Welcome to Growbox Hill

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Welcome to Growbox HIll!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

By God that's a lotta seed!

So early last year I got all happy with seed trading. Was hoping for a 250 seed stock by the end of the year. Then I really was in the trading swing... And was gleeful that we were gonna top 300.. then 350... By the time I was getting hopeful about the close of the year, hooray, almost to the hopeful goal of 2014 closing!

Well, with the last of last years seed swaps finally arriving, we are around 475 or so. Almost doubled my 2013 goal. Makes me hesitate- I want a final bank of 1000? Perhaps I should think twice about all of this, lol.
What it really does is make me look much more closely on what seed is still out there. It makes me think about how much of what do I really want to have. For example, what am I missing if I have 140 kinds of tomatoes? What do I have too much of? How many frigging kinds of tomatoes can I have and still do reasonable and successful year rotations? I think I will be trimming the hell out of the reds category. I've found myself much more fascinated in other colors. I will be trimming out tons of hybrids that are in the collection too. Then I get to start growing out some of the rest, lol.
I have tons of beans, peppers, around 50 kinds of each. Rather nice selections of carrots, beets, greens, and squash, several kinds of greens. 75 kinds of flowers to tinker with seeding all over the place.

I think when is all is said and done, 1000 seed might be pushed out by a couple years. I'm thinking that a 500 cap might be in order for a bit. Get used to handling that much seed and building it into a proper sale/trade/keep base before moving on to more.

Of course there will always be seed on my wish list, and random seed I see while out and about that I'm going to pick up.

But now I have the task of sorting through all that seed and figuring out what all is going to happen with it. Some stuff is going to be planted in a couple weeks with wintersowing. Mostly first rounds of flowers. Maybe a couple of the herbs. And then it's a big ole domino till June or so, lol.

The weather is playing a fine game with us too. From snowed in for days to rain and slush/ice off, to the last couple days promising lake effect snow that last time saw us in multiple feet deep. And now we seem to be in the eye of the needle again, everywhere around us has been slammed with dark skies and heavy snow, and we have gotten sunshine and cold sculpting. Only now as sunset has crept in on the 22nd has all the warnings of the past couple days seemed to have merit here. And we were snowed in overnight and finally had to call in a push on the 28th. We were looking at even more snow and cold and had to take the break in the weather to get the push. Right now we have spent weeks snowed in compared to days open for mobility.

So over the last several days I've been sizing up the seed collection. I think I'm going to drop almost all traditional red tomatoes from the seed list. Figured out how to best process what seed is on the list.
I should be sowing in the first of the wintersowing jugs next week, but cold and snow as it is, I'm not too sure about that. I have to dig my way to the jug areas!




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