Year: 2016

Hello Gardening Friends—

The 2016 Carol Deppe/Fertile Valley Seeds Catalog is now up on my website http://www.caroldeppe.com/ and we are open for orders. I’ve expanded from 45 to 70 varieties and included color photography for half the varieties. (Go to the Fertile Valley Seeds page on the website and browse or download the pdf file of the catalog.)

New Variety Introductions for 2016. I’m especially delighted to introduce two new parching corns that I have been working toward for 15 years—Parching Red Manna and Parching Starburst Manna. I also introduce Beef-Bush Gold Resilient dry bean. Returned for 2016 are Beefy Resilient Grex dry bean and Fast Lady Northern Southern pea. There are also 18 new listings and 33 OSSI-Pledged varieties.

Open Source Seed Initiative. This is the big news for me for 2016. This is where the fight to take back our seeds is happening. (See the write-up on page 2 of my catalog.) I’m completely in with OSSI, having OSSI-Pledged all my original varieties, enrolled Fertile Valley Seeds as an OSSI Partner Seed Company, joined the Board of Directors, and volunteered to edit and contribute regularly to the upcoming OSSI quarterly e-newsletter Free the Seeds! The first issue, to be published March 24, will include stories by me, Jack Kloppenburg, CR Lawn, Joseph Lofthouse, Rose Marie Nichols McGee, Frank Morton, and others. (I’ll be doing a regular feature, “Plant Breeding Stories.”) For more information about OSSI, and to sign up for Free the Seeds!, visit http://osseeds.org/.

Open Source Seed Initiative is a 501c3 corporation. We need donations. We particularly need one or a few “founding” donors who are able to make a substantial contribution so OSSI can rent office space and hire staff. If you are interested in being one of our founding donors, please contact me at my (OSSI business only) email address carol.deppe_at_osseeds.org. (For seed company business use the email address carol_at_resilientgardener.com.)  [replace _at_ with @]

Speaking Events for 2016.

February 5-7. Organic Seed Alliance Seed Grower’s Conference. Corvallis, OR. I’ll do a 1 ½ hr session on breeding for organic systems and participate in a panel “Ask the Elders.”

Feb. 23. Santiam Food Alliance. Lebanon, OR. (Public Library; 6:30 pm.)

March 13 (Sunday). Grow Organic (Corvallis organic gardening club.) Corvallis OR. South First Alternative Co-op meeting room. Vegetarian potluck 5:30. Talk 6:15. “Join the Open Source Seed Revolution.” BYO guitars.

June. Mother Earth News fair. Albany OR. (I expect to give three talks. TBA)

July. Seed Saver’s Exchange. Ames, Iowa. I’ll do a keynote and a number of workshops. TBA.

Please share this announcement with anyone who might be interested.

Hello Everyone,

It’s been a while since I was active, almost a year since my last post and much longer since I was posting regularly.  I don’t think I’ll ever be as active as I was before, but I hope to get back to a few posts per month.  Please remember to check in from time to time.

Every few years I have to change the look of the blog website, the so-called theme.  This is like updating your PC or phone, it’s just important to keep up with evolving technology.  I always miss the old layout as I move onto the new one, and usually get a few complaints from my readers, but it’s something that needs to be done.

It used to be upgrading the theme was a big undertaking, requiring a lot of customizations to get it the way I like it, with the links just so on the side and so forth.  It’s a little strange to now see many of my old customizations are standard.  It’s even a small vindication of my earlier efforts.

If anyone has any comments about colors or layouts, I’d be glad to hear them.  I may also continue with a few small changes over the coming weeks, so don’t be alarmed if you see some updates.

Anyway, the main change with this new theme, which is the new default WordPress theme, is mobile friendliness.  I switched to this over the holidays.  The reality is most of you are not sitting at home reading this on your desktop PC any more, but are on some kind of mobile device.  This theme was designed first for mobile devices, then adapted for the desktop.  The old themes I’ve had have all been for the desktop, without any consideration for mobile users.  There are also very few customizations with this theme, which should make it possible to more seamlessly use plugins and addons, should these emerge and prove useful.

I’ve promised several of you I would do some posts, some a long time ago.  In the next few days and weeks I’m going to be looking over these, and posting those things that are not hopelessly out of date by now. My apologies to those of you I’ve disappointed.

Please send a mail if there’s something you would like to see here.