treebarb, hehe only 19 trees coming!

I haven't done inventory yet of seeds but that hasn't stopped me from getting some new seeds.

I'm not much of a seed hoarder.

Somethings are pretty easy for me to save:

I have found pepper seed okay but I have to think about isolation to my backyard. There's only so much room back there, as opposed to the big veggie garden. It's a better environment for everything, altho I certainly wouldn't grow corn or winter squash there. The tendency is to load up the pickup and go to where there is unlimited garden space. Opps! I just put ALL the peppers out there and they are gonna cross pollinate!

Tomatoes are more reserve about that sorta thing. Still, I really should use the earliest fruit for seed - less insects moving stuff around, fewer flowers on any of the plants. And yet, tomato seed lasts a few years. What was I needing?? Slice slice slice, pop in the mouth -- oh boy, ripe tomatoes!! I finally get around to checking my seed supplies/age at the last minute of the season. Truth be known, I've actually collected after the first frost ...

Things have gotten away from me ... I was just wondering if Dusky Rose in Totally Tomatoes is the same one that I grew about 10 years ago and saved seed for. What happened to that seed? Was it "Dana's" Dusky Rose or was that something different? It may have been the first big pink that I grew and I got started on saving seed for pink beefsteaks. So happy that I did - altho I sometimes (often) lose my plant stickers, mix up the ripe tomatoes when harvesting and don't know which tomato variety the plant in front of me is!!

Some gardeners seem almost obsessive about seed saving. Good for them. Something so practical as gardening should be fun! Are there RMG seed hoarders?

ツ Steve

I'm mostly caught up on seed inventorying (it's almost time to start my tomatoes indoors!), but then last night I "happened" to see that Burpee is having a Buy One Get One sale on ALL their seed packets... yep, there goes $$.

I'm also in one of the group swaps over in Seed Exchange, so will be getting some new ones from that which will need categorizing. I use a spreadsheet to keep track of my seed collection, what I'm growing each year, and what I need to be sure to save.

Steve, have you ever tried Crnkovic Yugoslavian tomatoes? They're the best pink beefsteak I've ever had -- possibly the best tomato. I originally got one as a plant from tomatoz1 on here a few years ago, and have been saving the seeds every year to grow more. I grew 10+ varieties of tomatoes last year, and 8 or so the year before that, and the Crnkovic keeps making the cut.

Btw, beautiful corn and beans!

Thanks, Oladon! I was looking for a picture of seed for a choy sum that I have saved for years. It wasn't much of a picture but if you can put up with some of the brassicas sending up seed stalks and then making sure that the pods don't break and scatter seed on the ground - some of those things are easy. Radish seed pods are tasty! Paying attention to when they are tender adds to their care but it's worth it. Shoot. If you save enough seed, there can be sprouts for your winter salad!

I was a little worried that you may have found yet another large pink tomato for me! Then, I see that the Yugoslavian is an 85 day. I can set the limit at 80 days and those varieties don't always do very good for me. Resistance! You do have one that I liked and grew for a number of years, Prudens Purple.

Your list showed me something that I didn't know: Anise Hyssop is now being called Lavender Hyssop by some of the seed companies. That's okay for me. It's not really a hyssop, as they so often point out. It is a wonderful tea herb, for me, especially in combination with lemon verbena! I saved some seed from the few plants I had last year. It self-seeds well but too often seedlings are trampled in paths or tilled into the soil. I've got reserves!

Orders going out, soon.

Steve

Radish seed pods are indeed delicious! I've also done them pickled when I have a ton, which is quite lovely -- they're a bit like mild pickled jalapeños.

You really should break your rule for the Crnkovic, Steve... f'rexample, Pruden's Purple doesn't even compare.

Steve, have you ever tried Mat-Su Express tomato?

Mat-Su Express F6 2018 Recent variety resulting from the crossing of ' Brandywine ' and ' Bloody Butcher ' in F7 in 2017, so almost stable. It was developed in order to obtain a variety with good taste qualities and especially early in northern climates (Alaska), hence its name 'Express'! Fruit red 150 to 300 grams beefsteak type, flattened at the poles and ribs at the top. Juicy beef meat with excellent flavor. Plant with great development, low potato foliage, indeterminate growth.

Oladon, Think I'll try growing Crnkovic Yugo again this year since you like it so much. I haven't grown it in awhile. Have you figured out which kinds of tomato you're planning on growing this year? I'm just starting, but have a few from last year and a few new ones.

Tomatoz, why don't you start a separate "what tomatoes are you growing in 2019" thread. That way more people would see it and you could get replies from more different people. I have my list finished for this year, and I know TreeBarb has hers done too!

Skybird

Good Heavens, TomatoZ1. That sounds like a right proper cross!

I have grown the Brandywine OTV for several seasons because it is earlier than the other Brandywines. I've grown Gary O Sena for years and Bloody Butcher, maybe even more years! (Gary O is a Brandywine and Cherokee Purple cross.)

Indeterminate and a little bigger than an Early Girl, by the looks of those numbers. Who has these Mat-Su Express seeds?

Steve

Steve, I received 10 Mat-Su Express seeds in a swap if you'd like them.

I haven't really decided yet, tomatoz1 -- other than Crnkovic and Currant (red and yellow, the second of which is on its way from Burpee now). I think I'm going to cut back on tomato varieties a bit this year from past years, and try to focus on other veggies a bit more... so I may only grow 6-7 tomato types.

Tomatoz1,

Thank you for that kind offer. It sounds like a responsibility for something new and very )appropriate for RMG.

I better not be entrusted with too much. Because of DW 's and my health, we have been taking each year pretty much month by month. I took my 100 year old father to a scheduled doctor's appointment Monday. He was sent to the hospital ... fortunately, I could have him out and home by evening. Fortunately also, that we had good driving conditions as we are 65 miles apart.

I was once entrusted with several bean varieties gathered several years earlier from someone's vacation to Africa. One variety had 2 weak seedlings emerge out of about 10 seeds that were planted. The person who sent them to me was very understanding but had never even seen that variety growing. I didn't either because those two out of 10, died before setting true leaves. Disappointing!

With something rare and very limited, I think that it would be best to allow someone more assured of a 2019 gardening season. Seed ages and those embryos weaken; perhaps I can be entrusted in the future with seed from plentiful stocks. Thank You, again.

Steve

All of my seeds are present and accounted for. I'm hoping the stored leftovers from years past are still good. Nearly constant moving over the past couple years has made "proper" storage a hard thing to do.

All the orders were placed and recived before thanksgiving so now I'm just waiting on onions to arrive in April and I never did find a reasonable source for potatoes. I usually bought them from Potato Garden down in Alamosa, but their website wasn't updated this year and you weren't able to place orders the several times I checked in October-November. Everywhere else expects me to pay a king's ransom for shipping and were sold out of the varieties I wanted by December anyhow. It looks like I might just be planting feed store spuds this year.

Your corn is beautiful Steve. We can't grow corn where we are at. We are completely surrounded by fields of it and not the good kind for eating. Its the stuff they turn into ethanol so any cross contamination (and with the nearest cornfield only a few yards away thats more or less a guarantee) would ruin my corn. Oh well, at least we have room for pumpkins now!

I've only ever planted the store-bought potatoes I had in my cabinet, Zach, so I don't know about prices, but do you know that Fedco sells potatoes? Fedco is a "good" company! They refuse to deal in any GMO products, and they even stopped carrying a few seeds because they were "associated with" Monsanto, so they were actually willing to lose money just to avoid doing business with a company that "promotes" GMOs! I don't have any idea how their prices compare to other places (their seed prices are VERY reasonable!), but if they have varieties you want and the shipping makes it doable, I very highly recommend them! I'm waiting for some seeds from them right now!

Having said all that!, I think planting store-bought--or feed store--potatoes works just fine!

Skybird

https://www.fedcoseeds.com/moose/

P.S. Fedco's take on GMOs--and Monsanto!

https://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/genetic_engineering.htm

https://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/articles/lawsuit.htm

https://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/monsanto.htm

P.P.S. The whole GMO and "integrity" thing is the reason why I now buy virtually all of my seeds from Fedco, Seed Savers, and Sand Hill!

I looked at at Fedco for potatos, but either their shipping or their unit price was higher than I was willing to pay for potatoes. The one variety they had that looked promising was "Colorado Rose" which apparently didn't pass inspection this year.

The problem is that there are very few outlets outside of New England that sell potatoes and their shipping cists increase the further you are from them. Potato Garden does the same thing, but since they are only a few hours away in the San Luis Valley, its pretty reasonable to have them ship potatoes to the Front Range. Its a shame it appears they wont be selling potatoes this year...

Another thing I look at is where the variety I'm growing comes from. I have been growing Sangre Red for several years and it has always done very well. It was developed by Colorado State University I believe and it was designed to do well in our arid climate and not-so-nutritious soil. While ones like Kennebec are a fine potato, they are a variety that hails from Maine where they get only a handful of sunny days a year and a lot more inches of rain. I don't know that I would be as pleased with the results as I am with one of our local varieties.

But we will find out this year, I may just end up surprised!

I have no idea what variety they were/are, but I have to tell you that the growing-in-the-cabinet store-bought potatoes I've managed to grow in the past (I started when I happened to find a couple I had thrown out that had started growing in the compost pile!) have been possibly the best potatoes I ever had in my life! I'm pretty sure I must have had multiple different varieties over the years, and I suspect the "real" difference is in the fact that since I'm growing them, I'm eating them very shortly after I harvest them--and they're not sitting in a warehouse for a year before I get/eat them! So I think you very possibly may "end up surprised," and that whatever variety you grow, they're going to be delicious! I only ever buy red potatoes, so don't know for sure if it would be the same for white ones, but, again, I'm pretty sure the main difference is that they're not sitting somewhere forever before they even get to the stores! I've looked at the seed potato varieties in the past, and it sure is fun to look, but between the price of the potatoes themselves and then adding the shipping, I couldn't conceivably ever grow enough potatoes to justify the cost.

Since this thread is about seeds! I don't remember exactly how you described where you're living right now, but since you're on some sort of a "nature preserve," have you ever heard of Prairie Nurseries? From what I can tell they're another "good company." They carry native wildflower and "prairie grass" seeds for all kinds of different conditions--and have them in bulk too, for large projects. I got a dozen different (small) packs that I hope to be able to plant down on the Ute Mtn. Tribal Park sometime, and got a couple packs of sweet grass, Hierochloe odorata, that I just wanted to see if I could grow some--and it took me over a year to germinate one seed! (I knew when I bought it that it was going to be difficult to germinate!) But I just thought you might be interested in the company in case you'll be doing any sort of planting or "restoration" up there!

https://www.prairienursery.com/prairie-nursery/about-us/

Skybird

I would rate home-grown potatoes right up there with home grown tomatoes. The store bought ones just don't hold a candle to them! Maybe it is the freshness, but I've stored the potatoes from my garden for a few-several weeks and they are still better. Maybe it's because they are "grown with love." That is always grandma's secret ingredient right? So I'm sure that whatever potatoes I wind up growing will be great to eat, but I'm just curious how preformance and production will hold up with "east vs west" varieties.

Yeah, so we are on a privately owned peice of land which the owners use for waterfowl and upland bird hunting. Our job is property maintenance and habitat management, which would definitely include some restoration projects. Our big task for the upcoming few seasons is going to be reducing the amount of cattails which are encroaching both inward into the open water and outward onto the uplands. I will definitely look at Prairie Nurseries, sounds like a good source for stuff to do some supplemental planting. We also have a local outfit up in Greeley called Pawnee Buttes Seed. They don't sell small "packs" of seed, but I have worked with them at my "day job" (I'm back at the Arsenal, only this time all year rather than just seasonally) and they are a fantastic company for anyone who wants to do larger projects. They aren't the cheapest, because they are small, but really awesome to work with.

Hi Zach,

When I’m talking about long term storage of (commercial) potatoes, I mean LONG term storage! For the last several years I’ve been wondering if I was right about this, so I just did a little bit of research. Commercial potatoes can be stored up to NINE MONTHS (one site said up to TEN months!) before they’re distributed to be sold retail. They use both chemicals and gases to help prevent sprouting. The reason I started wondering about it is that within the last several years I’ve been noticing more and more that the potatoes I buy are either already sprouting or starting to rot in the cabinet within a couple weeks of buying them! Since I “cook for one” I don’t use all that many, but I used to be able to keep them for at least a couple months before they’d start to grow—and it was very rare for any to rot—you definitely can’t miss a rotting potato! Is there ANYTHING that smells worse!?! In the last couple years it’s not at all unusual to have them already be turning green when I get them at the store—meaning they’re starting to grow, and since potatoes are nightshades, that’s not a good thing! And while I always had lots of them already growing to plant whenever I wanted to in the past, in recent years a lot of them are rotting before they ever start to grow—several times when I dumped out the bag at home I found one or two that were already just starting to rot! So I concluded that either they’re storing them longer, or else they’re not storing them in the proper conditions—or they’re not properly drying and “curing” them before putting them into storage! (In recent years I’ve also had insane problems with onions! Can anyone tell me where you can buy onions anymore that aren’t rotting within two weeks! When I was a kid and we grew our own we’d store them pretty much until we had the next year’s batch, so, for most of a year. Sure can’t do that with store bought onions nowadays! Half the time if I’m using them shortly after getting them, when I cut them open I find that they’re already rotting “from the inside out!” It’s maddening! Even with store bought onions you used to be able to keep them for a couple months, and just go thru every now and then and clean off the dehydrating layers of “skin!” Now the skin doesn’t dry—it rots! And, again, that must go back to the fact that they’re not properly cured in the field anymore! Just makes me mad to keep spending money on food only to throw it on the compost pile! End of rant!)

So, anyway, that’s why I commented that I think the home grown potatoes are SO much better than the store bought ones ‘cause, even if you keep them for three or four weeks, you’re still eating “fresh” potatoes—not “almost year old” ones! I think that even home grown ones, if you were to store them for 6-9 months wouldn’t be as good as if you ate them within the first month or two. And I don’t think, unless it was at a local farmer’s market, you can buy any commercial ones that would qualify as “fresh” anymore! Sad commentary on the State Of Our Food Supply nowadays! [P.S. I’m not discounting the Grown With Love theory at all! Love makes the world go round—and makes the garden grow!]

On native seeds:

Since there’s a possibility you could be doing some planting/restoration at some point, here are a few more sites you could conceivably be interested in! Back when I first started buying trees for on the Tribal Park burn areas I also started looking around for native grasses (and wildflowers) that could be planted out there to help give cover for seedling trees—and I found more sites than I thought I would! The next year I found out that they had already sown native grasses out there—and now, several years later, the grasses are doing, and spreading, very well! Still extremely difficult to get the seedling trees going out there—even with polymer!

Truth In lending! I have never bought anything from any of these sites—but they do all look like decent companies that don’t deal in GMOs—no Roundup Ready seeds on these sites!!! I’ve never compared prices on any of these sites and never checked out shipping charges! If you ever get around to doing any restoration, I suspect that if you have a “particular” seed in mind you could probably find it cheaper on some of these sites than on others—that’s why I saved them all, for possible “comparison shopping” if I ever wanted to look for “bulk quantities” for somewhere else out there!

Seeds Trust – Denver!

https://www.seedstrust.com/

Western Native Seed – Coaldale, CO

http://www.westernnativeseed.com/index.html

Great Basin Seeds – Utah

https://greatbasinseeds.com/about-great-basin-seed/

Native Seeds – Tucson, AZ

This place offers free seeds for members of the SW Indian tribes, and discounted seeds for other tribes!

https://shop.nativeseeds.org/pages/seeds

Native American Seed – Texas

This place doesn’t have anything to do with “Native Americans!” It’s about “native” seed!

http://www.seedsource.com/

Plants of the Southwest – Santa Fe/Albuquerque

This is half “regular” seed company (small packs!), and half “restoration” type bulk seeds! In the wildflowers section, small packs (200 seeds), they have LOTS of different Penstemons! They also have wildflower mixes and grasses in larger quantities.

https://plantsofthesouthwest.com/

This place is in Arvada, but they seem to be only wholesale! I don’t know if the kind of place where you are now would qualify for a wholesale account or not!

https://www.applewoodseed.com/

Also, when I was looking down my list of bookmarked “companies” for these names I just happened to notice this one! Potatoes! There’s very little info on this site except the varieties, but from a search, I’m pretty sure it’s out on the Western Slope, partway up Grand Mesa from Delta, at Orchard City! Not positive about that! [Road Trip! Take a drive out past the Dillon Pinnacles and pick them up yourself!!!]

https://potatogarden.com/index.php […but I still think growing Cabinet Potatoes—if they don’t rot first!—are REALLY good!]

Oh! BTW. I think Pawnee Buttes Seed was one of the sites I found back when I was looking for bulk native seeds—the name sounds familiar, but I can’t find it in my bookmarks right now! Thought maybe I put it in my “trees” folder, but it’s not there either—but I bet I still have it somewhere!

Sounds like you’re a Busy Boy these days—yeah, yeah, I know you think you’re old—you’re not! A Day Job, and a “Night Job” must keep you going most of the time! Good thing you’re NOT Olde! Since I know you’re doing things you love I’m gonna assume you’re happy even if you are crazy busy!

Skybird

My Seed Order came last week from Osborne. Included was most of the onion seed. Some seed will go into the soil mix and into the unheated greenhouse immediately, for this year's transplants.

North American potatoes of Native Americans? Is that circling back?

There is a story about one variety. What is called the Ozette:

http://potatogenome.berkeley.edu/nsf5/potato_biology/history.php

Steve

I tried onions from seed once, Steve. I failed miserably. One variety had about 50% germination, most of which promptly died. The others had much better germination, but most never got bigger than blades of grass. Virtually all the ones that I did plant out bolted. Now I just order plants from Dixondale to save myself the headache. That is an interesting story of the Ozette potato. I would presume it has it's origins in Spanish colonists, but the idea that there was a vast network of trade amongst native peoples on this continent well before Columbus arrived is well founded and documented. How else would people living on the northern coast of the Atlantic have gotten corn which was domesticated in central Mexico?

You are probably onto something there Skybird. I had an apple at lunch yesterday and the sticker said B.C. Canada. Now, I know the ocean moderates temperatures, but even so I'm pretty sure apple season in the northern hemisphere ended a while ago... I have had potatoes in my kitchen for the better part of four months now and they are still good. To be honest I did expect to pull them out of the drawer and have an oozing, stinking mess on my hands. Surprise, surprise however, they are still in good shape. I think air circulation pays a role as well. If you buy the pre-bagged spuds, I've noticed they tend to get icky in those bags pretty fast. I store mine either out of the bag or in a much more breathable mesh one. I think you are right though, long term storage before they even hit the produce racks definitely makes for sub-prime product that rots quicker and tastes far worse. Onions I don't usually have a problem with, though, I go through them pretty quickly. I could probably buy a bag of onions a week depending on how much cooking I'm doing. Our food supply is definitely in poor shape. Big ag and chemical companies having hijacked it have thrown quality and care out the window in favor of maximum profits at any cost. The effect this has had on not only on our food supply and personal well being, but our environment as well is disastrous. Truly is a sad state of affairs.

What an awesome list of seed sources Skybird, thank you! I am definitely excited about doing some restoration sites out here and I've been on a pretty much constant lookout for good seed vendors in order to do some stuff. The guy who managed this place before me (who was my supervisor out at RMA) wan't big on the whole "diversity" thing. Even in our restoration work at the Refuge, he was perfectly content with monocultures as long as it was a native species. To me a monoculture does not good habitat nor ecosystem make, regardless of the origin of the plant. So it will be fun to add some diversity to this place. Right now most of the pastures are dominated by slender wheatgrass, which is a fine plant, but with somewhere around half a brazillion grass species native to the high plains to chose from, I don't see the purpose in limiting yourself (beyond cost of course). Including more forbs and shrubs is also one of my big ticket items for out here. We have some awesome patches of prairie sunflower (which have been great for attracting some HUGE flocks of white crowned and tree sparrows as well as goldfinches this winter) but I am envisioning swaths of bee plant, Mexican hat, coreopsis and milkweed... Hey, a guy can dream right?

Busy, yes. But I prefer it that way. There was an "old timer" in my National Guard unit who said his reason for staying in was "you can't bury a moving body." Sounds like pretty solid advice if you ask me. And you're absolutely right, I do love what I'm doing so it's (usually) hard to complain. I just turned the corner to 30 last Saturday, does that make me "olde" yet ;).

I got an Ozette seed potato from a stand at the Denver Farmer's Market a few years back -- they made me promise to plant it, but unfortunately, it didn't grow for me. I haven't been back to the weekend market since then, so I'm not sure if that vendor is still attending.

Happy Birthday, Zach, you young whippersnapper!

Thanks Oladon. After spending all day yesterday chopping dead cattail stalks, I don't feel like much of a "whippersnapper" haha!