Seeds
When to plant…
I tend to over do it every year and plant at least 20 things all at once. Then I forget when to plant my summer crops, and things are late and nothing goes right.
One of the handiest tools I’ve ever come across to help keep the garden on track is the West Coast Seed catalogue. Their yearly seed catalogue is free at any store that sells their seeds, or you can go onto their website and order one for free. It has all of the tips you will ever need to grow your own food organically, and their yearly planting calendar is a life saver. It clearly shows what needs to be planted and when, all at a glance.
I’ve taken the liberty of scanning a copy here, but be sure to grab a copy of their catalogue or view the online version. This is all timed for our funny west coast weather.
A word about that. We are experiencing some very cold weather for this time of year in Vancouver- in fact, it snowed a bit today (no April fools joke, my friends). I would say we are about two weeks behind where we normally are and my spring bulbs are just barely starting to peek open right now. So if you’re a bit late according to this schedule, don’t sweat it. I just started my broccoli, cauliflower and leeks… oops.
New seeds for 2009
Much like picking out the new paint colours for a bathroom re-do, I love leafing through seed catalogs and drooling over the new flowers and plants introduced each year. For the most part, these new varieties are hybrids of existing ones, but some outfits introduce “new” heirloom varieties. And by “new” I mean new to us, and these make me the most excited of all!
A few new lovely things that tickled my fancy this week:
Vessey’s Golden Japanese Forest Grass. This looks like it was dreamed up for the next Miyazaki animation about a little girl questing in a spirit forest in Japan. I hope forest spirits come included in each shipment (and they should at that price, ouch!). Still lovely and dreamy and probably worth if you have your own yard to landscape. Why not pair it with a lovely laceleaf maple?
Vessey’s Mouse Plant. This reminds me of so many childhood favourites: Mousetrap, Three Blind Mice, Beatrice Potter books… I love this so much, I just might buy one. I have the perfect spot in a slightly shady corner. I’m sure my cats will love it (oh, don’t play cat and mouse with me, you!).
Vessey’s Pam’s Choice Foxglove. Gorgeous! Like Blackberry compote and whipped cream, or merlot splattered white linens (for more likely in my home) these little two-tone bells are unqiue and would make a gorgeous addition to a collection of other foxgloves in the garden. Actually, these would go nicely with my creamy white ones come to think of it…
West Coast Seeds’ Blue Danube Sweetpeas. This is a very late variety with a gorgeous blue colour (June to September). This will be a perfect way to keep those lovely sweetpeas growing all year long. Snniiiiiifffff. I can smell them already.
West Cost Seeds’ Multicolour Blend Cauliflower. Grape Koolaid, Kraft Dinner and Shamrock milk shakes, together at last. I’m a total sucker for oddly coloured veg, and this cauliflower blend is no exception. Why grow something that you can just buy from the local farmer’s market? If you’re going to grow something at home, make it something unique that you can totally brag about when you show it off to others. Squeal!
West Coast Seeds’ Sweet Heart Grape Tomatoes. As anyone who knows me will attest, I’m a total cherry tomato cheerleader. They are so easy to grow, great for containers, produce lots of continuous fruit and taste oh-so-sweet. I love the shape of the clusters on this variety.
Salt Spring Seeds’ Novelty Tomato LIne-up. Their catalogue doesn’t contain any pretty pictures, but it doesn’t have to either. These guys serve up an amazing selection of locally grown and organic seeds, and their tomato collection is second to none. I drool over this one every year!
Sigh… is it Spring yet?
Potato Berries
Oh yeeeah… what the hell are those?
For anyone that’s grown potatoes before, you may have noticed small clusters of bizarre berries that grow on the tops of your potato plants and look rather similar to little green cherry tomatoes.
Surprise, surprise- potatoes and tomatoes are actually related, hence the similarity in appearance, but these little berries aren’t tasty or edible like tomato fruit. In fact, they contain high amounts of solanine and are poisonous. So don’t leave these lying around for your pet Lab to nose up.
While there are varying accounts out there, it appears that these fruit produce what is known as “true potato seeds.” Each fruit contains up to 300 true seeds, similar in appearance to tomato seeds. To harvest, you need to wait until the berry is ripe then toss it into a blender with some water and blast it to liberate the seeds. The seeds should float to the bottom. Continue to soak them in water, similar to the process for saving tomato seeds, and then dry on paper towels for next year.
When you plant these seeds, they form little mini tubers that develop into robust new potato plants.
Most farmers and gardeners just keep a small stash of extra potatoes to plant as seed for next year- I keep mine next to my other stash, which means I usually end up making them all into french fries and have to buy more seed potatoes again next year.
With true potato seeds however, you can tailor your crop by selecting for certain characteristics (so choose fruit from the best performing plants) and begin to control diseases like blight (tubers carry blight forward from one year to the next, so you can break this cycle). It also means you can eat your whole crop of potatoes each year and not have to buy seed potatoes ever again! Yay!
Yukon Gold potatoes tend to produce the most berries, I find, and have very high yields of potatoes each year.
Saving tomato seeds
It’s ripe, it’s perfect and it holds the key to an even better crop next year.
Saving your own tomato seeds each year can save you loads of money and also ensure better growing success year after year.
You can begin to control your tomato crops by selecting seeds from the very best tomatoes on the best performing plants you have. Given that our seasons tend to be a bit short in Vancouver, I like to select my seeds from one of the earliest tomatoes on my best performing plant. Theoretically, this helps ensure your tomato plants set their fruit nice and early the next year.
You can also select for size, colour, fragrance or plant qualities, whatever you like, bearing in mind that you won’t be inventing a new breed of tomatoes any time soon of course.
Here’s what to do:
After you’re done chopping that beaut for your boccocini salad, scoop the seeds that remain on the cutting board into a jar and fill with a bit of water so the seeds are floating. Cover the jar with a coffee filter so some air can get in there. Leave the jar in a warm, out of the way place for 2-3 days. This puppy’s about to get stinky.
Cracked Pot Pix
