A minty travel story...

Mint... sometimes it's kind of funny how this weed, tea, culinary object, crop, medicine, what have you comes and goes around...

Around 15 years ago, I bought a mint plant and placed it in my yard. While living at this house, the mint got big enough that I gave a whole beds worth of starts for the place my sister was living at.
So I shared some starts with her, and some of those starts ended up at another house she lived at and at a friends house. While all this sharing was going on, I moved from the house I planted the original mint in, and never looked back.

Now I'm where I'm at now. Just a couple weekends ago the friend that got mint starts asked me if I wanted some of those plants for my yard now that I can have something like that again. Of course I said yes.

It's kind of cool. A mint I planted 15 years ago has been shared and planted and moved and shared.. and now I get to plant in a bed of the descendents of that one plant I planted so long ago.

SPAM ALERT!!!!

HEY!!!!!

... Especially new property owners.
We just had a new scam show up in our mailbox today. So for any property owners, especially anyone that has purchased property in the last couple years...

NATIONAL RECORD SERVICE, INC. is the dirty header.
3775 COMMERCIAL AVE, NORTHBROOK, IL, 60062.
PHONE IS 888-480-2711.

It's a rather nice and official letter notifying you that records show that ownership of a property is at ADDRESS X. Yeah, where you live.
The letter goes on to tell you that you should have a certified copy of your deed, which they can supply to you for 69.50.

THAT'S RIGHT, SEVENTY BUCKS!!!

Just to let you know, if you did not already get all your official documents when you purchased the property, it's usually easy enough to get copies of the documents you need from your local town hall or courthouse for under 20 bucks.

Don't fall prey, or let anyone else you know fall prey to this scam!!!

KEEP IN MIND THAT WE DON'T LIVE IN ILLINOIS, AND WE GOT THIS LETTER. I WOULD SAY THE WHOLE CHICAGOISH AREA COULD GET THIS SPAM.


Keep your eye out for spam like this that comes into your mailbox. Easy enough to filter email spam. But lots of stuff still comes in through the regular mail too. 
I suggest a few things to do with it. 

Use it for kindling for starting fires. 
Use it as paper to roll up a pot to plant seed. 
Use it shredded up for making paper mache, or mulch, or whatever. 

BUT DON'T EVER, EVER USE IT FOR WHAT IT INSTRUCTS YOU TO ON THE LETTER!! 
 

Veggie Row and Living Fence

Well then, Mama N has indeed decided to play nice for the last few days so some stuff has gotten done in the yard, hooray!
Got the front two sections of the yard cleaned up and mowed the other day, so all looks at least passibly decent from the road. I pretty much just always leave my cutting clearance at four inches because a lot of the yard is kind of lumpy and I like my grass a smidge longer anyway.

So today is cool, breezy, and sunny.. My love suggested we do a fire tonight so long as the weather holds out. I told him, sure, clean out the fenceline of burnables. He grabbed the boys and away they went. Damn, didn't quite realize how nice it is to have a few extra pairs of hands helping out! While I finished setting up dinner in the crockpot and setting bread to rise the got a goodly bit of it done. I only helped at the tail end.
So with all of the wood cleaned out of the orchard section, I was able to mow there today. I went back over the veggie row and living fence strips a couple extra times with the mowing blades set lower than usual.
Then it was time to start pinning down the strips of black plastic that I'm using for marking off areas this year. Boy, that sure was easier with extra hands to help hold the plastic since it was so breezy.
Since I have the floor space in my workshop to lay out plastic and mark it, that's what I did. The plastic is ten feet wide, and I drew in four foot wide boxes on them. I can already tell that I like the three feet on either side of the veggie row boxes, but I will probably trim the living fence back to eight or even six feet wide, ten is just toooo much.

 So, here's the layout for the living fence. You can see a noticeable cut line of where I leave the grass normally at, and where I mowed it lower to lay the plastic over it. That stuff over to the left in the back is the messy raspberry bed, and you can see the peach and what's purported to be a plum tree on the right. Depending on how I trim the bed and what kind of trees I get, I may be able to add 2-3 more fruit trees into the orchard.

 This year the living fence is starting out as a three sisters row. I marked off three foot wide sections that alternate between corn/pole beans, and squash. The squash are just gonna get center planted, the corn/pole beans I did using a sort of square foot method. There will be six kinds of squash, five kinds of beans, and two kind of corn going in. I would rather have done just one kind of corn, but didn't have quite enough seed. So, gonna wing that one this year, haha.
Starting in this year maybe, but for sure next year, this area is going to be planted in with permanent stuff. Outdoor herbs and edible flowers, tea garden plants, those sorts of plants will eventually find homes here.

 Here's the veggie row. At the bottom you can see where I have my little bulb corner marked off. Got a couple lovely clumps of daffs that I want to break up and fill in a bit of the corner with.
I left the tail end of the plastics to butt into this corner. I want to try setting up a pair of chicken wire compost towers on them.

 As with the living fence that I marked, I also marked off this in their sizes and plant assignments. they are 4x8. I like the three foot borders, but I think I might sneak the box spacings down to two feet instead of three.

 Well, you can tell we laid out the plastic kind of crooked, but that's no big deal. This year is much more about determining spaces and all that jazz. When boxes are made and staked in, they will line up right, lol.

From both of our offices you can really tell the chunks of space that are taken up by all of this. I'm pretty pleased so far. Even if the plastic utterly fails, some plants die or whatever... This all still shows me in a very real sense what the eventual garden will be like. Or, at least these chunks of it. 

Gonna go do more stuff now...

One swan a stalking....

 Ok, so Mr. Swan flaps geese off the pond on a pretty regular basis, and it's usually pretty loud and somewhat entertaining. Sometimes the persistance of some geese amazes me!!

We have a pair right now, or at least I think it's the same pair, that Mr. Swan has been flapping off for days. Now, when on land, Mr. Swan does not usually flap, he usually stalks... Walks or runs the birds off his turf. Always totally entertaining!

Here's a few pics from yesterday....

Mr. Swan strutting the goose out of the sanctuary... 

 Must of figured that was enough shoo-away, because it's time to stroll down the path and into the pond. 

 And the goose is left standing... 

Well, apparently that little incident yesterday didn't get the point across to the geese. Today Mr. Swan stalked them off past the curve of the drive behind the house.... 

 Looking low and mean there Mr. Swan.. 

 Got a goose to escort from the property.. 

 Oops, make that a pair of them.. again... 

 Walk away, walk away... 

 Crap, he's still following, walk away some more.. 

Looks like he stopped. Stop and honk some goosey smack talk at Mr. Swan. 

 

Mr. Swan, unimpressed with the goosey smack talk, raised his butt and wing feathers to them, and walked back down to the pond. 

Seed Envelopes

 Came across these great origami envelopes you can make out of recycled seed catalogs to store up sample sized packets of seed. I'm making them up for some wedding favor action for garden packs, but they are also good for seed sharing/swapping, or seed bombs in the urban environment, or a little envelope to enclose with a garment for that extra button, or few beads, or whatever.

DISCLAIMER!!! I photoed and wrote up my own demo because there were a couple of different sources I took inspiration from, and I didn't want to plagiarize, so I just made my own demo to share.

Anywho, time for the demo... For this particular batch of pics, I sliced up two seed catalogs. Both of them are glorious for pics and descriptions, but I never actually order from them. They were the same size, thickness, and paper quality since they both came from the same catalog family.

So. No pics for the prep work, If I remember, I will take some pics next time I do this.
First, I cut the spine. I found that tearing along the line works better than cutting. These were stapled catalogs, not glued spines. I will be checking out glued spines soon since I have a stack of mags awaiting something.
Second, I folded in half top to bottom, then cut those up. Made four piles of long strips. I did this fairly quickly by clearly folding one page, then lining that page up with a few others and using a scissors to cut.
Third, folded papers into neat corners with the prettiest side out. I folded the ends into the center.
Fourth, cut the corners off the strips. Used the scissors for this too.

Now, on to the folding aspect.

 Since you folded up your strips to make your perfect triangles and cut them off anyway, here's the resulting product.

 Fold the open tip of the triangle to the folded edge. Make sure you leave a bit of a gap between point and fold. The pic does not show it well because of the angle.

 With that tip still pressed down.. Take one corner and fold it in. Note that the "tight" angle of the corner has an overlap with the tip, you want to make sure you have that. The "up in the air" tip- that whole edge should line up neatly with the folded edge when all is pressed down.

 Repeat with the other corner.

 Fold it all open again to this point.

 Take one corner and tuck it between the two layers of the other corner. The tip corner should be out of the way right now.

 Here the corners are fully tucked in and the tip is positioned off to the left. Smooth down all the folds at this point and make it neat. Now you can get a complete idea of where your fold lines should be. Note that your corners don't overextend the folds, and the overlap at the tip fold line. This ensures complete sealing of seeds later.

 Fold your tip down and smooth that fold.

 Of the two catalogs I snipped up, here's a pic of the half fold bin and envelope box. The bin is from lunchmeat. The box is recycled too, measures about 8lx3wx2h". The paperclip with the leaf on it is there to keep the stack from falling over as the envelopes are made and used.

Here we go, the box is finished. How many total? A tiny smidge over 150. I started out just using the pretty corners with the first catalog and then figured screw it and just took the 4 per page out of the second catalog. I weeded out a few pages, strips, and triangles if there was too much shipping/ordering/products action on it and kept to plants and plant descriptions.

And yeah, I already filled up this box with seed and stowed it away in the back of my fridge.
I then chopped up the other three seed catalogs I had in the pile, and they were three different sizes, but close to the first ones. Those are now folded up into envelopes awaiting seed samples.

Holy shit, this all sounds time consuming...
Not really, and this kind of project is perfect for smallwork. Ok, cutting up the catalogs into the triangles takes about 10-20 mins depending on how much you are cutting up.
After that, each envelope takes seconds to do, seriously. The first batch was sit down and fold up, and I averaged 10 seconds each once I got into the swing of it. Took a couple hours.  The second batch I did up during a random TV evening of watching a couple hours of various stuff.
The 10 seconds is pretty good, but then I do dink around with other paper folding stuff pretty often.
An average never done it before in your life kind of time? 10 to 20 seconds each. My love sat down and tried this folding out a couple of times when I started doing this and that was his average.

So, I figure with some of the neat stacks of catalogs and magazines I have laying around, I can make up a crapton of envelopes for various stuff. I also collect mags from the local library too. Sometimes I collect a stack of something just for a few pages worth of material. Better if I can start funneling some of this into some recycling effort before tossing into the burn or pulp piles.

Seed report...

Well, even though the overnight temps have dipped down into the 30's and yep, we have woken to frost a couple of times in the past several days.. We have also had fairly warmish days too, full of chill breezes and spats of precipitation. The temps in the solarium have been holding warm enough that I decided it was time to clean up and move the bench back. 

 Before shot... Lots of stuff sprouting!! Sadly the pink egg trays at the end holding chamomile I declared a null and pulled the trays.

 And all the windows are empty and the plants have been stretching for the sun.

 Cept for int the SE corner. The flat leaf parsley, lettuce, and pumpkin pepper plants are all looking great.

 The half dozen trays of marigolds I put into the window ledges an evening or two ago. They have held up perfectly, so I decided to clean them up. Since I had about 26 out of 72 spots fail, I took a spoon and lifted out the dead spots on four trays and emptied out two trays. All of the failed to take egg carton dirt and the dirt from garlic chives (also declared NULL) went into the pot that I later planted with.

 Green Zebra Tomatos, the failed cheese pepper that replaced the failed paprika pepper, the ghost chilis and half the hot pepper mix are in the big trays. The cheese peppers pots will just sit as they are till I need to use them. I'm thinking of setting them aside to dry out a bit though.
The 4 pots are brussel sprouts and cabbage, and the soup cans are cilantro, basil of genovese and purple types, and compacto dill.

 The leeks are in the really small pots, more cabbage and cauliflower in the small 4 pack pots. The nice plants on the upper left are Paul Robeson tomatoes, under them are the other half of the hot pepper mix that finally decided to sprout.. and next to that is the cayenne, planted to replace the failed pepperchini. Yep, I've declared the cayenne NULL too.

 Soybeans, lettuce, straweberries, beets, parsnips, carrots, lovage, wildflower growing. I finally had tiny sproutlings peek their heads in the oregano and lovage pots, hooray! The toothache plant is still a no go :(

 A twelve pack of mammoth dill, a flat of flat leaf parsley, several pots of moonflower to plant in the area outside my love's office window. The red plastic coffee can has a whole bunch of cutting celery kicking up, and the three matching coffee cans have white, brown, and black mustards in them.

 So, I pulled all the dead spots, put plants back onto windowsills, and moved the bench. I now have room to do future potting and seeding. If needed, I can pull off the windowsills overnight if we get frost or freeze advisories.

 So, this is pretty much what the seedling bench looks like now. Yeah, I do like to pack them in at this stage. I think the en masse helps them retain their temps and moisture a little bit.

 Ok, I took a shot of my Envy Soybean for an entry to Pinetree Seeds after they had been planted 10 days and all were cracking heads. This is what the monsters look like today. I tucked them into the corner so they could get better sunlight.

So, had kind of a oh shit moment and a hey, I can try a planting experiment kind of thing whilst rummaging in the fridge the other day...

 This is what I found. A sprouted onion and a bag of ginger left over from ages ago. Well crap, hate to throw stuff out that could have been eaten in time, even if it is to compost. But wait, I could try for some second life out of the stuff...

 Took a recycled can, and threw some of the dirt into it that I knocked out of my reusable pots that I declared NULL. Put the onion in it.

 Filled the pot up, watered it, and tossed it on the windowsill. If it sprouts up I will use the greens that grow off it for some fresh onion action to my cooking.

The ginger was in three chunks. So I used the rest of the knocked out dirt and a bit extra from the bag. Once it was mostly full, I snugged the ginger in. Then I filled the pot to the top, about an inch or so above the roots. Then I watered it well and set it on the edge of the pond. We shall see if anything happens from this.

A failed experiment in take a kitchen scrap and try it that failed... Taking snippets of thyme and sage and sprouting them. I am not sure if I just didn't take viable enough chunks or what, so I will just let the plants grow for another year or whatever and try again when there is woodier stuff on them.

I also potted up the couple of seeds of Good King Henry I have. I needed to revamp the veg row boxes a tad to accommodate for what has failed, and I decided to try the sample seed in the solarium instead of using a square for it. 

The only wildcast seed that looks like it might actually be doing something might be the aquilegia that I scattered outside my love's office window. There is a fairly even growth of somethings going on, but I'm not sure if it's flower or weed yet, haha.

And cleaning up a ton of my seed. I got ideas for stuff, muahahahaha.

In the next couple weeks I get to gear up on all sorts of other stuff too. Spring has sprung!

Arg, Mama N!!!!!

Ok, so this time last month it was so nice that I thought it was ok to start seeding in the solarium, which is a good thing. Some seeds to need lots of indoor time first. This time next month is the mark of the last frost around here. Today small snow and hail, cold and high breezes.

With the chilly day making me think more on cold food than spring food... Good thing the pantry is still stocked with cool weather comfort.

Took an overly large quart of bean soup I made out of the freezer, and a cup bag of mixed greens. The greens I got a huge pile of on last day clearance at the supermarket, so I bought it up, blanched it up, and bagged it up. Had half a raw butternut squash left over from scalloped goodness the other night.
So I chopped the squash up, drizzled it with oil, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and I'm roasting it off. Once it's good and roasted it will get tossed into the reheated bean soup. The greens I set to a slow defrosting simmer with about half a bottle of beer. Once the greens are done up, I will add the bean soup and heat through, add in the squash, and yay soup goodness!

And I'm making biscuits to go with it. Simple bisquick ones like my mom used to make. I decided to kick the things a bit by adding some garlic powder, butter buds, paprika, turmeric, and parsley to the mix. After the squash has roasted off I will adjust the heat and make up the biscuits.

Achievement Unlocked: Administrative Access

Yowza!`p`x`x`x`x`x`xHello World! For some reason my beloved saw fit to give me administrative access to the blog. What was she thinking?!?! Does she not realize what she has done! [EVIL GRIN]`b`b`pIn any case, it is good to be among you.`p I am enjoying`p`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x not enjoying`p`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`xproud to have been trusted with the task of helping to turn this blog into a FULL-ON WEBSITE. `pWith cool stuff to browse and stuff.`p And maybe a store`p`x`x`x`x`xspecial way to help`p`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`xPONY!`x`x`x`x`x`x`xyou can help us figure out what the next generation of GBH online should look like!`p`b`p`bWe're thrilled to be bringing it to you! Don't worry, I'll try not to get in the way of her righteous`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`xawesome`x`x`x`x`x`x`xBLOGERRIFIC pandemoni`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`xmasterful writing-- but hopefully I'll be helping her augment that magic`x`x`x`x`xinsight with archives and albums, calendars and clever charts and tables with clever HTML5 wizards and other high tech tomfoolery`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`xtools to monetize`x`x`x`x`x`x`x`xenhance the user's browsing experience.`p`b`bWell, thanks for waiting for all of this to scroll on by. I promise future blog posts will not be in simulated-time-shifted-real-time.`b`b

Cheers,
-Marc

STAND UP.. against Monsanto/Seminis seeds..

So, I stumbled across this handy list of seeds churned out by Seminis, who is owned by Monsanto.
Note: Not all of the veggie varieties in the below list are Monsanto/Seminis exclusives. Consequently if you spot some of these varieties in the catalog of an heirloom seed-seller,  just check with the seller to make sure the seeds were not purchased from  Seminis/Monsanto. I will provide resources below to see if your seed company is on the Safe Seed Pledge list or not before you ask them :)
But if you find these seeds on a rack at a big-box garden center, you have every right to suspect they were purchased from the evil empire.

Beans: Aliconte, Brio, Bronco, Cadillac, Ebro, Etna, Eureka, Festina, Gina, Goldmine, Goldenchild, Labrador, Lynx, Magnum, Matador, Spartacus, Storm, Strike, Stringless Blue Lake 7, Tapia, Tema
Broccoli: Coronado Crown, Major, Packman
Cabbage: Atlantis, Golden Acre, Headstart, Platinum Dynasty, Red Dynasty
Carrot: Bilbo, Envy, Forto, Juliana, Karina, Koroda PS, Royal Chantenay, Sweetness III
Cauliflower: Cheddar, Minuteman
Cucumber: Babylon, Cool Breeze Imp., Dasher II, Emporator, Eureka, Fanfare HG, Marketmore 76, Mathilde, Moctezuma, Orient Express II, Peal, Poinsett 76, Salad Bush, Sweet Slice, Sweet Success PS, Talladega
Eggplant: Black Beauty, Fairytale, Gretel, Hansel, Lavender Touch, Twinkle, White Lightening
Hot Pepper: Anaheim TMR 23, Ancho Saint Martin, Big Bomb, Big Chile brand of Sahuaro, Caribbean Red, Cayenne Large Red Thick, Chichen Itza, Chichimeca, Corcel, Garden Salsa SG, Habanero, Holy Mole brand of Salvatierro, Hungarian Yellow Wax Hot, Ixtapa X3R, Lapid, Mariachi brand of Rio de Oro, Mesilla, Milta, Mucho Nacho brand of Grande, Nainari, Serrano del Sol brand of Tuxtlas, Super Chile, Tam Vera Cruz
Lettuce: Braveheart, Conquistador
Melon: Early Dew, Sante Fe, Saturno
Onion: Candy, Cannonball, Century, Red Zeppelin, Savannah Sweet, Sierra Blanca, Sterling, Vision
Pumpkin: Applachian, Harvest Moon, Jamboree HG, Orange Smoothie, Phantom, Prize Winner, Rumbo, Snackface, Spirit, Spooktacular, Trickster
Spinach: Hellcat
Squash: Ambassador, Canesi, Clarita, Commander, Dixie, Early Butternut, Gold Rush, Grey Zucchini, Greyzini, Lolita, Papaya Pear, Peter Pan, Portofino, President, Richgreen Hybrid Zucchini, Storr’s Green, Sungreen, Sunny Delight, Taybelle PM
Sweet Corn: Devotion, Fantasia, Merit, Obession, Passion, Temptation
Sweet Pepper: Baron, Bell Boy, Big Bertha PS, Biscayne, Blushing Beauty, Bounty, California Wonder 300, Camelot, Capistrano, Cherry Pick, Chocolate Beauty, Corno Verde, Cubanelle W, Dumpling brand of Pritavit, Early Sunsation, Flexum, Fooled You brand of Dulce, Giant Marconi, Gypsy, Jumper, Key West, King Arthur, North Star, Orange Blaze, Pimiento Elite, Red Knight, Satsuma, Socrates, Super Heavyweight, Sweet Spot
Tomato: Amsterdam, Beefmaster, Betterboy, Big Beef, Burpee’s Big Boy, Caramba, Celebrity, Cupid, Early Girl, Granny Smith, Health Kick, Husky Cherry Red, Jetsetter brand of Jack, Lemon Boy, Margharita, Margo, Marmande VF PS, Marmara, Patio, Phoenix, Poseidon 43, Roma VF, Royesta, Sun Sugar, Super Marzano, Sweet Baby Girl, Tiffany, Tye-Dye, Viva Italia, Yaqui
Watermelon: Apollo, Charleston Grey, Crimson Glory, Crimson Sweet, Eureka, Jade Star, Mickylee, Olympia

The companies listed in this link have signed the Safe Seed Pledge for 2012. We encourage you
to support them in their efforts to preserve the integrity of our seed supply.  

The following may be companies that sell only safe seed but have not signed the safe seed pledge (see link above).

Abundant Life Seeds
Amishland Seeds
Annapolis Valley Heritage Seed Company (Nova Scotia, Canada)
Diane’s Flower Seeds
Garden City Seeds
Heirlooms Evermore Seeds
Heirloom Seeds
High Mowing Seeds
Horizon Herbs
Irish-Eyes
Lake Valley Seeds
Livingston Seeds
Local Harvest
Mountain Rose Herbs
Organica Seed
Pinetree
Sand Hill Preservation Center
Seeds of Change
Southern Exposure
Sustainable Seed Co (added on request of the company)
Tiny Seeds
Uprising Seeds
Virtual Farm Seed Co (added on the request of the company)
Wildseed Farms

My favorite seed company of many years, Pinetree Garden Seeds is on the not signed list. Why? Here is their response to the question.
"Many of you have contacted us asking about Pinetree's position on genetically modified seeds and the recent acquisition of small companies by larger corporations. After 33 years, Pinetree remains a small family business. In the front cover of our catalog we state "We sell no seed that has been developed using genetic manipulation. We do not view technologies as being good or bad things in themselves, but people can certainly employ them in pernicious ways. We also think that developing countries are best served, focusing on the agricultures that they have the material and manpower for. Not some Western notion that ignores indigenous materials and tastes." Moreover, Pinetree has signed the Safe Seed Pledge in the past but has chosen not to this year because we do not feel it is worded strongly enough and is used more as a tool for marketing than a political statement. More than promise not to "knowingly" sell or buy GM seeds, Pinetree promises not to sell or buy them. Period. In the interest of full disclosure, Pinetree has purchased seeds from Seminis in the past. We did not purchase their seeds this year, nor do we intend to in the future. Our relationship with Seminis predates the Monsanto acquisition by many years and we had always felt they were a responsible company but have chosen not to support Monsanto in any capacity. Pinetree will continue to meet the needs of the home gardener and provide our customers with more and more organic and heirloom choices in the coming years. We are committed to the ideals of sustainable agriculture and environmental stewardship and appreciate your support. Please feel free to contact us with any questions, Melissa and Jef"

HOORAY FOR MY FAVORITE SEED COMPANY!!!!

Now, who to avoid?

These are companies currently, or at one time, known to sell seeds from Seminis and/or Monsanto. If you think a company doesn’t belong here, Please leave a comment with with information about the company’s seed practices.

Audubon Workshop
Breck’s Bulbs
Burpee
Cook’s Garden
Dege Garden Center
Earl May Seed
E & R Seed Co
Flower of the Month Club
Gardens Alive
Germania Seed Co
Garden Trends
HPS
Jungs
Lindenberg Seeds
McClure and Zimmerman Quality Bulb Brokers
Mountain Valley Seed
Osborne
Park Seed
Park Bulbs
Park’s Countryside Garden
R.H. Shumway
Rocky Mountain Seed Co
Roots and Rhizomes
Rupp
Seeds for the World
Seymour’s Selected Seeds
Snow
Stokes
Spring Hill Nurseries
Totally Tomato
T&T Seeds
Tomato Growers Supply
Vermont Bean Seed Co.
The Vermont Bean Seed Company
Wayside Gardens
Willhite Seed Co.

Again, if you don't think one of these companies should be on the list, please leave a comment and let me know about it. 

A few pics of seedlings

Just a few pics of all the seedlings we got going on right now...

 Here we have flat leaf parsley in the big blue pot a mix of lettuces in the two handle pot. The two handled pot was sadly retired after I screwed up and baked the bottom off of the pan when I turned on the wrong burner and walked away thinking I was starting up the big kettle of water. Ugh, hadn't used electric cooktop in decades and had to re-learn. Nonstick is worthless when improperly baked out, but still can stand in very well for a large planting like this.
The matching pair of pots now have a sproutling each of pumpkin pepper plant. I got this seed from Pinetree seeds and I'm trying it for the first time this year. It is neither a pumpkin or a pepper, but rather grows like a leggy pepper plant and produces small pepper sized fruits that are perfectly orange and pumpkin shaped! And they are supposed to be dryable for long term crafting action. Hopefully will get seed off these this year too :)

 So end of the bench by the corner. A bunch of toms and peppers in the six-packs. They are all coming along quite nicely I think. The pink cartons are Roman Chamomile which seems to have utterly failed to sprout :( And the yellow cartons are random discount marigold seed I picked up last year. I saved a bunch of seed too and did wildcasting with it.

 A nice pile of baby marigolds waiting to be plunked into the keyhole line leading down to the firepit. Picked up a handful of mixed varieties on clearance last year from a dollar store for 5 for a buck and a few nicer kinds for about 3 bucks total mixed them all up. I also saved up a big pile of seeds from some clearance marigold plants I plunked into planters outside the back door and rounded out the remainder of this planting seed for the wildcasting. With some time and care, we should have an amazing flame colors border there that also has the benefit of being repellant to bugs!
Those leggy things in the fourpacks at the back are some of my cabbage, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. I planted all of them waaaay too early in my anticipation of spring.

 The soup cans are herbs, the super bushy one closest is cilantro. And yack those leggy plants at the bottom again. The ninepack tray is leeks. My leeks and leggies, I'm not too positive I can hold them all indoors for the couple more weeks till safely after the frost date. I may have to set up sort of a quickie hardening off stage on the front porch or something. The leeks I think I can extend out since I now have enough cardboard tube to add a couple inches to those pots and start blanching in a tad.

 The leeks and onward. Most of the rest is a bunch of the second serious batch of planting. The big pan is envy soy, ans most of the row on the left are beets and other roots. The Lutz beet is popping up, which is nice since I can put it out earlier. If I figured it out right, I should be able to start pulling and taste testing this batch of spring planting along with setting in seed for fall setting in planting for storing, and perhaps two set-offs for seed saving. The pile of five blue trays on the right are wildflower plugs. Beyond those are big dill, more parsley, mustard (in the 3 matching coffee cans), and moonflowers. The mustards are one of those wild and questionable weeds I wanted to try out this year. According to a lot of information, it's a very useful plant that can extremely naughty in the containment department. Helpful is that I plan on harvesting as much of the seed as possible for culinary and seed saving.

 This is a closeup of the envy soy... I just love the instant gratification that legumes give. I'm hoping for a super-early harvest on these, and they take a tad longer than other soy does.  So in a few weeks when I'm ready to put them out, or even earlier if I put caps on them, they are a full tray that can go out.

 A closeup of one of the wildflower mix trays. I put together a whopping bunch of discount flower mixes and a big handful of desirable wildflowers into a big dried herb shaker. About 8oz or so gathered up. A couple weeks ago I dug up about 10 spots in the sanctuary and sprinkled seed in. Once these five trays are ready to go out I will divide them up into another 10 plantings in. Once the overnight freezes knock it off and I can proceed with using the windowsills again and start moving stuff outside I'm going to pop off with another pile of wildflower plugs of the smaller square kind. Gonna use a chunk of what is left over to do another wildcasting too. I plan on using up all the wildflower mix this year and start looking for my bergamot/oswego seeds for starts next year. Especially the native scarlet kind.

This is one cup of a muffin tin. Unfortunately it too is a recycle after setting it damp on my bamboo cutting board left the board with black rings on it. I figured if it did that, what in the heck would it do to food, even when it's in liners? Those tiny and adorable seedlings are some of my strawberry seed. Fraise de Bois I do believe, anywho, a little alpine wild kind. Makes super potent, super tiny berries. I want to build up a whole section of these eventually.. Thinking perhaps as a vertical wall on the west side of the garage.

There's still way more plantings and seedlings to come. I've put a total halt on any seed planting while overnight lows are in the below 40's, and we are hitting a streak of lower 30's. So far the seedlings have been weathering well in the solarium, and the temps have been holding steady in there.

 Here's a long shot of pretty much the whole of what's seeded so far. It's pulled out quite a bit from the windows right now with the cold overnight temps.

Here is one upset little Moon kitty after being scooped up in the solarium. She decided to sneak out while we were going to take pics.. Silly kitty, there's a modeling fee for entering the solarium :)