Showing posts with label john scheepers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john scheepers. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

So, You Say You Want to Sow Seeds?




Growing plants from seed – especially our native, seasonal produce -- is essential to our food supply. 
Besides buying from local greenmarkets or farmer’s markets, it is really, really important to grown your own food.
As the food thought leader and author Michael Pollan advises with his 7 Words & & Rules for Eating, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”   

Think of seeds as the “Warriors” or “First Responders” in our battle to retain taste and diversity and local cuisine.

Any gardener worth their salt, er seed, delights in growing some edible basics, including tomatoes or cucumbers or zucchini or peppers.
 
But it’s just as easy and fun and delicious to grow a very wider variety of fruits and vegetables. 
Don’t just replicate the store or familiar plant variety.  Please.   

And while one can get the more familiar, “staples of the table” plants at a big box store or nursery, why bother? 
Frankly – if you are going to grow your own -- why limit yourself with the ordinary?

There is a vast, thrilling, visually enthralling and unlimited supply of deliciously, unique plants just waiting, beckoning to be tried.
Like a fashion Lookbook, you will be giddy with anticipation, merely turning the catalog pages.  
Check out these beauties -- the color, the texture, the glamour!

Laurentian Rutabaga
      
  






Rainbow Sweet Inca Corn

You know you want to show off your Marc Jacobs - so indulge and show off your amaranth!

Plus, the big superstores were more than at fault in the tomato blight issue a few years back.
The corporate food retailers/big box stores sourced their tomatoes from China and other far-flung, non-local regions and the results were disastrous. 

Tomato Blight  Photo credit: tomatocasual.com
 Looks familiar?  
Tomato Blight Photo credit: vegegarden.com

Tomato Blight



  







There is a happy, healthy, tasty, easy-to-grow alternative.   
Seeds! 

Where to Source Seeds and How to Grow

There may not be a better place to start than the book, “The Heirloom Life Gardener: The Baker Creek Way of Growing Your Own Food Easily and Naturally,” authored by Jere & Emilee Gettle, cofounders of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.


No less than the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart and Melissa Clark – a trifecta of homegrown food advocates – have provided blurbs for the best selling book. 


“Gettle is the Indiana Jones of seeds,” according to the book cover banner quote credited to The New York Times Magazine.

I received "The Heirloom Life Gardener"for review last year. 
I remain very impressed with its presentation and content.
The importance of growing food free of pesticides, genetically modified Franken-melons or what have you, continues to resonate and is only gaining in popularity.

The book is an engaging how-to, for beginners and for more experienced gardeners.
The zen of gardening, after all, is the understanding of the art of gardening, especially as I am advocating pursuing myriad plant collections and not just the monoculture of growing a few varieties. 

While I have read that some take issue with the somewhat protracted author biography, I think they missed the point here.
The purpose is to establish the author’s credentials and philosophy.
Why follow the leader if you don’t know where they’ve been?
In addition to Gettle, every vegetable and fruit has a history – a provenance. 
Those stories need to be told in a book. 
With the passion and expertise that inspires a lifetime of gardening knowledge
The artwork of those early seed packets, alone is worth a book.  (The New York Botanical Garden curated an exhibit of seed packets a few years’ back and one might look into this display of agricultural art.)

Otherwise, just Google what you seek!  Or seriously, contact your local Master Gardener’s Extension Coop.

A book is an exploration and a reference.  A friend.

Further, this grow-your-own-food book showcases full-color photographs to enchant and excite the home gardener.  The images are a passport to the world of plants that most don’t ever see.
I will hate myself for saying this, but even if the reader doesn’t get to growing much of the beauties offered in the book, they can take the book to the Greenmarket and discover jewels of the earth such as the candy striped Chioggia Beets, for example, or carrots.  

Lest one be deterred, the full color sidebars and tips do make it all so easy and tempting to jump in and get planting.     

Chapter headings help tell the Heirloom story too.  Here is a sampling:
Growing Up with Heirlooms
Seeds in America
Collecting Seeds Around the World
How to Garden
Seed Saving
City Farmer
A to Z Growing Guide.

You will enjoy the good-food stories, the history of heirlooms, how to garden even in urban settings, and cooking tips. 

Seed Sources

Seed and bulb sources are a cornucopia of garden information!  Plus they give it away.  For free.  Take advantage of that expertise.  The seed companies we use earn our loyalty be providing outstanding, quality product along with unbridled, solid growing tips and tricks. For example:  http://rareseeds.com/planting-guide


At our Garden State farm-ette, my husband Bill and I grow a variety of vegetables, herbs,  and fruits.  Some of our favorite, tested seed and bulb resources include:

Kitazawa Seed Co. - Especially for their Shisedo Peppers  http://www.kitazawaseed.com

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds – more than 1400 heirloom seeds.  If you can’t find something here to tickle your carrots, click off! http://rareseeds.com

Maine Potato Lady – for their garlic and potatoes  http://www.mainepotatolady.com

John Scheepers Garden Seeds – for their eggplants, especially the Black Opal, and Turkish Orange  www.kitchengardenseeds.com

Brent and Becky’s Bulbs - http://www.thebulbshoppe.com/gardens.php


**  Don’t forget to plant your Peas!  St. Patrick’s Day is the traditional calendar date to plant the peas and hope for snow!  If you are further south, happy pea harvesting.




Friday, February 4, 2011

Snow to Seeds

Maybe I’m the ever-happy garden sprite, but when everyone else seems to be complaining and kvetching about the winter and its snowstorms (hello: it’s the season) I view it all as almost a perfect mash up. 

The winter weather forces us gardeners inside where we more or less do our winter gardening.
What’s that?  Attending lectures about gardens; reading about gardens; dreaming and drawing up new garden designs; taking care of the garden tools: cleaning, sharpening, oiling, all in preparation for the spring.

And as any dedicated, hard driving gardener will tell you – or perhaps sheepishly admit, nothing short of a blizzard will keep us out of the garden. 
So look at it like this:  we NEED the snowstorms and winter crazies to force us to sit down and take the time to choose the seeds, fruit tree varieties that will fulfill the next season’s garden desires.

So relax, enjoy the winter seasonal respite to flip through the print catalogs or the online ones – complete with colorful thumbnail images of the plants we dream will be part of our gardens.
It’s not unlike online dating.
Perhaps seduced by the too handsome or pretty image, we find our love.  Once there, we peruse the bio or stats and only then feel the chemistry. “This one’s for me!” the bubble in your head can be heard to exclaim.  Or maybe you shout out loud.

Better than Vogue’s fall issue, we love the cover shots of the boutique offerings from the smaller breeders and organic artisans.



For part of my Christmas wish list, I couldn’t resist the cherry trees from One Green World  - 1-877-353-4028 / www.onegreenworld.com
I am designing a home orchard: a double row cherry allee of compact trees near the kitchen garden or potager, located on the “back forty” as we say. That would be the backyard garden…
Last season, it was sad and curious when I asked one of the many nurseries I work with about securing fruit trees for my garden design clients; I was told they haven’t stocked them in forever. What? Why?  “Because no one grows fruit anymore.”
Pardon me, but isn’t this crazy?  Why do we have to buy imported fruit?  Most of suburban America can grow edible fruits. Most of urban residents can too.
Sigh. This is just the most recent example of lost food opportunities.

Not to be deterred. I moved on.  I would appeal to a higher resource: Santa Claus.

I needed dwarf varieties that would provide sweet, delicious, edible cherries.  My husband loves cherries – we buy Red Jacket Cherry Stomp from the Greenmarket in Union Square and my mother always makes him cherry pie for family holidays.

I wanted trees that are relatively carefree, with various blooming time that would yield fruit within the first year or so.  Some trees can take several years for cherries to bear fruit, so be mindful. 
   
I asked Santa for the Prunus cerasus  Montmorency.  This tree promises pie cherries.  They will rarely exceed 12 feet and are hardy to Zone 3.  The catalog says it produces abundant crops of firm, bright red, richly tart fruit with clear juice (yeah!)  Montmorency makes the best cherry pies!  (can’t wait to test this out!) A self-fertile and naturally dwarf tree.

I also hoped Santa would see clear to bring a sweet cherry, Prunus avium. That fat red man doesn’t wear red for nothing!  He’ll be sending two Compact Stella.  Stella – (which means ‘star’ in Italian. I know because the name of one of my most favorite garden client’s mother is Stella!)  I am hoping my sweet Stella cherry is indeed a star of our soon-to-be cherry orchard. 
The catalog describes Stella as “unique, self-fertile, dwarf cherry that will grow to only about 8-10 feet ad begins bearing fruit within a year or two and bears large, tasty, almost black fruit.” Good to zone 5

My mother remembers she and her sisters were picking their cherry fruit form the trees for what seemed forever – but that did not deter us from
We will add more trees to the mini orchard, but not before test-driving this year’s babies.
Santa was great.  He did it.

Seeds.

We order seeds from the Kitazawa Seed Co.,  www.kitazawaseed.com
 (LOVE, love, love their seed packet design!); 
Maine Potato Lady www.mainepotatolady.com;
Burpee’s www.burpee.com;
John Scheepers, kitchen garden: www.kitchengardenseeds.com
Seed Savers Exchange: www.seedsavers.org
and Comstock native Seeds www.comstockseed.com/ (and what about those cover-boy melons?) 






Just recently, I received the Renee’s Garden spring seed offerings and am very to say they have some very exciting new Gourmet Vegetables and Flowers.  I am very excited to try their new introductions, including, Sugar Pearl White Corm, Zinger Hibiscus herbal tea, ‘Beauty Heart” Heirloom Radish Watermelon, Wine Country Mesclun and Tricolor carrots.   I’ll keep you posted on the growing of the Renee’s Garden seed growing.







Today, Garden Design Magazine featured their secret and heirloom seed picks from England, Italy and Vermont. 
http://tiny.cc/yeqoq               













Take the time to indulge the season’s “snow to seed” research and selection.