Planting In Early February

 It was our annual seed swap on Saturday and it was as brilliant as ever (I'll do a post on it later in the week), one thing it did was get me really fired up for this years growing! 

I was so fired up I even stopped on the way home and got some compost. I decided that with Sunday being quite warm and sunny for a February day it was ideal to sow a few things and get started. 

Hereford Seed Swap This Weekend!

So it's the annual Hereford Seed Swap this weekend. 

I look forward to this every year, it's always such a fun event filled with likeminded people. I'll be behind the tables with the rest of the volunteers, giving out advice and trying to sort out seeds as they're handed in. 

 It really is incredible and you could easily get your whole years worth of seeds from this event! 

I'm sure the talk is going to be good as well, I've met Liz and she's lovely, really knows her subject well (her book is great). 

If you go make sure you say hello to me! I'll be easy to spot - pockets filled with seed packets and talking non stop about growing! 

Kentucky Wonder?

Every year I try out different varieties of french beans.

They're one of my favourite veg to grow and a dead easy one to save seed from.

Don't "Panic" Plant

Seed companies have been selling out of seed or having huge orders that they can't cope.

Seeds from America!

I've seen lots of Tweets on Twitter and other sources of people growing gardens while they're in quarantine or lock down. Something I actively encourage as there might be predicted shortage of certain veg later int he year in the UK due to labour shortages as mentioned in my last post.

Isolation Cage?

This is nothing to do with the current problems facing the world. But all to do with seed saving. 

I have ten of these lovely looking board beans that I want to grow this year called Gloster Bounty. Trouble is it's not enough to eat a good meal of (when grown) and I know it likes to cross.

Ideally i'd like to build my stock of this seed up and grow it properly next year. So to do that I'm thinking about building them an isolation cage over the top. I'm not sure how well they'll pollinate then though, will I have to do it by hand or introduce pollinators like flies from fishing maggots? I'll need to do some research before that time comes! I love the idea of building my seed numbers like this! Hopefully I'll get enough to grow out a full bed next year!

Anyone else grown plants in an isolation cage and had to introduce pollinators?

Seed Sowing

With a break in the rain and the sun trying to poke it's head out we decided to sow a good number of seeds last weekend.

It was still bitter cold though so we got out of the wind and into the greenhouse!

SEED GIVEAWAY!!!

I decided that I should put one of packet of each type of seed I'd been doing for the seedswap together for a giveaway.

Ten packets in all - there's five varieties of tomato, a very unusual pea and some super winter squash seeds plus a few others.

If you'd like to enter make sure you follow my page on either facebook, instagram or twitter and comment on it. 

If you're not on any of those platforms just leave a comment below and I'll make sure to add you to the hat! Make sure you check back in a weeks time when I announce the winnerand you can contact me by email if you win! 

*I'm not sure on the legality of this but as I'm not charging think it's fine, it's just like a seed swap...

New Seed Packets

As I spent my free time last week writing out seed packets with the same bits of information on them I was thinking how I should modernise the process a little bit.

I looked online and saw that to have a label I could print on would cost me about 0.5p a sticker!

How I wish I'd looked sooner!

Never mind next year just got easier! And I still have lots to bag up for this year. I'm going to send some packets to some friends and with every craft item I sell on Etsy I'm going to put a packet or two of seed in there as a bonus (although at the moment I'm working on a bigger job so only have a few things listed).

What do you think to the new packets? I hope the instructions will help anyone new to gardening as well.

Should stop my bad spelling - hopefully!

Hereford Seed Swap 2020

Every year I come back from the seed swap absolutely buzzing about gardening!

This year was no exception! I get to spend the day geeking out about all things growing, I love it.

Early May Update

As usual this is a really busy time of year. Seeds to sow, plants to put out and veg to maintain and grow.

I love this time of year, so much to remember to do but it really sets the pace for the rest of the year, hopefully ours will be full of goodies.

The kids have been a great help with all this. Not helping all the time but really entertaining themselves and letting me get on with things.

Heritage Seed Library Order & Peas Boiling HARD

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I'm a little obsessed with seeds!

And when I joined our local seed swap group last year it seemed logical for me to join the Heritage Seed Library as well. 

They're part of the charity Garden Organic who try to promote organic gardening. They keep a bank of old varieties of seed that they are trying to prevent from going extinct with members breeding them each year. 

Each year as a member of the HSL you can pick six packs of seed from the list. The idea that you grow a few to taste and the rest to save for seed. The pack size is quite small so it might take a few years before you have enough seed saved to be worth sending back in to the library, instead spending your time to build a reserve. 

Last year was utter chaos for growing for me and I'm glad that I didn't have the last few seeds of anything as I doubt there will be any going back. But that's the beauty of it, some (good) years you can give back to the library and others you can just experiment and see how you do. With lots of members the risk is spread.

The list has lots of options to choose from and from this years I chose some that are relatively easy to grow without the risk of cross pollination. I picked:-

Scotland Yellow Tomato
Bijskij Zelty Tomato
Black coco Dwarf French Bean
Fat Baby Achocha
Bronze arrow lettuce (lucky dip extra)
Sutton's Harbinger Pea
Blue Prussian Pea

In the packs of peas there is only about 8 to 10 seeds so they need to be sown in pots, protected from everything!

I'm especially looking forward to growing Blue Prussian Pea as it's in an American book I own called "Heirloom Vegetable Gardening" by William Woys Weaver.

He describes the pea as "as a excellent split pea" But gives further advice on the storage of dried peas, "like any dry pea should never be kept more than a year. An insightful article called "Why Peas Boil Hard" appeared in the gardener's magazine (April 1831, 249) and explained that if peas are stored too long, they will cook "hard," never really softening no matter how long they are boiled. This observation is as true now as it was then, with one further footnote: peas stored for two or three years have also lost significant portion of their nutritional value. This is why it's important to date all stocks of dry peas and beans."

Really interesting I'm sure you'll agree, but I should imagine that the fact we can now store them in airtight containers and in vacuums would seriously increase their shelf life.

One years soup peas collected from a handful of peas - These are called Latvian Soup Peas or the "Grey Pea" 

So I'll try to build a stock of seeds from the 8 I have. Might take a couple of years, or the efforts of a mouse could wipe it out before I begin! Peas are easy to build up numbers though so I'm hopeful.

Anyone experimented with how long you can keep soup and dried peas for before they stay hard even when cooked?

Who else is in the Heritage Seed Library and what have you ordered for next years growing season?

Selecting Carrots For Seed Saving

So the seed saving bug was strong on Sunday after the swap!

Pulled up all my Heritage Seed Library carrots, Red Elephant, today for selection. Some are real beauties!

I laid out the 70 or so carrots and then selected the best 32 of the roots for growing on for seed. I could get away with about 20 but more gives them a bigger genetic pool and prevents inbreeding depression. I would have liked to have selected from a bigger group as well but we've eaten quite a few! 

These will get planted in a bed in the spring, quite close together, to flower and pollinate each other.

This will hopefully give me plenty of seed for next year's swap and to send back to the heritage seed library, as well as leaving me enough to feed our family next year. Believe me when i say we eat a lot of carrots!

Anyone else saving carrot seed this year?

Seed Swap Herefordshire 2018

I've had just the best day!

I've got to talk about trees, vegetables and seeds for the whole day and no one has told me to shut up!

I'm so grateful to be a tiny part of the amazing Seed Swap Herefordshire. It was great fun being behind the tables this year. Such a high level of knowledge in the group, each time we meet up I end up learning more and more about the amazing world of seed saving. I've made some great friends since I joined up to help over the last 12 months and I've loved growing more plants to save for seed.

I was so impressed with what some people had brought with them today. So much effort had gone into growing them and packing seeds up to bring to the swap.

I also picked up some really interesting seeds to grow in the spring.

If there's a seed swap by you make sure you go and get inspired for the next growing season and make sure you save some seeds!

Seed Swap Next Saturday

A couple of weekends ago the seed swap group I'm a part of had a meet up to sort and bag seeds. Unfortunately I was feeling under the weather and didn't want to pass on my germs so I had to miss it. 

 So on Friday I forced my children into helping me sort and bag up seeds.

We got a lot done, but I've still got more to do. We had french beans to pod and lots of packets to write up and fill.

We managed to do two types of peas, chives, tomatoes, french beans and Korean mint plus a few others. Over a hundred packets so far! I want to get at least double that ready by Saturday! I also need to fire up my seed cleaner to clean up some Heritage lettuce seed I grew. 

If you're around Hereford on Saturday I strongly recommend you pop by the Courtyard and come to the swap, even if you have nothing to bring with you, we won't mind!
It opens at 10.00am and runs until 2.00pm with a talk at 11.30 by Chris Collins who is doing a talk on Urban Organics, he is a former Blue peter gardener and Chelsea medal winner - should be good!

Earthway Seeder Modification

So I decided with all the planting I'm doing here and how the area is growing every year it was time to invest in some sort of a seeder. 

The only one that people really recommend in my budget is the Earthway seeder (there are many other better ones but out of my price range for now).

I bought second hand, (around £40) but I had to buy the seed plates separately. Once they turned up I was desperate to try it. I got some old seed and ran through it, carrot and beet seed worked fine. Smaller seed not so much. 

Carrot seed being sown

 In fact small round seed was terrible, unusable in fact. 

I was a little gutted, the seed would get behind the plastic plate and the hopper and then grind to a paste which would cause the plate to move further away and more seed to get in there. 

I was disappointed as I had ideas of plating mustard and turnips with it for fast catch crops. 

A quick search of the internet came up with a few answers, most involved buying a few bits, I decided to see if I could fix it with just a few scrapes in the workshop.

Replacing the centre bolt

The first thing I did was to replace the centre bolt for a much longer one. This doesn't affect it when using plates normally but it gave me a way to secure a spreader plate to hold the seed plates tight against the hopper body

Gap down the side of the plate and the hopper (this is the carrot plate which it doesn't affect much but you get the idea)

 I then cut out a few rings out of 1/2" and 1/4 ply to go over the plastic "nut" that holds the plates in place (I cut it with a jigsaw) and a circle to go over the top of them with a centre hole in to go over the newly lengthened bolt. The outside diameter must obviously be less of a diameter than the seed holes on the plate!

The three ply parts cut ready. 

Gluing them up to make putting it on easier

The spreader plate in place doing it's job. 

 I then glued these up and left them to go off over night. 

Now when I want to seed small seed all I have to do is fit the plate then add my spreader, put the nut on and tighten up a bit. the seed goes round perfectly and because the pressure on the plate is so much nearer the edge nothing gets stuck behind it anymore, it holds flat to the hopper.

I will upgrade the nut with a wing nut welded to a washer once I get to my dads farm at the weekend and can borrow his welder for a few minutes, as that will remove the need for a spanner as well! 

What do you think?

Do you use a seeder? What one would you recommend?

Pea Shoots Shooting

It's hard not to get excited and carried away at this time of year - I love it! 

So far I've got two types to peas coming up (a mangetout and a soup pea for drying) and the broad beans were just breaking the soil today (I could have been so much earlier with the broad beans if I'd been organised!).

In the greenhouse I've also started two types of beetroot, kohlrabi, red cabbage, sage, globe artichoke (coming up today), red Russian kale (for baby leaf), celeriac, coriander (cilantro for you guys on the other side of the pond) and three different lettuce, I'm planing on sowing some carrots as well and protecting a bed with some plastic to get them earlier. 

Who else has gone mad on sowing seeds already?

I'm planning on transplanting most early crops this year to give me a bit of a head start! 

Also if you've got a spare 60 seconds pop over to this survey and vote for my blog please! It's for best smallholding blog, and although there's no prize it would still be nice to win! Thanks! 

Peas & Beans

The gardening year is just starting for me (although it never really ends), Saturday I had the day to myself and managed to plant a few seeds and a few trees, I also could see some signs of life around the garden.

Softneck garlic just coming up

Hardneck garlic has been up for the whole winter but is just starting to grow again. 

I did plant lots of legumes, broad beans (that I should have planted before now) and two types of peas, one mange tout and one pea for drying as a bit of an experiment in growing staples. 

Seed planted in root trainers, laid out before I push them in.

I also sowed some Jerusalem artichokes as mine don't seem to have made it over winter.

One thing I made sure was that I covered these seeds over and set a few mouse traps, I can't seem to get on top of the mice this year and I know if I left them exposed then by morning there wouldn't be a pea or a bean left! This is the main reason I don't grow anything like this direct in the ground. 

My tomatoes and peppers are going in this week (the girls are so excited about sowing them), most years I put them in far too early so I've been trying to hold off this year! 

Who else has started planting? Or am I way behind everyone else?

My Seed Problem

The other day Tricky posted about his seed problem and listed all the seeds he had.

Well this week my seed order turned up and I was really excited to see them all laid out. 

I've tried to put my money where my mouth is this year and I've bought all non-hybrid, open pollinated varieties (except one variety of sweet pepper I thought my daughter would like and a few F1's from previous years - sweetcorn & a couple of types squash). 

I've also tried to buy the vast majority of my seed from The Real Seed Catalogue. I've mentioned them before on this blog and I know many of you already buy seed from them, I just feel that their ethos matches (or betters!) mine and I want to grow seeds that are produced in this country rather than China or Thailand and are adapted to a climate similar to mine. 

I did get a nice selection from the seed swap earlier in the month as well and of course I've bought seeds from a few other places as well, I always see a variety that I like the look of or there are some things I want to plant in bulk. Carrots and beets that I can never grow enough of, so I use a couple of wholesale sellers that sell bigger packs of seeds (Kings and Moles seeds are both quite good for this). 

I do think I've probably gone a little bit over board but I know I'll end up planting most of them. I seem to have a lot of squashes and dwarf french beans, both great veg to grow and eat, but hopefully I'll start selling a few veg this year and I want to keep experimenting with growing staples that produce large amounts of the calories that we need. 

As well as this I have the rest of my seeds organised into 12 separate boxes that I group by either family or how I plant them. 

I'll put up my planting plan next week if anyone would like to see it - I have at least 30 beds to organise and I think it might even be more than that by the time I'm finished setting up this year! 

I don't have many vices but this is certainly one of them! 

Who else buys or collects far too many seeds?

Seed Swap Herefordshire 2017

Another great seed swap today in Hereford.

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!

Who else has been to a seed swap lately?

What plant do you always save your own seed from?

Seed Swap On Saturday!

It's almost that time of year again - The seed swap in one of our local cities (Hereford) is on this weekend. 

I always look forward to it. I've even put off ordering my seeds until afterwards so I know what I need. 

Today was a wet and miserable day so I took the time to bag up some parsnip seed I saved from earlier in the year, I had a little help as well. 

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!

Anyone else going to a seed swap this year?