Seedlings! Seeds! Sprouts!

Tomato Seedlings from the Garden Park Heirloom plantings- Seed collected circa 2010.

Green Sprouting De Cicco Broccoli. Seed Saved 2012  Berkeley, CA.

Tomato Seedlings from the Garden Park heirloom plantings. Seed collected circa 2010. Possibly Baltic/Gyspy varietal.

Kathy's Red chard-  Seed hand collected from Ukiah, CA. 2012 - Kathy's personal red strain.

Red Beet Seedling- Collected the seed from a Berkeley Community Garden 2011

I decided to cull through my seed saving collection and start some of the mystery seeds that I have collected through my travels. Here are some of the stories from my personal heirloom collection....enjoy!

 Last summer I collected and grew a BUNCH of the De Cicco broccoli seeds and they are turning out to be great offspring of the parents. The parent plant had lots of room to sprawl and stretch out in the Cali sun, resulting in some of the biggest, sprout-iest broccoli I have seen! I can only hope the same for this generation of tasty, nutty Italian heirloom broccoli.

When Sam and I lived and farmed in the Mendocino mountains we met a wonderful friend Kathy. She has a beautiful vegetable garden with some of the brightest red chard I have seen. We were lucky to be there in the fall, so I could snatch some seeds from the chard plants. I stuck the seeds in the back of an envelope and mostly forgot about them. Thousands of miles and many stories later- the chard is blossoming in Beloit, WI. It is beautiful and hearty reminder of the open connection between people and plants.

The red beet is from a garden bench in a Berkeley community garden. There were a couple of stray seeds that were floating around in some brush and leaves. I snatched them up and stuck them in my purse, thinking they were chard. Surprise- its beets! I only have one or two if the seeds....so it will produce a tasty experimental snack.

I encourage all of you to start a few experiment seeds of your own!