As I'm the newest (and youngest) member of the Herefordshire Seed Swap I suggested a BBQ at mine for the summer meet up. I think they were all quite keen to see what we get up to here and where we were.
Before we ate I took everyone on a whistle stop tour of the homestead, showing them the veg gardens, orchard, coppice, sheep and chickens, I'm just hopeful most could see past all the nettles and see the produce growing around it! The children provided much entertainment as well, stealing carrots and getting stung by the nettles!
Such an amazing spread of food
Everyone brought some food with them and we had slow cooked a large joint of mutton and my wife baked bread rolls, it was a lovely spread of food. We all ate very well! With cakes and plums for pudding!
These three did me proud and were very well behaved!
It was a lovely evening, the weather was perfect and we sat out on the patio as it got dark.
They're a lovely group of people and the seed swap is a great thing that I'm really keen to be a part of, I've got lots of crops for seed this year so I should be able to provide even more seed next year. It's also a group with a large bank of knowledge that I'm only too keen to tap into!
Our next meet up is in October and it'll be interesting to see what seed we've managed to produce as a group!
If there is a seed swap group near you why don't you try and get involved?
I really look forward to this day every year, I'm a bit addicted to seeds and I love seeing all the different sorts there. I also met up with a couple of friends who love gardening and then after a quick car picnic with Kirsty we went and watched another really interesting talk by Adam Alexander about being a seed detective. I think the stories behind seeds are fascinating and this man collects such wonderful tales as well as the seeds, I could listen for hours.
He also talked a bit about how he was in Syria before the war collecting seeds and he's now breeding these varieties out to save the seed and sending them to Syrian refugees around the world so they can grow crops they are familiar with. Without his efforts some of these varieties could have been lost forever.
The other great thing for me was meeting lots of like minded people. I got talking to all the helpers/organisers of the event and I've put my name forward to become involved in the future. I'm pretty passionate about seed saving so it'll be great to be involved in a group and have their collective knowledge to pull on. As well as this I'll be trying to grow more for the seed swap in future years, and hopefully getting better at it!
I've got some more things to bag up yet as well as plenty more parsnip seed! If anyone wants any parsnip seed then please let me know, this stuff is last years seed and grown in the UK so I'm hoping it should be good stuff!
I harvested our first melon of the year yesterday - a little late!
I don't grow melons very often but I chucked these seeds in last minute, then didn't plant them on quick enough and in the end they got chucked in a planting bucket and left in the corner of the greenhouse.
For their neglect they've rewarded me with a few miniature melons. I could smell this one was ripe as soon as I went in the greenhouse.
They're only tiny, about the size of a cricket balls but the perfume coming from it is really strong.
the variety is bred to be small and early to ripen in a short season. I think this was probably a day or two over ripe but still really tasty, the girls ate it straight away, with big dribbles down chins!
I'll certainly be growing this type again and maybe even try them outside next year or under a row cover. I've saved the seeds so I'll probably be giving some away to friends and in the seed swap as well.
This blog post has been over 18 months in the making!
Parsnips are a biannual plant so to they only flower and set seed in their second year of growing.
Last year I grew a good batch of parsnips which we ate all winter, but I saved the best ones to grow on for seed. In march I sorted through them and planted them in a new bed.
Parsnips selected. Not the most perfect but they're all a good size.
Laid out ready to plant
They grew all summer, reaching a height of over 6ft with no care from me whats so ever!
The green flowers at the back are the parsnip ones.
Flowers as tall as me, if not more (6ft)
I once the flowers had set and the seeds formed the plants started to dry off. I picked a sunny day and harvested all the flower heads, with stalks still attached, and hung them up in the shed to dry out fully.
Parsnip seed heads harvested and hung in the shed to dry out fully
Then a month later (this Friday just gone) it was a a lovely sunny afternoon so I decided it was time to collect the seed from them.
To get the seed was simple, I laid a dust sheet on the ground (an old bed sheet actually) and then we "threshed" them in batches. To thresh them we just used a 5ft length of bamboo cane and hit them, periodically we'd stop, move the seed heads, pick out all the big bits then scoop the seeds into a jar before starting again. The girls loved this job and thought it was great to collect the seed up as well.
The girls threshing the seed heads.
The boy thought this was great fun as well!
A bit of the seed fresh off the dried plants.
A big batch of seed saved up and a chunky arm trying to steal them!
Growing these parsnips for seed has been great fun and I certainly learnt a lot doing it. The main thing I learnt is how much space it takes to grow something for seed. These plants took up a huge amount of space, not something that you could do in an average UK garden that's for sure!
I think growing things for seed would be best done in groups of like minded people, each growing a different variety of carrot for example. To try to do it all yourself each year (or every other depending on how long the seed lasts) would be a massive undertaking, not just with the growing but the planning as well (cross pollination of certain plants), something that needs careful consideration from anyone planning for full self sufficiency or a grid down situation.
I now have a massive amount of parsnip seed that I'm going to use myself, give away to friends, take to the seed swap next year and give away on this blog. I have five huge jars full of seed, far more than I could ever use.
Later in the year I'll be posting on here how you can get some of my saved seed, I'm currently thinking just a self addressed envelope sent to me and if anyone wants to send some saved seeds back that'll be great (a little like I did with my blogging seed swap last year), hopefully I might have a few more seeds to swap with people by then as well.
