Buy No Seeds Year

It's buy no seeds year for me and if you know me you realize how difficult that is. One of my favorite things to do in the spring is flip through the Territorial Seed Company catalogue ticking and dog-earing delicious looking and sounding seeds, wandering the seed aisles at local nurseries, and choosing tiny parcels of seeds to carry me through the growing season.

I love reading the packets -- the tiny but taste-filled descriptions of tomatoes, the short and concise growing recommendations, the drawings or photos of the plants and fruits. I love the names -- Armenian cucumbers, tigerella tomatoes, sweet sugar snaps, red meat radish.

But there comes a time to clean out the long forgotten stores. To reach for that satchel filled with old seed packets (some are more than five years old) in the utility room and make do with what's inside. It's the same in the kitchen -- working through the stores, the frozen containers, jars in the back of the cupboard, tins on the highest shelf so I can start afresh. Some packets only have a few seeds remaining and never get used -- I'm planting all of those remainders this year.

So far buy no seeds spring has been somewhat successful. Most of the tomatoes have come up in the seed trays, all of the cukes, the green beans haven't sprouted yet in the backyard but I'm pretty sure they will. The poppies and nasturtiums look small and unhappy and only a few of the spinach seeds germinated but those are the only ones that have been weak and truth be told they were all kindergarten age. The sunflowers haven't sprouted yet either but I still have hope. It's crazy to think that all this was happening just a couple months ago.

I think once the summer sunshine sets in I'll devote an area to random direct seeds. It'll be the empty-all-remaining-packets mound. We'll see what comes up. Last year was a very fruitful season, hopefully this year will be too.

Maybe I'll even save some seeds this year. I always have the best of intentions but it never seems to happen. The best I've done is scatter dried seed pods directly in the ground, to wait through the winter and hopefully rise in the spring.

Go sow some seeds!

Good to know: F.H. Steinbart, Portland Nursery and heirloom beans

Over the weekend I stopped by F.H. Steinbart Co. to pick up a small sack of corn sugar/dextrose for the hard cider we pressed this fall. It was my fastest in-and-out ever at Steinbart mainly due to weather. Saturday was so sunny and nice it felt wrong to be inside.

After resisting a long look at Steinbart's wine, beer and soda supplies, where I would not have been alone -- I counted almost 20 molasses-speed people scooping malt, handling carboys and discussing the pros and cons of cork versus rubber -- I made my way east on Stark toward Portland Nursery. I found most of the seeds I still needed there -- several varieties of tomatoes, pickling cukes, arugula, watermelon radish and more -- but was sad to find that they're already out of Ananas Noire tomatoes. Anyone know of a local nursery that still has this seed?

At PN I also picked up some Amber's Heirloom Beans from Red Truck Farm (if you follow this link be sure to scroll down till you get to "Dry Beans Available"). These heirloom beans -- produced by Amber Baker a former intern at Sauvie Island Organics -- are going for $3.49 per packet and they're going fast. I picked up a packet of the Golden Appaloosa and Peregion, both bush beans that I've never tried that sound delicious. The packets tell me to sow them in May-June and to harvest them when plump. Easy enough.

A couple more weekend finds:

While I was wandering PN picking my asparagus crowns and gathering seeds, I heard on the intercom that Vern Nelson of the O was about to host a free class on crop rotation in greenhouse two. I went, I learned, it was great. Apparently there are loads of free classes offered at Portland Nursery. Good to know.

Mirador Community Store is having a 25% off book sale through February. I bought a food preservation cookbook and a root cellar how-to book.

People's Food Co-op is hiring. Check out what for here. They're accepting applications until this Sunday, March 1st.

A half teaspoon of that corn sugar from F.H. Steinbart went into each of these bottles of hard cider.