Seed Saving...Round 2

We have saved seeds before...

Last year we did tomatoes as well as white corn and broccoli seeds.

Tomato seeds, in my opinion, is only for the advanced seed saver!

(psst....its really gross)

We saved tomato seeds this year too.

Mainly because I really enjoyed the heritage Black Kris tomatoes we nabbed for free.

We also saved cantaloupe and honeydew melon seeds...as shown above.

The melons were purchased for a family event...so naturally we snagged the seeds. 

We are also trying our hand at radish seeds...which was really the result of forgetting to harvest them.

I think we have enough radish seeds now...each wee pod you see has at least 3-8 tiny seeds...

It is time consuming, but easily done while watching a movie on the couch.

Not too hard at all.

We chopped the heads off our Gigantius sunflowers...

not sure if these beauties will become winter feed for the chickens?

Or snacking for us...or for re planting next year?

Only time will tell....again, I think we have enough...

Butter crunch lettuce seeds?  Sure, why not?

One of the kinds of lettuce that came from our mesclun mix...

Yup...it's all good.

Added bonus of seed saving?

You can take them to a seed exchange and its like money!

You can exchange for any other seed you want!

AMAZING!

So if you are lax one week and some of your veg goes bolting on you (sends out flowers), don't fret!  

Get excited about what you can do with all of those seeds...

It is our goal to never buy seeds or plants again...sorry Burt's Greenhouses...

I'll always refer people to your business and your advice has been invaluable.

But we are DONE with seed buying!

(insert evil laugh here)

What were you able to save for next year?

A Year of Firsts...

First Veggie Stand!

This was an awesome experience.

We will definitely have more of these...and plan the garden accordingly for next year.

I love infecting people with the love of home grown foods.

I also love hearing "I already grow that" when people see what we were offering.

Seriously!

*****************

First Sunflower Garden!

When the seed package says 10-12' flowers...

you really don't think about what it is like to stand under a 12' flower!!!!

These things were HUGE!

(and beautiful to boot)

****************

First Wild Food Walk!

Another thing I've been dying to do for years.

I was able to get some people excited about eating weeds.

Awesome!

The looks on people's faces was my favorite part.

The Oooohhhs and the Ahhhhs.

The eyes opened wide as the lightbulb of flavour went ON!!!

I will definitely be hosting more of these next year.

This winter will be big for planning...

Making a wild food walk schedule...

The garden will have to be set up for storing and selling...

So many things to think about...I'm almost excited for winter.

I said ALMOST.

Mystery Bed...

I hope you can follow this logic...

This year, we made a few garden beds....but they won't be ready until next year.

Yeah...no one I told got it either.

Let me go back...

We decided to make some dedicated space for berry bushes.

We dream of raspberries, blueberries and Chester blackberries.

Seriously...there is a type of blackberry that is called a Chester.

Of course we have to plant it!

Out of the way...in the sunlight...near evergreen trees...

This new planting area had to have all of these things.

Ches had cleared out sumacs from the west side of our property last year.

The area seemed perfect!

We moved railway ties.

We layered the beds with straw-like grasses, manure from a friend,

50 % composted compost...basically anything we could find to fill the beds.

I considered the fact that new plants are sensitive to the high nitrogen in fresh food waste.

Our compost isn't composted enough!

Let's wait a season, I said.

Give the area a chance to decompose and settle.  

We still had a buncha beds that were empty this year.

What to do?

Ches thought it would be a good spot to plant several packets of sunflowers we had laying around.

Not a bad idea!

I'm not a huge one for flowers.

I don't have the energy to deal with things that aren't going to feed me back.

I am branching out though...

and perhaps giant dried up sunflower heads might be a nice treat in the winter for our chickens?

We bought a selection of different sunflowers from a fundraising neighbour.

There was a wide variety of colours and sizes.

From shortest to tallest:

Teddy bear (bright orange)

Autumn Beauty (bright yellow and red)

Velvet Queen (dark crimson)

Early Russian (traditional yellow)

Giganteus (bright yellow and HUGE)

I hadn't given a lot of though to where we would plant them.

A temporary fix for an empty garden!

I figured they would do alright in these fresh beds...and even if they didn't...

we already had long term plans for these beds anyway!

What I didn't realize was that I was in for a big surprise!

The compost grew mystery plants!

We have no idea what the above vine is...kinda looks like a pumpkin plant.

We discovered 3 kinds of tomato plants growing!

Some sort of regular red tomato, romas and some type of cherry tomato!

Our sunflowers ended up doing fantastically well!

One of the plants is over 14' tall!!!

We waited patiently to see which kinds of sunflowers actually took.

We didn't cover them with mulch or anything.

We feared the chipmunks took the seeds away.

One of the railway ties we used actually had a wild black raspberry cane in it when it was moved.

It actually came back!

Do you see the strong new green cane vs the dark red dried up version?

Our patience paid off and we are now rewarded with beautiful sunflowers!

Striking...

Breath-taking...

Bold sunflowers...

These things might have been an afterthought...but they make my soul soar when I look at them.

Sometimes it is better to be surprised than plan your whole entire life...