Seedy SaturdayA City of Food

The most exciting thing about Seedy Saturday was not...

Before Picture: This is what setup looks like. Scroll down to end if you want to see the After Picture. Notice Greta (organizer in the orange shirt) of Greta's Organic Garden tirelessly working. She's been the coordinator for this Seeds of Diversity event for many years.

Trading and Buying Seeds

I know what you mean random guy, "It is hard to say no to all those great varieties and as an enabler told me, it's a cheap habit."

Chatting with Friends

Here are my partners in crime (wo)manning the Canadian Organic Growers- Ottawa Chapter booth: Connie and Lloyd. These guys are workhorses! You may recognize them from such places as Seedy Sunday at Perth, various organic events like Feast of Fields and EcoFarm Day, farmer's markets and more.

Meeting New People

Like this lady from The Garlic News and Beaver Pond Estates who suggested I try a soft neck variety that's hardy and a good keeper. I'm on the waiting list, looking forward to making some garlic braids.

Eating the Goodies or any of the other Activities...

Yeah, it was busy though perhaps a few less elbows to rub as you crane your neck at the seeds than last year.

... It was Finally Tracking Down these People!

Twigs were growing around the building asking you to pick a website: www.HiddenHarvestOttawa.ca

Who are they? Not the Sasquatch or the Loch Ness monster. No, they are the until now elusive urban orchard people like Not Far From the Tree in Toronto. It's a way of making use of all that beautiful and often unharvested fruit within city limits. Want to know more about Hidden Harvest Ottawa? I'm hoping to post an interview with the organizers very soon.

In the meantime, here are some other initiatives to get us growing in the city:

Community Orchard brought to you by the Heron Park Community Association - You are in the pre-know so look for info on this project after March 20th at the above site.

Just Food does a lot more than just food: Check out their community building website. Here is the link to a list of Community Gardens in Ottawa.

Veggie Patch: New to me, this is an urban Ottawa based CSA that uses rented garden plots (my understanding is its land for veggies) to run a patch work farm. It looks like it works on the principal of SPIN farming.

My Review of Seedy Saturday

The trade table was hopping and bopping with lots of donations from regular folk and seed vendors (Nice to see you here Mountain Grove Seeds), but was it my imagination or were there less seed vendors and more sundries this year?

Overall, the sketchy weather seemed to keep the hordes at bay so there was breathing room to manoeuvre between booths. I have to assume you all have enough seeds from last year. Now that was a crowd!

I really enjoyed meeting up with plant buddies such as the twin themed I Wet My Plants and I Soil Myself who came out of blogger hiding to dash off a few posts (keep them coming) as well as some more folk for a few private seed exchanges. It's a party folks - if by party you mean hanging out with a lot of chlorophyll drunk people giddy over pre-baby plants.

Next up on the calendar of plant fun, I'll be giving a talk on Starting Up Your Organic Vegetable Garden in North Grenville at the Branch Restaurant. Come out and say hi.

***

P.S. I'm still on the lookout for something substantial on:

Urban Foraging - *Your Group Meetings Here*

Ottawa Guerilla Gardening - *Your Clandestine Drops Here*

Any other Projects? Let me know.

Eat My Front Yard

As requested, here is a post on front and centre edible gardening.

My old front yard had a large spiral garden planted with herbs, perennial edibles, ornamentals and fruiting trees and shrubs. If you followed the spiral to its centre, a small stone bench awaited beneath a grape vine (not pictured here - instead peas climb up the trellis).

Tired of the growing green cement in your front yard? Or perhaps you have thriving perennial beds but have run out of space to plant veggies? Maybe it's just that the only tomato growing sun is in the front?

Ever watch a kid interact with a lawn? If they are not spinning in circles or kicking a ball, they gravitate to the bushes and flowers at the edges or search out the weeds. The 'yawn' becomes a blank palette on which the eye searches for interest. Why not paint boldly.

Well then what's stopping you from growing your food for all to see?

Here is a formal decorative vegetable garden before planting at the Museum of Agriculture. It's not messy but it is terribly boring early in the season and requires some pretty diligent weeding to keep up those bare spots. Orderly shapes compliment the sometimes rangy growth habits of vegetables but without anything at all growing they are merely geometrical.

The biggest issue is that people worry that veggies are messy. Because we view food as coming from utility plants, we have a hard time imagining them replacing the frilly fancies that normally dot the front. Not to fear. In this case, you can have your blooms and eat them too. There is more than one strategy to add edibles to your front yard.

Some purists only plant what enhances the garden's ability to make food either because it's a cover crop, a trap crop, habitat for friendly bugs or because it's food. Others add the odd veggie here and there among their flowers and still others prefer more prescriptive approaches such as forest gardens¹ or decorative potager. There's no right way but here are some design tips to help with curb appeal.

Bones

The visible skeleton of my old spiral garden that faced south though was variably shaded by a beautiful old Linden and a red oak in its prime. The main paths were stone inlaid with old pavers, secondary paths were lined with blasting stone and wood/leaf mulch that was also applied around the perennials. Compost and manure completed the top dressed amendments.

Just like designing a purely decorative garden, structure will keep the garden looking organized even in the early spring before perennials have popped up their heads or bedding plants have been tucked in. There are two main types of bones: hard structures like paths and arbours and woodies like bushes and trees.

In the beginning... Some softer bones in the form of fruit trees. I got these in the ground before I built the rest of the garden around them. The bush in the middle was removed and replaced by the stone bench and a grape vine but the three trees remained: two apples and a self fertile plum. This picture gives a sense of the large swath of south(ish) facing lawn that once graced the front yard. By the end of our stay, it had shrunk to a bit less than a third of its original dimensions.

Especially if you are planning on growing a lot of typical annual vegetables in your front yard, you'll want to have an attractive, strongly structured shape to your garden to give eye-appeal even if the beds are empty and to offset the often rangy growth habit of veggies. Start by looking at the shapes and structures already present: dimensions of your house, the shape of your yard, any standout features like rocks, trees etc... Even less noticeable features like a slight dip can be taken advantage of and enhanced.

Next ask, how do you use your yard? Do you like to sit out front and watch the world go by or would like to make it a bit more private (without blocking lines of sight for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists of course). What is the most common route that you take across it? This will help define the main path and any additional features you'd like to add such as a bench.

I love how little care I seem to take in staging pictures (she says sarcastically). The knee pad is a nice touch in this client's garden where a stone and mulch path leads from the front door to the back. Along its edge is a healthy row of kale. This client requested an entirely raw, edible garden. Kale chips were a favourite.

Note the shape of your yard and start breaking it apart in the mind's eye. Inside a square, a circle can be drawn and then a garden placed either within or at the edges. Structure can also be provided by more naturalistic shapes such as curves. Trace them out with a line of flour, a hose or by doing the dotted line - my usual technique. I turn over clods of sod along the line and then examine it at all angles to decide if it has the right affect. Be bold. Just remember you will need access paths approximately ever four feet both for maintenance and so you can wander around your paradise admiring the small details.² If dealing with the whole yard seems daunting at first, focus on a feature such as a bird bath or existing garden and build outward from it.

I am a big believer in four seasons of fun gardening. Though during the white one, it's mostly playing in a polytunnel. Therefore, I plant lots of spring flowers and early risers along with edible perennials that give tender shoots shortly after the weather warms like Hablitzia or asparagus. If you prefer, you can go native. The same holds for fall when I love late flowers like asters combined with the glorious seed heads of amaranth and the violet blues of cabbage.

Also giving year round structure are the woody plants such as fruiting trees but don't discount evergreens. Though not as edible as apples or currants, their branches can be clipped to shelter other plants and they provide long season interest.

As the season wears on, the spiral is less obvious for those not walking it and the textures of plants emerges. This garden is as bursting with things to eat as to look at and smell. See list below.

Mature fruit trees often have beautiful natural shapes and liven up spring with their short lived flurry of blooms but various pruning techniques can limit shading such as splaying the branches against the wall or making stopover trees so that more plants can be grown around them.

Canadian Organic Gardeners maintains a little herb and veggie patch at the Museum of Agriculture. Here they have rhubarb and currant underplanting apples if I remember correctly.

Another alternative is the hedgerow. Generally a wild, mixed, woody boundary or living fence. Hedgerows are not just attractive but provide food and shelter to wildlife and yourself.

Not Just Herbs: Edible Perennials

Here are 'just' some herbs: sage and oregano planted in the dryer, sunnier part of the garden.

Not that I want to discount the beautiful flowering herbs like catmint, lavender, sage, oregano, and thyme but I'd like to include less well known edible herbs like lovage, sweet cicely, garlic chives, mondarda, and sorrel. For those who have not yet investigated, the list of perennial edibles is surprisingly long including well known favourites such as daylily and hosta (yes, the early spring shoots that Stephen - edible plant collector extraordinaire - calls hostons), natives like prickly pear and strawberries and other favourites such as asparagus and perennial onions. Many of these are very attractive plants that are not out of place in a decorative garden.

Needing careful placement, this towering giant among useful perennial edibles - Jeruselum Artichoke - was put at the side and back of the garden in its own bed as it is seasonally dug out. By being kept to the back, its absence in spring and fall are not so noticeable nor is its presence too foreboding at the height of its growth. Instead it is a lovely backdrop. P.S. If you tend your garden, rumours of its invasive nature are at least slightly exaggerated in my opinion in our climate. If you do not spend your days lovingly coddling your plants then you might forget a patch long enough to require few years of diligent removal. Radix Rhizowen recently made a discovery when trying to eradicate a patch with landscaping fabric. The forced shoots are quite tasty.

The list of edible perennial plants is surprisingly long and they are often beautiful. In fact many plants started their history as useful only to be converted to decorative along the way such as balloon flower and bloody dock.

One of my favourites: Sweet cicely - all parts edible tasting like sweet anise - lines the partly shaded path toward the back, grown with clematis and alpine strawberry, mallow and iris.

Ringing your annual beds with compact, short statured herbs is not only useful but also acts as another reliable feature around the rangy pumpkins or potatoes. Having lots of diverse flowering plants will also feed beneficial insects and confuse the signals pests use to find their host plants. Breaking up plantings slows the spread of disease too.

Sperling toga onion underplanting Nanking Cherry.

To explore the world of possibilities when it comes to edible perennials, check out the sites Plants for a Future³ and Richters. Also look up books such as Perennial Vegetables, various titles called Edible Landscaping, Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, Food not Lawns and Uses for Wild Plants and The New Food Garden by Tozer. Search terms like wild edible foods, foraging, permaculture and hardy culinary herbs can inspire you too.

Perennial/walking kale currently is continuing its winter hardiness trial in my garden, backed by the flowers of the spready Dame's Rocket (edible and not bad).

Decorative with Edible?

There is no law that states that you cannot grow peppers near Dahlia or Coreopsis.

In early summer, this garden is alive with iris along with orach, lemon balm (ack - that's one that you shouldn't let seed), malva, salad burnet, strawberries, elderberry, lovage, young currants, Bellis perennis and more.

Turn the rules of design on your edibles to make something pretty and functional, ex. compare and contrast, don't put your sweet potatoes near something that doesn't like root disturbance. A well mulched perennial bed with plants carefully chosen to thrive in that garden's conditions can be pretty low care.⁴

Cabbage in the background facing the street and lavender in the foreground playing off cabbage's bluish leaves.

That's not to discount annuals. Many people add bedding annuals such as marigolds to look at and to ward off pests. When incorporating temporary plantings, make sure that everyone has enough space to do their thing though as sometimes annuals can suffer next to well established thugs.

Salsify was grown here as a self seeding root crop. Here their early morning glory is echoed in the giant purple alliums.

Classic annuals

Dark leafed elderberry (not convinced by this cultivar as a fruit crop by the way), is threaded by bicolour runner bean.

Mixing it up with annuals and biennials will mean that you disturb the beds more either by exposing ground for seed or transplants and to harvest or remove debris. Some good places for annuals are the border edge especially for greens and root crops before they go to seed, spaces between young perennials and dedicated annual pockets.

A dedicated annual planting pocket that was soon overgrown with tomatoes. These spaces can be rotated. If rotation and perennial planting sounds confounding, here's my exploration of the subject.

Don't forget that you can embed pots around the garden too. Having the pot in contact with the soil and surrounded by greenery may keep them moist longer.

These two habanero peppers were placed on the ground and abandoned while I traipsed off to visit relatives for a month. I was happy to see them alive when I returned. The rain must have cooperated.

There are plenty of colourful edibles such as rainbow swiss chard, purple leafed beet, golden anise hyssop, amaranth and eggplants, and others that are texturally compelling such as feathery leafed carrots and parsley, glaucous cabbage and kale or strap like chufa and salsify.

Some texturally interesting plants seen head on including soft leafed orach, the whirl of salad burnet, and the increasingly fine dissection of the malva leaves. I love, love Rhubarb as leaf plant. It is particularly nice paired with rainbow swiss chard and nasturtiums.

In keeping with decorative, veggies should be neat and by that I don't necessarily mean in orderly rows or blocks though that's an option. Make sure their best features show by removing diseased leaves and growing sprawlers up. I can see how peas intertwining through a shrub can be beautiful but otherwise, you'll want to trellis vines with something that doesn't say utility.

The Museum of Agriculture's potager (shown above) late in the season with some type of dwarf, upright pepper and the edible designer's darling: rainbow swiss chard. Note how the tomatoes on the trellis are looking very scruffy.

Just like in regular garden design, keep large plants to the middle or back of a bed. Some vegetables will look sickly before harvest is finished such as tomatoes and squash that tend toward foliar disease. I wouldn't put these front and centre if you are going for maximum eye appeal. Others that will be harvested early can be replaced with a second crop or bedding plants.

Self seeding annuals

Yes, it's a fav: orach. That's the bright red one, along with osaka mustard and red ursa kale. Perennial onions spiking up in the background. These were all self sown.

Lots of edibles such as chicory, oyster root, magenta spreen, amaranth, and kale will give you a second, third or more harvest from an initial planting if only they are left to go to seed (which may not be until the second year). There are two problems. One is that a tidy, ruby head of radicchio placed at the front of the border can become a four foot spindly giant the following year. If you are planning on letting them go to seed, keep their final height in mind. You may want to plant diagonal swathes, removing those in the front and letting those at the back do their wild reproductive thing. The flowers will add to the diversity of your garden.

Yes, this is my old backyard and I actually think these bowing heads of parsley preparing to invade my yawn are cute but you can see the problem. P.S. They are leaning on what used to be my veggie patch. It was reconverted to lawn for sale. Apparently people like lawns?

You may want to bend seed heads toward where you'd like them to travel or cut and lay them down in a new spot. The other issue is that if you heavily mulch then you may get few reseeders. For this reason, I used to do my main mulching before reseeding (depends on the plant and the mulch, how well they'll do seeding into mulch) or after the volunteers are up and thinned in the spring. One easy way to rejuvenate an area is to stir the top few inches soil in spots near where plants have gone to seed.⁵ When I replaced my vegetable garden with lawn before selling, I just spread out the dirt and sprinkled some grass seed. What emerged was a swatch of salad greens germinating alongside the grass and clover.

And with that we come full circle.

What grew in the front?

Below is just what I remember growing in my old front yard that was edible. It doesn't include all the great stuff in the backyard or all the possibilities. At my new place, I'm going totally wild (in a so much space, so much choice kind a way!)

Currants

Gooseberries

Jostaberry

Hostas

Chives

Garlic Chives (eat the flowers or you'll have lots)

Daylilies

Strawberries - pink, white flowered and alpine

Apples

Pears

Cherries

Blueberries

Horseradish (near the back)

Jeruselum Arichoke (near the back)

Yarrow (marginal!)

Oregano

Sage

Thyme

Lavender

Mint (yikes!)

Mitsuba - purple leafed

Salsify

Scrozonera

Red Valerian - not bad in the spring

Violets

Violas

Rhubarb

Borage

Spiderwort

Rugosa

Crosnes

Hosta (spring shoots)

Solomon Seal (spring shoots)

Grapes

Seakale

Prickly Pear

Strawberry Spinach

Bloody Dock

Calendula

Trilliums (shoots) - no I couldn't eat them, too pretty

Bellis Perennis

Bellflower(s)

Balloon Flower

Sedum (check varieties)

Cinammon Yam (didn't like me)

Perennial Leek

Ox-eye daisy (marginal according to me)

Raspberry - not for front yards me thinks - moved.

Rugosa rose

Various edible flowers and tea plants: catmint, monarda, hibiscus, dianthus and so forth

Mustard

Celeriac

Peas

Peppers

Eggplants

Sunberry

Kale

Nasturtiums

Cabbage

Lettuce

Garlic

Landcress

Sunflower

Corn

Cucumbers

1. Seen as belonging to a much wider gardening (and increasingly lifestyle) practice called permaculture, this link takes you to a man who popularized the term forest garden.

2. My spiral garden was planted in part to obscure the path in order to invite people to walk its distance. It was challenging planting for height in the middle of each bed but also graduations as you moved toward the centre, from front to back AND from the house to the far side. Also, I wanted lots of little features that could only be seen up close. I enjoyed making it!

3. Double-check their info for your own peace of mind and remember whenever you try something new, go slow! I find that their hardiness ratings are sometimes off. They are located in the UK so growing info is skewed to that climate.

4. I would feel remiss if I didn't mention that certain plants can affect each others' growth negatively or positively. These interactions aren't always so visible especially if the plants are in a rich garden environment where they can compensate for slight insults. However, the classic example would be the strongly allopathic affect of black walnut that inhibits the growth of certain plant families such as tomatoes and their kin.

5. Seeds have different longevities of course and weeds also inhabit your seed bank which is why some people are hesitant about recommending self seeding annuals in perennial planting schemes as to allow them to self seed, you often need to let down your mulch guard a little. That and some self seeders do so at nuisance numbers. I'm an equal opportunity edible gardener though as you can see so I included many.

Tomatillos in March...

... probably.

Here are some of the tomatillos I have left from last summer. They were stored in their husks. There is lots of variety here with some having very inflated calyxes and others having those that fit more tightly. They are all yellow in colour though this year I have some seeds for a variety that tinges purple. Some varieties will burst out of their husks when ripe. I'm not sure how well those would store in comparison as I've not tried them.

If you haven't tried husk tomatoes yet - tomatillos and ground cherries - but can't imagine life without tomatoes, then you might just like these fruity flavoured relatives as well. They are started in the same way: about six to eight weeks before frost, transplanted in warm soil after last frost date. Some of them are quite rangy while others are more upright in habit. Tomatillos need more than one plant to fruit well so I've read (never tried to grow just one plant). Once they start producing the fruit, they can really pump it out.

Tomatillos, Physalis philadelphica (ixocarpa), are eaten at the well formed still green stage as well as the dead ripe, but you will be cautioned not to nibble on ground cherries, Physalis pruinosa, until they are golden with a tan husk. Some go as far as saying to wait until they fall off the plant. Not to worry if you have to collect them from the ground because they store well in those husks.

These fruits seem to be more popular of late. I've seen versions of salsa verde as a relish in chic-chic restaurants the occasional time I've been found inside of one and a nursery man at Make it Green told me that he has been selling a lot of ground cherries to chefs, with kitchen gardens I presume.

So what do they taste like? Green tomatillos taste tangy and tomato-esque and are often described as like citrus. Fully ripe, their fruity overtones intensify sometimes reminding me of a ripe apple. Ground cherries, on the other hand vary from reminiscent of pineapple, strawberry or something else dessert worthy. They make a nice addition to salads and some people use them to make pie.

I've opened some husks so you can see the innards. Note that they are nice and ripe looking. The top one is getting a bit wizened but still quite edible

But that's not what this blog post is about! You've heard me go on about small fruit tomato relatives before. No, it's that storage thing I mentioned.

If you pick them ripe in their husks and store in a cool, dry place (or just on your counter like me), they will keep for months. I have a few plants of ground cherries yanked by the root and left in the cellar too. Some of them may raison-up a bit but that doesn't take away their yumminess. In fact, it can intensify their flavour. My youngest told me the ground cherries were "Mmm, sweet."

Now what to do with these fruit? Something special to contrast with the snow globe outside today.

***

Would you like some seeds? I have some seeds. They are no-named varieties and characteristics will probably vary a bit.

There is also a perennial ground cherry, Physalis heterophylla, that grows around here and probably stores well in husk too. Unfortunately, I seem to have eaten them all already so I couldn't test this theory. The variety I have has a heavenly fruity scent. Northern Bushcraft seems to think they can be stored for several months in a cool room making me think that indeed that'd store much like the above. They also describe the taste as pleasant sweet/sour. I'm reading that as pleasant sweet/tart: tomato-tomato. Anyhow, if you find a good tasting variety in your foraging - they are wild around here - then you may want to take home a rhizome or two as my experience suggests that they vary in quality much like most plants. Not too much mind as you wouldn't want to deprive the locality of this fun and tasty weed. Did I mention it was weedy? Think chinese lantern before you commit to a location in your garden though I'm not sure if it is really THAT bad yet.

***

And another thing: A lady on FB asked me to write up a post on edible front yards so I am committing to doing that after I resurrect my old computer files to find some good pics. It'll be fun!

Forging wild edibles link

Just a quick post to give you this potentially interesting link from Northern Bushcraft on wild edibles by province.

Love this site, talk about adventurous: Eat the Weeds

Sourcing Plants and Seeds Part II -Vocabulary TMI

There are some people who know immediately what kind of seeds they want. It should be heritage, preferably an old, rare variety that if they don't grow, might blink out of existence, and it should be organic. Then there are others who don't really care as long as it will give them reliable yields with fruit that will make their neighbours envious or at least prevent them from looking down their noses at their crazy gardening hobby. Then there are just those that don't know what the heck all the fuss is about. Isn't a seed a seed?

Sure all seeds are seeds. After all if they weren't, we'd call them something else like grains or gerbils. But there are movements afoot and sometimes they are bannered by sleeping baby plant packages.

Organic vs. Treated

A blast from the past: Here's my youngest as a toddler playing with an unnamed soy bean that had been saved for generations on a farm. Given out at a terminator seed protest. I grew it out for years before turning it over to a small living seed bank.

To produce the seeds, you need plants. If these were grown organically, then some standard - this varies from place to place - must have been met. For example, your seeds were not grown with the help of death-icides or chemicals fast food fertilizers. The seed house may be officially certified - see Cottage Gardener - or they may simply state that they are organic because, for example, their land may still be in transition.¹

Some seeds are additionally treated after harvest with fungicides or other chemicals. This will often make them weird colours. Normally it will say on the seed package, but this is a good reason not to eat any seeds not marketed for that purpose. Your own extra seeds make the best sprouts anyhow. Some plants really pump out those seeds too. Yes, I'm talking to you mustard.

Hybrid vs. Open Pollinated

If you are planning on saving your own seed, then it is easiest to start with plants that are open pollinated. This means that the baby plants will be similar to the parent plants. Hybrid seeds are (usually) produced by cross pollinating two distinct, genetically predictable (such as inbred) parent lines. The result is highly uniform but if you were to save seeds from them then the genes get reshuffled and you cannot predict the exact result.² The statement, "you can't know what you'll get" is a bit misleading however as a gardening friend once pointed out. If you grow out seeds from a hybrid pepper plant you will get.... a pepper plant.³

Hybrids are created to produce, among other things, uniform results in size, yield time and to incorporate resistance to negative pressures such as disease or pests. If you want a particular trait in your plants and can't find them in an OP (open pollinated source), you could try growing out some seed saved from hybrid plants. After several generations of selection, you may have a strain that maintains that trait AND is more or less predictable in form from one generation to the next. In other words, you will have de-hybridized the hybrid. This is a common hobby among backyard breeders. The delectable hybrid tomato Sungold has been, or is in the process of being, dehybridized in all sorts of ways. Big Sungold is an example mentioned on Tatiana's Tomatobase.

It will usually say on the seed packet/description that it is a hybrid. Another clue is an F code behind the name. F1 means that it is a first generation hybrid.

Some people believe that certain plants need to be hybrid or they will be dismal failures. Around here, the brassicas such as broccoli and the melons are often touted as flops if they are not F1. I have not found this to be true. Once you know how to grow these plants, both of them are top performers. Keep in mind that I do not run a CSA nor am I a commercial farmer so maybe I have different acceptable margins.

Heritage/Heirloom vs. Traditionally Bred

Some people are allergic to plants that are created any later than 1930. Often very old and perfectly good varieties are in danger of being lost because they are just not grown. It has been argued that very, very old varieties may have been inadvertently selected as extra healthy because people depended on them to survive. The hypothesis goes that families and varieties co-evolved meaning that families/localities growing the best varieties had more reproductively successful children etc... you know the theory. To dis/prove this you would have to do a nutritional analyses on the crops. Keep in mind too that you would have to use the same cultural practices - ways of working the land, growing the crop - as they did under the same climatic and soil conditions to achieve a similar result. That's not to say that heritage varieties aren't worth growing or aren't healthy. I'm just complicating matters.

My eldest threshing some cabbage seed.

Unfortunately, the rarer of these varieties can suffer from one of two effects by being seldomly grown out. They may have lost a lot of genetic diversity as the seed parent pool is quite small especially if they are out-breeders⁴. Alternatively, they may no longer have the traits they did in the past. Maybe the solid orange squash from 1890 now has yellow stripes because of cross breeding with other cultivars. Both these situations call for revitalization. If you have a pet variety, you can grow out lots of it and reselect for the original characteristics (assuming they haven't lost the genes responsible for them) or you can intentionally cross them with something similar to increase their genetic diversity and vigour. Of course by crossing them, you are creating something new but that's okay in my books. In this way, you might get a great crop that maintains the original variety's genes even if the phenotype (form) is slightly different. It's like the heritage variety is hiding out in the new variety. Or you could reselect for something that looks like the original.

I love heritage varieties. There I said it. I didn't want you to think otherwise. I don't worship them but I do really like them and I do like to believe that co-evolution hypothesis if for no other reason than it sounds neat.

But what you ask is the definition of a heritage/heirloom crop? It varies but the internet consensus seems to be that it has been created and maintained in a traditional way for at least 50 years (some use before the end of the second world war as a time limit) though others say at least 100 years old.

Even today, people are breeding plants in traditional ways. Some may be saving all seeds from high and poorer performing plants. This can maintain more genetic diversity as not all plants perform the same from year to year because of variations in pest/disease pressures and weather. That said, you will probably have some plants that produce consistently higher seed yields and therefore self select. Other breeders intentionally cross plants either with a goal in mind like a purple turnip or just to see what will happen. This blogger's fun with cabbage breeding.

These modern reselections, de-hybridzed crops or intentional breeding projects have value! Wild Garden Seeds (a fav of mine) is busy producing disease resistant lettuce in what they call hell's half acre and strawberry spinach with more reliable germination. That sounds as cool as ancient veg. to me.

Wild Collected vs. Raised Local or otherwise

Seeds in catalogues are produced by an assortment of growers. Small companies often grow a lot of their own seed but also may have other people grow a portion of it. The growers may or may not be nearby. If you are looking for locally adapted varieties, inquire. On occasion, seed companies will merely be reselling seeds from other suppliers. Hopefully they are forthright about where they get their wares.

Other seeds, especially of native varieties, are collected in the wild. As best you can, you should be sure that the collectors are doing so in an ethical way - i.e., taking only a few seeds from different populations if they are rare varieties and none from endangered crop populations unless they have permission and are attempting to increase the population. The same holds if you are the collector.

Speaking of seed explorers, I have seen seeds offered from collections made off of a neighbour's interesting tree, a weird looking bean found on vacation at a market, or even a tag along seed that didn't belong in someone's soup mix.

Grex, Mix or Landrace?

Ripe species seeds from Myhrris odorata - no cultivar name - or Sweet Cicely.

It is becoming more popular to sell seed mixes. Often it'll say 'using our special formula' implying a precision mix. This means that they are adding seeds from different batches together. On the other hand a grex is the herd of babies produced by a cross. These are sister and brother plants that don't necessarily all look a like. Extreme Gardener talks chicory greges.

Which brings me to landraces. These are populations of plants that come from a particular locality and show variability. For example, a landrace of soup peas might have different dry colours and growth type but it is traditionally all saved together and used to make soup. Language - being a means of communication - has led to the evolution of the use of this term so that landrace can refer to intentional variability by mass crossing plants. Here is Joseph's definition of an adaptivar landrace and some of the interesting work he does on his farm.

And finally, when growing many herbs or unusual vegetables from seed, there may be no named cultivars at all. This does not mean that there aren't different varieties, so getting a species variety from two different spots may give you plants that vary in dates to maturity, shade tolerance and so on. Even the seeds grown out from one area may vary considerably. Often, there ARE named varieties even if it is just a regional name attached but because it is unusual to us, we clump them all together.

'K - go out and buy some seeds now.

¹ For example, here's some organic regulation standards linked from Canadian Organic Growers.Or you could try and navigate this omafra site.

² So you want an (overly simplistic) example? Okay let's say you have two parent plants. One has the following genes for three traits: aabbcc. The other plant has these complementary genes: AABBCC. Now form 'a' and form 'A' are for the same gene but each parent has two of the same. When you cross these two inbred lines you get uniformly plants that are aAbBcC as the babies each get one gene from each parent. If you were to let these F1s cross and make baby seeds then you would be crossing two plants with the genes: aAbBcC x aAbBcC. The result could be any of the following: aabbcc, AABBCC, or aabBcC, aABBcc, aaBBcc, etc... See? They may be more like one parent or the other and who knows what the parents were like.

Some people claim that all hybrids are produced to be dependent on big-agri crutches like chemical fertilizers. Though the holy grail of capitalism is to create brand dependency, such as GMOs that work with certain pesticides, this is not always the goal. I don't endorse F1s per se but I don't see anything inherently wrong with them especially when they are produced by combining two cross-pollinating OPs together to invigorate a crop. These may or may not be uniform but they also may show the glorified hybrid vigour. My point is you don't need a lab to do it. It can be done in a garden setting and it might be to your benefit depending on the situation. Or it might just be a fun science experiment.

Here is a decent explanation - It also lists a three line system which uses more than two parent line hence the qualifier in my description.

³A plant that is produced by crossing two closely related species could also be called a hybrid. Obviously this is more unpredictable and it is possible to have mules - sterile plants. If the hybrid process used male sterility in one parent line, I suppose it is also possible to pass on this trait to seedlings. My experience so far, however, is that hybrid plants produce F2 babies which produce F3 seeds and so on.

⁴ Outbreeders are plants that require cross pollination of others of their kind to produce healthy, viable offspring. Otherwise, they suffer from inbreeding depression meaning decreased fitness and fertility. They are normally wind or insect pollinated. Examples are cabbages or corn. This contrasts with inbreeders that are often self pollinating and need smaller populations of parent plants to produce healthy offspring. More on the subject.

Dandelion to the Rescue Harvest Monday

This fall, among the beets, parsnips and carrots, I dug out of the ground, I also collected dandelion roots. They were stored in fall leaves in a pot in our cellar. About a month ago, I started taking them out to force.

Some were potted in moistened soil and left to grow in the near dark of the furnace room. A small window makes for soft green rather than yellow leaves. After harvesting these milder dandelion greens, they were moved upstairs to the kitchen window where within days they became deep green and prepared to flower! Can't wait to see those sunshine yellow blooms.

These dandelion and chicory roots were soaked in water for a few hours than place in a freezer bag in the vegetable drawer of our fridge to sprout as mentioned in Salad Leaves for All Seasons by Dowding.

I particularly like eating bitters in deep winter as a vitamin and mineral rich tonic.

***

You've heard it before and I'll say it again: many weeds are good for you and the queen of them all is arguably the Taraxacum officinale. It is hardy, doesn't take much room and requires even less care, pretty if you can get past the reflex to eject it from the earth and useful. Roots can be roasted, leaves used in all manner of recipe calling for 'greens' and petals can give their delicate flavour to baked goods or even wine. If you find dandelion greens too bitter then concentrate on eating new growth in the spring or blanch like you might endive by placing a plate over the crown. You can also harvest them in the fall to use in the winter!

There are various species of dandelions including red leaved, pink or white flowered too. In places where dandelion is grown as a green more commonly, there are some that have been selected for juicy hearts or thicker leaves such as Ameliore a Coeur Plein and Vert de Montmagny but the common weed is wonderful enough. Instead of pulling out every dandelion you see, give a few some extra love and experiment in the kitchen with this edible perennial.

***

More Dandelion ideas at Floridata - Never heard of Cramaillotte before.

I just had to include this recipe as the pictures are great: Dandelion Flower Fritters

Sourcing Plants and SeedsPart III - Plants for a headstart

You want to buy that cool pear-sorbus hybrid or that nifty variegated form of sorrel, prepare to be frustrated. Though there are lots of plants for the buying in Canada, many google searches will leave you slavering over the unattainable (or quite difficult to attain) plants in the US or Europe. Your next step, if you are me, is to try and find seeds of same variety but as many unusual forms of plants don't come true from seed, that might be a either a lost cause or a long venture. Of course, you could import some plants from the states using a phytosanitary certificate but I always felt too bogged down in the mire of expense and paperwork to try it.

As this is primarily an edible plant blog, I'm going to focus on plant mail-order houses with edible entries, but there are a list of nurseries in the area that may have what you're looking for or MAYBE will order them in. I say maybe because I've submitted various requests that were filed under 'not in our lifetime.'

This will NOT be a complete list 'cause I don't spend all day on the internet. Feel free to contribute your brain power and free time to the project by recommending others.

Mail-order Edible Plants in Canada:

Acorus Restoration: Native plants, many edible. Generally listed as mail-order

Alberta Nurseries: Hardy tart/sweet cherries and other small fruits. Not a huge selection.

Alcla Native Plants: Some edibles most notably ground plum - Astralgalus crassicarpus which I normally only see as seeds such as from Prairie Moon Nursery (US native seed and plant source)

Bamboo World: I have not researched which would be good to eat but if you have the right zone, then here's a source.

Beaver Pond Estates: Seed garlic - link takes you to seeds of diversity page for email

Boughen Nurseries: Fruit trees and plants including U of Saskatchewan Cherries and cultivars of Seabuckthorn.

Boundry Garlic - Lots 'o garlic.

Clear Sky Farm: Heritage Garlic Varieties.

Cornhill Nursery: Small fruits, including a good selection of grapes for mail-order.

Denman Island Heritage Apples: The name says it all, includes cider apples

Eagle Creek Farms: Lots of potatoes. Years ago, I ordered from them with very good results.

Fraiser Thimble Farms: Has some edible listings

Golden Acres Farm: Seed Garlic. No direct link to website so linked to Seeds of Diversity info

Golden Bough Nursery: Sells Red Mulberry, American Plum, grapes, some other rare fruits and nuts

Green Barn Nursery: Odd naming practices such as using the term apple-pear for an asian pear, and using the heading cranberry for high bush cranberries. Nursery stock is interesting but expensive: crosses between cherries and plums and a cross between an apricot and plum, mulberries, nuts and more.

Grimo Nut Nursery: All sorts of interesting things from paw-paw, quince, north hardy nuts to mulberries. My trees arrived in a good condition and grew well so far.

Hardy Fruit Trees: Doesn't the first picture make you wondering if he's peeing on his plants? At any rate, good selection.

Hawfield Farm Garlic: Garlic farms don't seem to like to have websites so I'm pretty sure this is the right one.

Henry Fields Seed & Nursery: Small berries, trees and some veggie starts

Heritage Harvest Seed: Perennial walking and potato onions.

Hortico: Fruit trees and plants along with lots of other perennials and woodies.

Humber Nursery - Fruit and Nut trees available - not clear if plants are shipped

La ferme tourne-sol: Jersusalem Artichoke and chuffa

Maddog Farm: Just discovered this one (Thanks Mike!) Large selection of Jerusalem Artichokes, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Also sells crosnes (Stachys affinis). Also sells honey bees.

Mapple Farms: My original source of sweet potatoes and crosnes. They also sell the Volga2 variety of Jerusalem Artichoke. Mr. Allan's plants have always grown well for me.

McFayden: Various small fruits and some fruit trees

Mr V's: Good selection of fruits including cherry-plums. Said to be expensive compared to others.

Mycopatch: Mushrooms - navigating this site is not easy.

Pine needle farm: Tree nursery

Rhora's Nut Farm: I've not ordered from them before but they offer some unusual nut and fruit trees that are hard to come by like cornelian cherry and beach plum. My only complaint is that they sell inoculant for their different plant categories.

Richters: Venerable herb house of Canada with lots of offerings including some fruit trees and vegetable starts. Prices are reasonable and though the size of the plants are small when they arrive, they grow well in my experience. Lots of seeds too.

Saskgarlic: You guessed it.

Seeds of Diversity: Last time I received their trade catalogue, there were cuttings available

Silver Creek Nursery: Reliance peach, asian pears and more

Siloam Orchards: These guys come up as a mail-order house though I couldn't discover how to order. Mostly apple varieties but also asian pears, cherries and more. They sell perry pears too which I have just discovered are pears selected for cider production.

Strawberry Time: Mostly strawberry and raspberries, good prices.

T&T Seeds: Interesting plant selection from hardy kiwis to Saskatoon berries.

The Cutting Veg: More garlic!

The Mushroom Patch: Large selection of kits and plugs. I can't tell you how my plugs did yet as they were started just last year.

William Dam Seeds: The usual: asparagus, raspberries, strawberries, potatoes and so on.

Other:

Some specialty or collector perennials, such as daylilies, are also edible but slogging through those numerous websites is making me woozy. For what it's worth, it's normally easier finding seeds of interesting species of popular edibles such as citron daylily and red-leafed dandelion.

Also, conservation societies can be a good place to get inexpensive tree seedlings for reforesting. Ferguson Forest Centre is nearby. Try native nurseries and sales too for plants such as edible fiddleheads.

* It was supposed to be definition day but I decided to do Part II next week as I have an eye on getting some more trees this week :)

** They also sell bloody dock, various shallots, garlic, walking onions, lovage, various hops, more mint than anyone should plant and lots and lots of herbs many of them with culinary uses.

Part I - Seedy Dreams

Coming up next week:

Part II - Not all Seeds are created equal from hybrid, heirloom, landrace, GMO, species, GREXes and more.