Monday, December 29, 2008

Winter seed orders

Wow, do I love winter! Finally, the last farmers market for the year done, miss it already and yet so nice to move on to winter projects. Finishing our LLC and land trust documents, office cleaning, filing and planning for next year. AND my all time favorite, ordering seeds. The catalogs have been coming in since just before Thanksgiving, glossy colored pics, and the desciptions! (no spell check, arg), 'brick red overlaying a bright green' red boston lettuce or the new personal size melon, 'suger cube', a dealer told me tasted one in the growers field and it was so good!, but wait, the grower treated the whole seed crop with Thiram fungicide, idiot, will try again next year. The small melons are so hard to find, there are only a half dozen varieties out there and we have only been able to get two untreated, maybe three this year. No wonder that we are on a fast track to learn seed breeding. Would you want one melon the size of a basketball that takes 4 days to eat or 4 small melons to eat one each day? I know the answer to that one! And can you imagine trying to pack a basketball into a csa box? Varieties are so important.
What's new this year? We are planning on trying the red striped horticultural bean 'red dragon', a very tasty snap bean or let dry for a bright red dry bean. Maybe some ground cherry will make a comeback here, eat fresh or make a salsa with tomatoes!
Any good suggestions that you have seen?? Richard

Ice is broken! Terri, pics, please?