Seed Starting: Agretti and Onion Update

 

 

Here's a close up of Agretti seedlings just a few days old. They look like mini serpents! H2 grew her's in a cute mini travel SIP.

 

Planted in the soil they start to take on a new form.

 

The onions are coming along; they pop out of the soil folded in half then straighten up. 

Next seed starting project is winter sowing!

Giant Tomato Flashback

Aug 16  2007

Or is this like the effect of holding a fish out in front of you to increase its apparent size relative to you?

Starting Seeds: 2012 Seed Swap

What's not to like about the annual seed swap? Busy people mark tiny packets, open and shake a few to share, close and move on to the next.

A big donation of flower seeds this year, courtesy of Debbie's work with a children's garden. I took a few each of the full-southern exposure lovers and will plant them in our window boxes, along with a couple dozen herbs.  Kitchen garden beautification.

Did I mention there was food? We ate everything but Debbie's homemade BBQ sauce. Seed sorting is hard work.

Debbie also brought a plastic gallon milk jug with cuts made to show me how she uses them for winter sowing (more from her in an upcoming post).

 

Mmmm--some lovely new additions

I stripped some agretti seeds off their stems to share. We let them go to seed last fall and then dry out, at which point I stuffed whole stems into a paper bag and stored in a dry area.

Don't let anyone tell you saving seed is difficult. That pretty much describes it.

Starting Seeds: Free Heirloom Seeds from the US Government?

Well this is provocative. Bill Brikiatis writes at his blog Suburban Hobby Farmer...

Get rare heirloom seeds free. Many people start seeds indoors to save money, yet empty their pockets buying seeds. That’s okay if searching through seed catalogs is what you enjoy, but with a little more work, you can get rare varieties for free.  See how I got three unusual heirloom tomatoes from the USDA Agricultural Research Service at Rare Vegetable Seeds from the U.S Government. I didn’t even pay postage and the USDA would have sent me more seeds if I had asked.

Like many things governmental, the USDA Agricultural Research Service National Plant Germplasm System site is a tough search (and a mouthful to say).

Pride 

of Chicago

I used the search tool to find lists of available seeds for "tomato" and "pepper." I looked for seeds with a weather profile broadly parallel to that of Chicago's (whatever that means these days).

A costoluto

from Bruce's roof

In other words, I bypassed the Mexican, Brazilian, and California varieties in favor of those originally from the Northeast and, just for fun, ordered the IXL Bolgiano’s Extremely Early Tomato Bill mentions because, buddha knows, if we get scorched this summer like we did last year we'll want all the early fruiting varieties we can get.

Grab the salt!

I didn't spend much time on all this because, as Bill notes at the link, the feds ask you what kind of research you'll be doing. We submitted the following:

Research entails growing these seeds in sub-irrigated planters on my roof in Chicago. Results will be published at Green Roof Growers blog.

Wouldn't it be nice if (a miniscule portion of) my tax dollars could cover our seed order next year?

And I would display my research

beautifully

Starting Seeds: Onion, Shallot and Leeks

I love growing onions but it can take up to 120+ days for some of them to mature. Plus, I was too busy to plant any last week (which is when the seeds should have been started inside), so I took the easy way out and germinated some in a wet paper towel placed in a small plastic bag.

I figured it would buy me some time...and a few days later I was pleasantly surprised to find they had germinated, and most of them too! Great way also to test your seeds to see if they’re still viable.

Here’s a close-up of some sprouted onion seeds, just 3 days old.

Looking forward to tasting some of these onions, shallots and leeks. I usually plant them in between crops because rabbits aren't fond of their sulfurous smell.

Starting Seeds: Home Depot Offers Organic Martha, Burpee Seeds

Pretending to be looking at paint, I was drawn like a magnet to the seed racks at Home Depot this week. I rarely go there and it's early for spring garden supplies, but there they were, and so alluring.

I wondered if organic seeds could be genetically modified (GM) seeds or if the two were mutually exclusive. According to the back of the pack, Martha's organic seeds come from Ferry Morse.

 

Bruce did a little research into Burpee and found that its seeds are all GMO-free, per the chairman of Burpee who goes out of his way to thank Mr. Brown Thumb for giving him a platform to refute allegations that his company sells GMO seeds.

Bring on these luscious greenies...

Starting Seeds: Glossy Garden Porn via Hudson Valley Seed Libray

 Imperfectly perfect

Hudson Valley Seed Library, one of our favorites, muses on too-pretty seed catalogs in this post:

"Every farm or garden is a story with its own tragedy, slapstick, drama, sex, death, and delicious redemption. Where are the catalogs that communicate the stories of losing all your Brussels Sprouts over night to one woodchuck, giving a hummingbird a bath with the hose, finding self-sown volunteers from last year, wishing for rain, wishing for sun, having a stand-off with a young buck over an apple sapling, listening to pollinators, being stung, finding a lost ripe musk melon hidden beneath weeds, watching helplessly as your tomatoes rot from blight, forgetting what variety you planted and having to wait two months to find out, flitting from open flower to flower hand-pollinating with a freshly picked male stamen, sitting down to a meal your grew yourself, blemishes and all?"

Seems to me these shared stories of triumph and disaster are the reason garden blogs flourish, with ideas and potential fixes exchanged among neighbors across a virtual fence.

We who love growing often castigate ourselves for less-than-lovely outcomes. As if we're mostly in charge.

 Cracked, streaked, and delectable