Morning errands

Maggie has gone broody, so I brought her some food...

...but it looks like she'll have to share. I ended up putting those fake eggs in the right nesting box (from the kiddie kitchen section at Target: quite realistic, which is why I've marked them with an "X") under her to make her feel useful.

Every morning, between dropping our daughter off at school and starting work, I try to do one outdoor task. This morning, I headed east to the Fruit Exchange to get the birds some more scratch.

I adore the fruit exchange. It's our feed-and-seed shop, but it is also the regional fruit processing and storage facility. Normally, I can chew the fat with the guys who work in the warehouse. They look at me (I think) as an anomaly: when we first moved here, I was in there often to get supplies to beef up my compost piles (greensand, dolomitic limestone, cast-off fruit, moldy straw) so I guess I have rightly earned the reputation as "that organic gal." But today they were busy, far too busy to chat, and the place was hopping! Big semitractor trailers are rolling in, their trailers piled high with wood boxes filled with apples and pears. Conveyor belts were rumbling away in the now well-lit warehouse, with a few women sorting and dumping the beautiful red round fruit rumbling down it.

I got a peck of Cortlands for $3, got my scratch, and made for home.

Local color

Yesterday I headed over to our fruit exchange (seed and feed) after making a trip to the lumber yard. (I do feel like I am cramming for a test, trying to get all this interior construction completed before it's Gardening Time.) I had just loaded the wagon up with trim for some final upstairs projects (trimming out two closets) and I figured, what the hey, let's see what's doing at my favorite local store.

Seems their fruit is winding down: they have a huge cooler where they store orchards' stock for the winter, doling things out to supermarkets and cider mills as the season goes on. I got a peck of Red Romes for $2. Yum! But the reason for my journey was really to see if they carried alfalfa meal. I could use it for a compost boost to get the last two piles up and heated before planting season.

So I was trading how-you-doings with the two old guys who run the warehouse. They don't stock alfalfa meal, as it is usually a feed supplement, and in Fruit Land, there aren't many animals who need it, "Though we do get some organic kooks like you who use the stuff."

I looked into their seeds. As a rule, I prefer to get stuff that's heirloom, and open-pollinated, and most of what they carry is kind of boring. BUT they did have castor beans, cheap.

"So you better be paying cash," the bigger of the two guys says.

"Why's that?"

"Well, because you don't want the FiBbIes after you. You know they make ricin from them. And you know them spooks have everyone's data, so that purchase will show up for SURE."

Considering I bought 6 seeds, well...

But trading conspiracy theories wasn't even the best reason for going. I got an orchardist tip. This guy lives about a mile from me! And he carries a LOT of different kinds of apples.

Peach Festival

Cardoon in bloom

This morning I went to the Fruit Exchange in the next town over. This would be the equivalent of a feed store in most of rural America; here in the fruit belt, though, these places also serve the purpose of processing fruit from the smaller producers. I needed to get chicken scratch and some cheap fall-harvest seeds like spinach and peas, as well as some green manure. (Green manure? It is a cover crop that you let grow in your raised beds in the fall to be turned under the dirt in the spring to add some nutrients to the soil, thus, "green" manure. It is one of those standard organic practices employed by tons of us woo-woo gardeners: one shouldn't let one's beds sit bare and exposed all winter or else the nutrients will leach out and blow away, plus the worms love the cover the stuff provides.)

The back end of the shop was hopping, as it is high peach season. This area is known for its peaches. Last weekend, in fact, was the Peach Festival in our town. We of course avoided it like the plague (as Tom said, what do eagle-printed blankets and tattoo displays have to do with a harvest festival?). So I drove back through our town on the way home and yes indeed there were peaches everywhere on the main drag: spraypainted on the street, hanging on flags from the lightposts, and painted on every storefront. I also had the fortune of driving behind a tractor, driving right down the center of main street: he was even waving to the people on the sidewalks.

We are so not in Minneapolis any more.

Seedy questions

This is an interesting thing. Obviously, I can and do post nearly daily...it's just a good exercise for me; nothing more. But I do often wonder if I will run out of things to say--slash--get boring, or MORE boring, in a year or so. The garden world and this farm are only so big. Well. On occasion something comes along that gets me off of the creative hook. Carol a couple of days ago posted something called "What kind of seed buyer are you," and Kathy asked me, yesterday, to take the bait. Hmm. So, here goes. I hope it doesn't bore you all. If it does, just tune back in a few days from now; I will be off to other things by then.

Do you carefully read all of the seed catalogs sent to you and then browse the Internet to compare and contrast all the options, then decide which seeds to buy?
Uh, I comparison shop catalogs, then (usually) pick from three or so to place orders.

Do you buy seeds from 'bricks and mortar' stores and get whatever appeals to you as you are browsing?
Not really, unless they're annuals that I have forgotten to buy elsewhere (annuals, frankly, are the red-headed stepchildren in my gardens, so little regarded yet so ubiquitous).

Do you buy vegetable seeds in bulk where they scoop them out of seed bins, weigh them and put them in hand-marked envelopes?
Yes. Watervliet Fruit Exchange is my store for chicken feed, crushed limestone, blood meal, and, on rare occasion, veggie seeds. I had poor germination with some parsnips last year, so I decided that getting them for 40c beat paying shipping to get less from a seed company. But I don't really want to be planting everything else my neighbors are planting, you know? What's the fun in that?

Do you buy seeds for just vegetables, or just annual flowers? Do you buy seeds for perennial flowers?
All three, actually. I start cold-fearing seeds in the house, but most other seeds, perennials especially, get started in the unheated garage. It has a great bank of southern windows.

Do you know what stratification and scarification are? Have you done either or both with seeds?
Uh, yes, again. Roughing up some big annual seeds tends to help germination.

Do you order seeds from more than one seed company to save on shipping or buy from whoever has the seeds you want, even if it means paying nearly the same for shipping as you do for the actual seeds?
I have in the past. This year I am trying to order from one store only, though I think I won't get all I need from there, sadly.

Do you buy more seeds than you could ever sow in one season?
Of course, silly! Who could possibly use all the tomato plants that a packet of seeds promises.

Do you only buy seeds to direct sow into the garden or do you end up with flats of seedlings in any window of the house with decent light? I do both. However, the plants grown in the house are grown under fluorescent lights. My biggest discovery last year was to use an emergency solar blanket (get them at Target in the camping section for about $2: they're basically reflective mylar) draped over the light and the seed trays. It bounced the light around quite a bit, and the plants loved it.

Do you save your own seeds from year to year and exchange them with other seed savers?
I have begun to seed-save veg seeds. I have actively and passively saved perennial and annual seeds (actively = put them in envelopes and label them, passively = go out and harvest the seedheads I never cut off the fall before) in the past. I would love to seed-trade (any takers?).

Do you even buy seeds?
YES, but I am organized in my approach. I swear.

Do you have a fear of seeds? Some gardeners don't try seeds, why not?
Please understand that I am standing in the middle of the intersection that is "Tightwad Street" and "Simple Living Way," so going out and buying flats of plants, though tempting, is not something I am going to do. Seeds are cheap!

Do you understand seeds? I once bought seeds at a Walmart in January (Burpee Seeds) and the cashier asked me, "Do these really work? Yes, they do. "Isn't it too cold to plant them now?" Well, yes, if you are planning to plant them outside. I don't think this cashier grew up around anyone who gardened.
Most of everything is trial and error. I chewed my husband a new one when he "forgot" one morning to lift the lid off some lettuces I was hardening off. They fried. He didn't understand it would get to 120* in there with the lid on it. Now he knows. But he'd never done this before, so how would he know...

Do you list all your seeds on a spreadsheet, so you can sort the list by when you should sow them so you have a master seed plan of sorts?
Wow, that's even too OCD for me. I use a three-ring binder. Much more user-friendly in a muddy garden.

Do you keep all the old seeds and seed packets from year to year, scattered about in various drawers, boxes, and baskets?
Well, I keep them year to year (knowing that germination rates drop) but they're in plastic shoebox-sized bins, organized by plant type.

Do you determine germination percentage for old seed?
Only when I really have a question about its extreme age. Then I put them on damp paper towels, roll them up, put them in a ziplock bag and then put them atop the fridge, or, rather, forget I put them atop the fridge. Then they sprout, I remember them, and I think, well, this works.

Does this help understand what kind of gardener I am? I bet it gives an indication.