Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Re: Baker Seeds

>  will try to go to his spring festival and check 
> the operation.

In that case give the fellow my regards.  First, he is a clear and vocal 
advocate for OP seeds recognizing and preaching (as so few do either, more's 
the 
pit) that hybirds and GMO's were specifically bred to do well with chemical 
agriculture and old heirloom seeds require a different cultivation.

I was keen to try all of those colored carrots last year but the typical 
offering was 100 or less seeds for a large price.  I'm not that good at 
growing 
carrots and needed ore.  Baker's stated a minimum of 700 to 900 seeds 
(depending 
on variety) but the package was more like 5000 to 7000.   The seeds were 
ungraded and so all weren't viable, but hey, at that rate they don't need to 
be.

Among the squashes and melons I got to try a lot of things I'd never heard of 
like the Plum Granny and Tiger melons,  both of which are bland but worked 
really well stuffing them full of raspberries, strawberries, and 
blackberries.  
I managed to get a pint of sees of each by season's end.   Two vines of the 
Queensland's Blue squashes rambled over hundreds of square feet and made a 
great 
heap of squashes we are still eating.  They keep like stones.

Since you already know those folks, let me recommend also:

www.italianseedandtool.com

Highly recommended very small family business importing Italian seeds.  Last 
season I was keen on having a big crop of savoy cabbages for the market 
garden 
and all I could find were small, expensive, packages of hybrid varieties I'd 
already tried and didn't so much like.  So I bumbled into this outfit that 
deals with specialized Intalian seeds, from Italy no less, packages written 
only 
in Italian with interiestingly different information than we are use to (for 
example, the seed is dated by the year was grown, not the year it was 
"packaged 
for" [nudge, nod, wink]).  THe results were stark using these seed but the 
same methods in the same locations I'd used for cabbage before:

 www.geocities.com/luthierie/savoy.jpg

The seeds were $2.50 for more than 3000 seeds.
--------------------------------

I'm trying to locate some Alpine strawberry seeds of the yellow or white 
variety.  Pintree has them but only in packages of 40 seeds.  Anyone know of 
anyone else offering them?