Seed Savers Exchange visit

I figured while I was in Iowa (for the International Master Gardener Conference) I should visit Seed Savers Exchange, an organization I hold in high regard. This idea of proximity only makes sense in the context of my drive through large portions of the Midwest, because it took me about 6 1/2 hours, including short stops, to drive from Council Bluffs to Spillville, where I had a B&B booked. Then the next day I drove fifteen minutes or so further on to north of Decorah, where SSE has their farm.

SSE promotes and practices the saving of history: heirloom vegetables, flowers, fruits, animals, and whatever else comes their way. The organization is actually spread throughout the country and the world, and I could have visited it by finding one of my most local Seed Exchange members, someone who's listed in SSE's annual directory of seed savers offering heritage seed for sale. Or I suppose really SSE is as close as my own garden, since I've bought seeds from them and grown them out. I am a member of SSE, but I don't list seeds - generally I only save enough to give out locally. Members get the big directory (as opposed to the smaller publicly-available catalog, which has quite enough in it for most people really) and discounts on merchandise.

Anyway, local is important, but a national headquarters has a vibe, so I went. Aside from the snazzy visitor's center, SSE HQ is a working farm, with seed preservation gardens tucked away in corners for less contamination by foreign pollens. I didn't get to those gardens on this visit (some of the trails were out, due to summer flooding), but I did manage quite a hike after seeing the demonstration and trial gardens close to the parking area. Photos below.

View of Diversity Garden and buildings

Sorghum in trial garden

Spectacular cleome

Diane's Garden, with sun effect

View through Diane's Garden to barn

Ducks and geese

Heirloom cattle

The cattle (Ancient White Park, described here) were very curious about me as I walked a 3 3/4 mile loop around their pasture. It was good to stretch my legs a bit before driving the rest of the day (all the way to Indiana, yikes).

I've been home almost two days now - it's good to be back and not driving so much! Not much gardening in sight immediately as we've just had a big rain front go through and it looks like a hurricane will be passing by this weekend, but at least the plants are finally getting watered? It never rains but it pours, yup.

Showing off the pepper seedlings

The Grow It Eat It blog really doesn't need me spamming about my seed-starting operations any more this year, so I thought I'd just post a photo of my huge and lovely peppers here instead.

They really want to go outside, but even hardening off is not going to start for another week or so. But aren't they pretty? I'd forgotten what it's like to have non-stunted peppers from which I am not constantly washing aphids. (Two years, two accidental introductions, long story. Nothing that goes outside comes back to my seed-starting room anymore, ever.)

Aside from a few things that just didn't take, indoor seed-starting has gone really well this year. If only outdoor sowings in this chilly spring were as speedy to take off. Don't think we are likely to get peas before the plants poop out from heat - March 17 sowing is about three inches tall now...

Mid-December update

No flowers to share for GBBD this month (though we do have shockingly-colored shiny balls in the magnolia branches) but it is the time to start going through the seed catalogs that are quickly accumulating, and this year instead of putting lots of sticky notes on the pages I'm trying out a preliminary wishlist on my Pinterest page, with links to seed company web pages; I've been through three catalogs so far. (Note: I got the Pinterest account as a place to stash images related to my novels, and am not entirely caught up on doing that, but the "Gardening" board that should have lots of stuff in it has practically nothing. Someday it will, but I think I function better as a collector in specific categories than as a general noter-of-cool-things.)

You may note that there are about twenty zillion kinds of radishes listed there. I'm not going to grow them all (even though I have two gardens to work with) but I've been enjoying colorful radishes and finding them delicious roasted, and would like to expand my repertoire a bit. And the idea of the wishlist is to get all the possibilities down in one place.

Other things to do, aside from look through more catalogs, and take inventory of the seeds I already have:

• Soil test for the community garden plot (probably should do one for the oh-so-pathetic fruit garden too)
• Finish cleaning up the fruit garden area, which got very weedy this summer
• Decide, with some nod to reality, how much I can actually do with the weed- and black raspberry-choked back part of that fenced area
• And ditto, with the rest of the "way back"

Of course, a lot of that depends on weather, but we usually have some decent non-snowy periods to work outside in. We'll see.

Spring, flying visit of

The pretty pictures first! I have a daffodil:

I also have more crocuses blooming (they weren't open yet when I went out to take photos earlier, and I'm too lazy to try again) and the Iris histroides I-think-'George':

I'm sure spring will be sprung upon us all at once in the next couple of weeks, once it gets over this maybe-I'm-gonna-snow-again-just-watch-me! nonsense. It's chilly today, but yesterday was gorgeous, and I took advantage of that to dump manure on the community garden plot and put in a few hardy seeds that may or may not decide to come up (spinach, peas, mache, fenugreek). And then I came home and finished the Whack the Black Raspberries project, in which more than half of them (the originally planted ones that are now in the shade, and the plants that exist because I didn't keep up with pruning and let the canes root themselves all over) got pruned back to 12-18 inches high so they can be dug up and moved to someone else's new fruit plantation, and the rest got pruned to a few feet high so they can be organized onto their fence again. I have a lot of plans for the space that used to be the vegetable garden, but the most important thing is to devise ways to keep it from becoming a mass of weeds again.

My arms looked like this when the pruning was done:

but it was worth it. (That was the worst of it, really; I didn't suffer too much. And it was my fault for wearing a short-sleeved shirt - but how glorious to be able to! I'm so sick of my winter wardrobe.)

I need to do an inventory of seed-starting, but suffice to say I have lots of wee peppers and tomatoes and greens and other things coming up (a few still with aphids, but they are slowly being conquered), and I am thinking of ordering one of those fancy self-ventilating cold frames, or maybe two, instead of a greenhouse. More on that later.

Amaryllis update plus snow and seeds

I didn't do GBBD this month because it would have been exactly the same as last month's, but that does mean my amaryllis is still blooming!

Exotic Star is definitely a winner - I believe it's had eight flowers so far this season.

My green amaryllis will be blooming soon, more modestly; it's mostly been engaged in growing a flowering stem that is at this point, I kid you not, 26 inches long. And the third one has finally started growing, with a far shorter stem and a flower bud. It's nice to have flowers over a long period of time, anyway.

Aside from that, I did get some time for mulching and such in the community garden on MLK Day, when it was 50 degrees F. A couple of days later the temperature plunged and it snowed:

and the snow is still there because it's not even reached freezing again, mostly hovering just north of zero. Again. I went outside this morning into 18F and thought that was pleasantly warm! But it is a good time to plan, and to sort the seeds (I was brave and threw a bunch out) and to get some more at seed swaps, like Washington Gardener's event yesterday. Got lots of great stuff brought by fellow seed lovers and donated by companies, sometimes for understandable reasons:

I'm hoping it will grow lettuce instead of tomatoes.

Just housekeeping

Seed-starting update, boring, pass on...

Today transplanted dozens of little brassica-type plants from the egg cartons into peat pots, which will hopefully hold them until it's time to plant.

Also put in seeds for: mizuna, radicchio, ground cherries, ornamental millet, and dahlias.

Also sorted out my ridiculously-large seed collection into categories: Probably Will Use This Year, Old Flower and Herb Seeds to Combine and Throw Onto a Bed and Maybe Something Will Come Up, Keep in the Freezer In Case I Want It Again, Give to the Seed Swaps (there are two coming up), and (can't believe I managed this) Discard.

It was a seedy kind of day.

Itching

I was very amused this morning to read articles in the Washington Post by the two Thursday garden columnists, Adrian Higgins and Barbara Damrosch, which start out respectively:

If you are itching to get into the garden on a mild winter’s day, you might want to grab a good pair of hand pruners and some sharp loppers and go in search of a shrub to prune.

and

If you’ve got the gardening itch and it’s too early to scratch it, try growing some microgreens.

I think we can agree that everyone is a little itchy, and possibly irritable and testy and skin-crawly and hot under the collar, and if it's not the flu it may be the gardening bug.  I tend to scratch the itch by getting some soilless mix under my fingernails and starting seeds.  Photos soon ETA: photo of some of my baby plants:

Here's the list of what I've started so far.

Greens for demo garden: kale (Lacinato, Lark's Tongue), mustard (Southern Giant Curled and Red Giant), Chinese cabbage, komatsuna, purple pak choi, broccoli raab, collards (Green Glaze), kohlrabi (green and purple), cabbage (Early Jersey Wakefield and Red Acre), and gai lan (Chinese broccoli).  I may be a little early on some of these, but it gets so hot so fast and a lot of them bolt, so better to get them planted early and offer temperature protection if needed.

Peppers (mostly for me): Fish (no luck with germination, but I have just acquired some new seeds), Antioch (an Armenian heirloom, mildly hot), Red Cheese, Sweet Banana, and Romeo (these are to go with Juliet tomatoes, yes I am geeky).  Also some yellow bells and Italian frying peppers that have not germinated.

Other: cardoons (also on second germination try and succeeding this time), sorrel (more old seed, dunno if it'll work but I do want more plants), parsley, celeriac.

I wish I had room for microgreens.  As it is Older Son is going to have to share his room with some seedlings on his visit home.

Some of the many things I need to do outside when we do have a mild day and I have time in it:

Pruning, yes, thank you Adrian.

Setting up the tunnel I got PVC pipe and fastened brackets onto a raised bed for several years ago and have never actually used.  I'm not going to grow anything in the bed, but I do need some outdoor space for hardening off seedlings, and after the demise of my "mini-greenhouse" thing with the shelves and the zippered cover that broke the first year, all I have is a small shelf on the deck and row cover, and that is not enough for the vast number of seedlings in pots that are soon going to be requiring space that currently does not exist.  Existential crisis!  Metaphysics!  Tunnel of intermediate size to the rescue!

Getting over to the community garden plot and making the soil ready for planting.  I can actually direct-seed some hardy things right away once I get that done.  Real soil under the fingernails!

June is busting out all over

... which would be fine if it weren't April.  I suppose really our mock orange has been blooming in the second half of May in recent years, but I still think it blooms in June, dammit, and it is a month early in any case.

On the other hand, plenty of trees are still just thinking about leafing out, those that depend more on daylight length than temperature I guess.

This is my red buckeye, Aesculus pavia, which usually blooms somewhat later too.  It's settled in well and growing nicely, about 5 feet tall now and should double in size eventually.

With the heat wave over the weekend we're seeing the end of the daffodils.  I will have to find something else to cut for the refreshment tables at the high school show this coming weekend (I thought since it's "The Secret Garden" we should have flowers).  Perhaps mock orange.

The big news is we're getting rain today, and probably tomorrow and over the weekend as well.  We need it desperately.  I've been making rude faces at the sunny, clear and warm weather reports.  I want gloom and damp, thank you.  However, so far we've had about a splash and a half, so I will believe the new weather pattern when I see it.  If we don't get an inch I will have to drive over to Derwood and water anyway.  My seedlings are parched.

I forgot to record seed-starting, so: last Thursday, I think it was, I started a huge number of nasturtiums, some of which have sprouted, along with mouse melons (yay), West India gherkin, amaranth to be a flea beetle trap plant, and a few calendulae.  Very soon it will be time to harden off the tomatoes, which is good because I need the space they're sitting in.

Sense and seedability

I will have a more substantive post soon, but here's a seed update.  Various spring crops (sorrel, radicchio, radishes, chard, spinach, arugula, beets, carrots, lettuce, dill and cilantro) were seeded directly in my veggie garden yesterday, along with seedling peas.  The earlier-seeded kale and other brassicas along with peas are coming up.  I am hoping for some cooler weather.

Have also started indoors: basil, tithonia, zinnia, hollyhock (more), shungiku (edible chrysanthemum), and catnip.

Had a fantastic first workday at the demo garden Tuesday, with much organizing of compost and shed junk.  I still only have the onions and peas planted, but hope to get more in next week.

Also, have ordered 1000 red wiggler worms for vermicomposting.  Must drill holes in bins and arrange them.  There will be pictures when the worms arrive.  (I'm warning you now.)

I must go down to the seed again

The magnolia bloomed!  The day after I put together the GBBD post, of course.

But this is really a catch-up on seed starting post.  I think I have actually recorded everything I started (amazingly enough) except for the purple mizuna, which happened a week or two ago and is growing, not very purply as yet.

The ides of March is tomato-starting day around here, so I have started some: Speckled Roman, Jubilee, Purple Jasper, Orange Icicle, Mortgage Lifter, and an anonymous cherry I was given seeds for.  I also started some yellow bell peppers called Sunbright, to make up for the ones that didn't germinate, along with more Fish which also didn't germinate (I have small hopes; the seed may be too old), and a few Antioch that I got from a fellow MG who got them from another MG who really loves them.  And I transplanted the first set of eggplants (there has been another set since then; I may not have recorded those either) into pots.

Very few real failures this year, aside from the low rate on the peppers, and some of the early brassicas apparently not taking well to transplanting.  But I have so many brassicas (the Year of Leafy Greens, you know) that it doesn't matter.  I've tried direct-seeding some in my own garden, without much result as yet.  The salad table plants are emerging, though.

Many more seeds to start, as soon as I clear the shelves a bit - I guess it will be something with row cover down in the garden, rather than anything on the deck.  Oh well.

In which I probably will not move to Canada

Yeah, I really should not let myself make declarations of that sort.  Because here are the miniature iris, popping out while it is still February.  And I know perfectly well they bloom with the daffodils (and sometimes earlier).

These may be my favorite flower ever, which has something to do with that earliness and hence the relative scarcity of flowers generally, never mind ones this delicately elaborate.  I think these are 'Harmony' - which is a hybrid of Iris reticulata and Iris histroides - though don't quote me on that, since of all the bulbs I don't keep records of, little ones like this are the least likely to have their location noted.

These, I'm somewhat more sure, are 'George' (also a hybrid of the same two species) - for some reason harder to take a photo of, but really equally gorgeous.

In other news, planted more seeds today, so for the record:

Two hybrid Asian greens from Johnny's, Summer Jean and Green Lance.  I think both are a type of gai lan or Chinese broccoli.  I grew the Summer Jean last year and it was delicious, but that was in early fall, and I'm not sure how it will do in spring; it may bolt or get bitter.

French baby leeks, a whole 40-cell flat of them, which I may have no space to grow to transplant size, but we'll see.

Radicchio 'Rossa di Chioggia.'  To be pretty and delicious, probably in the square foot gardening bed I've decided to add to the demo garden.

Two kinds of peas, Dwarf Gray Sugar and Taichung.  They may actually produce before it gets too hot if I start them now.

Oh say can you seed

I came home from this week's state Grow It Eat It meeting with a handful of seeds for our Year of Leafy Greens project, and got a chance to stick some of them in seed-starting mix this morning.  I need to spend a good part of the rest of the weekend organizing the remaining seed-starting (so far it's been seed-of-the-pants stuff, oh ha ha) so that I know what needs to go in when and who's going to do it.  Obviously my own garden's seeds get started here, and I'll probably end up doing most of the leafy greens and other early transplants here for convenience's sake, but soon enough I will run out of space, and I have other MGs who've volunteered to start things.  So, just have to figure out what, and get the seeds to them.

Here's what went in today (some of it YOLG-related, and some just what I had lying around):

Kale, Lacinato and Lark's Tongue.  The Lark's Tongue was my choice that I talked Jon T. into, not that I had to try hard.  It's from Southern Exposure (as are all the YOLG seeds) and was a variety saved by William Woys Weaver, and it sounds very cool-looking.  Lacinato (also called Dinosaur or Nero di Toscana) is beautiful stuff that I've been growing for a while - I was actually going to go for a new breeding experiment mix called Rainbow Lacinato, but hey, free seed.

Broccoli Raab Sorrento.  We should be able to get results in the spring, and I'll try it again in the fall and see if it produces longer.  It tends to bolt when the weather gets hot.

Collards Champion.  Can't have too many kinds of collards, hm?

Mustard, Red Giant and Southern Giant Curled.  GIANT MUSTARD.  I know the red mustard is gorgeous, and I look forward to the other one.  Of course, they may end up smothered under row cover... but hot stuff sometimes gets chewed on less, so we might manage to leave some of it out.

Celeriac Large Prague.  Celeriac did really well for us last year.  I do need to find a space that can be occupied all season, because it takes ages.  But mmm.

Hollyhock Summer Carnival.  This will bloom in the summer if started early.

Orach Magenta Magic.  This is the most incredible dark pink color.  It's a leafy "green" too, so goes with the theme.

Pak Choi, Purple and Da Cheong Chae.  Pak choi is one of my favorite things to grow.  These are meant to grow full-size, I think; I've been growing "baby-designated" varieties for the last few years, and I may harvest these ones early too, since that lessens some of the inevitable bug damage and besides they are so cute.  Ooh, I have a picture (from fall, obviously).  I'm really looking forward to the purple ones.

ETA: I now have sprouts on everything I planted before except for the eggplant (and the seeds that need stratifying).  Eggplant is probably not quite warm enough and so will germinate slowly.  Spinach is only just getting started but I'm sure it'll come along well.

A green thought in a green seed

... not that most seeds are green at full maturity.  Seeds OF greens, mostly.

Record-keeping!  Here's what I got into the egg cartons today:

Kohlrabi 'Early Purple Vienna' and 'Azur Star'.  I love kohlrabi, and I haven't planted nearly enough of it in recent years.

Collards 'Green Glaze'.  These got rather flea-beetled last year, but they are so pretty I hate to stick them under row cover.  We'll see.

Komatsuna ("mustard spinach," whatever that means).  I have had this seed for several years and don't think I've had it come up from direct sowing, so starting inside seemed like the thing.

Kale 'Red Russian' and 'Nero di Toscana' - since I had the seed still.  There will be more kale.

Spinach 'Space' - starting inside is how I'm dealing with that April 3 first workday thing.

Roselle 'Thai Red Early' - this is the hibiscus that "Red Zinger" tea is made from.  I had one plant last year and now want lots more.  Beautiful.  Takes a while to get going and mature; last year it bloomed in September, I think.

All this stuff is for the demo garden; I am planning to direct sow my own spring greens, and we'll see how that works out.  Ha ha ha.

Pak choi and some other things in the next week or so.

Subculture

Me saving mouse melon seed

Time flies... two weeks ago now, I went to the Washington Gardener Seed Exchange, and Our Fearless Leader Jon Traunfeld was there to speak (and get some seeds).  Jon said he'd told his 17-year-old son about the event, that there would be 60 or so people trading seeds, and got the reply, "Wow, is it a subculture?"

And... well, yeah, it is.  I sometimes feel that I'm surrounded by Seed People all the time, but actually we are quite a tiny sprig in the broader landscape, those of us who save and trade seeds, and the larger group who plant and appreciate them (which is still not all gardeners; plenty of people deal only in plants).  And we don't all do it for the same reason.  Heck, each of us doesn't do it for a single reason; often it varies per plant (or day, or whimsical fleeting thought).

I wrote a review over on Grow It Eat It recently about a book called The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans, which I really liked and highly recommend.  I do admit to being a little twitchy about the title -- no, not the "sustainability" part, though having this comic appear while I was reading it made me laugh.  It's that I always read "Ethnic Americans" as "Ethnic-Americans" and, you know, I am a Non-Ethnic-American, being English-Scottish-Welsh-Irish-Dutch-German-Swedish-American with no immigrants later than the early 20th century and no significant cultural ties other than reading lots of British mysteries and watching Doctor Who.  (Doctor Who is not "ethnic."  Though it does constitute a subculture.)  I know what Klindienst meant (assuming the title is hers and not the publisher's); it's the "sharing a common and distinctive culture" definition - the Non-Culturally-Amnesiac-Americans.  I have a sufficiently privileged and confusing background to not have to worry about being defined by my culture, if anyone can figure out what it is besides Twitchy-Snarky-American, but there's also a thread of unreasonable jealousy in there toward people who actually do have a defined heritage that, for one thing, gives them stuff to plant and cook that they know their ancestors planted and cooked and that are more distinctive than, say, beets.  Not that I don't love beets.

Where was I?  Oh yes.  One of the gardeners Klindienst interviewed, an Italian-American woman named Maska (because everyone in her family has Russian names), was showing all the great plants she had in her garden, and Klindienst asked her if she had any heirloom tomatoes, and then immediately knew it was a stupid question:  yes, of course she did, but she didn't think of them that way.  They were tomatoes grown from seeds that she'd saved and replanted, that had history clinging to them along with the mucky stuff you have to ferment off before drying, but they were named after the people who'd given them to her or by their culinary characteristics, to accommodate no one but herself.  In other words, without the intermediary of the Seed Savers Exchange catalog or the formally-arranged trading events or the tomato tasting festival with little cups of forty supposedly different varieties.  She saved seeds because that's what you DO, although saving money and preserving culture were part of the equation as well (though the latter is probably expressed better as "these are good tomatoes and I want to keep eating them").

So, these are the Seed People, a subculture with room for those who don't know they're part of it, along with those who are kind of hyper-aware and more-heirloomy-than-thou (yeah, I've done it too, though I'd get thrown out of a lot of groups for planting hybrids).  A Big High Tunnel (tents would block too much light).  I have to say I save seeds (and I'm just getting started at it, really) mostly because it's fun, it keeps my seed budget slightly lower, and it allows me to be pushy about mouse melons.  (You really ought to grow them, you know.)  I have written before about being far too distractible to be good at preservation; I always want something new (or old-new), not the same thing year after year, but that doesn't mean I couldn't save the seed and pass it on to someone else.  The other side of being the Purple-Carrot-Chaser is that I'm willing to try anything (see this post on growing "exotics" - which is a much more twitch-inducing word than "ethnic").  And I guess not having a distinctive cultural heritage means I'm not tied to growing anything in particular (not that anyone should be); the world is my oyster plant.  (Though I have tried salsify and am not sure it's worth it.)

And oh, crap, I have a bunch of seeds to start today, and a map to draw, and a class to plan.  Get moving.

The first of many boring seed-starting posts

One of my many failings as a gardener is the inability to keep good records.  I always mean to, and then the scribbled notes and the buried Word file and the good intentions never coalesce, and then it's April and spring is in my heart and my brain is on the wing.  I know better than to spend good money on a pretty gardening journal, not that I'd have qualms about spoiling it by writing in it (I take the first bites out of artistic cakes, too), but I know I'd never finish out a season.

However, I do have my own personal blog now, and license to bore people with it, so I can attempt to keep records here.  I am already behind with seed-starting; so what else is new.  This weekend I must get the greens for the demo garden started, as they have to go into the ground April 3, and most of them will have to be pulled out in May to be replaced by summer crops.  They will all produce something (I am not stupid enough to try making broccoli or cauliflower conform to that schedule, so it's all leaf crops) but the more the better.

But that's another post.  Here's what I started earlier this week (February 6, for the record):

Sown in soilless mix and into the fridge:  aronia and serviceberry from Bountiful Gardens; a native anemone from the demo garden (will check on Latin name next time I'm there).  These need stratifying, or cold treatment; the refrigerator is the impatient gardener's substitute for actual winter.  They'll sit in the back of the bottom shelf (serving the useful function of preventing leftovers from being pushed so far into obscurity that the moldy grossness is hidden from view) for a month (anemones) to four months (the others), then be brought out to warm up and (hopefully) germinate.  Often it works.  The other way to do this is to sow the seeds in pots or flats outside in the late summer and leave them over the winter, which in a winter like this one means they sprout in January and have to be taken inside before they freeze to death in the next cold spell.  I also sowed rugosa rose which is supposed to sit in a warm place for a month before joining the others in the fridge until June.

Sown in a more traditional fashion:  two kinds of sweet peas (already sprouting, which means I need to get the lights set up and going).  I never have any luck starting sweet peas outside (this would be the year it would work, no doubt, although I'm still pessimistically expecting blizzards in March) and they have a short growing season here before it's June and boiling hot, so I'm trying the indoor method, which will produce enormous tangled seedlings that will take over the light shelf so I will have to plant them outside just in time for them to freeze (and then it will hit 90).  I am always, always seduced by the sweet pea page in the catalogs, though.  These are from Seed Savers Exchange.

Also, Thai and Pandora Striped Rose eggplant, started early because eggplant grows slowly and needs to be big and strong to face the cruel world of the garden and its onslaught of flea beetles (I do intend to use row cover, but still).  Ironically, considering this blog's name, I'm not all that fond of eggplant, but I do like it in moderation, and it would be a beautiful plant if it wasn't always eaten to shreds.  I did grow some on the deck a few years ago that the flea beetles never found, but I bet that only works once.

Also Victoria rhubarb, yes from seed.  I seem to keep killing off plants started from roots, and I'm hoping that home-nursed seedlings will do better.  They will need afternoon shade in this climate (although the plants in the demo garden do fine in full sun).  I have just the place, considering that half the vegetable garden is in part shade now.

That's it for now.  There will be more of these posts; I will warn you by putting seeds in the title somewhere.

The aesthetic seduction of seeds

Well, my posts might get a leetle less frequent at this time of year (also, ridiculous weekend followed by brain-numbing cold; you're lucky you get me at all).

I did want to mention that among the slow avalanche of seed catalogs arriving at my house, I received yesterday the one I actually bothered to pay for, from the D. Landreth Seed Company.  They are in serious financial straits, and I encourage you again to jump in and order something from them, either a $5 catalog or a holiday gift or actual seeds.  The catalog is a marvel.  My one complaint is that the print describing the seeds is a bit small (aging eyes), but it's readable online where I'd be ordering anyway.  The rest of it is just great fun, with full-color reproductions of old catalog covers (from the 1800s to early 20th century mostly; the company has been around since 1784 but the catalog not that long) and engravings, plus pearls of wisdom, research stats, complaints about their competitors, etc. from the same period.  If you like history, and that moment when you read historical sources and realize how much and how little has changed, you'll enjoy it.

They have a really quite decent selection of seeds, including some collections (the African-American Heritage one is a collaboration with Michael Twitty and really interesting) and it's definitely one of those catalogs where you page through saying "ooh, I'm going to get that... and that..."  We'll see how my orders actually come out, but I'll get some stuff from them to be sure (prices are good, too).

Landreth is also the kind of company where, when you order a bunch of old seed packets (for purposes of... framing for decoration, I guess; I just thought they were cool) that they sell on the website, you get a call from not just customer service but the company president, to be sure you know the packets don't contain seeds.  Apparently some people thought they did; hope they didn't think they could plant them as a time-travel device.  (Though it is a fascinating idea.)

The packets evoke the days before what you got to illustrate your purchase was most often a photo of the flower or fruit or whatever end result is desired, impossibly perfect and yet, because it is a photo, daring you to challenge the perfection as unrealistic.  Drawings of unrealistic produce let you in on the joke more, I think, though possibly the gullible were once just as susceptible to them.  Not that I haven't had perfect produce out of my garden on occasion, and it's the privilege of the market to sell based on the product that tops the curve.

Seed catalogs (and with them, though not always matching one-on-one, seed packets) seem to fall under the general headings of "trying for pretty, with varying success depending on financial resources" and "trying for utilitarian, with varying success depending on how much we also want to include pretty photos."  Landreth (like Shumway's, but more successfully) goes for historical aura, but also shoves photos of most of their offerings into the center.  Their modern seed packets have modestly-representative photos on them, like most of the packets you buy in hardware stores; it's not art, but it tells you what you're supposed to be getting.  I for one like to see photos or good drawings, even if I don't believe them; it's habit and human failing, as if the lack of a picture somewhere means that the plant won't do its thing.  Some companies - Seeds of Change is one - edge over into really good photography, both in the catalog and on the packets; Seed Savers Exchange does this too, and their catalog is a pleasure to look at.  Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds goes almost too far in this regard; it's hard to tell in my photo, but their seed packets are downright seductive, and the catalog (huge and glossy) is basically food-gardening porn, which I find amusing considering their squeaky-clean home-schooled-Christian image.  The other end of the scale are companies like Johnny's and Pinetree, which have no pictures and little information on their packets, and catalogs that don't get fancy even if they are (in Pinetree's case - and Fedco, too, come to think of it - must be a Maine thing) occasionally quirky.  Johnny's has more money and can afford glossy photos, but their pride is in giving you tons of information and a wide selection, not in making you pant with longing.

And then there's the pretty-drawings crowd, which in the group above includes Renee's, Territorial (photos in the catalog), and Southern Exposure, but there are others.  Artsy, sometimes folksy; seducing with design and words rather than with enormous shiny watermelons.  I buy from them all in turn, depending on my mood and my needs, and I'm not denying the effect of presentation in my choice.  Go ahead, seed companies: cater to my desires; make me want you.  (Just please no more cute Caucasian toddlers holding jumbo produce, or I will throw up.)

GBBD tomorrow - I have blooms, and not just on seed packets, either!

Please help save D. Landreth Seed Company

The Landreth Seed Company, America's oldest still in operation (since 1784, people!) is in dire straits and needs your help.  They need to sell 225,000 catalogs by December 15 to pay off creditors and stay in business.  If you can spare $5 to buy a catalog, even if you have no intention of ordering seeds, it would help.  Then pass the word along!

I'm on the run this morning, so I'm just going to link to my friend Michael's post to provide all the details.  Thank you!