3rd week of September 2009

Ali Baba Watermelon We have been indulging in daily watermelon lately which makes for a delicious (and drippy) afternoon snack. The one pictured is a 23 pound Ali Baba watermelon from seed stock originally collected in Iraq. Some of you have heard me say before that this is my "protest melon" in response the the ban on seed saving that our government placed in the new Iraqi republic. Before the advent of seed catalogues, seed saving was an essential survival practice. In many ways, knowing the conditions for isolating different varieties and knowing how to choose the healthiest specimen and when to take seed is becoming a lost art but I believe it is becoming increasingly important again. In our world of genetically modified seeds, seed corporation monopolies and food security issues I want to have a good seed stash on hand. Some of my seeds I order in bulk from a catalogue but I am also working at saving more of my own seeds. Pictured next to the Ali Baba are the dried Rattlesnake pole beans I recently collected. Once fully dry, I will shell them and put them into the fridge for next year's crop. I also am gathering seeds for Cimarron lettuce, Mexican sour gherkins, salad burnet, sorrel, Rossa de Milano onions, cilantro and others. An excellent resource for learning more about seed saving is Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth.

Purple Hyacinth Beans I am scurrying to finish up cold frame plantings. Letting some of my spring salad greens go to seed gives me a head start since there are baby arugulas, kales and maches all over the greenhouse. (But I am wondering why I let the milk thistle go to seed in the greenhouse as I pull out many little baby milk thistles....) The clumps of mache seedlings come in handy and I scoop out sections of them to transplant in various places. Some are going out in the garden, others in rows that will be covered by white barrels and some in between rows of Winter Density lettuce. Tonight I enjoyed some quiet time in a drizzly rain while I transplanted over a hundred little maches and in a few months they will be our salad base. I have one more cold frame seminar to lead this week at the home of an Amish friend. She is inviting friends, neighbors and relatives and it should be an interesting evening. This week we also finished filming the final segment for the cold frame video I have been working on this year. After our videographer friend does the editing, we hope to put it on the website.

The flowers, especially the zinnias, are still looking lovely and we have one more wedding to deck out this weekend. The bride and her friends are coming to do their own picking and will be arranging them in pottery vases made by the bride so I'm looking forward to seeing the results. Pictured is one of the new flowers I tried this year, purple hyacinth beans. The flower stalks are striking in arrangements as well as the waxy purple seed pods. This batch is growing on twine and reaches to the top of my greenhouse. This will be another plant I want to save seed from to share with other flower growing friends next year.

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