Month: December 2021

Our 2022 garden seed order: Heritage Harvest Seed

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I was really excited to find Heritage Harvest Seed. First because it is a company from Fisher Branch, Manitoba. They are even further north than we are. Which means we can be confident that anything we order from them will grow here!

Also, they specialize in rare and endangered seeds. I love going through the site and reading the descriptions, which include things like the history of a particular plant, or the efforts made to find seeds, and so on. Quite a few things ended up on my wish list the moment I saw “extremely rare” added to the description!

There’s no way we could possibly order everything on my wishlist! However, when I placed my order, I did include things we will not be able to plant this year, but which I hope to plant in the future.

It was so hard not to order more than I did!

Here is what I settled on. All photos belong to Heritage Harvest Seeds.

Here we have a very different corn than I’m used to; Tom Thumb Popcorn. It is a small variety, growing to about 2 feet high, that produces many cobs that are only 2 or 3 inches long. They make an excellent popcorn, and are a short season corn. Popcorn is one of our few regular snack foods, and we’re always running out, so if we can grow our own, that would be awesome. :-)

This is the one variety of tomato that we are growing, not as a snack food for my husband and older daughter, but as something to preserve in the larder. I’ve been looking for a paste tomato to try, and settled on Cup of Moldova. It is listed as extremely rare. It is an indeterminate variety that is good for making sauce, which means it should also be good for making tomato paste. That is what I am growing them for. As it is a rare variety, we will definitely be keeping seeds, too.

Here is another red onion I decided to try. Tropeana Lunga. The Baker Creek onion I ordered is similar to this, and this one is also an Italian variety.

This makes a total of five different varieties of onions we have seeds for, but I don’t mind. We use onions a LOT. The hard part will be finding the space needed to start them indoors.

We’ll figure something out!

Last time, I ordered these seeds from Baker Creek. They failed completely, and we don’t know why. Perhaps ordering Strawberry Spinach from a Canadian, zone 3, source might make a difference? I don’t know. We will do what we can to improve the bed we’ll be planting them in as well. I do hope they work out this time. I was really looking forward to them!

Though we’ve ordered pole beans, I wanted to have at least one variety for dry beans, rather than fresh eating. These are Blue Grey Speckled Tepary, and were once a staple food in parts of the US and in Mexico. They are also drought resistant and heat tolerant – which, after this past summer, is a big deal!

This is the third variety of hulless pumpkin seeds that I ordered; Styrian hulless. This variety was used to press for oil, and the fruit can reach up to 20 pounds in size! The description noted it as being very productive and dependable.

This is another one I picked when I saw it listed as extremely rare: Boston Marrow Squash. There is an interesting history behind it, but the real selling point was the description including “…makes the best pumpkin pie I have ever tasted!” It’s also a good storage squash. Even if we only grow a couple of plants, I want to make sure to save seeds from it, to keep the variety going.

Yes, I picked a wheat. The historical Marquis wheat, which is supposed to have excellent baking qualities.

We don’t have anywhere to grow wheat right now, but it is something we do want to do, so we can grind our own flour. Wheat seeds can last for a very long time, so I don’t mind getting some now, while we can, for future use.

This one is my wild and crazy purchase. The Zucca Melon; a variety that was saved from near extinction. I highly recommend clicking on the link and reading the story behind it.

These can get massive – anywhere from 60 – 120 pounds, and is described as …“a cross between a vegetable marrow and a hippopotamus”.

How can anyone resist that?

I’ll probably grow only one or two plants, and hopefully will be able to save seeds.

This makes the last of my seed orders for this month’s budget. I may still order things that won’t get shipped – or billed – until spring, but we shall see. For now, I’m done.

The garden will be expanding quite a bit again, and this time we should have more fruit trees and berry bushes. Hopefully, we will have a good growing season, too, and not have to deal with drought and heat waves again!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden seed order placed: Mary’s Heirloom Seeds

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Last year, we grew the Montana Morado corn, from Baker Creek, which I thought was maize morado, or Kulli, from Peru. They turned out to be a US hybrid.

There was certainly nothing to object to about the corn itself, but once I learned about maize morado, I just got it in me that I really, really want to grow Kulli corn, here in the middle of Canada.

After much searching, I found a source that I could order from: Mary’s Heirloom Seeds.

This image belongs to Mary’s Heirloom seeds.

While the company is based in Texas, the corn itself is from the Andes Highlands. From what I’ve been able to find out, the Highlands have two seasons; summer (dry) and winter (wet). The temperature swings are more moderate than what we have. It’s a mountainous region, filled with microclimates, so it’s hard to know how to compare to the zone system we use in Canada and the US. With how hot and dry our summers can get, it may actually do all right here. It requires 120 days to maturity, so I will be starting them indoors, as we did with the Montana Morado.

The seed packets have only 25 seeds in them, so I ordered four, since I wasn’t ordering anything else. Even so, the cost of shipping wasn’t much less than the cost of the seeds!

As with so many other things, the main issue will be protecting the corn from critters. If we can manage that, I feel we will be able to grow this successfully, here. This is a corn that can be eaten fresh while young as a sweet corn, dried for a flour corn, used as a dye, and of course, used to make chicha morado.

I like a multi-purpose plant!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden seed order placed: Baker Creek

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I may not have made my shopping trip to the city today, but that didn’t stop me from shopping!

I have already placed my first seed order for next year’s garden from Vesey’s. That order is in, including a correction. We’ve got a monthly seed budget right now, so we will continue to place orders throughout the winter, for seeds, seedlings, roots and tubers.

For this past year’s garden, we ordered seeds from two places; Vesey’s, which is where we had ordered seeds for the previous year’s garden from, and Baker Creek; Rare Seeds. We were quite happy with both places. This year, I plan to order from other Canadian sources I found, but we still have items we wanted to get from Baker Creek.

This is the order I placed with them last night. All photos belong to Baker Creek.

I had already ordered onions, but did not have a red onion, yet. This is the Red of Florence onion; a long day onion (important when growing onions as far north as we are) that is a rare Italian variety, noted for its “balanced” flavour – whatever that means!

I like its shape, and think it would be a lot easier to cut!

The description says it can be planted in the fall or spring, but I doubt that applies to our zone!

This is the Black Nebula carrot, described as the darkest carrot they’ve ever seen, and it’s supposed to be exceptionally healthy. We already have a couple of other varieties of carrot we can plant, but I enjoy trying new types, and purple things did well for us in our 2021 garden. Plus, I consider carrots a staple food, so the more, the better!

As long as we can keep those groundhogs out!

Here we’re into something rather different – hulless seed pumpkins! I’ve ordered three different varieties, including two from Baker Creek. I really like pumpkin seeds, but hulled pumpkin seeds at the store is pretty expensive, so when I discovered there are hulless varieties, some of which can be eaten straight out of the fruit, I just had to give them a try!

The variety pictures here is the Kakai squash.

This variety is the Lady Godiva.

I plan to try growing only a couple of each variety, so we can see which one we like best.

This past year, we got the Giant Rattle bread seed poppy, which we will be growing again from seed we’ve saved. Next year, we will find a spot for these Hungarian Blue, where they can self sow and be treated as a perennial.

Well, I couldn’t resist! Though we still have seeds, when I saw the Crespo squash was back in stock, I ordered a fresh packet. I was really impressed with how vigorously these grew, and how well they recovered after being repeatedly damaged by deer and groundhogs. If there had been enough growing season left after that, I’ve no doubt we would have had quite a few squash. We will try these again, and take precautions from the start, to ensure the critters don’t get to them!

That is it for our Baker Creek order this time. While I have loads of others in my wish list. Since we are ordering from several other places this year, and I am trying to focus on Canadian sources as much as possible, I don’t expect to be making another order from here.

I’m really looking forward to how these work out!

The Re-Farmer