seeds
sastyk | July 22, 2011It is hard as heck to imagine that one of these days, I'll be longing for a hot day again, and for the fresh food that accompanies it, but it always happens. It is also hard, deep in the dog days, to realize that right now is when you have to start thinking about your fall garden. That's probably why so many of us start out beautifully, but peter out when the cold comes, running out of fresh things months before we have to.
Indeed, after a decade of working my farm, including the years when we ran a CSA, and many other years when we were gardening for ourselves, or raising perennial food and…
sastyk | March 25, 2011There's a very silly article in the New York Times about controversy over hybrids vs. heirlooms. Yes, this is a real debate. No, it isn't as stark or as stupid as the Times makes it.
There are plenty of horticultural reasons heirlooms can grow glorious fruit. One is size. An heirloom tomato is often a big, robust plant. The central stalk is usually indeterminate: it keeps shooting up after setting fruit. Mr. Ball, of Burpee, recalls a customer telling him about a Brandywine plant that crept into the house through a second-floor window.
An heirloom tomato will also have a lot of leaves, in…
sastyk | February 9, 2011
The first thing you need to remember is to think ahead, and bring in the compost before three feet of snow and ice lands on top of it. That was my big discovery two years ago, and like so many big discoveries was a. unpleasant and b. completely obvious - in retrospect. Living in a linear society, it can be difficult to get cyclical.
You see, I knew you could start seeds in lightly sifted compost - in fact, I'd seen Rodale Institute tests that showed that some varieties seeds did best in finished compost. So, the year before, I'd gone out in February, dug up some compost, let it defrost, and…
sastyk | January 20, 2011
Sorry for the extended radio silence. A combination of Apprentice Weekend, followed by Fellowship Application due, followed by ice storm related power outage, followed by internet outage of indeterminate cause, followed by visitor, followed by a series of family administrative things put off because of all the previous means that I'm just now online, and my email is still down, so if you've tried to contact me, please be patient! I'm not ignoring you, just discombobulated. I apologize for the difficulties - especially if you have tried to register for the garden design class and been…
sastyk | September 22, 2010There are coyotes denned right across the road, which is one of the reasons we have Mac the Marshmallow. Mac is a 110lb Great Pyrenees dog, a livestock guardian breed the approximate size of a shetland pony. Asher, my four year old, has been known to ride him.
We call him "Mac the Marshmallow" because he's the color of one, and has the same personality. He's fearless when it comes to predators, but so gentle one of my cats will stick his head in Mac's mouth without worry. When a rabbit got out of cage at our house, Mac caught it, and, instead of doing it harm, washed it. For hours.…
sastyk | April 28, 2010From the wonderful Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog (a favorite of mine) over at Research Blogging, is a fascinating summary of paper that describes the ways that most modern seed varieties, selected to be used under commercial conditions, don't do as well under organic conditions, because we haven't selected for the qualities that would enable success:
To perform well under organic conditions, varieties need to get a fast start, to outcompete weeds, and they need to be good at getting nitrogen from the soil early on in their growth. Organic farmers tend to use older varieties, in part…
sastyk | March 14, 2010After all that work, you'll want to plant good seeds. Glenn Beck approved seeds, ideally. Well, Stephen Colbert is right on board, aware that in a disaster, we'll all want raddichio. He's even started his own crisis herb garden, because, "I may be ready for a world where the streets run with blood, and zombies rule the night and feast on human flesh. But I refuse to live in a world where I can't garnish."
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Survival Seed Bank
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor
Health Care reform
Sharon
sastyk | February 18, 2010In keeping with the reminder I got that I should back up a little bit, and present my ideas more coherently for those who haven't encountered them before, I thought I would add a post about why someone might want to start seeds, and how to do it, to supplement the posts on winter sowing and the sowing of perennials from seeds.
New gardeners generally start out by buying their seedling, and depending on where you are getting them, this can be a problem. The destructive wave of Late Blight that hit the tomato crop across the eastern half of the US was derived from seedlings purchased at big-…
sastyk | February 18, 2010Yesterday, I spent a long time filling seed flats and pressing seeds into dirt - and then I took them outside and set them to germinate. The temps were hovering right around freezing, and there was light snow coming down - the perfect conditions for growing things. Or at least, for winter sowing
(Note, there was originally a link and short quote from a website about the subject, but the owner of the site apparently took offense because I attempted to drive traffic to her, so I strongly recommend you avoid her site, to avoid offending her. I will go out of my way never to mention it or any…
sastyk | January 27, 2010Buying seeds here is not a quick process. First there's the perusal of all the seed catalogs, the dreaming and fantasizing with my garden porn. Then there's the marking of all the things I'd like to try this year, which would get me a seed order about 4 times bigger than I could possibly plant, even on my farm. Then there is the actual ordering, and the occasional banging against reality, like the fact that I waited too long to get that variety or this one. I'm winding up the process now, and starting to get to open the boxes of seeds.
For those of you who have ordered or at least…
sastyk | December 15, 2009The seed is starting to take shape as the site and symbol of freedom in the age of manipulation and monopoly of life. The seed is not big and powerful, but can become alive as a sign of resistance and creativity in th smallest of huts or gardens and the poorest of families. In smallness lies power. - Vandana Shiva
There's an AP investigative report into Monsanto that suggests that the winner of the highly competetive "Evillest Corporation Ever" award has decided to raise the bar on evil further, trying to bring virtually all seed companies together under its own axis of evil.
"We now believe…
sastyk | December 7, 2009Ok, those of you who know me know that I am not much of a consumer. If I can buy it used, make it myself, or make do with something I've already got, I'm pretty good. I hate the frenzy of shopping that accompanies the "Holiday" season, and I think the most awesome thing about being Jewish is that Chanukah is a minor holiday, and generally I'm sitting around with my feet up while everyone else is racing around.
I'm a big fan of homemade gifts - this year most of the grownups in my family got homemade jams and such, and a bunch of meat chickens, raised at home at my house. Now I realize…
edyong | July 4, 2009Walks through a forest are often made all the more enjoyable by the chance to watch brightly coloured birds flit between the trees. But birds are not just mere inhabitants of forests - in some parts of the world, they are the key to the trees' survival.
The Serengeti is one such place. Since 1950, around 70-80% of riverside forests have disappeared from this area. Fires seem to be a particular problem, opening large gaps in the canopy that forests can't seem to recover from. To understand why Gregory Sharam from the University of British Columbia has been monitoring the density of the…
ddobbs | April 13, 2009Kew Gardens (that is, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew) is trying to collect and bank the seeds and pollen from 10% of the world's plants -- a nice 21st-century continuation of the stunning collecting effort that started in the 1700s and helped supply evidence, via Joseph Dalton Hooker, that proved crucial to Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection. The Guardian has put up a nice photo gallery of some of the seeds they've collected so far. A few:
Seed of wild spider flower (or spider wisp) Photo: Rob Kesseler & Madeline Harley
Himalayan iris pollen. Photo: Rob Kesseler…