And the adventure begins! This is a very technical read, I’m sorry… But I’ve never really found a way of making inventorying sound poetic. 🙂
As promised, here you’ll find all the seeds we possess and intend on growing this year. It may seem like a lot, but we have over 800 sq.ft of actual garden beds and will be doing container plantings in addition to trying our hand at straw bail planting for the winter squashes. We have estimated that our final square footage should be about 850 sq.ft. Many of the herbs, medicinal plants and pollinator-attractors will be spread around all the beds and the sunflowers and corn will mostly be planted as a living fence between us and our neighbor. The trench will be 2 feet wide by about 30 feet long.
For each sections, you have the websites of the companies we used.
We plan on trying smaller quantities of all these to determine next year which ones to plant most of (we usually order seeds once every 2 years). Most varieties have been chosen for days to maturity (the shorter, the better), productivity/yield, hardiness and preservation qualities.
Any comments, suggestions, experience with some of these varieties? Please let us know!
Here goes…
————————————————
Annapolis Seeds (Nova Scotia) http://www.annapolisseeds.com
Beans :
– Tonello Pole Bean
– Lazy Housewife Pole Bean
– Grandma Nellie’s Yellow Mushroom Pole Bean
Kitchen Herbs :
– Red Rubin Basil
– Lettuce Leaf Basil
– Cutting Leaf Celery
Medicinal Herbs/Pollinator attractors :
– Elecampane
– Motherwort
– Tulsi (Holy Basil)
– Catnip
———————————————————–
West Coast Seeds (British Columbia) http://www.westcoastseeds.com
Root vegetables :
– Javelin Parsnip
– Napoli Carrot
– French Breakfast Radish
Greens :
– Roquette – Arugula
– Winter Blend Kale
– Winter Blend Mesclun
– Mâche – Corn Salad
– Tyee Spinach
Medicinal Herbs/Pollinator attractors :
– Borage
– Sweet pea
Fruit trees/bushes :
– Goji
Cover crops :
– Winter wheat
– Mustard White
—————————————————-
The Cottage Gardener (Ontario) http://www.cottagegardener.com
Kitchen Herbs :
– Cilantro
– Garden Sage
Medicinal Herbs/Pollinator attractors :
– Lemon Balm
– Vervain
– Purple coneflower (echinecea)
– German Chamomile
Root vegetables :
– Yellow Solar Carrot
– Speciality Radish Mix
– Mammoth Red Mangol Beet
Greens :
– Heirloom Romaine Lettuce Mix
Other veggies :
– Early Jalapeno Hot Pepper
– Long Island Improved Brussel Sprouts
– Cocozelle Zucchini (a very favorite in our home!)
——————————————————
Seeds from varied local vendors (leftovers from last year’s seed fair) :
– Bee Balm (Agastache foeniculum)
– Calenula Officinalis
– Comfrey
– Winter Green Mix
– Nantes Carrots
– Green Zebra Tomato (Another favorite here!)
– Frisé Darki Triple Parsley
– Giant Mammouth Sunflowers
——————————————————
Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company (Missouri) http://www.rareseeds.com
Squash & Pumpkins :
– Red Kuri (Hokkaido)
– Hubbard True Green Improved
– New England Sugar Pie
– White Bush Scallop
– Rouge Vif d’Étampes Pumpkin
Tomatoes :
– Blue Gold Berries (cherry tomato)
– Violet Jasper (cherry tomato)
– Break O’ Day (red canning tomato)
– Amish Paste (roma type canning tomato)
Root Vegetable :
– Lutz Salad Leaf Beet
– Bull’s Blood Beet
Beans :
– Bush Bean Dragon’s Tongue
– Bush Bean Cantare
Peppers :
– Chinese Five Color Hot peppers
– Orange Bell Pepper
– King of the North Sweet Pepper
– Friariello Di Napoli Pepper (Frying pepper)
Chards, Kale & Cabbage
– Flamingo Pink Swiss Chard
– Bionda di Lyon Swiss Chard
– Oriole Orange Chard
– Blue Curled Scotch Kale
– Nero Di Toscana (Black Palm) Cabbage
Cucumber :
– Suyo Long
Lettuce :
– Merveille des Quatre Saisons
– Red Romaine
– Rouge d’Hiver
– Slo Bolt
Corn :
– Golden Bantam 12-row
Herbs/Pollinator attractors
– Spearmint
– Stinging Nettle
– Tall White Alyssum
– Distinto Dwarf Sunflowers
– Dill Bouquet
————————————————–
Saved seeds we intend to use this year :
Tomato :
– Red Pear Cherry Tomato
Beans :
– Irelan Creek Annie Bush Bean
– Sunset Runner Bean
Squash & Melon:
– Butternut Squash
– Kabocha Squash
– Yellow flesh watermelon (unsure of the variety, but one of our farmer’s market faves)
Flowers & Herbs (medicinal and other)
– Sunflower (unsure of the variety)
– Calendula
– Agastache (Bee Balm)
– Basil Mix (Mix of Thai, red leaf and genovese)
– Wild Canadian Rose
– Blue Vervain
Oh, how exciting! Just the names are so lovely, and the packets are works of art in themselves! No planting for us this year, as we’ll be travelling all spring. We’ll enjoy hearing about your progress. Happy planting!
LikeLike
Thank you Sophie… They truly are. We started cold stratification on some comfrey seeds this week and it just made it more real.
I’m sorry you won’t be growing this year, but travel YAY! That is very exciting too.
LikeLike
Wow, that is a lot. I’m cutting back on the gardening this year to focus on getting stuff done in and around our house. I had a plot in the community garden, but with everything else, it was just too much. I had to cut it to focus on other stuff. I still have a couple of beds in our backyard, so we’ll get a few things. I cant wait to see yours, though. I’ll garden vicariously through you. 🙂
LikeLike
I totally get that, you can’t do it all, it’s just the way it is! For us, it’s the contrary… I quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom and a full time homesteader so we are increasing. It will be a lot of work, but the kiddos will be older this year (2 and almost 5) so that will have a huge impact. I won’t be breastfeeding while trying to pull weeds. LOL!!! We are also applying permaculture techniques (I’ll have a small series on some of the principales we’ll be getting into over the course of the growing season) and should theoretically make our job easier! We’ll see. 🙂
Thank you for stopping by…
LikeLike