Put some Peas…in a gutter

Welcome new members to our seed saving community who committed saving pea seeds at our recent Seedy Saturday!

A number of people have chosen to save pea varieties for the Seed Saving Project 2009. Sapporo*Japanese shelling peas, Carlin(dry soup pea), China Snow, Oregon Sugar Pod, from Saltspring Seeds. And Green Arrow(mainsteam variety) and Sugar Pea from William Dam Seeds.

Here’s a little tip, have used the last few years for an early start to a small but successful row for early peas.

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First. Get your minds. In the gutter!

Gutter peas that is.

Today it’s snowing again. On coastal B.C. fairly unusual for mid March. The soil outside is so cold. Most weeds aren’t even sprouting yet.

If gardeners plant peas outside,(even presprouted) chances are they’ll rot. And that’s if the slugs, insects, birds etc. don’t have at them first.

So off to the scrap metal pile at the back of the farm, to haul out several 8′ sections of old guttering.(scored last summer, while garage-sailing, when noticing an adjacent neighbour having their roof, redone)
And that nice pile of rusty old guttering piled on the driveway. Although have used other metal guttering in the past)

Fold and layer, several thicknesses of newspaper and overlap them, the entire length of the gutter.

Fill with soil. As these gutters have been moved into my 8′ x 16′ unheated greenhouse, I use greenhouse soil.

Plan presprouted peas. Cover with soil up to the top of gutter. Water.

Cover for extra frost protection and evaporation with anything handy. I use old feed sacks or potting soil bags.

Peek under the gutter wrap, periodically, to see when the peas emerge and need daylight.

When the pea-lings get six or so inches high and have several leaves(and hopefully the nights are becoming frost-free)

Transport your gutters to the space, where you want the peas to grow. Then gently…slide. The sections of newspaper with soil/peas into the pre-dug pea trench.

The pea-lings will get a little disturbed but if you’re careful, they will recover nicely. Cover as per the ‘code’ of transplanting:)

Chances increase of getting a small but delicious crop of peas, some weeks before the outdoor planting.

Save some seeds from these early peas. Or plant other rows and save seed from them.

Seedy Saturday, March 14th 2009!

Doors open Saturday March 14th 10 a.m for Powell River’s fourth SEEDY SATURDAY,
at Community Living Place, 6831 Artaban Street, Cranberry.

Bring your seeds, tubers, cuttings, food plants etc. to a lively day of swapping garden plants and information. Cost for this community gardening event is a nominal $1 for admission with children under 12 are free. In addition to the exchange, information booths, and refreshments at the Seedy Lounge plus a supervised children’s activity corner, all day.

Five free workshops included:

10:00-10:45 a.m. Berry Happy, Thank You

Volunteer Master Gardener Myst de Vana presents ways to boost immunity in small fruit shrubs. You can have your fruit (and eat it too) by selecting sturdy varieties, planting for long-term health, and preventing disease and pestiferous creature problems. Managing crop size, staggering harvests, and using wild berries all help create a potentially long season of treats for our cereal and desserts.

11:00-11:45 p.m. Winter Gardening for Powell River

Master Composter, and professional horticultural therapist, Carol Engram helps you plan and manage a productive winter garden. Start planning your winter garden now, in order to plant in July.

12:00-12:45 p.m. Permaculture Gardening for our ‘Wet Coast’

Patches, from Nimh Permaculture Farm, south of town, provides practical tips for incorporating perennial food crops and sustainable gardening techniques into your garden and home landscape.

1:00 p.m.-1:45 p.m. Starting Plants from Seed

Kevin Wilson from micro-market garden, Fiddler’s Farm demostrates how to take the seeds you get at Seedy Saturday and grow them into healthy plants. Workshop covers starting seeds indoors under lights, direct seeding outdoors, and starting seeds the easy way with minimal protection.

2:00 p.m.-2:45 p.m. PLANT frequently. HARVEST abundantly.

Wildwood market gardener, Wendy Devlin helps you plan a small vegetable garden in advance in order to extend productivity and extension of the harvest.

Beans. Beans. The magical fruit.

Some of you, might have the other line of that jingle, stuck in your head!

Beans are magical in many ways:)

If you have several favorite beans and you want to save seed from them, will you end up with crosses(hybrids)?
Bush beans are self-fertilizing. Therefore there is generally little chance varieties cross-pollinating.

However it is advised to separate bush varieties in the home garden by at least two feet.

What is often done in home seed saving, is separating similiar bush bean varieties by a row of a different variety of bean (if you are growing all your beans in the same section of garden) Or a row of different vegetables.

There is more tendency for a pole bean to cross. So the advice is plant similiar varieties a minimum of 12 feet apart.

Also the more open-faced flowers of Scarlet Runners, limas and broad beans attract more insect pollinators and therefore more cross-pollination.

So again, a wider planting distance between varieties is advised.

Am growing Andy’s Broad Beans from Saltspring Seeds, and several varieties from my own fava seed collection(originally Windsors, and a small green and purple seeded. Plus two pole varieties of red-flowered Scarlet Runner and one bicolor.(which started out last year as EMERG0, all white which apparently crossed with the red due to close proximity)

So I’ll be paying closer attention to planting distances this season.

Veg Seeds from the UK

While I was in the UK I picked up some seeds (Mum and I shared some packets).

These two I plan to save seed from:

broad beans: “Masterpiece Green Longpod “
Extra long 12″ pods, excellent for freezing, sow feb-Apr, so it may not overwinter. I’ll try some in fall 2009 though.

Shelling peas: “Meteor” bush pea 18″ high, the shortest I could find. Overwinters from an Oct-Nov sowing, or sow in March.

The following are brassicas and I don’t plan to save seed, but they are OP and I can give away a small packet to anyone interested:

Sprouting Broccoli “extra early sprouting Rudolph”
Overwinters from a Apr-Jun sowing to start harvesting January onwards – good flavoured purple spears.

Sprouting Broccoli “White Sprouting”
Overwinters from a Apr-May sowing to harvest Mar-Apr – white spears.

Sprouting Broccoli “Purple Sprouting”
Overwinters from a Apr-May sowing to harvest Mar-Apr – purple spears.

Brussels Sprouts “Bedford Winter Harvest”
Sow Mar-Apr for Nov-Feb harvest. Reliable, long season, winter-hardy.

Obviously these are not part of the “project” but fun anyway

Kevin

Vegetable Varieties for Seed-Saving Project 2009

Here’s a list of the vegetable varieties included in our community seed-saving project.
Of course, we encourage people to save seeds of any of their favorite vegetable, flower, herb, tree etc. seeds.

This list was arrived at by knocking a couple of experienced local market gardeners’ heads together last fall. Then running our choices past Dan Jason, experienced seed saver and owner of the Saltspring Seeds.

With our focus on enhancing local food security, we chose vegetable varieties that were both relatively easy to grow and save seed from.

Plenty of beans, peas for inexperienced seed savers to learn how to save seed. And then a number of beets/chard and squash varieties, that it is difficult for an individual seed saver to save more than one variety of each type of vegetable. Per year.

A network of local seed-savers, increases more varieties of vegetables for swapping.

Here’s the list:

1)Beets(Lutz Winterkeeper, Detroit Red, Early Wonder Tall-top)

2)Chard(Rainbow, Rhubarb, Bietina(Italian)

3)Peas(Oregon Sugar Pod/Sugar Pea(edible pod) Green Arrow(fresh shelling) Carlin(dry soup) China(Snow)Sapporo(Japanese Shelling Pea)

4)Beans (Pole(green, wide Celina), Pole Blue Lake), Pole Dry(Neabel), Fava(Andy’s Broad), Dry Bush, (Ireland Creek Annie, Odawa, Jacob;s Cattle,Beka Brown, Kidney-Red/White,Ukraine, Monetezuma Red, Coco) Bush(Honey Wax) and green, (Jade)

5) Squash-
Moschata-Butternut
Pepo-Table King Acorn, Sweet Dumpling Delicata, Spaghetti,
Maxima-Hokkaida -Buttercup, Baby Blue Hubbard,
Golden Hubbard

Seed Project 2009 underway!

Seed Savers of Powell River officially launched our pilot seed-saving project on February 11th.

About twenty people enjoyed a delicious potluck at the monthly Wednesday Kale Force meeting. Then we got busy packaging up seeds in readiness for Seedy Saturday, our community seed/plant swap and garden fair on March 14th.

If you’re a gardener or food security enthusiast, read about that meeting and our project at:

http://www.prpeak.com/articles/2009/02/25/community/doc49a4ced861dd5427202298.txt

“Seeds are God’s microchip”

I think that’s a kind of funny way to put it… after all, seeds do not process data; microchips do not grow into computers (which then spread microchips around the room hoping to spawn new computers). But they do things funny in the mainstream press. At any rate, I thought that it was worth noting that the interest in seeds and vegetable gardening has really hit the big-time: this article from USA Today contains some pretty wild information; e.g.:

What’s more, the number of homes growing vegetables will jump more than 40% this year compared with just two years ago, projects the National Gardening Association, a non-profit organization for gardening education.

I suppose it’ll take another year or two (or maybe more) for the interest in buying seeds to become an interest in saving seeds. But it’s a start.

Seed Packaging Bee Wednesday February 11,2009.

Collected your garden seeds from last year, but never got around to putting them in envelopes, to trade at Seedy Saturday?

Got paper bags, jam jars, used envelopes of seed, earmarked for donation to Seedy Saturday?

You’re a gardening/food security enthusiast, with a couple of spare hours and a desire to have some fun and network with other seed-saving gardeners?

If your answer is, positive to any of the three above questions:

Come tomorrow, Wednesday, February 11th to the Community Resource Center on Joyce Avenue in Powell River to our seed-packing bee/party.
Pot-luck with local gardening group, Kale Force at 5:00 p.m. and work ‘party’ from 6-8 p.m.

And if you’re thinking this is a late announcement. Rest assured that, this message, has been passing around that most effective of communication devices, the human ‘telegraph’, word-of-mouth for the past few months. It’s more of a last reminder of the date to locals. And a hello!
To the international seed-saving community.

Seed Saving Project up and running!

Today, the Seed Savers of Powell River sent out a letter of invitation to experienced vegetable growers in the district who have expressed interest in seed saving for the Seed Saving Project 2009. Also a description of the goals of the project as outlined elsewhere on this blog.

The seeds from the selected varieties of peas, beans, beets, chard, squash and pumpkins purchased from Saltspring Seeds, will be divided up, on a first come, first served basis.

Of course, we’d like to encourage everyone to save seeds from far more vegetables then just these variety names, in this small pilot project. What vegetable seeds you select, from what sources,and how your growing season goes over the next year. And any other subjects of interest to food gardeners.

It’s still early to plant much outside, but the warmth in yesterday’s sunshine, got me, feeling spring is on its way!

“Homegrown Goodness” – gardening / seed saving resource

Here’s another interesting place:

Homegrown Goodness

It’s a forum / discussion board very much into seed saving and breeding, saving old varieties, and growing information. Worth taking a look at.