March: Seeing our Plans Through

March 1, 2017

At our March meeting, we sowed our spring crops:  radishes, a mess of different peas, and a bonus:

Seeds of Bachelor's Buttons, collected off of our plants from last year.  We talked a little about saving seed from our plants, so that we have something to grow for the next year.








We were recently gifted some lettuce seeds from Slow Food's Ark of Taste.  This was timely, given our discussion about saving seeds.

This variety, Grandpa Admire's butterhead, used to be grown in a family garden, but has almost been lost forever.  Food varieties can (and do) go extinct, if no one grows them any more.  This is happening a LOT, especially the home garden varieties that taste wonderful but do not harvest easily with modern equipment, or do not ship well.  They are not planted any more, given our current harvesting and distribution methods.   These seeds were collected and given to Seed Savers Exchange in 1977, and are named after the person who grew the lettuce, George Admire, a civil war veteran.  His granddaughter donated them.  

It is now sown in our garden!  I'd better go check on them, actually... I don't want to miss out on the opportunity for our club to literally taste history.

We also built a trellis, weeded, and tended our compost- a student thought (rightly so) that it was too dry and she added a little water to the mix.  I'm so glad I have so many helpers keeping things running smoothly!