Seeds

It's done!  Well, sort of.  I've ordered all my vegetable seeds from good old William Dam as well as a few from a new-to-me catalogue - Henry Fields. 

As you get older you're supposed to take a greater interest in growing flowers and move away from the vegetables, but that hasn't happened.  At least not yet.  I love growing vegetables.  I pore over the vegetable section in seed catalogues with the same growing excitement other women might reserve for shoe shopping. 

I ordered this exclusive beet seed from Henry Fields called Harrier Hybrid that is supposed taste like you've already added the butter.  The blurb went on to say that even non beet lovers will ask for seconds.  I was telling Darcy about it and he was doing his best to look interested, when I realized that I have never put butter on my beets and I'm not even sure I would like how that would taste.  I guess I'll find out in a few months.

I definitely like butter on my popcorn.  I ordered some Japanese White Hull-Less Popcorn that is supposed to mature in only 83 days and give incredible yields.  Or as the catalogue puts it...Incredible yields!  Every stalk produces between three and six ears of corn and there's 300 seeds in a packet, which means I could produce as much as 1800 cobs of my own popping corn!  I just need to find the room to plant it all. 

I also ordered some seed for brussels sprouts called Royal Marvel Hybrid that only takes 85 days - most of the others I've tried take 95 days and up here in Zone 2a our season is often too short to get much of a crop.  Although the good thing about brussels sprouts is that frost is what gives it that great flavour.  In fact if you grew them in a place where it never froze it would be pretty much tasteless.  However, you still need to at least have some brussels sprouts on the stalks when the frost hits. 

When I looked over my list I noticed it had a lot of hybrid vegetables.  I tried to rectify the situation by searching for open pollinated, preferably heirloom, replacements.  I finally found one old variety of brussels sprouts variety called Catskill but it took 120 days to  mature.  We average 90 frost free days.  The thing about hybrids is that they have been crossed and bred for certain qualities such as earlier harvesting and up here that's pretty important.  I've decided that hybrid brussels sprouts are better than no brussels sprouts at all and I just hope that all the green minds out there will forgive me.  Please.  I need my brussels sprouts. 

It's interesting how a hybrid vehicle is usually seen as a good thing, but a hybrid vegetable isn't.