Seed Saving 101

Love this photo. I grabbed a clump of carrot tops last fall and came up with these beauties. Variety: St. Valery

I recently sat down with Donna Balzer for a conversation about saving seeds, the difference between hybrid and open-pollinated tomatoes, my journey into seed farming, and so much more. We get into best varieties to grow for the home gardener, and why seed saving is so important in these troubled times.

I haven’t done a lot of podcasts (only two), but I really like to listen to them while I am working. Often, while I am filling seed orders or starting seeds I put on a podcast and the work seems to go easier. I will admit that it was kind of weird to listen to my own voice for a change! I hope that this conversation makes whatever you’re doing hum along.. Check it out. https://donnabalzer.com/s2-episode-5-save-seeds-they-will-adapt/

On another note, if you haven’t already started your onions and leeks, now is the time. Onions start to make their bulbs when the summer solstice happens, regardless of their size and leeks take their own damn time to size up, growing slowly but surely through the season. So an earlier start is better for them. If you are motivated and you have the indoor space you can start lettuce, chard, kale, mustard greens, celery, and some others I’ve probably forgotten. It’s almost time to get your peppers and tomatoes going too; at least, if you have indoor lighting and a greenhouse to transplant them into. You will be eating your first tomatoes by late June then. Yum!

Happy planting folks,

Sal Dominelli

Sweet Rock Farm

What Should I Plant Right Now?

Yesterday I was working outside in a t-shirt. It was sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and I could actually feel the warmth of the sun on my face and arms. Today, the temperature will barely crawl above zero, and we had a hard frost last night. For the next several days it is supposed to go down several degrees below zero. This time of year we often get these “extremes”. I like to think that Winter and Spring are battling over who gets control of the weather. Not being a winter person I cheer wholeheartedly for Spring and revel in the warm days and curse when I have to wear layers of clothes to keep warm when I’m working outside.

So in answer to the question of what to plant right now, the answer is not much… unless you have an indoor heated space to start seedlings. Then you can get going with some early stuff. Most market growers will have started their earliest plantings of things like onions, leeks, lettuce greens, and other greens— mostly brassicas like Kale, or any of the mustards. There are a couple of other greens that you can plant early as well. Claytonia, also know as Miner’s Lettuce is great, Corn Salad, and of course, Spinach.

When you start your seedlings inside you also need lights or they will get leggy and fall over from not enough light. I just updated my indoor lighting setup a couple of weeks ago and am so stoked because it was simple and relatively cheap. For too many years I have used fluorescent lights to grow my seedlings, and while it works, I have found them awkward because they have to be placed close to the plants to provide enough light, which makes it difficult to water them properly. Plus, the cost of replacement bulbs has gotten out of control. This year I decided to check out LED lights as they have come down in price so much, and they are cheaper to run than flourescents.

A friend showed me his set up and I was sold (shout out to Grahame W.!). One of these grow lights is enough for a few seedling trays and can be placed high enough over the plants to make for easy watering. In fact, I have placed a layer of plastic down on the table and put a raised ring of wood around the edges of the table so I can bottom water. I recommend this once the seeds have germinated as its quick and the seedlings like it. I don’t need a huge, intensive space to get a head start on everything. Enough to get a dozen trays going is good for me. Then I transfer the cold hardy veg starts to an outdoor greenhouse to harden off until they go into the ground or into another greenhouse for early selling.

If I wasn’t a market grower, trying to be first to have that salad mix ready, or trying to have the biggest sweet onions I wouldn’t be so quick to start things. As a home grower there is not much advantage in being the first in your hood to have lettuce. It is a lot of extra effort and if you wait just a few weeks you can have greens almost as early.

I will say that an early start is almost essential for onions and leeks though. They grow slow and steady all through the cold wet spring and really appreciate the long growing period. After the summer Solstice they stop putting out leaves so much and concentrate on bulbing, so the bigger the plant by then, the bigger the bulb. Leeks just keep slowly growing all season long.

If you haven’t started your onions yet, for sure get them going. Even without indoor lights, you can put them on a bright windowsill until they can be transplanted outside. You will be rewarded with bigger bulbs come August.

Seed Matters

Ethiopian Blue Tinge Wheat. This variety can be easily grown, then cooked and eaten like rice!

Hi Folks. The weather here on Gabriola Island is rain mixed with the barest tinge of sleet; in other words, it is an inside day. The animals think so too. They are inside their shelters munching contentedly on hay, not even curious about venturing out of doors.

If you have recently perused the online catalogs of the big seed companies you will have noticed that backlogs are already starting to happen. Because of the pandemic last year, there was a buying panic on vegetable seeds, which caused huge wait times for shipping, and some companies flat out stopped selling to home gardeners (Johnny’s Seeds).

Well, the pandemic is still here and it looks like there is a continuing fervor around all things seeds. We are certainly noticing it here at Sweet Rock Farm. I have a request of ya’ll, those of you who garden and grow our seeds or anyone else’s. This year, when you plan your garden and you are dreaming of plucking ripe tomatoes off the vine, or harvesting that huge broccoli crown you just know you can grow, this year plan to save some seeds. Nothing crazy, something easy like beans or peas to start with. Why?

Seed Matters. Seeds matter. They are the base of our entire food chain and in all cultures, across all of the time that we have practiced agriculture, seeds have been cherished, grown, traded, and given as gifts. In North America, even 75 years ago it was the usual practice to save your own seed from year to year, as a farmer or gardener. Its not that hard, all it takes is intent. There is a ton of information online about saving seed if you are not sure. It just takes you to do it.

This may seem self defeating at first. After all, it is in my interest as a seed producer to have you come back year after year to buy my seed. But its not, not really. it is really difficult to produce all of one’s own seed, just as it is very hard to grow all of one’s food. So you’ll keep coming around (I hope!).

What this is about is relocalizing our food web. The pandemic has shown us that our globalized food chains are brittle, and in fact, are quite fragile. We need to start producing more of our own food. In Canada, in BC, and in our own cities and locales. And this begins with seed. Which begins with you.

Like I said above, it doesn’t have to be a huge ordeal. The lettuce seed you save from your best two or three lettuces would be enough for a couple years of harvests. If we all do this, we become stronger together as a community and a nation.

Have a great gardening year everyone,

Sal Dominelli

Sweet Rock Farm Seeds

Happy New Year!

Kabuli Chick Peas. Easy to grow and super productive.

Its a brand new year, and despite our fields being completely flooded because of this incessant rain, I am in a pretty positive space. I was going to write today about the politics of seeds and why it is so important to support small scale seed producers (like us!), but meh.

I’m way too excited about the upcoming season and crop planning. This is the part of the year that everything is perfect because my plans are all down on paper or in my head and I haven’t screwed anything up yet. Its all good!

For example, for one bed in one of my greenhouses I have written down that I am to start spinach by January 15th inside under lights to be ready to transplant as soon as they are ready. The bed will be all amended with compost and a light dusting of oyster shell, and I will be able to plop them right in. Once I have harvested them several times and they are starting to bolt, I will have a bunch of cucumbers ready to transplant in where I will have hoed through the spinach. They will be left in place to provide a mulch and to decompose. I will also have lettuce transplants ready to put in beside the cucumbers, a row on either side of the cucumbers at the edge of the bed to utilize the entire bed while the cukes are still small.

Once the cucumbers are finished (and these are cucumbers grown for both harvesting fresh and for seed) in September/ October, I will “clean up” the bed by cutting off the cucumber stems at soil level and sprinkling some more compost. I will then transplant more lettuces into the bed for a final crop.

Will this work? I have done this before but it never works exactly to plan. Sometimes I fall behind in the weeding so things are a mess, or the spinach bolts too early before the cucumbers are ready, or its still too cold at night to put the cukes in. Anything can happen, and something usually does to keep things less than perfect.

But right now, on paper and in my head, the year will run smooth like a well oiled machine.

Seeds vs Market Part Two

Painted Mountain Flour Corn— Awesome for corn bread!

I occasionally get asked by other farmers if seed growing is more profitable than selling at the Farmer’s Markets. I say maybe… It depends… Sort of… Its about more than just the money.

Seed growing is similar to market farming in that there are certain crops that are very profitable (carrots are a good example) and others that are mediocre money makers once you factor in labour, or trellising, etc.— but they are in demand and attract people to your stand. Beans and snap peas are a good example of this. And yet others aren’t really profitable but you grow them for other reasons. For example, we like to grow rutabagas and celeriac, neither of which are big sellers, but we like to eat them. So we grow them and sell a smattering.

One might say, “Why not just grow the most profitable crops and forget the rest?” This is one strategy, but particularly for seed growing, it is important to have as large a selection as possible to choose from so people do all their shopping with you, just like at the Farmer’s Market. And moreover, farming can get pretty dull when one is growing large amounts of just a few kinds of vegetables. This is another reason why we don’t just grow one or two varieties of seed and sell them outright to another seed company.

Aside from profitability and engagement however, there are other reasons why I decide to grow lots of varieties of seeds. When our farm is in full flower from May to July it is crazy how many pollinating insects are about. Sometimes in the main field the drone sound of buzzing wings is a little awe-inspiring. Even more than this though, we have noticed some knock-on effects. The huge array of insects attracts dragonflies which congregate above the pollinating insects and take out their meals. Insect eating birds (and later on, seed-eating birds) make themselves at home, and we regularly see predatory hawks sitting like sentries in the branches of trees waiting for an opportune time to snatch a bird. Of course, Raven comes by to see whats going on and makes mischief in some way usually sneaking into our chicken pen to steal an egg.

There is probably some natural law that states, “Diversity begets even more diversity.” Or, “Nature hates a monocrop”. The photograph is a picture of Painted Mountain corn, one of the most diverse varieties of corn there is. The man who bred it, Dave Christensen, wanted to create the toughest, most resilient variety of corn to survive where he lives, in the mountains of Montana. More than sixty varieties of traditional, indigenous corn were grown together and he selected only the ones that thrived and survived in his harsh growing conditions. So, diversity also begets resilience, which is another reason I grow many varieties of seeds.

I want to to acknowledge the Indigenous people that spent hundreds of generations developing corn into the master grain that it is. Not enough is said about their contribution to our horticultural legacy. Not just corn, but squash, tomatoes, peppers, sunflowers, potatoes, and many other vegetables come to all of us through their efforts. I won’t write on about what i know little about, except to say with gratitude and humbleness, thank you.

Until next time, farm on.

Seeds vs. Market

Sept.6/2020 Farmer’s Market, Gabriola Island

Growing seeds is such a different business model than growing fresh vegetables. How so? Well, for example, when the Farmer’s Market opens up in the Spring it is a Big Deal on our little island. Not everybody goes but it sure seems like they do. The market space is full of people chatting, buying, and generally “showing up”. Its a social scene. And as a grower, I’m in demand— at least my produce is. Pretty much everything I bring there sells. And it is like this for most of the season. Very full on. It is exhausting, but feels great of course.

The seed part of my business is quite different. Here I am, my seeds are all cleaned, my website is updated, and I’m rarin’ to go! But its December and people aren’t thinking about gardening and seeds just yet. Yes, there are some sales happening, but it is slow. The seed selling doesn’t get going until January, but doesn’t heat up until March and then it is crazy busy filling orders for a couple of months. If you could graph seed sales it would look like a bell curve, with March and April being right at the top. A graph for the Farmer’s Market would probably look like a table. Nothing, and then a sharp rise straight up and staying there until the end of the season when it would once again drop straight down.

Why do both, one might ask? Its, like, full circle man. Seriously, I wouldn’t want to give up either seed growing or market farming. They dovetail together so well. Other than the actual growing of the seed crops, much of the work is done when the Farmer’s Market is over. And similarly, when seed sales have slowed down, I am earning a good income from selling produce at the market. It works.

What's New?

Hidden Rose: The most stunning of the red-fleshed apples.

I spent this an hour this morning doing an podcast with a fellow named Jordan from COABC. It will be aired at the upcoming 2021 BC Organic Conference this February. Check it out. www.certifiedorganic.bc.ca Of course, this year everything is different with Covid so the conference will be entirely online instead of in person. I checked out the list of presentations, guest speakers, and it looks pretty exciting! In fact, one of my new “stars”, Chris Smaje, is a guest speaker. He has just published a book called, “A Small Farm Future”, which I have ordered but not yet received. I can’t wait to read it.

He writes about how we need to change our agricultural models from being commodity-based and globalized, to more local and small-scale, supplying local needs in food and other essentials. He argues that this is future we need to secure a sustainable and resilient society. Most importantly, he says how it can actually be done without teeming masses of starving people. He is based in Britain and says that it is possible to feed the current population there solely on British land.

In other news, we did our last apple pressing of the year this past weekend. We had about 250lbs of apples that are coming to the end of their storage time so we either had to make sauce or squish them. We decided to make juice. Most of it went in to the freezer, but we are making 5 gallons into cider.

I am 95% done with seed work, having cleaned everything except some radish seeds and sunflower seeds, and one variety of beans. Germination tests are ongoing, and the website is mostly updated. It has been a lot of work this year cleaning seeds. I grew more seed than ever because sales were… robust, to put it mildly and I had sold out of some seed by March. But when a crop of dry-seeded vegetables (beets, spinach, kale,etc.) is ready for harvest in July, it gets wrapped in a tarp of stuffed in a sack to be put somewhere out of the way until the fall when it gets threshed and cleaned. This fall the seed cleaning work crashed on me like hollow wave. It was overwhelming, so next year I need to plan better and get help for this task.

Back In the Saddle

Blue, the farm dog, doesn’t want to head out to do chores.

Now that the farming year is starting to slow down I have more time to focus on “the Blog”, and projects around the farm that aren’t strictly about farming veg., or growing seeds— like fence building and other infrastructure stuff.

It has actually been a good year to be a farmer, at least for me and other farmers I know. Despite some wacky weather in June (unseasonably cold and rainy) we had bumper crops of organic seeds come in. We are still cleaning, cataloguing, and germination testing, getting ready for the seed selling season in early spring.

There has also been a surge in the number of people interested in everything local around food. So we pretty much sold out of seed this spring and had an unprecedented number of people come to our farm stand looking for fresh veg. Our farmer’s market started off slow, but quickly got busy. I consider myself a seed grower, but selling fruits and vegetables is a part of our business for sure, so I am very grateful that our community has been embracing local agriculture.

And it is so important to do so these days. Yes, there is the pandemic, but the world seems to be in a slow motion collapse, with so many different crises going on. The more that communities strive to keep the supply chains short— meaning that we grow and make what we can— the better. Of course we can’t do it all, that would be amazing(!), but is unrealistic in our culture. But when supplies get short like they did this spring with certain foodstuffs, the more that is produced locally the better. The community just keeps on keepin’ on.