Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
A few small packets went out yesterday, and the rest will go out this afternoon. As far as I know, this is everything everyone is expecting me to send them. This includes readers of this blog, as well as a couple of Seed Savers Exchange members.
If anyone reading this is expecting something from me, and it doesn’t come in the next week, get in touch because something has gone wrong. It probably either means the package got lost or I forgot.
I’m finally back home and have a few minutes to make a post about our Oxford get-together.
The day started off with some coffee and small talk. Since the weather was so nice we moved outside to give the presentations in the botanic garden itself. It was really a wonderful setting for the presentations.
Ben from Real Seeds kicked things off with a real eye opening presentation about the history and importance of seed saving. In the picture you can see him making a timeline.
The recurring theme from Ben is that he wants everyone to save their own seeds. If you need some seeds to start with, he’s quite happy you buy these from him if you want, but he would really prefer you saved your own seeds so it wasn’t necessary to buy any more. At the moment business is good, and they don’t really want to expand or sell more seeds. You can do much more to further the goals of the Real Seed Catalogue by saving your own seed than you can from buying more seeds from them.
Real Seeds has seed saving information on their website, released under a Creative Commons License. You are welcome to copy and redistribute this information almost any way you want, as long as you don’t charge money for it.
After Ben’s presentation, I talked a bit about my garlic.
The last presentation was Simon (above), who discussed allotment culture and the importance of having a good shed. His presentation included a mini-quiz game with prizes and a poem. In all, very enjoyable!
After the presentations we had lunch. Cat brought a wonderful home made apple pie (with apples from her neighbor), and many others brought samples of things from their gardens. Ben brought some exploding cucumbers, which we dissected and learned how they worked.
After lunch was the seed exchange. I had garlic to offer, and many others had self saved seeds. Kate brought seeds from Wilson in Singapore, as well as from her own garden. Thank you Wilson! Ben had exploding cucumber seeds on offer.
We then spent a couple of hours walking around the gardens. Among other things we saw a number of plants some of us have in our own gardens. There was an impressive display of Andean tubers, including mashua and yacón. There were a number of quinoa and amaranth varieties. There were some heirloom tomatoes in the greenhouse.
Thanks goes out to everyone who took the time to come and make this a complete success!
A special thanks goes out to Ben who travelled from Wales to speak to us, and to Emma who helped with the setup and organization.
You can see posts others made by following the links below:
Daughter of the Soil
Veg Plotting
Spadework
Fluffius Muppetus
Soilman
Manor Stables Vegetable Plot
Hills and Plains Seedsavers
MustardPlaster
For those of you coming to the Oxford meeting on 20 September, here is a little last minute information.
Important! Don’t pay the entrance fee at the Botanic Garden. Just tell them you are there for the Food Growing Bloggers Get-Together. The entrance fee is included in the price of our room, and I will collect 15 pounds from everyone later to cover our expenses.
There are a few spaces available if anyone still wants to come. Please email me, leave a comment here or call my mobile number below. After Thursday it’s safer to call, because I may not have regular access to the Internet as I’ll be traveling.
Tentative Schedule
9:30 – 10:30 Coffee and tea. Please arrive at this time, and spend a little time chatting with everyone.
10:30 – 11:10 Ben from Real Seeds will give a presetation about seed saving in general and the seeds he sells.
11:15 – 11:30 I will talk a bit about the garlic I’m growing.
11:30 – 11:45 Simon will talk about allotment related things
11:45 – 12:30 Seed swap
12:30 – 1:30 Picnic (indoors if necessary)
1:30 – 5:30 Time to visit the Botanic Garden, or use our room for more coffee and tea.
Route information to the Botaic Garden is here.
My mobile telephone number is: +31 6 4010 9417
For the picnic, be sure to bring everything you need to eat or drink with (plates, cups, etc). It also might be handy if you bring something to sit on. Please try not to bring excess trash, because we are responsible for disposing of our trash ourselves. We can accommodate a reasonable amount of trash. Remember to think about bringing things from your garden to share, but don’t worry if you don’t have anything along these lines to offer.
A simple kitchen is available for our use, but we have been asked not to prepare any food there because it is not licensed for catering. If you need to rinse a few vegetables, need some hot water, or need to do a little washing up afterwards, these should be no problem.
A few people have not yet confirmed. There is still space if you want to come, but please get in touch first to confirm, because it is still possible we could run out of spaces. I would also appreciate hearing if you have decided not to come.
People with a * next to their name have confirmed.
Bifurcated Carrots (2)*
MustardPlaster (2)*
Spade Work (1)*
Daughter of the Soil (1)*
The plot thickens (1)*
Joanna’s Food (1)*
Growing Our Own (2)
A Blog Called Fuggles (2)
Veg Plotting (1)*
Soilman’s Allotment Blog (1)*
My Tiny Plot (1)
Manor Stables Veg Plot (2)*
Fluffius Muppetus (1)*
NomeGrown (1)
Hills and Plains (1)*
Speaker: Ben – Real Seeds (1)*
Some of my Mary Washington asparagus I started from seeds this year is looking pretty good. The main problem is out of 24 seedlings, only about a third of them have turned into healthy and strong plants. Some just didn’t survive, and other plants are just barely alive.
When you start asparagus from seed you don’t get your first harvest for three years anyway, and even then you get a light harvest.
Now however, I look set to need to keep replanting for a number of years before I get well established plants. I’ll need to make a decision about keeping weak plants, or starting over with these too. Since it’s possible to transplant asparagus crowns after the first year, I need to consider the pros and cons of moving all of this years plants into a single spot, or just filling the gaps with new plants. Decisions, decisions…
I’m starting to see the advantages of starting with crowns instead of seeds. Crowns of named varieties are hard to find here, as are crowns in general. When you do find them, they are pretty expensive. I’m wondering if I’m going to get any seeds from my plants this year or if I’ll need to order some more.
Anyone have any advice?
I had a pretty good crop of Dog Beans this year. We had several large servings of the green beans, and I guess I ended up with a kilo or two of dried beans. This is really a good tasting bean, both dried and green, and the plants are among the most prolific of any bean I have ever seen.
If you want to see something strange, have a look at Jardim con Gatos, he grew exactly the same beans (I sent him some of my seeds), but in his garden the colors reversed. Where my beans are red, his are white, and vis-versa. I’ve never seen a color reversal in these beans before (but this is common in some other beans). He also didn’t get any beans with the same color pattern as mine.
I’ve been growing these off and on for a couple of years now, and honestly I’ve never noticed any germination problems. That is until now. It’s possible I’ve just gone back and planted some more seeds when I noticed seeds weren’t germinating, because I do this with beans sometimes.
Before starting the year I germination tested them, as I was going to give some away to other people, they were a couple of years old, and I wanted to be sure they were still good. The results of the germination test were 100% out of 30 seeds or so. Hard to get much better than that, I thought.
Everyone I sent the seeds to reported poor germination. I also got poor germination rates in my garden this year. I thought this was because the seeds I had were old, so I replanted some of the seeds I saved this year. Guess what? Poor germination again. I even dug up some of the seeds to verify they weren’t eaten by a mouse or something, and they all seemed to be in the ground still.
If you are willing to go back and replant some of the seeds that don’t germinate, or sow heavily and thin, it’s still a great bean. I wonder what it is about being genetically predisposed to poor germination, that doesn’t go away on it’s own as the result of being selectively seed saved. Maybe it just needs a few more years of selection. Maybe I need to sprout them in a paper towel before I plant them.
I grew these beans as companion plants in a few places in my garden this year. This ended up working very well, because this variety is agressive enough to smother most weeds, but not so tall it gets in the way of many other garden plants growing.
