Veni, Vidi, Seedy: I Came, I Saw, I Seed

 

Seed saving is something that has gone the way of processing your own chickens and milking the family cow... it's something nobody does anymore. Most folks probably wouldn't even know where to begin. Before I got here, I certainly didn't.

Most seed saving that happens at the home gardener scale is for heirloom plants. Heirloom vegetables are usually older varieties, although there are some exceptions, and are open pollinated,* which also means that the second generation will be the same as the first generation.** Heirloom varieties are usually known for their flavor, and often look a little funky, especially to those used to buying mono-vegetables at the supermarket that are all bred to look flawless and exactly the same.

These are some big differences from hybrid plants you usually buy from stores - if you save seed from a hybrid, the third generation will be quite different from the second generation, which is what you planted. If you remember your high school genetics lessons, you'll see why - the third generation will have recessive characteristics from the first generation that don't show up immediately. As a result, seed companies have a monopoly over that seed. Anyone who wants Sun Gold Tomatoes has to buy their seed year after year if they want the same product.

How you save seed depends on the vegetable. Tomatoes, watermelons, eggplant, cucumbers and squash are wet processed; beans, corn, lettuce, brassicas, spinach and peppers are dry processed (although peppers can be wet processed, as you will see). Last week, Autumn and I visited Twin Oaks Intentional Community and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange as part of the CRAFT program, where they did demonstrations of various types of seed saving.

Wet processing involves cutting or smashing up the vegetable in question and letting it ferment for several days. This, by the way, is definitely the best-smelling part of the process.

Then you add water and pour off the pulp and floating seeds, and keep adding water and pouring until the water runs clear. Then the seeds are put on a screen, where they dry out, which should take about a week. Once they're dry, they're ready to be stored.

With dry processing, the process depends on the plant, but often involves crushing everything together (most memorably by sandwiching the plants between tarps and dancing on them) and then winnowing the seeds using a fan.

 

We're actually saving seed for Southern Exposure this year at the farm, so the demonstrations helped us answer a lot of questions.

One of the vegetables we're growing for seed is Lipstick Pepper, a red pepper that is incredibly sweet and delicious.

 

We decided to wet process our peppers, since it seems to be a slightly easier process than scraping all the seeds off by hand. First, you cut out the crown of the pepper, with the seeds still attached.

 

You put all the pepper crowns in a container...

...and cover them with water. Let them sit for a day. The seeds are then much easier to remove by hand. After removing the seeds, you add more water and pour off the excess water and the floating seeds. You keep adding water and repeating until the water runs clear - with peppers, that takes maybe one or two more tries. (Tomatoes take forever.)

The seeds go on a screen in a well-ventilated area (preferably with a fan running). They need to dry for five to seven days. And voila! Home-processed pepper seeds.





*Open pollinated plants are pollinated naturally by insects, wind, etc. They are not self pollinating.
**Assuming you didn't accidentally cross pollinate your plant with another type, that is. For open pollinated plants, this is a real possibility. Isolation distances to prevent crossing differs from plant to plant, from 40 feet for string beans and lettuce to 600 feet for corn and squash.

Eggplant Galore

As mentioned in my last post, the Nightshade family is coming in droves right now. That means we have eggplant, and lots of it.

I'm sure many of you have met some of my eggplant friends already. But in any case, here's a little picture tour of our 90 foot eggplant row.

Berenjena

Rosa Bianca

Imperial Black Beauty

Listada di Galidia

Eggplant has been interesting to cook with, and I've had some definite failures that landed me in Mush City. But there were two notable successes recently. The first was Seared Eggplant "Steaks", which I served with a reduced elderflower wine sauce with garlic and parsley. Not as weird as it sounds, I promise.

The other was Eggplant Parmesan:

Not the best picture (forgot to get one before everyone dug in), but whatevs. The weird green things on top are fresh basil leaves. Next time, I'll probably put them on about five minutes before serving so they won't look so decrepit... they did taste very nice and aromatic and basil-y, however. So I'm not too concerned about it.

Incidentally, I made the eggplant parm with fresh tomatoes ALL from our farm. The basil's ours too. I used a mixture of eggplant - a little of everything except the Berenjenas, which I hear are better for stir-fry. The Imperial Black Beauty in particular baked well, and was incredibly sweet and delicious. 

Color Me Happy: The Many Shades of Summer Produce

The tomatoes are finally coming in, and they are delicious.

Remember when I planted these back in May? They're taller than me now. Not like that's a big accomplishment or anything.

We also have eggplant (which I think look like little old ladies - can you see her?)...

Zucchini...

Peppers...

(which are delicious cooked in olive oil over high heat and sprinkled with sea salt)...

...and copious amounts of basil.

Based on the taste explosions I've experienced thus far, the rest of summer is promising to be extremely tasty.

New Potatoes and New Beginnings

This was a post that I meant to do last week, but due to my afore-mentioned technical difficulties, I'm just now getting to it.

The last two weeks have been full of planting things: tomatoes, peppers, okra, lettuce, cantaloupe, brassica mix and squash, to be precise. There's plenty more to put in the ground, of course. But in the midst of all this planting, it's easy to forget sometimes about what we've already planted... like potatoes, back in early April.

Yes, they are purple. They're Caribè potatoes.* And they were delicious, soft and tender and melt-in-your-mouth-y when we ate them.


And here is Brian, harvesting away:

Anyways. I just thought everyone might like to see the fruits potatoes of our labors.






*It's best if you pronounce it like Speedy Gonzales.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch... er, farm.

Due to some unfortunate events at home, I was in Indiana all of last week. Thus the blogging moratorium.

Although I wasn't present to witness it, the farm kept operating. Plants grew, animals ate, people harvested. And despite my (relatively) short absence, I was faced with plenty of changes when I returned yesterday.

For starters, Juanita the Spanish Meat Goat had her baby - a single boy. I don't have any pictures of him yet.

Second: two of our remaining three ducks ran a-fowl (hee) of a predator in the night, and are now swimming in that big lake in the sky. The last duck has been put in the aviary for protection... where she will soon be joined by the cute little bevy of ducklings that arrived while I was gone. (The red light is from a heat lamp.)

Third: plants grow fast. Really fast. The potatoes, which were a few scant inches tall when I left, are now a foot at least. The buckwheat now reaches my hips, despite being merely knee-high a week ago. And the heirloom tomatoes I planted the other week? Take a look.

This must be what having children is like. One second they're seedlings... and before you know it, they're bearing fruit of their own. Where, oh where, does the time fly?

We also have strawberries now. They are delicious.

And, judging by the numbers of Kermit look-alikes leaping about, it is well into frog mating season.

Sadly, I will be leaving the farm again on Thursday, to return on Monday. Hopefully, there won't be too many more changes in my absence.

Soil Blocks II: The Heirloom Tomato

Today, we continue the saga of the little soil blocks that I planted back in early April.

This week, I started transplanting the tomatoes into one of our greenhouses. Susan grows a lot of tomatoes – we have nearly 600 tomato plants in soil block form. The farm sells them to Fresh Link, a local wholesale outfit that supplies restaurants in DC, and at local farmers markets. We mostly grow heirloom tomatoes, although Susan does have a couple hybrids that she likes.

I was planting Purple Cherokee and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, which are both heirlooms.* The first step is to water the soil blocks with fish emulsion mixed with some water. The fish emulsion is brown and chunky and smells rather a lot like fish, which gets all over your hands as you plant so you smell like you took a swim in Baltimore's Inner Harbor for the rest of the day.** 

While the starts were soaking up their meal of fish guts, I prepared the beds by setting up the irrigation hose along both sides of the two rows I would be planting. For tomatoes, we use a drip tape that slowly releases water at one foot intervals along the hose, for a nice, gradual soaking that allows the water to reach the roots.

Then, using my trusty trowel, I dug pretty deep holes every foot and a half or so…

…then planted the starts.

The reason the holes have to be so deep is that with tomato starts, you actually want to plant them up to their “neck”, or right under the crown of leaves. The stems underneath will sprout roots, which gives the plant a bigger, better root system.

The next day, I got to mulch these little guys in with old hay, but here you can see them peeking out, all happy and green in their new home.

*The story goes that the guy who developed Mortgage Lifter tomatoes was able to pay the mortgage on his house with the proceeds from his work.                                                           

**Good thing I didn't come to the farm expecting to get my MRS degree or anything.

Potato, Po-tah-to

Yesterday, I had the supreme pleasure of planting potatoes for the first time in my life.

When I was a kid, I remember harvesting potatoes. It was probably my favorite crop to pick from my grandpa's garden. He would hoist the plant out of the air with his pitchfork while I scrabbled through the dirt to find them... it was like a treasure hunt.

Susan, it seems, loves potatoes. She grows six different types, some of which are heirlooms, and almost all of which will be for the farm, not for sale.

The first order of business was preparing the field. We weeded four rows, and dug a trench in each row for the seed potatoes. (That's Brian below - he's one of the other interns.)

Then came the business of preparing the seed potatoes. We cut them into pieces, each of which needed at least two "nodes" on them. Nodes are what eventually turn into eyes.

Some of the potatoes had faces. I named mine.

Fred



Manny



Hubert

We then sloshed the potatoes around in a mixture of mycorhizal fungi and humic acid - the humic acid acts as food for the fungi, which improves the quality of the soil with its presence by increasing the microbial life there. Appetizing, no?

For the actual planting, one person would lay down the potato pieces, skin side up, in the trough. The second person followed with the hoe, covering the seed potatoes and mounding a hill of dirt over them. (Below is Autumn, the third full-time intern on the farm. We are a merry little group.)

Final note: Normally, potatoes are planted in March. By planting later, Susan hopes to escape the worst of the potato bugs... another (less enjoyable) thing I remember from my childhood. We shall see.