Brown Envelope Seeds

Growing onions from seed

2012-01-11T01:07:00.000-08:00

There are a number of advantages of growing onions from seed. The first is minimising the chances of bringing in a nasty disease. The second is having a larger choice of varieties and the third is cost. A packet of onion seed contains as many potential onions as 2kg of sets and is a lot cheaper. However they do need to be started earlier than sets, to produce large onions.

The seeds should be sown between now and the end of February and kept between 10-15°C (50-59°F) which is a bit warmer than outside. They can make use of propagator space before it is needed for tomatoes etc., or started on a sunny window sill. Sow four or five seeds per module in damp seed compost and grow each module as a clump. This is called multi-planting. Imagine each module growing on as a bunch and becoming a week's supply of onions. When planted out the clumps of bulbs will push themselves apart as they expand. There is a nice picture of multi-planted onions here http://tinyfarmblog.com/onions-from-seed/ Water module trays carefully, as onions don't like to be over-watered, and it may cause damping off, or death. They can be moved out of the propagator once they are up and growing, and at a time when it will be needed for other things. The seedlings can be hardened off in a greenhouse or cloche before planting outside in March of April. Onions like a sunny bed which is well drained and fertile but without too much nitrogen. If your soil is soggy you will not get good results and will need to add organic matter and grit to make it drain well, or raise the onions up on a ridge, or raised bed. When planted out, the modules can be 8" (20cm) apart which makes hoeing between them practical and hand weeding close to the plants is easier than if they are in rows, without enough space between them, for a hoe to pass. Onions do not compete well with weeds and will be easily swamped, resulting in small onions. High humidity in weedy onion patches also encourages diseases like powdery mildew. Some gardens have a really nasty onion disease called White Rot which causes a white fungal growth on the bottom of the onion. The spores live for years in the soil so if you have this disease you really can't grow onions.

Harvesting onions in clumps is easy, with one hand for each clump and about 50 clumps a 50lb crop can be harvested in a few minutes. This should be done as soon as the leaves begin to go yellow and the tops fall over. Then they need to be dried. Drying onions well is crucial to keeping well. Laying them out on a piece of plastic, one deep, in a greenhouse or polytunnel works. Making them into braids and hanging them up is even better, but is more time consuming. It can take several weeks for onions to dry properly. At this point a lot of their skins will fall off easily and they will be nice and shiny. Then they need to go in a cool but not damp place. I move them to our unheated 'back kitchen' where they can remain good until April or May.

To save your own onion seed select your best forty onions after harvest. Set them aside and only eat the ones that go soft. When you have twenty left, replant them in the ground in the greenhouse or tunnel about 1' (30cm) apart. This should be done in January or February. They will flower the following summer and produce seed ready to harvest in September. When it is ready to harvest the black seeds will start falling out of the flower heads. They can then be cut off and dried on a piece of plastic in the greenhouse. Tun the heads over every now and then to ensure they dry on all sides. Rubbing the heads will make the seed fall out when it is dry. Twenty onions will give you enough seed for all your friends and neighbours for several years. Onions will cross pollinate with other onions but not with leeks or anything else. The seed will keep for two or three years.

West Cork Artisan Food Awards

2011-11-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

Brown Envelope Seeds has been nominated for the West Cork Artisan Food Awards. We are so excited. What would we do with €5,000? Suggestions please. The photos are of our cat and some kiwanos.

Party Time

2011-11-12T06:59:00.000-08:00

We celebrated the arrival of the 2012 Brown Envelope Seeds catalogue and calendar at the opening of Sonia Caldwell's exhibition of paintings last night ( Friday 11th of November) at the Riverside Cafe in Skibbereen. The exhibition was opened by horticulturist Kitty Scully of RTE's 'How to create a garden'. We made it our Christmas party and stayed on for a delicious meal. Thanks to all at the Riverside that made it a great evening. Both the calendar and catalogue are illustrated with Sonia's watercolours of vegetables and their flowers. The calendar is available directly from Soniasoniacaldwell@eircom.net, and the catalogue is available from seeds@brownenvelopeseeeds.com and the seeds are available from www.brownenvelopeseeds.com

Caoimhe
Jacinta French and Eimer with Don Pollard.
The Brown Envelope Seeds team.Ruth Bulough and Mike Sweeney
Paul McCormack of Woodkerne Nurseries and Tom Atkins
Sonia, Eamon, Caoimhe and Ailbhe (hope I have spelt them correctly)
Joy Larkcom and Kitty Scully

2012 Catalogue Cover Girl

2011-11-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

The 2012 catalogue is going to print this week. It will be the most beautiful one yet with this painting of the Crimson Flowered Broad Bean by Sonia Caldwell on the cover.

Sonia is producing a Brown Envelope Seed calendar this year. To get one of these you can email Sonia directly at soniacaldwell(at)eircom.net They will also be for sale at all the best garden centres.

I love the story of how the Crimson flowered Broad Bean was saved from extinction by a Miss Cutbush who gave four seeds to the Heritage Seed Library in 1978. There is a great review of it by independent plant breeder, blogger and musician Rebsie Fairholm here. I see it as a symbol of survival, and of our biodiverse and global heritage of garden varieties. It occurred to me during the year that vegetables divide up into groups according to their ethnic origins and by the time of year they are sown. Well sort of, so the catalogue is arranged in these groups which I have given names like the 'woodlanders' and the 'fertile crescenters'. It is a bit like the way they move all the things around in the supermarket, so that you see things you might ordinarily miss.

The Crimson Flowered Broad Bean had a good year here. It seemed perfectly happy with the the cool dry spring followed by the cool and relatively dry summer. The critical part of broad bean seed growing is when chocolate spot hits. If the leaves blackened by the fungus lie on the pods they transmit the fungus to them and the pods begin to rot marking the beans inside and in come cases causing them to rot. We harvest the plants whole, as soon as it chocolate spot hits and hang the plants up to dry. Dry weather makes it a lot easier to get the crop in without damage. It takes us about 3 square metres to grow a kg of broad bean seed and the Crimson Flowered broad bean yielded a little better than the Bowlands Beauty even though it was on a less fertile patch. That is a about 3.5T/Ha, I think.

Beef

2011-10-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

We have beef for sale at the moment. Every year we fatten a few heifers and sell some of the beef directly from the farm. This year the heifers came from the farm of Con and Magdalena Burns in Union Hall. This is Con below, selling his potatoes at Skibbereen Farmers Market.

And this is the bunch last May.
They spend the winter in the barn, eating silage, lying on straw and making compost for the gardens at Brown Envelope Seeds.
Finally they go to Walsh's, a local abattoir and butcher.
Price list for beef collected from the farm or delivered to Skibbereen Farmer's Market:

Sides €4/kg dead weight, plus butchering €150

10kg box of beef €100 containing approximately

2 striploin steak .4kg

1 ribroast 2.0kg

1 sirloinsteak .5kg

1 stewing steak .5kg

1 roundroast 1.2kg

1 round steak .5kg

2 bags beef pieces .9kg

8 bags mince 4.0kg

Price for individual pieces

Rib roasts

Fillets @ €33/kg

Striploin @ €22/kg

Sirloin @ €15.50 /kg

Round steak @ €11.80/kg

Round roas @ €11.80 /kg

Rib roasts @ €11.80/kg

Stewing steak @ €10 /kg

Stewing beef @ €10 /kg

Mince @ €10/kg

Growing Quinoa: Feedback please

2011-10-09T19:42:00.000-07:00

A young neighbour of mine, Oisin Coakey is starting his final year in agriculture in CIT. He is hoping to do a project on quinoa and would like to hear from other people who have tried growing it. So please let us know how you got on if you grew it. Here is a summary of my experience with it.

Quinoa, Chenopodium quinoa, is a small grain crop from South America. It is in the same family as spinach and beet, and is even more closely related to the weed Fat Hen or Lamb's Quarters, Chenopodium album, which which it can cross. It was domesticated in the Andes several thousand years ago. It is known there as 'the mother of all grains'. It is a hardy annual crop that is tolerant of both low temperatures and low rainfall. It grows from the coast to altitudes over 10,000 feet.

It is valued for its high protein content and the quality of the protein, which contains a complete balance of amino acids for the human diet. It is as good a source of protein for babies, as milk powder, and as it is not a cereal, it is gluten free. The leaves can also be eaten as salad or cooked like spinach.

Quinoa seedlings in May 2010

I have been growing small patches of quinoa for three years now. The first variety I tried, in 2009, was Temuco, which I chose from the Real Seeds catalogue, on the grounds that the heads stood up to bad weather better than other varieties. In 2010 I grew a larger patch of Temuco and a few plants of another variety, Red Head, which I got from Adaptive seeds in Oregon. Red Head had been selected for open heads that stood up to damp weather, by Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seeds. This year I got some seed from Kai Schulze Boeckenhoff, in Ballydehob. He has been growing quinoa for several years from multi coloured seed he originally got in the healthfood shop. I chose his variety this year as I found it difficult to get the awful tasting saponins off the Temuco. Kai said that he removed the saponins simply by washing the seeds in water. So, I am looking forward to seeing if his cleans up more easily than the Temuco.
Quinoa in June 2010

Like its relative Fat Hen, quinoa grows like a weed. It is almost indistinguishable from it when it is young. I grew it in rows about a foot apart and thinned the plants to about an inch apart. They could have been thinned a lot more. In 2010 it was sown on the 9th of April but it was a bit later in 2011, I think, but I forgot to record the date.

Quinoa in July 2010
Quinoa August 2010

Quinoa can cross with fat hen and I think some of the chunky looking plants on the left above were hybrids. They had more branched stems like Fat Hen and were very vigorous.

2010 harvest of quinoa variety Red Head

I harvest quinoa when I see the birds starting to do it. I left the Red Head a bit too long and the birds got a lot of the seed.
2010 harvest of quinoa variety Temuco

We got the Temuco in in fine weather, tied it in bundles and let if finish drying in the Poly tunnel. We threshed it by running it through the shredder and then winnowing. The Temuco yielded over 2kg from a bed about 8sqm. I think that works out at 2.5T/ha Given that a 1kg bag in the health food shop costs €6.92 this could be a valuable alternative crop for Ireland if mechanised harvesting and removal of the saponins from the seed coat were possible.

I haven't found an easy way easy way to remove the saponins from quinoa seeds yet. I have toasted it on a pan until it starts to pop like popcorn and then rubbed it in pestle and mortar, simulating the process used in the Andes of heating it and then dancing barefoot on the grains in a stone basin. Yellow dust accumulates and can be removed by sieving the seeds. This removes a lot but it must still be rinsed a good deal while cooking, several changes of water will pretty much remove the rest. Alternatively, soaking the seeds in an alkaline solution before cooking, with several changes of water also works. For an alkaline solution I have used bicarbonate of soda and wood ashes both of which worked better than plain water but it still took a lot of rinsing.

Innovative 'no dig' method from Austrailia

2011-09-11T02:26:00.000-07:00

An old Italian gentleman lived alone in Wonthaggi (Victoria) wanted to plant
his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard.
His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man
wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty sad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my
tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot.
I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy
to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.
Love,
Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Papa,
Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried.
Love,
Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, The Piranha task force from melbourne and local police arrived and dug up
the vegie garden without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man
and left.
A couple of days later the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Papa,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now.
That's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love you,
Vinnie

Does size matter? Newton Wonder Seedlings

2011-08-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I grew about 10 apple seedlings from Newton Wonder pips. Now as I am sure you know, apples do not breed true from pips and each seedling is a unique 'variety'. In fact apple varieties, like potato varieties, are clones. It is supposed to be very rare to get an edible apple from a random seedling, so I stuck these seedlings behind a bit of fence on the side of the road and forgot about them. I saw there were a few apples last year but the crows got to them before me. Mike picked one from each of three trees recently and we were pleasantly surprised. The two on the right were a bit sour but might improve on storage like their mother. The one on the left was crisp sweet and tasty. It was small, but does size matter? It has been named John Hope.

Tomatoes 2011

2011-08-21T00:13:00.000-07:00

Inspite of savage balckbirds, half the polyunnel blowing away, and a crap summer we have a pretty interesting selection of tomatoes. As always the Tumbler was the first tomato to ripen here this year. Even in a rubbish summer, this little fellow produces ripe fruit outside in June. We grew some Tumblers outside in pots where they look pretty and provide a passing snack. They are really delicious when left to fully ripen which happens a few days later than they turn red.Below are a selection of the polytunnel tomatoes. The new (to us) varieties, came from Jean Perry of Glebe Gardens. These are Chocolate Stripe, Paul Robeson, (not in the picture because we ate them all) Ananas Noir, Federle and Vintage wine. The others are old favourites whose seeds we had run out of.

I really like both Paul Robeson and Chocolate Stripe, which are red/black beefsteak varieties. Like Black Crimea and Black Russian they seem to manage good flavour, even in cool sunless summers.

School Garden

2011-08-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

I got these photos from Fionnuala Fallon today. They are of her kids' school garden in Blessington. It includes some of our seeds, Gortahook cabbage, Daniel O'Rourke peas and Hungaria Black Seeded sunflowers.
My earliest memory is of standing under the clothes line in the garden and the thing that all gardeners seem to have in common is memories of a garden as a small child.
So, if you have any small people around, get them out there a little bit. It could be life changing.

Home Bred Potatoes

2011-07-10T23:00:00.001-07:00

The central row of potatoes in the picture below is of three varieties I kept from a grow out of seedlings from Nepalese potatoes someone brought back to Ireland a few years ago. The mother plants were big and sprawled all over the garden. We didn't like the taste much, but they had terrific blight resistance. I blogged about them last year when we harvested them in the autumn. They are the central row in the picture below, which shows how much bigger they are than the Sarpos on either side. The original seed potatoes were bigger than the Sarpo seed, but the Sarpos don't seem to have coped with the dry spell, as well as other varieties. The field they are growing in only has about a foot of soil so the affects of the drought were clear when this photo was taken at the end of June.

I just lifted one plant from each variety and you can see that the white 'Autumns' yielded the best. The pink and white 'Susans' also did well but the pink 'Hollys' did not yield much at all. The small pot of white potatoes at the back are 'Colleen' which I added for comparison. They are my standard early potato.
The next photo is of them cooked. We thought they all tasted as good as the Colleens but were still pretty immature, especially the pink ones. All the plants are still growing well and showing no signs of blight.

A Year on the Land

2011-06-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Documentary that we participated in last year is going to be shown on TV3 on Sunday at 6.15pm. There is a promo for the series here: http://vimeo.com/20637172

Dancing on Rocket: Day 3 of Seed Saving course

2011-06-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

The workshop today was about threshing and cleaning dry seeds and hand pollinating peas with a view to creating new varieties. The picture above sows Ciara pollinating a Bijou pea which is a giant mange tout pea, with pollen from a sugar snap pea, Sugar Anne, with the intention of breeding a larger snap pea. Lets hope some of the crosses took.
Mike demonstrated his cunning technique for cleaning round seeds by pouring them down a piece of guttering. The round heavy seeds roll to the bottom and the debris and flat broken bits of seeds stay higher up and can be removed

Then the dancing began and we threshed out a nice bit of rocket seed that had over-wintered in the polytunnel.

The Living Garden

2011-04-01T04:55:00.000-07:00

We went to Dublin for the launch of Jane Powers' fabulous new gardening book, The Living Garden. Sorry the picture is a bit blurry. It is available here, the book, I mean, not the blurry picture. I hope I find time to read it.

Diamond Aubergine and Maca

2011-03-24T01:26:00.000-07:00

For some reason the seeds of the new variety of aubergine, Diamond, that we grew last year, didn't germinate well, in the tests before Christmas. I didn't get around to putting the maca seeds onto the internet either. They are both germinating fine now and are up on the website. There is just about time to sow aubergines if you haven't done so already, I am not completely sure when maca should be sown. It doesn't like hot weather, so perhaps it is better sown in late summer. The maca in the picture was sown in spring 2009, none of it grew bigger than a golf ball, and if flowered quickly, during the following spring. One plant went to seed in the first year and produced lots of seedlings with no swollen root at all. I pulled these out to discourage that sort of thing. The plants in the foreground are the result of this cull. It was interesting that the seedlings grew and survived the winter as there were no self sown seedlings from the spring flowering plants. This picture was taken in May 2010. You can read more about maca here.

Being from the Ukraine, Diamond is an early aubergine, and did well for us last season. We haven't got a lot of seed because we ate too many of them.

St Patrick's Day 2011

2011-03-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

We have Zach and Maggie here again. they have almost completed their year in Ireland and came to celebrate St. patricks day with us. They made us a great float using a car trailer and we had good fun taking part in the parade. The Grand Marshal was Nell Levis aged 102, you will get tiny peak at her at the end of the video.

Winter Roscoff Cauliflowers

2011-03-15T16:35:00.001-07:00

The first few Winter Roscoff cauliflowers are ready to eat. They come at a great time of year, when the rest of the winter vegetables are coming to an end. A few have leaves coming through the curds and I suppose I should rogue them out but it doesn't make them any less nutritious. We haven't got any seed left now so we will grow these out for seed. Any cauliflower cheese we have will be made with the small imperfect ones.

I would like to know when others get there first Roscoff, to see if they are much earlier down here in tropical West Cork than in other parts of the country.

Seed Swap Sunday at Knockvicar

2011-02-28T23:44:00.000-08:00

For the second year running we attended the Seed Swap Sunday at Knockvicar. The first time I think I was so tired by the journey that I didn't take in the importance of what this community is doing. The gardens are in a field near the very small village of Knockvicar in Co. Roscommon. Here a group of people grow food for them selves and the wider community in ten polytunnels as well as outdoors. They also take care of the commuity hall which is an old school, testament to a larger population in the past. They also run courses in all sorts of sustainable activities like gardening, soap making and poultry keeping and once a month they have a meal in the hall together. Its a pretty international group with Irish British French and Hungarian members so the dinners look really interesting. On Saturdays they have a market from 11 to 3 which features Maison Djerbi Bakery and Patisserie. Mari-Aymone of Maison Djerbi provided delicious food for the seed swap. Other delicious items were provided by Bridget of Arigna Natural Gardens. There was no sign of a recession at Knockvicar as lots of seeds were bought by them. I hope they learnt enough from the seed workshops to be confident about growing their own in future, but all the same it would be nice to visit again. The community there is a great model for sustainable rural life.

We had a request for catalogues during the week from Pierce O'Reilly of Mayo Abbey Organic centre, so we decided to hand deliver them on the way home. We arrived into the lunch break of a FETAC organic horticulture course. It was a lively group who took us in and fed us tea and biscuits as well as buying seeds. The project is run by the community council and its goal as a rural community organic centre is to empower people with the knowledge to be self sufficient. It is another great example of how well organised communities make things happen.

Now its time to start sowing the seeds of next years seeds here.

Feeling grumpy about GM news and politics

2011-02-09T01:05:00.000-08:00

I have got election fever and have mostly been feeling very cross about things, cross with the government for supporting the bank bail out and the Green Party in particular, as I was once an active member of it. Then I heard that Minister Brendan Smith had ' altered its (Ireland's) voting position and will support a number of proposals from the EU Commission aimed at authorising the placing on the market of food, food ingredients and feed containing, consisting of, or produced from genetically modified maize and cotton. Ireland will also support EU Commission proposals to introduce a tolerance for the low level presence of, as yet, unauthorised GM varieties in imports of animal feed.' The full press release is here. It points out interestingly that: 'Over 90 per cent of the protein feed for Ireland's livestock comes from soya and maize by-products imported from North and South America, practically all of which contains GM varieties sown in those countries' Not many people seem to know this .

The Green Party press release points out that, 'In Government, the Green Party ensured that Ireland abstained on this vote.' which shows I suppose that their being in government was better than nothing, but doesn't really carry the spirit of its declaration in the Renewed Programme for Government which states it 'will declare the Republic of Ireland a GM-free Zone, free from the cultivation of all GM plants,' but failing to mention that being a GM-free zone does not mean that food sold is GM free, nor that most animal feed is GM.

Polytunnel Book

2011-02-08T03:19:00.000-08:00

Number 342 on my list of things to do before I die was to write a polytunnel booklet. Highbank asked me to do one to go with the seeds and I would have enjoyed it although I would probably have put too much emphasis on weird vegetables and not enough on actually feeding yourself. We lost part of our big tunnel a storm recently, so recovering it is getting near the top of that list.

Now I am off the hook (regarding book writing), because Joyce Russell of Kitchen Garden fame, who lives not that far away from me, has done it already, and much better than I could have. Its not a booklet but a big, full colour, bursting at the bindings, production manual. You can buy it here. It is really well constructed, laid out by month and giving detailed instructions for all the normal vegetables. There are masses of really informative, as well as beautiful photographs by Joyce's husband Ben. I highly recommend it. Below is our tunnel when it was young and reasonably tidy.

Silver

2011-02-07T06:45:00.001-08:00

We went to see a horse yesterday. As a result of an ad for an Irish Draught work-horse in Done Deal, several people contacted us. No body had a horse trained to work but Patrick's mare Silver seemed the most interesting. She is five and has been ridden and driven. She seemed pretty laid back. Naturally I fell completely in love with her, as I have wanted my own horse since I was about 5. I know its a really bad idea to buy the first one you look at but I am tempted. I would appreciate any advice from all you horsey people out there. She has very nice dark eyes. The flash caused the white dot.

A year on the Land

2011-02-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

Lat year Steven Lock and Adrian McCarthy made a series for television called; A year on the Land. They have recorded life on various farms throughout the year and they included us. We are not sure when it is going to be shown but they have put up a website about the series. We enjoyed having them around and even fed them.

Tree pruning before and after

2011-01-21T17:07:00.001-08:00

I have been pruning trees in the forest. These ashes grew a lot last year. I hope I am doing it right. They could be hurleys or kitchen tables for my, (as yet unborn) grandchildren. Failing that they should keep them warm. The first picture is before, and the second after.

Pet day

2011-01-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

A pet day is an uncommonly fine day for the time of year and today was one of them, I took to pottering in the garden and finally took down those bean poles, resulting in a nice ball of string.

I checked out what had survived the winter frosts and was pleased to see the St. Johnswort was none the worse for it.

Neither was the Belville sorrel,

or the chives poking up new shoots,

or the Greek oregano which was thriving and still has a Mediterranean pungency.

Garden Planning Workshop

2011-01-15T16:03:00.000-08:00

In spite of the wet weather, we had a good day planning gardens at the first of our free gardening workshops. The next one is on Saturday 19th February on Ground preparation and compost making. The first of the four part Seed Saving Course is on Sunday 20th February from 11am to 4pm Introduction to seed saving, selecting and replanting root crops. This costs €30 per day, and must be booked (4 days €100) Click to book.

First Workshop Saturday 15th January 2pm

2011-01-12T00:14:00.000-08:00

This will be the first of four free workshops at Brown Envelope Seeds this year. What with Christmas, the weather, tree pruning and a trip to London for a party, it has crept up rather suddenly. What I am planning to do is to provide everyone with a piece of paper and a pencil and and get them to draw a small sketch of their garden or polytunnel. Then on the other side of the paper, (we always use both sides now, don't we) write a list of the vegetables they plan to grow. Then divide the vegetables into groups. It is a good idea to rotate crops (although some seem to like growing in the same place, like tomatoes). I have five groups outdoors and two in the tunnel. I call my outdoor rotation PABLO (potatoes, alliums, (should they be allia?) brassicas, legumes, and others. In the polytunnel I put anything in the tomato family on one side and everything else on the other side, reversing the sides each year. Then put the vegetables into the sketch. Simple, I might even try it myself. There will also be the opportunity to purchase seeds. I hope its a nice day and I am sure it will be encouraging to everyone to see what an untidy mess our gardens are. I haven't even got the bean poles down yet. Click to see details of other workshops and events.

De Colgar Tomatoes

2011-01-03T01:27:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be nice to feature some of our new varieties on the blog. De Colgar tomatoes are storage tomatoes, in fact the name means 'to hang up'. We also have a variety called Longkeeper, which does the same thing. However in my opinion De Colgar has a far superior flavour. One of the projects I would like to do this year, but probably won't get around to, is to compare the keeping qualities of some of our old favourites, with these varieties. I think Moneymaker would do well, I have often been picking tomatoes out in the polytunnel until Christmas, and Moneymaker Gardeners Delight seem to hang in there very well. In fact the polytunnel seems to be the best place to store tomatoes unless we get serious frost like we did this year which is not good for tomatoes. They also seem to store best on the vine. Again I want to look at this more closely, but putting them in a drawer doesn't seem to work very well. I usually discover a gooey mess sometime later, a windowsill suits me better, and I am more likely to remember them. (Note to self, I need more windowsills.) Has anybody got any tomato storage tips?

The top picture I found on the internet which shows vines hanging up under a roof, somewhere that I expect doesn't get much frost.
De Colgar produces tall vines easily reaching the top of the polytunnel. The fruit are mediu sized and hard even when ripe with a high dry matter content. They are good sliced with a sweet tomato flavour, not much acid, and make a thick sauce.

Happy New Year

2010-12-27T10:07:00.001-08:00

Fennel outside the front door
Mount Gabriel
Icy Feverfew
Turk Head Pier
Snowy Driveway
The snow is all gone now, but it was beautiful while it lasted. We got most orders in the post, that came in before Christmas, but getting to the post was tricky. Now its raining :(

Solar Power

2010-12-11T21:42:00.001-08:00

We have had some PV solar panels put on the roof of the barn. They should make us pretty energy self sufficient. They are connected to the grid, so we can use grid electricity during the night and our own power during the day. On sunny days we will be exporting to the grid.

The panels and inverter were fitted by Jerry Cotter and his very efficient team from Micropower in a less than three days. I am looking forward to getting the hot tub on for Christmas.

15 Online Shopping Days to Christmas

2010-12-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

Whoopeee...... The new catalogues have arrived. In spite of the weather they made there way from Ecoprint in Dublin and are all stacked up ready to be enveloped, stamped and posted to all our customers. Don't forget what good stocking stuffers a packet of seeds or two can be.

Mr CD and his team are busy making up gift boxes in the office. There are some new ones this year, a Salsa Box, and a Staple Box (with seeds of staple foods for you and your chickens, not the kind for attaching wire to posts). There is a Weird Vegetable Box, a Herb and Spice Rack Box and aSeed Saving Box. If none of these intrigue you you can always Design your Own Box by selecting 4 packets of seeds, and naming it yourself.On the window sill you can see the Armageddon box, always our most popular gift box and also our Seed Saving booklet which could save you a lot more money than it costs.

Sorry the website is down

2010-12-06T03:04:00.000-08:00

Hello, I am sorry the website is down as I forgot to renew the domain name. We are getting a new all singing all dancing website made at the moment which is pretty exciting. The paper catalogue is with the printer so we should have it soon too. If you would like an electronic copy of the catalogue please email us. The snowy picture is of our orchard. I hope you are all keeping warm. Madeline

Mr CD

2010-11-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

Mr CD has something to tell you.

Naked Oats

2010-11-20T01:47:00.000-08:00

The two patchy looking rows in the foreground are naked oats, sown in autumn 2009 and photographed in March this year. The rows were about 3m long and the total yield was just over 1kg. I am trying to decide whether to sow it all again in spring, or sell it in 10g packs to curious growers. Not much point in having a dehuller if it is too successful. It is second from the left in this pic.

Finally, a Bowl of CSA Porridge.

2010-11-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

Last year we became members of Bantry CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group and became proud owners of some of the oats. Oats have a hard shell around them called a hull. Chickens and sheep are able to digest them whole. Cattle are happy with them if they are rolled however people prefer them dehulled. It proved impossible to find anyone to dehull them and In May we bought (with some financial help from West Cork Development Partnership), this machine from Horn in Germany. The instructions came in German, and although we were aware that it would not dehull every single groat we were initially a bit disappointed with its perfomance. Kinsale CSA brought down some of their oats, and found someone to translate the instructions. After a good afternoon playing with the settings and running the oats through a few times they started looking pretty edible.

So, we tried ours yesterday. After dehulling they were washed to float off any remaining hulls. We also put some of our own sunflower seeds through the machine which worked quite well and we added them to the oats along with a hand-full of our own dried gooseberries, and a little of Tim Rowe's honey. It was a delicious breakfast. The porridge tasted really nutty.

We would be delighted to dehull your oats for you too.

Interspecific Beans

2010-10-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Last October I blogged about beans that seemed to be crosses between Black Coco and Zolfino (Turin) drying beans and Black Magic Runner beans. Red flowered plants, presumably F1 crosses, appeared in both drying bean varieties in 2009 and yielded Runner bean type seeds (F2). There weren't many seeds and only seven of them germinated, of them only five flowered. All the F1 plants had red flowers but of the f2 plants one of the Zolfino crosses had pink and and the other white flowers. The three f2 black coco x plants had red flowers.

None of the pods had more than three beans and many had only one. One of the Black coco crosses was a climber. The rest were dwarf. Some of the plants are still green and the pods on the white flowered and beaned Zolfino cross plant have still not really ripened while one of the Black Coco plants was completely dry.

Trial by Abuse

2010-10-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

In 2005 I saved some true seed from some Nepalese blight resistant potatoes. I grew several hundred seedlings. Below are some of the tubers from that first year 2006.

Over the last four years I have grown them out every year, usually treating them really badly. For example, one year I didn't get around to lifting them till it was time to plant them again. Other years I have forgotten to weed them. A couple of years ago we taste tested them with the students from the Kinsale Permaculture course and narrowed them down a bit further. This year I left the tubers in a bucket until sometime in May when they looked like prunes with long green sprouts, then I planted them.

When I lifted them earlier this week there were three types left. The best yielder was the pink and white variety. I decided to call it Ardagh Susan after my sister who died earlier this year. The white variety was a very smooth skinned and scab resistant. It will be Ardagh Autumn after my elder daughter. The solid pink one had rather poor skin but was the 'flouriest' I have decided to call it Ardagh Holly after my younger one.

I have put away plenty of seed potatoes in the beautiful apple storage box that Mike made. he copied the old one that Sylvia gave us, and Bridget and Noel kindly brought back from England for us. It is full of apples now.

Naughty corner

2010-10-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

The talet seeds I got from Radix in March have done well. I wrote a blog entry about them at the time. I planted some of the plants out under a young apple tree, between some Belville sorrel plants.

It has all got a bit jungly now and I can't see if it has produced any underground pods, but it has seemed quite happy growing up its cane.

The others got a place in my cramped polytunnel in what I came to think of as the naughty corner. I have a soft spot for the weird and wonderful like achocha and bottle gourds, which are pretty vigorous.

The talet was tucked in between these two bullies and in spite of a pretty random watering regime produced quite a lot of flowers and pods.

Again, I don't know if it has produced underground seeds, it would be difficult as the ground cover would stop the flowers going underground.

Camelina

2010-10-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

Every year I try to grow some new varieties and crops. This year I grew Camelina Sativa.

It is a member of the Brassica family and was very little trouble. I grew a square meter or two and did nothing more than weed it occasionally. Although an ancient agricultural crop grown to produce oil, its current claim to fame, is that its oil contains up to 45% omega 3 fatty acids.
The biodiesel industry is also interested in it, as it is a very stable oil and it can be grown in rotation with wheat. It is a less demanding crop than wheat.
The birds rather liked mine and harvested quite a lot of it for me. The seed they droppped came up and is now flowering.
I have a small crop to play around with and try and make some vegetable oil out of, but will keep some seed to sow again next year, perhaps as part of my, grow your own chicken food, campaign.

Cereal quiz

2010-07-14T02:28:00.000-07:00

Who can identify these cereals? I know what some are but I am bit confused.

Henry came to help with the potatoes, oh and Sandra

2010-07-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

If anyone would like to learn about working with horses they can, here: www.bantryhousecountrycourses.com www.horsepowerinireland.com

On the "Star"

2010-06-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

We were delighted to have our "Open Day" covered by Nora Strong from our local Newspaper, The Southern StarHere is our first red tomato, a Latah.

Open Day 2010

2010-06-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

Catherine Fennell's book HOME GROW & COOK WHAT YOU SOW

2010-05-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

We went to Ballincollig last Saturday for the launch of Cathrine Fennell's book, HOME GROW & COOK WHAT YOU SOW. She has an infectious enthusiasm for growing and cooking her own food. We are delighted that she will be coming to our Open Day on June 6th to sign books.

Lentils from Glengarriff

2010-05-15T00:04:00.001-07:00

I was sent these lentils from Elizabeth who lives in Glengarriff. They were lost from the Swabian Alb in Germany and rediscovered near St. Petersberg. They produced a crop in Glengarriff so we are giving them a go. In spite of the cold weather they have come up outside.

more maca pics

2010-05-03T01:40:00.000-07:00

I bought a packet of yellow, and one of red maca, but most of the seedlings came yellowy -green. Two are red. I included the grubby finger for scale.

Maca

2010-04-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

The maca survived the winter and looks quite happy amongst the weeds. There isn't a lot of it and its not very photogenic.

Gortahork cabbage

2010-04-06T17:44:00.001-07:00

I am not a big fan of cabbage but it is popular especially the giant Gortahork cabbages that the Irish Seedsavers distribute. Most appeared to have died in the bad frosts but green shoots are emerging from the slime. We should have seed this year. The spring cabbages Offeheim mostly died in the frost. Out of about 100 plants 20 have survived, heavy selection for a cold winter. It is a small population to save seed from.

Talet, like it is

2010-03-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

These seeds arrived in the post today from Owen of Radix. His blog is the most entertaining one I know of. Also known as the American Hog Peanut, Amphicarpaea bracteata is native to eastern North America and was a popular food of native Americans. It can reproduce either by flowers which open and are pollinated, or by cleistogamous flowers (which develop into seeds without opening, following self-pollination). The cleistogamous flowers can be above ground or below ground. The seed pods are both above and below ground. It will be interesting to see how they do here. I would love them to naturalise in the woods. I have potted them up in the polytunnel and will pamper them this year.

Monsanto patents heat tolerance in brccolli

2010-03-25T02:23:00.000-07:00

Do you know where your seeds are coming from? It gets scarier and scarier; have a look at this

Visit To Knockvicar Gardens and Lough Bishop House

2010-03-02T16:29:00.000-08:00

We were invited up to Knockvicar Organic Gardens at the weekend for their seed swop. I was feeling really ill on the way up and was grateful that Mike did most of the driving. We stayed at Lough Bishop House on Saturday night as a treat and because we wanted to see their Moilie cattle. Helen and Christopher Kelly's hospitality was wonderfully relaxing and I would have liked to stay for longer. The seed swop at Knockvicar was impressive. There is a lot going on up there. A great crowd turned up and there was a showing of the film ‘Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi’ as well as a talk from me on seed saving. Delicious vegetarian food was provided by Maison Djerbi. Thank you to everyone who made it a great weekend for me.

Nigel's Trug

2010-01-09T03:56:00.001-08:00

Nigel lives on Sherkin and mostly messes around with boats and plays the accordion. He also makes very handsome trugs. If you would like one you can contact him here nigelctowse@yahoo.co.uk

And, you can look at his boat here

Happy Christmas All

2009-12-25T10:56:00.000-08:00

2010 Catalogues Arrive

2009-12-17T09:30:00.001-08:00

The fabulous 2010 Brown Envelope Seeds Catalogue has arrived! It looks really nice, printed by Matthew Walsh of Ecoprint Ltd. on recycled paper from Klee Paper, and full of handsome vegetable flower images created by the very handsome Mike Sweeney. It has of seedsaving tips too, to help me into an early retirement. If you ordered from us in 2008 or 2009 or have requested a catalogue, it should be on its way to you by the efficient An Post service very soon. If you don't think you are on the list and would like a copy email seeds@brownenvelopeseeds.com

Seed industry

2009-12-16T16:46:00.000-08:00

I found this interesting diagram on the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog It was created by Philip Howard, and you can see an animated version here. Funny, I can't find Brown Envelope Seeds on it anywhere.

Gift Boxes

2009-12-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

All your Christmas shopping problems can be solved by the

Brown Envelope Seeds Gift Box. We have Children's boxes,

Very Easy Veg Boxes, Polytunnel Boxes, and Armageddon

Boxes.

Still stuck? Have a look at Paul and Jacinta's Woodkerne

Nurseries Catalogue

Events in 2010

2009-12-06T01:43:00.000-08:00

We are still trying to get the 2010 catalogue to the printer. All going well, it will be tomorrow. It has focussed my mind on what events we want to hold on the farm next year, as that goes into the catalogue. And so we have decided to have an 'Open Day' on Sunday June 6th 2010 and a 'Seedy Weekend' over the August bank holiday weekend. We will have a beginners seed saving workshop on 31st of July, and on Sunday 1st August, a workshop on beginning plant breeding. Please email madsmckeever@eircom.net to book. If you want to buy a workshop voucher for someone special we can do that, at no extra cost. Cost €30 per day. (2days €50). Participants are welcome to camp on the farm. That leaves Monday the 2nd open for another event. Anyone want to run a seed related workshop? Or, would it be a nice day to have a gathering of seed savers who just want to hang out. What do you think?

And by the way, the cabbage is 'Gortahork' and we haven't got seed off it yet, ISSA probably do though. Hopefully we will this time next year.

Well done Sophie.

2009-11-22T04:08:00.000-08:00

The wind is howling here, and its time for a bit of sofa gardening, or perhaps Sophie gardening. Last summer we sponsored the vegetable plants for a show garden at Bloom. There is an earlier post here. Last week the garden, designed by Sophie von Maltzen, has won the Irish Landscape Institute Design Award 2009 in the category of Residential Landscapes. It was filmed by TV3 which you can see here and view it 3D here. Perhaps a few of the design elements could go in your garden plan for next year. The garden is still looking for a permanent home where the maximum number of visitors could benefit from it. It could also act as a hub creating a community park around it. If anyone has any ideas, a transition town project perhaps, do get in touch.

New Catalogue Germinating.

2009-11-18T10:43:00.000-08:00

This time of year is when we put the new cataolgue together and although there are still some aubergines and squash to be de-seeded, the growing season is officially over. The image below is probably going to be on the cover. It shows the old house on the farm where all the seeds are stored and where we have the office. In there, Ruth has tested and made an inventory all the seeds. Mike and Ruth have also been as busy as Santas elves, getting gift boxes ready to get in the shops for Christmas. Drop us an email, seeds@brownenvelopeseeds.com, if you would like a copy of the new catalogue.

Students from An Tionad Glas

2009-10-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

We were delighted to have two students from An Tionad Glas last week.

Joseph and Elaine podded lots of beans.

Then they saved the sweetcorn from the badgers by digging it up and putting it in the polytunnel. And that was just Monday.

Bean promiscuity

2009-10-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

A few red flowered beans turned up this year amongst the drying beans, Black Coco and what we call Turin (almost certainly fagiolo zolfino) and the green beans Tendergreen. The plants look intermediate between Phaseolis vulgaris, the commmon or 'French' bean and Phaseolis coccineus, the runner bean. The beans inside look like runner beans. So, I am wondering if these plants are hybrids. Last year all the vulgaris varieties were grown in the same garden as the Black Magic runner bean which has black seeds. Has anybody out there had any red flowered plants in their beans or know of any cases of these two species crossing?

Tom Wagner workshop

2009-10-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

This weekend could be one of those ones, that completly change my life, like the chance afternoon that I spent at Johhny's Selected Seeds, in Maine, way back in 1985. I afraid that if I take up the tweezers and paintbrush, all the equipment that you need to make deliberate crosses, that I will get hooked. Seed saving is like learning a tune that someone else has written, plant breeding is the equivalent of composing, a creative act. I am quite tempted to try on-line poker and heroin but I know its not a good idea. However plant breeding is a good idea but might cause me to compromise most of the other areas of my life and become the addiction it is for Tom.

.Here is Tom looking at a potato in my garden that I grew from true potato seed from a potato from Tibet. Below he is standing beside the mass grave of over 9,000 people who died in Skibbereen during the Great Famine.

He has created new varieties of potatoes using the old 'Lumper' variety, whose failure was the major cause of the Famine. By crossing them with blight resistant varieties he has restored them and he symbolically sprinkled their seeds on the graves of the famine victims.

What is preventing famine here now?

How much food do we need?

2009-10-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

This time last year I gave a talk in Clonakilty on How much space we need to grow enough food for ourselves. I meant to put these diagrams up before now but didn't quite get around to it. they are based on some fairly sketchy research mostly from the internet and are probably not very accurate. The first one shows the yield per ha of some basic foods grown without artificial manure. The beef figures are based on a grass only diet.

This next one shows the amount of each food type needed to give 2700cals or enough food for a person for a day. Its a lot of cabbage.

This one shows the price per kg of the same foods.

This one shows the price of a million calories of each which is the number of calories an adult would need per year.

And finally the number of sq meters needed to grow a years supply of food for one person eating a diet of 40% cereals, 5% pulses, 30% fruit and veg, 20% nuts, meat and dairy, and 5% oil.

sorry about the spam

2009-10-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

I tried to put my customer address list into a Google group, so that people could subscribe and unsubscribe to my rare newsletters. It was infiltrated by spammers today, offering video sex chat, which would probably be more entertaining than my newsletters, however I deleted the group, and that should put an end to it. I will just post my warblings on here and not try and email newsletters any more. On a brighter note. The yacon, winged beans and perilla are all trying to flower.

Ballydehob food festival

2009-10-04T02:42:00.000-07:00

Ba llydehob food festival was great fun this year. I am always a

bit wary of events up at An Sanctoir, a bit afraid I'll have to

hold hands with strangers and do a circle dance, or justify

raising animals for meat, but it wasn't a bit like that. There was

rabbit stew and a barbeque full of beef and fish.

Apple juicing, music, face painting, a demonstration on how not to damage your body when gardening.

There were talks about CSAs and bees, me going on about how much food it takes to feed people. Below is a display we

brought of food types, each screen containing to about 2,700

calories, or a days worth of food an active adult.

What I like best about things like this is I get to meet new people. Like Paul, who teaches horticulture at the Kinsale permaculture course. We got to talking about how to scientifically test if

biodynamic treatments work which is a subject under discussion on Zone 5. We also talked about whether Alaska Giant worked. I am hoping that they can come up with an experimental

design in Kinsale that could test this sort of thing and maybe get

the permaculture students to carry it out. Maybe some of the

students at Án tIonad Glás could replicate them.

Irish Seed Savers Associaton Apple Day

2009-09-28T14:40:00.000-07:00

Sunday, we drove to Clare to commune with the ISSA and talk about de-hullers with other interested parties.

It was a great day, the place is looking terrific, the apple trees are now trees. What a lot of work has been done over the years.

One of the really nice things about the day was meeting people in the bus queue. We met a farmer growing Miscanthus, and my godson turned up with his family. Bepe's father, Nicola has been block laying through the celtic tiger years but is now selling Italian food specialities in Markets. Lynn, his mother, is teaching vegetable growing and chicken keeping.

There was a quiet optimism in the air, and nearly every family took a tree home. What could demonstrate faith in the future more than planting an apple tree in your garden?

And there was music.....

Kiwanos

2009-09-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

The kiwanos are coming along. If I restrained myself to growing one plant, as they weren't that successful last year. However, if I gave up trying things that didn't work in the first year, the catalogue would be a lot smaller. It was in a pot outside for most of the summer and I brought it in the polytunnel when the nights got a bit cool. I hope they will ripen now.

What is the matter with my rice?

2009-09-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

Its not producing any. Carefully situated where the watertank overflows in heavy rain, it has grown nicely all summer. Surely it should have produced a few heads by now. Has anyone got any ideas?

Ivy

2009-09-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

Its funny how you can be walking past something for twenty years and then see it. It was really warm yesterday, when I set off up the road for a walk. Right outside the gate, the ivy was buzzing with all kinds of pollinators.

Skibbereen Food Fair

2009-09-21T15:02:00.000-07:00

Lots of biodiversity here from Woodkerne Nursery's (sorry they are sideways), display of apple varieties, to the teddies at the picnic. We were there too, exploiting free labour to pod peas.

GIY

2009-09-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

Its a great idea. You form a group in your local area, hold a meeting once a month, with a speaker, and network among yourselves about Growing It Yourself. It was started by Michael Kelly a journalist who gave up the fast life for the "Good Life". He and his team organised a conference in Waterford on Saturday. Mike and I went up to it and had a really enjoyable day. In the morning there were speakers such as Michael Kelly himself, Trevor Sergeant, and Joy Larkom. After a local food lunch, we were divided into 'pods', to discuss starting GIY groups in our own areas, and then given a chance to attend a workshop, on a subject such as permaculture, or nutrition or seed-saving. GIY groups would be a perfect network for seed swopping, as all the groups would be able to be in contact through the forum. I might try and start one here. Maybe it would lead to a CSA. We missed the threshing but it was all recorded and put up on U-Tube by Ron.

We then went on to visit Highbank in Kilkenny. I was in college with Julie many years ago and it was great to see her and Rod again. We are thinking about going to Bloom together next year.

This year's squash.

2009-09-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

This year's squash have done Ok. The wet August went against them but the warmth in July was enough for them to make a crop. time will tell if the seeds are good, this week's sun will have helped a lot.

It is a bit confusing remembering the names of squash and which ones cross with which. The green Buttercup in the top picture is Cucurbita maxima, as is the orange, Ushiki Kuri, in the next picture, and would cross with it.

The Butternut squash, above, growing outside have set some fruit, as they did last year. However last year's did not have any seed in them and any seed we got was in the tunnel produced Butternuts. The plants in the tunnel are further along than those outside. They are Cucurbita moschata and only cross with other beige coloured squash.

The Cocozelle courgettes, which are Cucurbita pepo, in the polytunnel are very different to the Green Bush down in the orchard, (also pepo) which are shorter and fatter. I will be interested to see how different they will be to eat. I am assured by some people that they are completely different. I won't be taking the seeds out for a while yet as I think they are still maturing inside the fruit. We are growing a third pepo variety, Delicata. I haven't grown them for a few years. Most of the plants have got mildew on them now but a few are growing strongly

Porridge

2009-09-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

I'm so disappointed we are going to miss the oat threshing on Saturday. We are off to the GIY conference in Waterford which will be a summer holiday of kinds. Well, the summer is happening this week. The sun came out today fora trial run.

This post concerns the oats that were combined a couple of weeks ago, and some of which are drying in our barn. Using the grain mill opposite I tried to de hull some of them, as they are pretty inedible with the hulls on, and de-hullers cost about €20,000, or are a long way away.

It took several hours to prepare the one bowl of porridge. first I ran some oats through at various settings on the mill and tried to screen off the hulls using different sizes of sieve. Then I tried to winnow off any remaining hulls. It didn't work very well because some of the oats were very small and so nomatter what size screen I used I still got some small oats. so, I tried again first screening off the small oats then running them through the mill at a coarse setting which mostly just broke the oats in pieces.

Most of the hulls came off and it was easy to screen off any un-hulled whole oats. Most of the hulls winnowed off fairly easily but so did a lot of the smaller pieces of oat and oat dust. There were still some hulls mixed wit

h the bits which I gave up on but when I got bored, and hungry.

I put the mix in a pot and added water and of course most of the remaining hulls floated to the top. I had a nice bowl of porridge although there was still the odd annoying hull in there.

Tom Wagner workshop

2009-09-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

Tom Wagner is coming to Brown Envelope Seeds to do a workshop on potato and tomato breeding. It will take place on Saturday and Sunday 17th-18th October.

If you would like to come to the workshop email me at madsmckeever@eircom.net It will be a really great weekend and hopefully a good chance to network with other seedy characters. The workshop costs €80. Workshop fees will go towards Tom’s travel expenses in Europe and towards the introduction of some of his important new varieties. As Tom devotes more and more of his time to being a seed ambassador of sorts, these fees will help continue his future workshops.

Tom is touring France in September and giving workshops there, before moving on to Denmark and Germany, then he will be in Ireland before visiting the Isle of Man where his grandfather came from, and finally the UK.

To get an idea of what he does have a look at his blog Tater Mater.

Tom has been breeding potatoes and tomatoes for over 50 years. He has created hundreds of varieties including potatoes resistant to blight,

He will be talking about what an independent breeder of tomatoes and potatoes does and possible release of new lines of potatoes and tomatoes.

Some of the topics that will be covered will be:

The history of Tater Mater Seeds

The development of some of Tom’s classic tomatoes such as the Green Zebra, along with dozens of other varieties that are available in the open market.

How Tom is rapidly accumulating a large germplasm of potato clones and TPS (True Potato Seed)

Hands on demonstrations of how to cross tomato and potatoes, many times with actual plants and with video and power point presentations.

Tom will talk about how he has taken just a few varieties of potatoes and tomatoes and created a vast diversity of seeds for the future. By using heritage potatoes and tomatoes, and adding some newer releases to cross with, Tom is working with these to create tomorrow’s heirlooms.

Tom will discuss making F-1 hybrids that anyone can make over and over again. He will talk about making backcrosses and taking each year’s seed increase to the filial level of F-5 on tomatoes which indicates a rather stable line. Tom will illustrate how his potato lines have better berry production which aids hybridization efforts.

Tom will talk about the nutriceuticals of tomatoes and potatoes; the essential nutrients that these crop could contain with a bit of breeding expertise. Enhanced antioxidants, anthocyanins, carotenoids, lycopene, are but a few. Fast cooking times in his new potatoes clones that cook in 5 minutes in boiling water will be featured in his topics.

Through a variety of breeder/grower initiatives beginning with the workshops, there will likely be many cooperatives dealing with plant breeding and variety development starting with seeds of Tater Mater.

These workshops will be part of an effort to keep seeds free and available to the public and not be allowed to be controlled by major seed companies, universities, or governments.

A concerted endeavor will be launched to work with local heritage varieties to incorporate them in variety improvement and to avoid GMO’s at all levels.

Potatoes can be grown from true seed and avoid the virus contamination of tuber trades. TPS is but one way to foster diversity and reach local needs for flavor, storability, yields, disease resistance, all with organic growing methods

The workshops will features many ways to look at seed extraction, seed saving, clonal selection.

Single seed descent and bulk population breeding and variety maintenance will be discussed.

The workshops will try to feature local gardens and local growers.

The goal is to find ways for this to help Tom in his work and how he can help local growers in return.

Video and audio recording will likely be part of many of these workshops. Some of those may be shown at succeeding workshops to show the growth of the information exchanges. A few clips of how to cross potatoes and tomatoes may be linked to the Tater Mater blog. Many still photos will be shown of his tomato and potato varieties.

Each of these workshops will invite anyone to submit questions to answer during the workshops and/or later in an interactive format. With sufficient interpreters present, these answers will be delivered in the original language.

The goal of Tater Mater Seeds is to get young people involved in plant breeding, therefore, if Tom can be a mentor and teacher for many potential plant breeders, justice is done.

During Tom’s 56 years of breeding plants, he has not only proven that anyone can be a home garden plant breeder but will show many how they, too, can be plant breeders. His unique collection of proprietary seeds of tomato and potatoes will be a great resource for plant breeding groups in each nation.

Tom started out breeding plants on his family farm near Lancaster, Kansas. He kept a family heirloom bean alive and growing each year in his gardens from a few beans his great grandmother brought to the USA in 1888. He kept growing new selections out of his breeding work even while he obtained degrees in Anthropology, Botany, Geography, and Education. His career includes farming, managing garden centers, managing greenhouses, potato buyer, potato and tomato breeder under contract, teaching, seed catalog, and a wide host of other professions. He has offered many of his creations in Farmers’ Markets and has introduced his varieties to other organic growers.

Tom stays busy with his TaterMaterSeeds forum and is a moderator on the Tomatoville.com for CrossTalk and Potato sub forums.

Tom currently lives in Everett, WA. His plots are all organic and shuns any chemicals applied to the soil.

Painted Mountain Corn

2009-09-07T04:10:00.000-07:00

'Maybe the most beautiful food we have ever seen' according to: Allan Jenkins of the Guardian

Ours wasn't sown until June and isn't ready to harvest but it is growing well. Who said corn needs a good summer? The pictures show ours from June to September. What is nice about corn is that it is a staple you can process at home with a grain mill and make things like plolenta and corn bread and tortillas without a lot of technology. The oats are a different matter but more about them anon.....

Maca

2009-09-05T11:29:00.001-07:00

Maca is a root vegetable from the Andes, renowned for its powers as an aphrodisiac, homone sorter-outer for women, a stamina enhancer and miracle adaptogen. I first heard about it from Sara of 'Sarah's Choice' who I met at the AGM of the Organic Trust last year. We were sitting beside each other at lunch and got chatting. I tried it and it did seem to have some good effects. So, I ordered some seeds from Horizon herbs. They have grown slowly throughout the summer, and one has set seed. They are not the most photogenic of plants.

The largest roots about are about 1" in diameter.

Some of the yellow maca plants have red tubers but most of both the red and yellow plants still have greeny yellow roots

Plant setting seeds. Seedlings are visible in the bottom left

Bitter Gourd

2009-08-31T11:56:00.000-07:00

These nasty little vegetables taste like poison and are capable of destroying a perfectly nice curry. I first came across them in the Philippines, where you never knew where they would turn up, and all meals had to be studied carefully to make sure they weren't lurking under the rice. I don't know why I tried to grow them this year because they really didn't want to grow here, any more than I actually want to eat them. I forgot they were there, and found them today amongst the scutch at the edge of the tunnel. I might have to eat one if it gets bigger than a jelly bean. They're good for you.

Bringing in the sheaves

2009-08-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

We brought the sheaves of oats in today, in a short window of fine weather. The rest of the field was combined and the oats are now being dried in various places, some in our barn. We didn't get there in time to see the combine, and didn't stay long enough to see the straw baled. The threshing of the sheaves and the party that goes with it will be the next phase and probably the most fun.

Battered bottle gourd and fried green tomatoes

2009-08-28T23:15:00.000-07:00

This is what we had for Supper. The green tomato seeds were brought back from France, last year, by my friend Bridget. The variety is Evergreen and they are sweet and tasty inspite of their colour. This year she brought me back some buckwheat flour, which was the base of the batter.

I didn't think Bottle Gourds would thrive outside, but as I had a few plants too many for the polytunnel, I tried them in a gap on the bean trellis. They love it out there, however, they have refused to climb the strings I put up for them and persist in smothering the beans. I had read that they were edible when small, and came across areference to battering and eating Lagenaria while blogging.

Oat harvest

2009-08-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the Bantry CSA in a previous post. Well, today we harvested the first acre with scythes. The weather made using the reaper and binder impossible. The cut oats were tied into sheaves and stooked. Lots of tea was drunk and we are looking forward to the threshing. The rest will be combined.

Perennial wheat

2009-08-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

I got this perennial wheat from the Seed Ambassadors when they visited here. It was bred by Tim Peters. I don't know much about cereal growing and sowed it in spring. It didn't produce a crop the first year but did the next. It was hard to harvest as it didn't all ripen at the same time and I was busy so I shoved a bunch of it in a bag and tried to persuade other people to grow it because I couldn't even work out how to thrash it. It looked good during the winter sending up new shoots, but most of it died in the spring. I rotovated the patch and sowed peas in it. One plant came through, I don't know whether from a seed or an old plant. As a reward for its persistance I harvested the peas around it without disturbing it too much. I harvested it yesterday, although some of the heads were quite green, more of them were getting mouldy.

I was surprised how big the seeds were.

Choughed

2009-08-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

Choughs shelter in our barn when its wet and the wind is from the West. Its nice except they pooh all over the tractor which is annoying. It would be nice if they would nest there, but I think they are a bit frightened of people. They used to nest in the castle in Whitehall but it has been turned into a holiday home and I don't know if they still do.

Broad beans

2009-08-07T02:02:00.000-07:00

This year we grew two varieties of broad bean, Witkeim in the field and Bowland's Beauty in the orchard. They both enjoyed the wet weather and grew very well. The Bowland's Beauty never got any Black fly but the Witkeim did and Mike experimented with spraying them with washing up liquid and elder potion neither of which seemed to do much good. Mysteriously the black fly disappeared after a while. The Witkeim beans on the left are paler in colour and although the pods are short they have more or less as many beans as the Bowland's Beauties.

The Witkeim were not as tall as the Bowland's Beauties and their pods

were mostly close to the ground so they didn't fall over. The Bowland's Beautie's pod's were more spread out on the stems and they collapsed a bit with the weight. This might

not have been a problem if they had been picked and not left for seed.

The rain last week brought on Chocolate spot and almost over night the leaves disappeared off most of the plants. You can see the Witkeim beans in the 1st of August post still had most of their leaves but by the time the photo here was taken on the 5th of August, they are gone. There were black patches starting on the pods so we cut them all down on Tuesday and we will hopefully get them inside today before the rain starts again.

2009-08-01T15:06:00.001-07:00

We finished harvesting the peas today. There was a heavier crop than usual but the heavy rain caused a lot of damage to some varieties. the pods fell apart and a lot of peas were lost. The varieties that held o to their pods best were the heritage varieties 'Irish Green Pea' and 'Daniel O'Rourke'. The pods on these varieties are small and light and the plants stood up better than varieties with large pods and peas. It has been the wettest July on record at many weather stations in Ireland this year, with over 10" at Valentia Island in Kerry.

'Daniel O'Rourke' pea in June

Quinoa

2009-07-26T05:19:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed reading 'A Year in Search of Seeds and Hope' written by Adam Forbes who has just spent a year traveling around the world. His photos of quinoa fields inspired me to sow some quinoa this year. I grew a few plants last year. The variety was Temuco which I got from Real Seeds in Wales. They said it could cope better than other varieties with having wet heads close to harvest.

It is growing away nicely.

February Orchid seeds now available

2009-07-25T01:47:00.000-07:00

I posted a bit about this plant in January. As far as I know we are the only suppliers of this seed in the western world, all thanks to Joy Larkcom who has done so much for garden biodiversity. Her book on oriental vegetables is an inspiration to me. There are still so many new vegetables to grow and eat. I found a bit more information on this plant which is is also known in Japan. We have now cleaned and tested the seeds and they are ready to go. I grew them in the polytunnel last year but I am going to try them outside now, along with other useful winter greens like lamb's lettuce, land cress, coriander, texsel, winter purslane, We are starting to harvest peas now which leaves nice clean empty beds in the garden.

Chop Suey Greens

2009-07-25T01:02:00.000-07:00

We should have these on the catalogue next year if we manage not to eat them all.

Chopsuey Greens (Chrysanthemum coronarium),or edible chrysanthemums as they are also known as, have deeply lobed dark green leaves with a unique aromatic flavour that is impossible to describe. They are quick and easy to grow and not bothered by slugs. Sown directly in the ground or started in modules they will be ready to harvest in about six weeks, when the plants are about 20cm high. They can be used a bit like spinach in stir fries or salads. In Japan, where they are popular, they are called Shungiku and used in dishes such as sukiyaki and westernised Chinese dishes such as chopsuey. The flowers are attractive in the vegetable patch but by the time the plants are flowering the leaves have become bitter.

Tom Wagner to present workshop on potato and tomato breeding

2009-07-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

Tom Wagner is coming here to do a workshop here at Brown Envelope Seeds, on potato and tomato breeding. The workshop will take place over the weekend of the 17th and 18th of October 2009. It costs €80.

If you would like to come to the workshop email me at madsmckeever@eircom.net or comment on the blog.

It will be a really great weekend and hopefully a good chance to network with other seedy characters.

He is touring France in September and giving workshops there, before moving on to Denmark and Germany, then he will be in Ireland before visiting the Isle of Man where his grandfather came from, and finally the UK.