A Year on the Land

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

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.