Just In Time For Christmas

 

My package of seeds from the Annual Canadian Autumn Seed Exchange arrived right before Christmas.  Perfect timing!  The host of the seed exchange, Nicky North, is very organized and somehow always manages to grant several items from each participant's wish list as well as sending unique surprises.  From my wishlist this year, I received Lemon Bergamot, edible Chrysanthemum, Kalibos cabbage, Scarlet kale, and a few tomato varieties.  In the "surprise" department were sorghum, Pigeon peas, and several varieties of corn, including Floriani and Painted Mountain (both flint, both beautiful).

 

In addition to receiving the ACASE seeds, a generous soul in a seed-trading group online offered to send me some Mémé de Beauce tomato seeds.  A bit about this variety (description from Terre Promise): 

 

In 1995, a carpenter found a bag of about 200 seeds in the attic of an abandoned house, where no one had lived for several years already, in Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce. The neighbors claimed that this house hadn’t had any garden in well over 60 years. Mrs. Gérard Parent, to whom they were given, tried to get them to grow; only three germinated. From those three initial plants originate all the current Mémé de Beauce plants found in Quebec.

 

The following are varieties received from this year's ACASE exchange:

 

Flowers 

Bachelor Buttons – “Chocolate” and “Tall Mix” 

Calendula – Festiva Gitana 

Chrysanthemum – Edible Shungiku 

Sunflower – "Little Becka/Elegance" and "Teddy Bear" 

Verbascum – "Milkshake" 

Zinnia - orange

 

Shungiku Chrysanthemum - West Coast Seeds

 

Herbs

Feverfew

Lemon Bergamot

 

Miscellaneous

Cowpea – Blue Goose

Garlic – Georgian Fire

Pigeon Pea

Sorghum – Broomcorn (Technically edible, but apparently better used as an ornamental or a pollen barrier between crops.)

 

Georgian Fire garlic - Garlic Brothers

 

VEGETABLES

Beans 

The Prince (bush)

Velour (bush)

Blue Lake (snap/pole)

 

Cabbage 

Earliana (green) 

Kalibos (red)

 

Kalibos cabbage - BC Eco Seed Co-op

 

Cauliflower

Snowball

 

Corn

Butter and Sugar

Early Sunglow

Floriani (flint)

Painted Mountain (primarily flint)

 

Floriani fint corn - Great Lakes Staple Seeds

 

Greens/Leafy

Kale – "Scarlet" and "Red Russian"

Orach – Purple Leaf

 

Squash  

Hubbard

Pink Hubbard

Table King Acorn

 

Tomatoes

Azoycka

Big Mama (hybrid/red paste)

Blush

Cherokee Purple

Dad’s Sunset

Delicious Beefsteak

Dwarf Champion

Dwarf Golden Heart

Green Giant

Green Pineapple

Lemon Drop

Lucky Tiger

 

Lucky Tiger - Baker Creek Seeds

Pantano Romanesco

Pink Passion (dwarf)

San Marzano

Savignac/Dufresne (Canadian heirloom)

 

Savignac/Dufresne - Ark of Taste

Sicilian Saucer

Speckled Roman

Sungold (orange cherry, hybrid)

Sunrise Bumblebee

White Wonder

Yellow Canary

 

16 Days to Go

   I looked at the clock around 8:00am and was surprised by the time, as it was still quite dark.  We're in the time of year when you can be puttering around the house and have no sense of whether it's 4:00AM or 8:00AM.  It's disorienting if you have to be on a schedule, and can be cozy if you don't.  I went outside just before 9:00am to take this (fuzzy) picture.  R. literally has the days counted down until December 21st, when the daylight will start to increase again.  I am not minding the short days as much this year.  Perhaps, compared to everything else there is to be stressed and fatigued by lately, darkness in the morning is barely registering.

   The weather for the last week has been unseasonably mild, with most overnight temps above zero, and daytime temps between 2 and 8 degrees.  It was 6 degrees out at 9:00AM this morning.

 

   On November 22nd, I decided to try my hand at growing micro tomatoes.  I planted 4 Orange Hat seeds and 5 Tiny Tim.  This picture was taken this morning. 

 

   In recent weeks, I've done three tomato seed trades with people online.  It's a benign and relatively inexpensive vice!  The new varieties I received are:

Dwarf Payette

Dwarf Red Viper

Mary Reynold's

Kozula 24

Neves Azorean Red

Mrs. Bot's Italian Giant

Hubert's Pink 

   Someone also sent some Dwarf Purple Heart, which I was grateful for, as I only have a few seeds of that variety in my stash.

   Later this month, my package from the Annual Canadian Autumn Seed Exchange will arrive.  Looking forward to that!  It is always fun to see what comes back.  Some of my favourite varieties of flowers and vegetables to grow are ones I discovered through this exchange.

   

 

 

Off Topic: The AndyVent Calendar Returns!

 

The annual AndyVent Calendar fundraiser for Feed Nova Scotia has launched!

Each $5 donated = 1 entry for a chance to win the entire 'calendar' of prizes and/or one of the runner-up Prizes.

Entries can be purchased through GoFundMe, PayPal, or by e-transfer.  

The fundraiser is launched in November, though officially kicks off December 1st. That is when prizes begin to be revealed daily on the AndyVent calendar (which can be seen on the main website, Facebook, and Instagram).  

Prizes are generously donated by businesses in the HRM.  Entries can be purchased by people living outside of Halifax (outside of Canada, for that matter).   If the winner lives outside the area, they can gift the prizes to a friend or family member in Nova Scotia.

This fundraiser relies on word-of-mouth promotion through social media, email, water cooler chat, etc.  Thank you for sharing!  

For more information about "AndyVent Calendar 7", see the Facebook page or AndyVent website.

(Image from AndyVent's instagram page.)

 

Hoarfrost and Bohemian Waxwings

 

   It snowed ~2 inches overnight, and judging from the crunchy top layer, the snowfall was followed by a dose of freezing rain.   It was -5 degrees this morning, wonderfully foggy, and everything was covered with hoarfrost.  So pretty.  I waited until the fog had cleared, around 11:00am, before taking pictures.

   Yesterday, I noticed a handful of Bohemian Waxwings in the trees on our street.  I love it when they visit, and usually hear their trill before I see them.  This morning, the number of waxwings had at tripled.  Hopefully, they will linger in the area for a few more days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garlic Patch 2020

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's a sunny, cool day  (8 degrees C at 12:30pm).  I started on the garlic patch around 8:30am, when it was still frosty out.  The soil in this garden is heavy on clay, and it was wet from the rain we had a few days ago.  Plucking weeds and working in cold, frosty, sticky soil...uhg!  It made the hot chocolate I enjoyed once I'd finished planting taste that much sweeter.

These are my garden shoes, after I'd pulled most of the gumbo off!

 

 

The patch this year is in the South garden.  Planted are:

Brown Tempest (Glazed Purple Stripe) - small cloves, planted in a rectangular plastic container at the front of the patch.

Northern Quebec (Porcelain) –   NQ bulbils (tiny, like grains of rice) in a round plastic pot at the front of the patch.  Also 3 rows of cloves.  Many of them were “fused”/double cloves.   The NQ wrappers are white.

Central Siberian (Marbled Purple Stripe) – 1 row, plus a few planted around the plastic containers. Small cloves.

Baba Franchuk’s  (Rocambole) - 7 rounds collected at the end of this summer.  The wrappers on the bulbs of Baba Franchuk's were so thin/fragile that they fell apart and exposed the garlic when I separated them, so I didn’t plant the cloves.  The rounds were planted in the same row as the Kiev cloves.

Kiev (Rocambole) – 5 cloves from the solitary bulb that made it through the summer!  Planted in the same row as the BF rounds.

Red Russian (Marbled Purple Stripe) - 5 rows of cloves.

 

 

 

The garlic patch was covered by some leaf and grass clippings saved from last Fall.  More mulch  is needed, so hopefully we can mow the grass and fallen leaves this week.