Author: Loralea

Are you saving your own garden seeds?

Concerning all the hubbub about seeds, patents and who owns what; wouldn’t it be fabulous to create more localized seed distribution and sharing? With that in mind, we need to understand more about the science of saving seeds, how pollen is moved from plant to plant (is the plant self fertile? pollinated by insects or the wind?) There are lots of good books to help Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth is fantastic. And you may remember this post for my easy technique for saving tomato seeds or you were inspired by this unique idea on NPR about a seed lending program at a public library in Colorado.

Do the plants need to be isolated? If you cover them to keep out pollinators you will need to do the pollination by hand, sometimes simply shaking the plant might work or do your best insect imitation by using a cotton swab or tiny soft brush to collect pollen from one flower and spread to others. Can you tell the difference between male and female flowers? Oh the things to  discover. Back to Erica at Northwest Edible Life for Sex in the garden!

You don’t want to save a squash seed and realize months later, when you are cooking up the harvest of squash from that seed, that the plant had cross pollinated with another variety creating a hybrid that is not delicious. (Yes I speak from experience, the squash looked like an acorn but the inside was stringy like spaghetti squash. We did eat it, with lots of butter, since it was the vegetable that I cooked for dinner, but what was leftover went to the chickens. (they didn’t complain)

That is a mistake you only want to make once. Although I have had some other seed failures, peppers that never produced fruit, and radishes that didn’t look right. Was it a seed saving problem or a growing misstep?

I know I wouldn’t want to share my flops with friends. I do have a few seeds that I have been growing out for years, Jacobs Cattle Beans for one, the Teton de Venus tomato  and the sexy Sivri Biber chili in this photo. The Sivri Biber is a flavorful chili, delicious sliced thin (HOT) and topping scrambled eggs, on a slice of pizza, or dried and crushed and added where ever you need some tasty heat.

I would be happy to share some of the Sivri Biber chili seeds with you, leave  a comment below, email me your address and I will get them to you asap so you can get them planted. I hope I don’t run out!

Why is it called Valentines Day?

I agree it is wonderful to have a special day to focus on love so where did this celebration originate? Are you ready?

February 14 is the feast day of Saint Valentine. Like many of the saints it is a gruesome story of martyrdom, here is a cleaned up version from the Catholic.org website.

“St. Valentine was a Priest, martyred in 269 at Rome and was buried on the Flaminian Way. He is the Patron Saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, young people. He is represented in pictures with birds and roses.” Excerpted from Catholic.org

Where we came up with candy hearts that say “be mine” or the newer version “text me” is such a big step from the story of Saint Valentine, who is there to support us in our time of need. It helps to know we are not alone in our struggles towards love and happiness.

Although, I agree with whoever dreamt it up — chocolate does help in times of need.

Happy Valentines Day to all lovers, travelers, fainters, bee-keepers, young and old!

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” –Nelson Henderson

One of the pleasures of winter is eating roasted chestnuts. Sometimes we can find them fresh at the local market. Several years ago there was a family growing and selling them locally, but they retired from nut growing and I don’t know what happened with their trees.

So I was happy this winter when I saw a posting from Dunbar Gardens in the Skagit Valley, saying they had Chestnuts for sale and were willing to ship us a couple pounds.

Once they arrived Rick and I rationed them out, roasting a few to eat in the afternoon or evening. As you probably know chestnuts should be stored in a cool place, they are not like other nuts that can cure and hold for a year or more. They must be stored in a cool humid place, cooked before eating and used in a reasonable length of time- before they mold or dry up. We put ours in a perforated bag in the vegetable compartment of the refrigerator.

One afternoon when we were snacking on the nuts, I mentioned to Rick that it would be nice to have our own trees. He reminded me that we’d planted a couple back in the late 80’s and they didn’t survive. And so we discussed planting them again.

Well, the Chestnuts must have agreed, the next time Rick pulled out the bag there were a few seeds with sprouts! There are now three of them growing in a plastic pot in our kitchen.

How long until we have our own nuts to harvest? Hopefully, in this lifetime. We’ll invite you over for a tasting!

Do you have a well loved kitchen tool or gadget, one that would be hard to live without?

One of my early home investments was to purchase a Kitchen-Aid mixer. I had used one at my first restaurant job and found it to be a workhorse of a tool.

Rick and I had moved to Leavenworth for the winter to work and save up money to fund our farm habit. Okay, my desire at that moment was not on making the land or tractor payment. I used that first paycheck earned working at a pie and sandwich shop, to buy the mixer.

Purchased in 1983, it is the same machine we have now. At that time you could also purchase an attachment kit that contained a meat grinder, a shredder, and a fruit or veggie strainer. They all seemed like necessary items so they went in the shopping cart along with the mixer. Each of them have been used, used up, but never replaced.

Everyone who came to our early sausage fests and the early farm workshops had a chance to push stuff through the grinder. Who knows how much ground meat that grinder produced?  Pigs, lambs, goats, it is always up to the task, except for the time we wanted to make hamburger from our old milk cow, there was so much sinew we gave up on that task! (and started dreaming about getting a commercial meat grinder)

Each fall the veggie and fruit strainer comes out for tomato processing season and later for getting the peelings out of the applesauce. The roto shredder wore out from grating hard aged cheese, it stripped the metal where it attached to the hub!

This old Kitchen-aid mixer has been a powerful helper in my life. Yes, it seems to be temperamental, sometimes it just won’t work. Wait a while and it comes back to life. I won’t trade it in for a new one, even though she has a lot of rotations under her belt. I have heard that the new Kitchen-aid mixers are not made as well and cannot holdup to the action that this old girl has endured.

What kitchen tool do you have that shapes your dining experiences?