Our Seed Store

Our 2011 Seed Store will be open Nov 1st!

Here are a few samples of what we will be offering this year:

This year we are introducing seed from our

Hopi Black Squash!

See our blog post "The Perfect Squash!"

Seeds for this particular variety will be limited, due to a cold, wet start and extreme dry heat.

Our own
Portugal Beef-heart Tomatoes

Hopefully enough to fill all orders for them. We do apologize to those customers who were unable to purchase them last year when we sold out of seed.

We also carry other varieties of heirloom tomatoes, including San Marzano, the best paste tomatoes in the world!, Ailsa Craig and Reverend Morrow Long Keeper. We will have seed for the Manitoba tomato, developed to grow large and ripen in the short Manitoba season.

From seed to fruit in one season!

Ground Cherries and Chichiquelites!


Great for pies, jams and wine! We will have both of these seed for sale this year.

Medicinal Herb Seeds!
Meadowsweet, Mullein, Feverfew, Self Heal, Goldenrod, Evening Primrose,Queen Anne's Lace, Echinacea, Motherwort, St. John's Wort...

Tobacco
Virginia Gold Variety 100+ seeds per packet
Did you know that commercial cigarettes contain 599 additives, some poisonous carcinogens?
See the list here

Anyone can grow tobacco, anywhere. If you have a short growing season, you will need to start it early indoors. I am sure most northerners are used to starting seeds early indoors to grow tomatoes, peppers and many other common short season vegetables. Tobacco is no different and is no trickier or more demanding than your vegetables to start from seed. Isn’t having your own, home grown, organic and free tobacco worth a little time and effort?

Herb Garden Volunteers

Does your garden reseed itself? Mine does, all over the place, but I like that! It gives me a second crop of everything, naturally. It's not in neat little rows, of course, it's in patches. Larges patches of spinach, green onions, chives, cilantro, thyme, oregano and anything else I leave to go to seed. I let everything go to seed because I have a seed store.

A lot of it escapes before I harvest it and I always lose some in the harvesting anyway, so I get a lot of volunteers. I love them! I am still cutting from a large, reseeded patch of spinach resulting from just one plant left to go to seed. I have a lot of cilantro growing all over the garden. That stuff really grows wild! I have baby chives coming up all over, baby dandelions, baby purslane, baby thyme and baby oregano.

I'm sure I would also have baby catnip, mint and choc mint, if I let those go to seed too. I will probably let them go that long next year so I have seed for the seed store but this year I cut them back and dried them.

If you keep your garden spotlessly clean, weed regularly or mulch heavily you will never know the joy of harvesting volunteers. I like my garden the way it is. Everything grows well and is green and healthy, shown by the ability of the plants to reproduce themselves all over the place. I do pull some weeds, but the useful things get left to grow.

Ground Cherry Wine

We love ground cherries, also called "Cape Gooseberry". It's not a relative of the real gooseberry, but is sometimes called that. We call them "ground cherries" and they are delicious!

The key to their superb flavour is to eat them only when they are fully ripe. They fall off the bush when they are still a bit green, sometimes they fall off when they are really green. They need to sit out at room temperature for days to dry the husk and ripen. They are ripe when they are a bit orange and not just yellow. The skin also takes on a slightly translucent quality.

We often have large baskets full of them ripening on the counter. This year, due to all the rain we have had, I spread them out on screens dry and to help prevent mildew. Many grew mildew in the husk anyway, but were still good to eat. They just had to be washed and wiped off first. The mildew only grows on the husk, leaving the fruit whole and unharmed, although a few fruits had gotten moldy enough to throw out.

In spite of this, I managed to accumulate enough ripe ground cherries in the freezer to make about 6 gallons of wine. We grew a LOT of ground cherries! I planted a few rows of ground cherries in the garden but we also had about that same amount reseed themselves along the edge of the garden where they grew last year. I knew I was going to need a lot for wine, so I left them there. (I spent quite a bit of time this year, weeding them out of the strawberries. They really reseed!)

I froze them in buckets and when I had reached about 5 gallons of frozen berries, I made wine. I started with about 25-30 pounds of berries, previously frozen and soft.

I covered them with water in my two large pots and used the hand blender to roughly cut them up. Then I followed my usual wine making routine.

I have begun using an acid test kit, since I am making wines with a lot of different things. I knew the ground cherries would be a bit low on the acid, so I added three white tea bags for the tannin and tested the must when it was ready to make, after boiling, etc. It tested at about a 3.5 - 4 so I added 3 teaspoons of acid blend, bringing it up to about a 6.5 - 7.


Here's the ground cherry wine recipe:

25-30 pounds of ripe ground cherries
23 cups sugar
3 white tea bags
3 teaspoons acid blend
3 teaspoons pectic enzyme
Water to make 6 gallons of wine


I have this 5 gallon carbuoy full and a one gallon jug, as well.

It's a beautiful colour!
I now have six large carbuoys of wine, making. They are: ground cherry, wild grape, strawberry, raspberry, rose petal and rhubarb. I have enough hibiscus petals in the freezer to make another one. I just need another carbuoy. I might wait on that until I bottle the rhubarb, which should be soon.

I also have a few one gallon jugs making, as well. They are: 2 wild grape, 1 ground cherry, maple, apple and chocolate mint. If the chocolate mint is as good as I think it will be, I might consider making 5 gallons of it next year. At the rate that stuff spreads, I'm sure I'll have enough leaves for it by then!

I do love making wine, especially from materials I have grown or foraged myself!

Queen's Anne Lace - Useful Herb?

Well, I have been shocked a few times this year while researching the things that grow in our fields! Some of these things that I have always considered "weeds", are now being looked at in a new light. Queen Anne's lace is one of these.

I know it makes a great cut flower and is one of those things you can colour by putting food colouring in the water, but I had no idea it was such a useful medicinal herb!

According to the "Carrot Site" (the "Carrot Museum"), Queen Anne's lace leaves "contain significant amounts of porphyrins, which stimulate the pituitary gland and lead to the release of increased levels of sex hormones". Really? Really? Is this true? Hmmmm...interesting... What does this mean, exactly?

More from The Carrot Site: "Queen Anne's lace (a wild carrot): "is an aromatic herb that acts as a diuretic, soothes the digestive tract and stimulates the uterus. (Pregnant women should definite NOT use it!) A wonderfully cleansing medicine, it supports the liver, stimulates the flow of urine and the removal of waste by the kidneys.

An infusion is used in the treatment of various complaints including digestive disorders, kidney and bladder diseases and in the treatment of dropsy. An infusion of the leaves has been used to counter cystitis and kidney stone formation, and to diminish stones that have already formed...A tea made from the roots is diuretic and has been used in the treatment of urinary stones.

An infusion is used in the treatment of oedema, flatulent indigestion and menstrual problems. The seed is a traditional 'morning after' contraceptive and there is some evidence to uphold this belief.

Ongoing studies are proving this to be a very valuable plant, useful in many areas of alternative medicine, a few are Alzheimer's, Crohn's disease, Parkinson's disease, Infertility, Asthma-preventive, most types of cancer, Diabetes, Leukaemia, HIV, Spina-bifida, Migraine headache, obesity, and much more, even the common cold. Used as a medicinal herb for thousands of years as an abortifactint, anthelmintic, carminative, contraceptive, deobstruent, diuretic, emmenagogue, galactogogue, ophthalmic, and stimulant..."

Wow! According to these people, Queen Anne's lace will fix just about anything! I wonder how much of it is true...

Apple Picking

We picked apples today! It was such a beautiful day for it too! We are having a summer like week this week with warm temps and sun, all week long. It's a good time to get some fall work done outside!

My friend, Janet, and I picked the apples this morning. Hubby worked on another job.

We have several apple trees but most don't produce usable apples or they have just little ones. There is only one really good apple tree that is worth picking. I have no idea what kind of apples they are. I haven't made an effort to become informed about apples. I know 'Delicious' apples, 'Cortlands' and my grocery store favourites, 'Royal Gala' which taste more like pears than apples, but I am sorely lacking in apple knowledge otherwise.

This is what we harvested this morning. It's a lovely bunch of apples, especially for an organic, never sprayed tree. That's it pictured at the top too. Beautiful apples! If you know what kind they are, please tell me.

The deer have already eaten all the apples within their reach, (which is also our reach). We didn't have a ladder so we had to climb. I climbed up into the tree and out on the branches to shake them, then we picked them up off the ground. The apples are the perfect ripeness now. Ripe enough to fall easily when the branches are shaken, but haven't fallen on the ground on their own yet. We didn't have a ladder so we had to do it this way. It worked well enough. We got lots of good apples!

I haven't climbed a tree in decades! I used to be good at it, once upon a time. I have become more careful in my older age. It was a humbling experience. I have lost some of my nerve, but I'm thinking maybe that's good thing...

The apples will sit in the kitchen for now, where I will work on them here and there. I had thought to leave them on the porch until I had time to work on them but, after remembering that we get racoon visits, moved them into the house. I must always remember the racoons!

These will be made into apple sauce, pie filling, baked apples and the good ones will go into the cold cellar for storage. We can keep apples in there, at least this year, because we don't have any other veggies in there with them. We didn't grow potatoes or carrots. (Ripening apples emit ethelene gas that makes other things ripen very fast and not keep very long.) The squash will be in there, but just for a short time, until they are ripe, then they go into the freezer. I need the squash seed for the seed store.

It was a lot of work but well worth the effort! We are looking forward to homemade applesauce and pies!

I am also planning on making apple wine, of course, and I can do that in the middle of the winter :-)

All in all it was a great endeavour and well worth doing, even though I would not have wanted to do it by myself. Big jobs always go much faster and are more fun with a friend! Don't you think so? Thank you Janet for your help!

Update next day: I graded the apples into three categories and put them all into the cellar. They are in shallow boxes with newspaper between each layer. I have read that they keep the best if individually wrapped in newspaper but I'm not doing that! lol! This is the next best thing. I will probably process the "eat me first" category within the next couple of weeks. Possibly into wine, definitely into apple sauce.

I love having our own organic apples!

Homemade Gluten Free Bread!

I have found a recipe for lovely, wheat free, gluten free bread! It rises tall and is light, fluffly, moist and soft. It doesn't get hard and can be used for anything you would use regular wheat bread for. It makes excellent toast!

It uses white bean flour and xantham gum. Xantham gum is very expensive but the recipe doesn't use much so it should last awhile. One loaf uses 2 rounded teaspoons. It is a lot cheaper than the gluten free alternatives and just as good!

I got this recipe from the "Mennonite Girls Can Cook" site. They have a lot of good gluten free recipes I am going to try, now that I know they are good.

My oven was a bit too hot, making the top too dark, but next time I will turn it down a bit or maybe try taking it out sooner.

I made my own white bean flour by grinding white kidney beans in my little coffee/spice grinder. It did a good job but it took a long time and the grinder got hot. I want to get a small flour mill. I think I will have trouble finding one in Barrie, however. If you know where I can get one nearby, (not mail order) please let me know.

Here's the recipe:
INGREDIENTS:

1 cup warm water
3/4 cup milk
3 large eggs
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp. molasses
2 rounded tsp. zanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup white bean flour
1 cup Kinnikinnik bread/bun mix (or 1 cup brown rice flour)
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 tsp sugar
1 pkg reg. yeast or 1 tbsp.
optional - add 1/2 cup of raw sunflower seeds

DIRECTIONS:

In heavy duty mixer beat eggs slightly, then add other wet ingredients. I proofed the yeast in the warm water and molasses called for in the recipe and put it all into the 'wet' ingredient mixer bowl after it bubbled.

Sift together dry ingredients and then add to the liquid, beating hard for about a minute . You will see the batter change and become smooth . (Constancy needs to be right.. batter that is too thick will not rise .. too thin it will rise and then fall. If it looks like a too-thick cake batter then it is probably just about right !)

This recipe makes one regular size loaf.

Line the bottom of the pan with wax paper and lightly oil the sides. It wills tick more than regular bread.

Let rise for about an hour until loaves round over the top of the pan.
Bake for 45 minutes at 350' - or until tops are nicely browned - do not underbake.
This bread keeps well, also freezes well and after the first day is good toasted !

I am going to make my own gluten free pizza dough next and then gluten free pastry with a squash/pumpking pie!

There are a lot of gluten free white bean flour and xantham gum recipes out there that I want to try!

Update Next Day:I have eaten half this loaf since I baked it yestserday morning, without any ill effect in migraines, digestion or blood sugar.

I'm thrilled! I haven't been able to eat bread like that in a decade! It makes great toast!!

I also has no "bean" flavour. It taste just like brown bread!

I have read that the store bought white bean flours do taste beany, but not if you grind it yourself. I bought the white kidney beans at the bulk store and ground them myself. This is also something that I can grow myself ;-)
(Should I ever find the time!)

Squash - Rooting Bucket - Forsythia

These are our "Hopi Black" squash, grown this year. They are curing in an upstairs, south facing window. I like to leave them out in the sun to cure for a few weeks in the fall, until a hard frost threatens, but this year I had to bring them inside. Something was eating them (racoons, deer...) and one was smashed completely when a deer ran over it.

They will still cure here, it might just take a bit longer to ripen completely. That's ok, there are a few that are almost there now. This is not a large harvest of squash for us but I'm just glad to get any at all! It was such a bad year for squash! I planted 19 plants of this variety and this is all I got, but it's enough. We also got two "Upper Ground Sweet Potato" squash and three little "Sweet Dumpling" squash. I will probably have a few seeds from those two varieties for sale, as well, but not many.

I am not growing the "Upper Ground Sweet Potato" squash next year since I am switching too butternut and only want to grow one moschata. I will be growing the other two again, however. (I will always grow the "Hopi Black" Squash! It's our favourite!)

These are the best squash we have ever grown. You can read more about them in my previous post "The Perfect Squash". They are an old Hopi indian heirloom variety.

I will have these seeds for sale in my seed store when it opens on Nov 1st!

On another subject: Remember the post on "The Rooting Bucket"? Well, it didn't go as well as would have liked but I did have some success. I planted it full, with everything organized and well labelled. Then the racoons came.

They dug a lot of it up. They pay me a visit about once a month, just to let me know that they are out there and will wreak havoc whenever and wherever they please. So far it has been little, except for the blue corn. They destroyed every single ear. (So those of you who are waiting for the blue corn seed are going to be dissappointed, unfortunately.)The next morning I was able to replant most of
the forsythia and some of the other shrubs without labels.

Most of the forsythia cuttings rooted! I have enough to plant a small hedge now!

I'm very happpy about that, as I love forsythia bushes! Not the trimmed little landscape plants but the ones left natural to grow tall and wispy, bending long bright, yellow fronds to the ground, swaying in the wind. I especially like them with daffodils around them, being the same colour and blooming at the same time. They are beautiful!
(That's not my picture on the right.)

I also had a couple of other shrub cuttings root but, without labels, I don't know what they are. lol! Oh well, I do like surprise gardening and they were free. (I like "free" too!)

Junking in the garden

I love junking! I go to garage sales every Saturday morning, whenever I can, even for an hour or so before work. I rarely come home empty handed. Sometimes I only find one little thing, but it's usually worth it.

The top picture is one of my large 'Keri Blue' dahlias in an old bentwood rocker with the seat removed. It has been such a good holder for the large dahlia, that I plant it there every year.

I recently found two other chairs for the garden while on a short walk down my road, looking for nettles and jewelweed. I live next to the county forest and people are always dumping their trash there! It's shameful!

On this particular occasion I was overjoyed to find these two black iron chairs. There is some glare on them in the picture. They are all black, not gray at all. They are a bit broken at a seam or two so not usable as chairs, but they will make great holders for the new large dahlias I acquired this year or any other large, tall plants that need a holder in the garden.

They are standing in front of an 'Intense Purple' amaranth growing in the flowerbed. It's a beautiful and stately small tree where a little shade is needed beside a bench and it grows to at least 8' tall in the one season (it's an annual). One of my favouite things to grow in the flower bed!

After seeing the dresser planter on another site, I searched around and asked on Freecycle for an old, solid wood, small dresser with 3-4 drawers, to make one myself. I got one from Freecycle and the owner even delivered it! Wow!

This is the dresser I have stored away until spring, when I am going to make a planter out of it. I will refinish it first, either stained dark with fancy handles or painted white, distressed and heavily sealed, of course, for outside use.

I love repurposing furniture and unusual things in the garden! I have a couple of old teapots that do well as planters too. I also have an old pair of rubber boots that I am considering using as planters in the spring. You just never know what you can re-use as a planter in the garden.

I like broken, mosaic tile in the garden too but I haven't done anything like that yet. It's on the list! I have gone so far as to collect some interesting tiles. I have a large collection of junk for the garden. (It's time that I don't have!)

Whimsy and imagination are part of what makes up a fabulous and interesting garden space!