Seeds

One of the more depressing graphical images I've seen lately, via National Geographic. If you follow the link, you'll find great images of endangered chickens and rare cattle breeds and diverse potato varieties (I'd like to know the story behind the naming of "Makes The Daughter In Law Cry" potato). One positive is the dated nature of the data. 1983 is a few years back, and there's been a real resurgence in valuing, preserving and cultivating heritage and heirloom vegetable and fruit varieties, as the National Geographic's feature article points out.

We save seeds ourselves, propagating heirloom tomato varieties, beans and peas, and radishes and garlic. The germination rates of our saved seeds are strong, so we must be doing something right. Seeds we buy generally come from the Comox Valley Growers and Seed Savers Society's annual Seedy Saturday sale, usually held in March. We purchase much of our supply from the stall operated by Salt Spring Seeds. They have a great range of heritage and heirloom varieties, and their seeds have high germination rates.

The cool weather this spring and early summer has been great for lettuce. Drunken Woman lettuce is an Italian butterhead heirloom; the seeds were purchased from Salt Spring Seeds. We have bountiful supplies of amazing lettuce right now. According to my lengthy research (yeah Wikipedia), the Ancient Egyptians considered lettuce an aphrodisiac. My factoid for the day. (And anyone who dismisses Wikipedia as a source should read the recently featured article on Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises - that's a quality piece of encyclopaedic writing.) Now we just need summer to kick on for our tomatoes to catch up.