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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

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.

I’ve been growing a drying pole bean for a couple of years that seems to have some variety name confusion.

The one I’ve been growing came originally from either the PR or CV Seedy Saturday labeled “Ukrainian Pole Bean”. It’s a strong grower, would easily go past 8 feet if I let it, productive, the pods go from green to red and cream-striped as they dry down. Seeds are mostly white with maroon flecks, but there are some which are maroon with white flecks. As they age, the white areas on the seeds darken to a brownish pink but the darker maroon flecks are still obvious. A few plants in each planting seem to stay very low and set beans near the ground.

I also have two other types of bean seed which look identical. One was labeled “Bull Hunk” (which might be a misprint for “Bohunk”), the other “Uncle Jim’s Pole Bean”. When I grew them out the plants looked identical to Ukrainian Pole and the behaved the same way, resulting seeds looked identical too. So, they may all be the same thing.

A bit of online searching doesn’t turn up any reference to a bean called bohunk or bull hunk, and the only Ukrainian pole bean is one called “Neabel’s” from Salt Spring Seeds or Annapolis Valley Heritage Seeds. No picture, but the description says “Very pretty maroon speckled two-toned beans. A heavy yielding pole variety” which certainly describes this one I have.

Any other ideas about this variety? Has anyone else been growing it?

I bought tomato seed (their “cherry riot mix”) from this company at the Comox Seedy Saturday in 2006 or 2007 and they did very well for me. Unfortunately all my saved seed was eaten by a rat!

The farm is located on the Island outside Victoria, so many of their varietes should do well for us here. They have a lot of interesting and unusual heirloom tomato varieties, as well as lettuces, herbs, peas and beans and other stuff.

Two Wings Farm

I mentioned this book by Carol Deppe at the last Seedy Sat meeting. Well, I just went ahead and bought it as my Xmas present to myself, so if anyone else wants to read it after Xmas, let me know and I’ll lend it out.

Kevin