I couldn’t resist.

I ordered more seeds!

There was actually a reason for this.

One of the things I’ve been wanting to grow and acclimate to our climate is kulli corn. The first time I tried growing them, I ordered seeds maize morado seeds from Baker Creek, which I thought was kulli corn but those turned out to be Montana Morado corn… which then turned out to be Mountain Morado. Long confusing story there. They grew well, until something destroyed them!

For last year, I was able to find and grow Peruvian kulli corn, they got wonderfully tall and healthy, started to form tassels, but not a single cob formed. After much research, I believe I’ve figured out why. These were grown in a new low raised bed, with trench composting and our purchased garden soil, plus beans interplanted with them as nitrogen fixers. Corn is a heavy nitrogen feeding plant after all but… it may have actually been too much nitrogen. Excess nitrogen can lead to lots of robust leaf growth, but can compromise fruiting.

I already have several types of corn, and I will not plant all of them, however I still want to grow the kulli corn, and was going to try growing them in a less nitrogen excessive plot. I went to order some seeds, only to find they are sold out.

After looking through various seed companies, I decided to go back to Baker Creek and get the Mountain Morado seeds again. They won’t need to be acclimated, and I can still use them to try and make some chicha morada.

Of course, I’m not about to order just one packet of seeds, so I got a few other things, but only one new thing.

First, of course, is the Mountain Morado corn. When we first tried these, thinking they were something else, we started them indoors, even though corn doesn’t like being transplanted. However, I see this is now part of the description:  Direct sow into the richest soil available 1-2 weeks before last spring frost. 

A corn that can be direct sown before last frost will make a big difference! We can actually plant in May instead of June! There’s only 75 seeds in a packet, so we’ll have to make sure to save seed from these, if they succeed.

I am not expecting to plant sunflowers this year; it’s more a matter of effective use of space and time. However, I did go ahead and pick up more Hopi Black Dye and Mongolian Giant sunflower seeds. We did save seed heads from when we grew them before, but none of them got as large as they should have, and they were stored in the old kitchen, then the sun room, which means they’ve gone through freezing and heat cycles that have probably damaged the seeds. So I got more, to ensure I had good seed, and they will be properly stored. If we can actually plant some this year, that would be a bonus!

Another repeat is the Giant Rattle breadseed poppy. We had planted some from our own seed last year, but that spot has been completely redone, so even if they managed to self seed themselves, they’re not going to pop up again there. We do have another variety of bread seed poppy that didn’t get planted last year, because we didn’t have a space where we could treat them as perennials. The massive flooding we had last spring changed quite a few of our plans! However, I do still want to have two varieties of breadseed poppy, planted well away from each other, so we can see which we like best.

One last repeat was something that I’d looked at before, but rejected because of the insane price, and there were only 10 seeds in the packet for that price. Well, things have changed! The price of Spoon Tomato seeds has gone down, and there are now 15 seeds in a packet. 😄 We have a whole 5 seeds left in our original packet, and these miniscule tomatoes are something even I can eat, and fresh tomatoes normally make me want to gag. This time, I want to grow a few plants and make sure to save seeds from them. In the reviews, people who grew them commented that they self seed easily, since it’s almost impossible to pick all the teeny tomatoes without losing some, but again, the bed they were in was totally redone, so none came up the next year.

Finally, there is one last new item – sort of. Salsify. We actually have salsify; the same variety from two different companies. We were going to compare them, since their photos looked quite different. However, there is also this variety.

These are Duplex Russian Giant Scorzonera salsify. One of my daughters requested salsify because it’s a root that apparently tastes like seafood. She likes seafood, though we don’t get it often due to cost. She’d be happy with a root that tastes like it, instead!

It should be interesting to compare them. Because the roots get so long and can be fragile, we will likely be planting them in garbage cans. There are garbage cans all the place, in the barn and sheds, so we should be able to find three that we can use for these!

The down side of ordering from Bake Creek again is that orders to Canada over $20 now incur duty. I have no idea how much that would be on an order that came out to just over Cdn$40, including shipping. We’ll see, and that will help us figure out if it’s still worth ordering from there – or any other US seed company – again.

And here I thought I was done with buying seeds… 😅

The Re-Farmer