Seed Keepers

[Anders Skarlind <Anders.Skalman@telia.com>]

Allan, I have some old seed. I email you off-list 
about that. But I want to talk about this 
variety. I bought seed from Pintetree garden 
seeds about 10 years ago. (They don't carry it 
any longer and besides their seed portions are 
small.) I grew it and noted the fine-fingered 
featherlike leaves. Then a friend of mine took 
care of about 10 roots and grew seed from them. 
(I had other turnips/rutabagas to grow seed from 
at home. As they crosspollinate, only one variety 
can be grown at one location at a time.) The seed 
my friend produced looked good. But whne I sowed 
it out, it produced what looked like ordinary 
rutabagas. The leaves were also more or less 
ordinary rutabaga leves. I suspected a crossing 
at my friends seedgrowing, but he was positive 
that hadn't occurred. And he is a person I trust 
when he says so. So I wonder if they can 
degenerate somehow. Or if my memory failed.
Anders

At 00:45 2008-03-02, you wrote:
> Anyone have any gilfeather seed or know the
> whereabouts of any? Fedco is sold out. Thanks
> -Allan
>
> Feco says:
>   Gilfeather® Turnip (85 days) Brassica napus This
> heirloom has come down in folklore as a turnip
> but is really a rutabaga, big-knobbed and bulky.
> Small hairy tendrils grow on its light green
> skin. Either developed or discovered by John
> Gilfeather (1865-1944) of Wardsboro, VT, in the
> late 1800s. Gilfeather, a lanky secretive
> bachelor, is said to have cut the tops and
> bottoms off his turnips, so that no one else
> could propagate them. Nevertheless, some seeds
> escaped to a neighbor who gave them to market
> growers William and Mary Lou Schmidt, who
> salvaged, then commercialized, the variety. It
> has developed a loyal New England following, to
> wit, "Gilfeather is the reason for the order,"
> stated Judy Simon-Bouton of White River Junction,
> VT. Gilfeather is sweeter and later to mature
> than other turnips, not woody even at softball
> size, and tastes better after frost. Listed on
> Slow Foods' Ark of Taste. Enjoy its tender mild
> spineless greens as well as its sweet white flesh.
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