Sunday, December 22, 2013

Invasion of the body snatchers...


My dear husband thinks my body has been taken over by some weird alien hybrid.  After all, it's just not like me to leave seed catalogs lying about unopened, seed lists unwritten, garden plans unplanned...etc...etc...yada..yada...

I guess I've been taken over by some odd career woman type alien being.  She looks like Sigourney Weaver, so I'm not seeing a problem here.

Anyhoo, I've had a few days off, so I've finished most of the holiday shopping, finished the wrapping, cleaned out the woodstoves and de-ashed the house...and then sat down to make my seed list.

Eöl rolled his eyes, pointed heavenward, and noted out loud, "It's about time!"

Sigh.

It's not that I have no interest in gardening this year.  In fact, I'll need it more than ever.  It's my quiet time.  My calming, soothing, communing with nature zen moment to end a stressful day.  

The reason I haven't been all over the seed catalogs is, well, I really don't need any seeds.  I've been saving seeds for a few years now, and my seed freezer is literally overflowing.  

But of course there are always new varieties to try. lol  So here's what I've listed so far.  Most of these are new to us and will be seed crops this year, meaning we'll save all the seed we can and probably never have to buy these again because they will overflow the second freezer.

Blue Jade Corn
Long Handled Dipper Gourd
Corsican Gourd (we had a crop failure on the last ones)
Blister Gourd
Pepino Melons
Minnesota Midget Melons
Big Red Peppers
Mini Belle Blend Peppers
Heinz Classic Processor Tomato
Peron tomato
Opalka Paste Tomato
Polish Linguisa Paste Tomato
Martino's Roma Tomato

And...that's it so far.  We've done pretty well with trying new varieties each year, then weeding out the ones we didn't like or that didn't do well.  The melon that tasted like it wanted to be a cucumber? Out!  The tomato that was prone to internal blossom end rot, so that it looked all delicious and tasty until you cut it open and saw black ooziness?  OUT!! 

This entire list is coming from Pine Tree Seeds. I've ordered from them before with good results.  I've given up on Baker Creek because they can't be bothered to list days to harvest.  There's a long excuse about it in the new catalog, about how dth is affected by weather, etc.  Well, duh. They suggest you read all about where the seed came from, since they tend to spend an inordinate amount of type talking about strolling through Peru to find this exotic thingamabob.  Erm, sorry, I took geography and all, but I have no idea exactly where you were in Peru or what the micro-climate is like in that particular area.  Give me days to harvest as at least a rough reference, m'kay?? 




2 comments:

Carolyn said...

The fact that Baker Creek continues to dodge the "date to harvest" thing drives me absolutely BONKERS!! But at least they've started using real photographs of the produce. I appreciate the artistic value on all their older drawings of their plants, but it always made me wonder "have they ever SEEN one of those melons/cucumbers/tomatoes.....or are they just drawing something nice looking"? I want a little bit of proof of what kind of munchie I'm going to be planting and I much prefer a photo than an artist's rendition of it.
Rant over.
For now.
Hope your career woman thing is panning out well.

Country Wife said...

I am so glad I'm not the only one bugged by that! If I order a seed from them, I have to google it to find dth and growing info. Frustrating. And their seed is expensive. I can get pretty much the same stuff from Pine Tree for half the price..or less...and sometimes even from Johnny's Seeds at a better price, with full growing info and a lot less social commentary.

The career is going well. It's been a slow week, but a few days off have been nice.