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seedkeepers - Re: [Seed Keepers] Gilfeather Turnip

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  • From: Anders Skarlind <Anders.Skalman@telia.com>
  • To: Seed Keepers <seedkeepers@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Seed Keepers] Gilfeather Turnip
  • Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2008 01:31:56 +0100

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:
GilfeatherĀ® 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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