Seed Packets

Above are some of the newly designed seed packets from 'Real Seeds' which I received this winter. I have only just discovered footage of their 120 year old seed packing machine! Brilliant. See it in action here.

Spring 2018

This feels like a proper spring - gradual warming and lots of rain. Saturday I harvested and cooked the first rhubarb of the season. And there are lots of fresh young nettles for my porridge. The lettuce seeds I sowed after arriving back from our hibernation on March 14th are now ready for planting out. Cabbage seedlings are potted on and tomatoes are 3 or 4 inches high. Yesterday I started trays of amaranth, sunflowers, sweet corn and popping corn, a few cucumbers and zucchini.
Higglety and Pigglety are laying about 10 eggs a week between them (well, under them). I was thinking that when they outlive their usefulness, stuffed they would make a fine pair of ornaments for the mantle...

Curiouser and curiouser

Once upon a time I had the idea of having a corner of the garden inspired by Alice-in-Wonderland with a huge chair surrounded by oversized plants - sunflowers and dahlias for example - to make one feel they had just taken a sip from the bottle labelled 'Drink Me'.
Maybe that time has come, while sorting my new seed packets I have noticed a bit of a theme...

As always, click the pic to biggen. Or nibble a bit of the small cake with the words 'Eat Me' beautifully marked in currants.

Selfies

Due to my laissez faire method of gardening, I get many things self seeding. Chiefly amaranthus, lettuce, chard and nasturtium. Several generations on and possibly having crossed with some local pigweed, it's a joy to see the amaranthus emerge unbidden in plain green or wine red or a hotch-potch of dappled and infused intermediates.

TPS for 2013

Four weeks after sowing, I've just buried my TPS seedlings up to their necks into the next size up (8 inch) cubby-holes. A great variety of leaf shape, colour and growth habit - woolly purple leaves to green savoy-cabbage-like ones. The first two rows on the left are F2 No.6x?, only dark seeds selected! Then some seed from last year's Minnie's Pig, then (all from Tom @ New World Seed) this year's Minnie's Pig, then ten Fiesta Gold and 10 F3 Skagit Magic. Soon I hope to be taking them out for afternoons in the sun!

Green Shoots of Recovery

Snow's all long gone and it's a blustery but sunny 10° outside. Yesterday I started two trays of seeds - one assorted peppers and the other 7 types of true potato seed. They are resting comfortably on the radiator in the dining room.

From KimIlJongLookingAtThings

Adventures with Potato Seed Continued

I've selected some fruits from the potato plants growing from last year's TPS harvest from which to save seed to grow on next year. Coloured yarn kept with the seed corresponds to bits that are tied around each of the plants so that once dug, I can record the colour and qualities of the mother potatoes. As the bee hive is right next to the experimental potato plot, the results will be anyone's guess. Maybe as quirky as those pictured on Home of the Potato (via ABW)

It's all happening!

The first radish seedlings have broken through the ground outside and all of the brassicas have germinated in the greenhouse. I spent the weekend debrambling and unearthing roots to enlarge the vegetable beds. Lots more to do. M. lopped off the tops of some shrubbery to allow more light through along the south border. And I sowed tomatoes seeds (10 varieties) in a tray on the dining room radiator.
4 Eggs today.

Spring is Sprung

This weekend just passed I sowed Cabbage seed Mammoth Red Rock & Savoy Piacenza, Brussels Sprout Sanda, Broccoli Waltham and Leek Monstrueux de Charentin in trays in the greenhouse and Parsnip Tender & True, Radish Sicilian Red and Blue Pod Capucijners Peas out of doors. AND potted on Peppers and Aubergines.


Leonora Carrington's painting of a cabbage (the alchemical rose?) which we saw last autumn in an exhibition entitled 'Surreal Friends' at Pallant House.

Further Adventures with Potato Seed

This weekend I exhumed the rest of the spuds from Tom Wagner's TPS. And I think that they hold great promise not least because, although it's been dry this summer, it is now late October and there's still no blight. I am most excited by the tiny round daughters of No.11 as they look very like 'Kuntur warmi' which is Andean for 'Like a Woman with the Colours of a Condor's Neck'. Note, one of the purple offspring of No.6 was a victim of the fork and it's interior is on view.

Committing To The Seedplot

"When you sow your peas, when you sow your beans, when you sow your potatoes, when you sow your carrots, your turnips, your parsnips and other root vegetables, do you do so with punctilio?...


...No, but rapidly you open a trench, a rough and ready line, not quite straight, nor yet quite crooked, or a series of holes, at intervals that do not offend, or offend only for a moment, while the holes are still open, your tired old eye, and let fall the seed, absent in mind, as the priest dust, or ashes, into the grave, and cover it with earth, with the edge of your boot in all probability, knowing that if the seed is to prosper and multiply, ten-fold, fifteen-fold, twenty-fold, twenty-five-fold, thirty-fold, thirty-five-fold, forty-fold, forty-five-fold and even fifty-fold, it will do so, and that if it is not, it will not."

Watt Samuel Beckett

Spring Things

In the 'pond'(cement thing in the ground what collects water) the other day -


Yesterday I pricked out and potted on 40 aubergine and pepper seedlings now at first true leaf stage which I sowed early February. Sweet peppers 'Doe Hill' & 'Aconcagua', Hot peppers 'Black Hungarian', 'Gelbe Kirschen', 'Grandpa's Siberian Home', 'Jemez', and Aubergines 'Slim Jim', 'Japanese White Egg', 'Thai Long Green' and 'White Ribbed' (only one of which germinated). Leeks 'Monstrueux de Charentan' are just seeing the light of day. It's all happening now!

Oxford '09

Yesterday was the 2nd (annual?) get together of garden bloggers in Oxford organized by Patrick. Vegplotting, Alternative Kitchen Garden, Ben from Real Seeds, Vicki Cooke from Heritage Seed Library and Dr.Simon Platten/British Homegardens each spoke about their projects/interests for 20 - 30 minutes. Most of the afternoon session was reserved for maverick potato & tomato breeder Tom Wagner - father of Green Zebra, Banana Legs and Schimmeig Creg tomatoes, to name a few. This was the final stop for him on a 2 month tour of Europe - giving workshops on breeding techniques and just spreading around his enthusiasm. Very inspiring!


This year I had a go at growing potatoes from true seed, and the results were unremarkable but I've had a lot of fruit set on both Verity and Skerry Blue so I'm thinking I'll sow some more next year. And I got a few pointers for increasing the yield.

Next Year...

Nights are drawing in, and I'm already sending off for seeds and planning next year's crops.

Diet of Worms

Today I did my worm survey. Pictured above are some of my finds. The chickens were utterly undiscerning when they dispatched them later, the different varieties are apparently equally tasty.
It was sunny and warm and I planted out some little pea plants (Magnum Bonum from Rebsie and self-saved Uncle Fred). Also sowed Champion of England pea in situ and, in modules in the greenhouse, Cabbage 'Mammoth Red Rock' and two interesting (new for me) brassicas from a Portugese friend, 'Couve Galega' and 'Repolho Bacalan Grande'. She says the stem of Couve Galega can grow many many feet tall and the head of Bacalan Grande will be 50 cm. across. Here's hoping.

Potato Fair

A balmy 8-10°C this weekend, the bees were making flights and I got a good deal of the garden and greenhouse cleaned up and ready. Perhaps a bit rashly I have started a few seeds in trays in the airing cupboard. Yellow Hinkelhatz, DeRata & Jwala peppers, Thai Long Green & Japanese White Egg aubergines, Matt's Wild Cherry, Copia, Olirose, Persimmon & Riesenstraube tomatoes and self-saved potato seeds.
Only a week now until our local annual potato fair and seed swap!


The Excelsior potato from The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato with instructions on cooking the potato furnished by Professor Blot, 1870. It can be read online here.

Grow Your Own

Metal sculpture by Abbott & Ellwood

This past Saturday I went to Oxford Botanical Gardens to meet some other vegetable-growing bloggers for a talk, picnic (the weather gods smiled) and seed swap. I returned with three new garlics to try from Patrick (Purple Glazier, German Porcelain, Krasnador Red) and Pea Magnum Bonum and Climbing Bean Purple Giant from Rebsie and a catalogue from passionate seed saver Ben at Real Seeds. A lot of my own self-saved seed returned with me as well. If there is anybody out there (?) wanting any 'Blue Hubbard' squash, 'Winterkeeper' beetroot, 'True Red Cranberry' pole bean or 'Bird's Nest' gourd seed just give me your address and I will happily post them.

Growing from True Seed

There is just one day left to enter your photos in the International Year of the Potato Photo Competition. I'm feeling singularly uninspired right now. I'll blame the drear mid-grey, windless, room temperature 'weather' we've had, day after day, for what seems like months (I griped about this last year around the same time I'm afraid). Most of my potatoes are yet to be harvested but I did reach in and pull out a few Arran Victory tubers which made me smile.
This year I saved some of the true seeds from the fruits, in the hope that I will be the discoverer of a noteworthy variety of hitherto unimagined curiousness, and I've been casting about looking for information on growing them. Alan Romans kindly replied to an email and said to treat them much as tomato seed, which I had guessed, and expect to have small tubers by the end of the year that I can label and store and use as seed potatoes the following year. What I wanted to hear was that I could start them straight away in the greenhouse and have tiny tubers by Christmas that I could plant out in the new year. I have read that the shorter the diurnal duration of light (9-10 hours), the earlier the initiation of tubers. Has anybody out there ever tried this? I'm going to experiment with a few seeds that I'm pre-chilling now in the fridge. What the hey.

Black Aztec

After several years of 'Stowell's Evergreen' and 'Inca Rainbow' I'm trying a new (old) variety of corn - 'Black Aztec'. I planted out a couple of dozen about a month ago (on the left now) and then got greedy and started another tray (right) which can go in next week I guess. I got the seeds from Baker Creek and their blurb states that the corn is sweet eating at the milk stage but will make a fine corn meal bread if left to mature. So here's hoping.
Below, from Strange Maps (originally from a satirical blog) - illustration of a possible correlation between GM corn production and neo-nazi violence. Hmmm...

Tricotyledon?

I've just noticed that one of the hot pepper seedlings is a mutant. Is this like finding a four-leaf clover?


And speaking of mutants, Michael @ Articles & Texticles has just sent me a link to the artist Uli Westphal's 'MutatoCollection'. Scroll through the pictures along the bottom for a laugh.