were amazing! Others, hmmmm, some didn't come up in the cold wet conditions during planting and some didn't do well without water. Those aren't on the list above!

Tomatoes grew well and we have some new favourites. I still hate cleaning cherry tomato seed but those 'Gardeners' Delight' are worth it! One other variety gave us 25 lbs. of beautiful red globes off of only 4 plants. This area was also on the dry side this year so that was very impressive.

Knowing me, I will plant too many tomato transplants for our needs and will have the extras for sale once we have planted out ours. Mid-May let's say, so you can look forward to seeing those at the market.

Again, if there is any commercial variety that you would like us to grow or if you have seeds that your family has been maintaining and would like to pass on just let us know. ittybittyseeds@gmail.com

TTFN

1 comment:

  1. Great post.Thanks for sharing such a useful information with us.

    ReplyDelete