Garden seeds – in November?

Yesterday, an interesting post came across a regional preparedness website as follows: "Order garden seeds NOW. Today, I went to my favorite garden seed sites to find out that many are not printing catalogues this year AND they are out of some of my favorite varieties, forcing me to try different ones. If you have saved some seeds you are way ahead.  If not, a seed exchange may be considered in the early spring to share extras."

We've been so busy with our relocation that I haven't given any thought to gardens, much less seeds. Is this person correct? Is a seed shortage already in the works for 2021?

Curious, I did a little poking around online and came across a post called "Top 12 Garden Seed Catalogs 2020" which mentioned: "Update: Some companies, in order to save on waste and money, no longer print paper catalogs… Their catalogs are online only. While I do love curling up with a cup a tea and a stack of catalogs, consider doing the same with a tablet. I encourage companies to save all the trees they can, and besides… you get faster service with online ordering anyway!"

While this cheery note hardly bespeaks dire predictions, it is certainly a break with tradition for seed companies not to send those seductive and colorful paper catalogs in the mail each January.

I logged onto my favorite seed company's website, Victory Seeds, and all seems normal (or as normal as can be in 2020). They have catalogs available upon request. However ...

When I clicked on a random vegetable – corn – many many varieties are already sold out for 2020. Not everything, but a lot more than I expected.

Same with beans.

Other veggies (broccoli, carrots) seem well-stocked. Yet other veggies (peas, lettuce) have mixed results – some seeds are in stock, others are sold out.

Now granted, I haven't gone through every seed company or even every vegetable within a particular seed company. However certain news articles are confirming the trend of ordering early (here and here).

Remember, older seeds are still viable. They may not have as complete a germination rate as fresh seeds, but who cares?

So I think the person who posted that comment is correct. You may want to beat the rush and order garden seeds NOW for your 2021 garden. We don't know what next year will bring, and garden seeds are a relatively cheap investment.

Where to get seeds when online sources are SOLD OUT

Here's a piece I wrote for The Organic Prepper entitled "Where to get seeds when online sources are SOLD OUT."

Check it out!

Finding seeds during scarcity

I've been asked to write an article idea on the subject of finding garden seeds during times of scarcity.

Everyone's been hearing about how seed companies are stretched to the limits or even sold out as desperate gardeners, both novice and experienced alike, descend on them in a panic. Many companies have stopped answering the phones and are putting up online pleas for understanding as they try to handle back orders with limited capacity and inventory.

What I'd like to examine is alternate sources for seeds or seedlings. Obvious examples are getting seed from gardening friends and neighbors, but I'd like to delve deeper.

Since I can think of no finer source of information than you, the reader, let me pick your collective brain. What are some sources where people might find seeds if the usual sources (such as online companies or big box stores) are out of the loop?

Your ideas will help everyone.

Friday roundup

Goodness, I have been utterly scatterbrained this week. It's been busy, yes, but that's no excuse for the absolute blog silence. Apologies to all my loyal readers!

So here it is – Thursday – time for our "Friday" Roundup. These, as you recall, are so we can all check in on what steps we've taken, big or small, to inch us incrementally toward greater preparedness (regardless of what day it's posted).

Here's what we've done in the past couple of weeks:

• We butchered five animals last Wednesday.

We were getting way too crowded – not just at the feed boxes, but also too many for our property to easily support. Now we're down to ten animals, a far more manageable number. We're not expecting any calves this year either, since we currently don't have a bull.

• In anticipation of sorting out which animals to butcher, Don built another "airlock" gate. We're putting in fences and gates across critical pinch-points on our property to assist when we need to sort out animals.

We tested this latest "airlock" when shooing the animals not getting butchered down to the pasture for a couple of days. One of the targeted animals escaped, but since she couldn't get past the airlock, it was a simple matter to get her back where she needed to go. As Don and I lose our farmhands (the girls), we need to come up with ways to work smarter, not harder; and airlock gates serve that purpose.

• After the butchering was done, Don took advantage of the livestock being down in the pasture to clean up some more of the muck underneath the feedbox awning. We didn't want the livestock in the pasture for more than a day or two, since the grass is just starting to emerge and we don't want it trampled or eaten down too early; so after a couple hours of scooping poop, we closed the gate and brought the animals back up from the pasture.

• I planted seeds indoors:

• 25 cayenne peppers
• 25 basil
• 10 Brussels sprouts
• 10 broccoli
• 18 tomatoes (6 large, 12 paste)
• 10 red bell peppers

The broccoli and Brussels sprouts are just starting to come up.

It's always fun to watch an infant plant push upward.

• We picked up the four hazelnut trees we ordered and paid for last fall.

For some reason I expected these to be a lot smaller than they are, so I'm delighted they're already at such a height. Unlike the walnuts we planted last May (and may take as long as 15 years to produce), hazelnuts should bear a crop much more quickly.

Hazelnuts (sometimes called filberts) and walnuts are the two types of nuts which will successfully grow in our area. Having a permanent source of plant protein (nuts) is a valuable addition to our farm.

• It's been raining an awful lot, precluding much work in the garden, but I got a bit of a start at weeding some beds.

I noticed this little guy...

...at the edge of the pond...

...keeping a sharp eye on Lydia.

• One of our pear trees, which bears prolifically, had two large branches growing out at awkward angles.

These would get so heavily-laden with fruit in the fall that we had to prop them up with tomato cages.

So I sawed off these two large branches, and nipped off a few smaller branches growing at odd angles. The result is a much nicer-looking tree.

• I've been admiring the birds we've been seeing:

Quail:

Western kingbird:

Robin (possibly my favorite bird):

Killdeer:

The spectacular mountain bluebird:

• We ordered two pounds (!!) of flower seeds, specifically a species called lacy phacelia.

These flowers were among the mixed seeds we planted in the orchard last year.

The bees went absolutely ballistic over them.

Come to find out they're extraordinarily heavy nectar-producers. They're also friendly to cows (some farmers even plant them for grazing). We're planning on sowing the mounded hillsides of nasty clay dirt that was piled when the pond was dug. This will not only stabilize the slopes, but provide endless food for the bees.

• I'm working on the talk I'm giving on May 6 at the Northwest Preparedness Expo in Prosser, Washington. This is put on by an nifty church-based group called the Lower Valley Assembly whose purpose is "to promote the advancement of self-reliance and security within the Lower Yakima Valley in accordance with the laws of nature and the commonly held Judeo-Christian principles by which the United States of America was founded." Hopefully if anyone's in the area, you can attend the expo.

That's what we've been doing around here. How has everyone else done as far as preparedness?

Welcome to Victory Seeds

The coolest thing happened over the weekend! We were contacted by a company in Molalla, Oregon called Victory Seeds indicating they’d like to advertise with us, and were we interested?

You bet! I’ve been a customer of Victory Seeds for years. I first discovered them around 2009 (possibly earlier, I forget), and their prices and service were so excellent I ended up ordering nearly all my original garden stock from them.

Let me back up a bit. When we began to get serious about our garden as a factor of living a prepared lifestyle, we knew one thing was non-negotiable: we wanted non-hybrid (open-pollinated) seeds so we could save them from year to year. Open-pollinated plants, for those new to gardening, are not hybridized and can be bred “true.” (Hybrid seeds can also be saved, but the resulting offspring can be disappointing since they often don’t reproduce the desirable qualities of the parent plants.) The idea behind open-pollinated plants is to be able to save the seeds at the end of each season, rather than buying new seeds every spring. This, of course, increases our self-sufficiency.

There are endless non-hybrid seed companies online, and my choice of Victory Seeds was fairly random and mostly motivated by the fact that it was a Pacific Northwest company and thus presumably carried seeds more compatible with our growing conditions. As an extra bonus, I like giving my business to small family-owned companies.

For essentially a random selection, it was a happy choice. My first order was modest; my second order was larger; my third order was enormous; and over the years I’ve obtained an extremely thorough selection of open-pollinated fruit, vegetable, and herb seeds from them. I have yet to be disappointed.


My gardening education has been an uphill battle – I have something of a natural “black thumb” requiring a steep learning curve – and so I ordered a decent quantity of each kind of seed I wanted in order to see me through my failures. Even seeds that were several years old by the time I planted them have grown well. This past summer I planted some six-year-old carrot seeds and about 75% produced beautiful roots. Being biennials, these carrots have overwintered well and will produce seed by next summer.

It was through Victory Seeds that I found my beloved Yukon Chief corn. Because this variety isn’t well-known, and because I had my first outstanding success in growing corn in our short summers with this dwarf short-season variety, I left a review on their website two years ago.

So as you can see, my positive experiences with Victory Seeds goes back quite a ways. Now you can understand how tickled I was to be asked to advertise them!

I can add yet another bonus: Victory Seeds is a "prepper-friendly" business. They understand and support the needs and interests of people looking to achieve greater self-sufficiency and independence. Their website has advice on seed saving and storage, garden layout, and general tips on increasing food self-sufficiency.

In working out the details of their advertisement, we learned other things about Victory Seeds which reinforces our pleasure in having them as advertisers. It turns out the owners of the company, Mike and Denise, have a similar backstory to that of Don and myself; namely, they chucked big-city living and started a rural business doing something they love and believe in passionately. They work long hours, and pour their heart and soul into providing customers with the very best, while keeping overhead (and prices) low.

Victory Seeds has a coupon code available that will take 5% off seed orders. The code is 5off2016 and is a reusable code that customers can use as many times as they want, with no minimum order. The code can also be shared with gardening friends. The only conditions that apply are that the offer cannot be combined with other discounts, can only be used online (not valid with mail orders or after an order has been finalized), and it applies to the seed portion of the order only. This link provides instructions on how to properly redeem the code.

Bottom line, I want to extend the warmest possible welcome to Victory Seeds, and state how pleased we are to offer them an advertising platform.

Spring!!

Spring is inching its way forward here in north Idaho. In fact, for the last week the weather has been delightful... which always triggers in me the need to get my hands dirty.

The tulips we planted last fall are starting to come up.

The garlic, also planted last fall, is doing well.

I can also tell it's spring because the chipmunks are all over the place. And I mean we're dripping with chipmunks. They may seem awfully durn cute, but let me tell you collectively they're a terrible pest on a farm. Last spring they ate down all my seedlings in the greenhouse. They nibble through bags of chicken feed. They get into everything.

So forgive me if I don't have a lot of sympathy when I find the occasional critter drowned in a cow's water bucket.

In fact, last year's seedling disaster in the greenhouse meant we had to do something about it this year before attempting to plant anything.

We have grandiose plans to turn the entire south side of the barn into a lean-to greenhouse, but right now we can't afford the materials, so we'll put it off. For the time being we'll use our tiny greenhouse.

Here's our greenhouse. It's a little shed we rescued a few years ago when we took down someone's barn for scrap wood. The shed was in fairly decent shape, so we took it whole and added windows and made it a greenhouse.

(This is what the building looked like when we first brought it home.)

Anyway, over the winter I used the greenhouse as a catch-all for anything related to gardening. I would literally open the door and pitch things in, mostly milk jugs donated by friends (we're saving them for seed planters). There's also a tangle of bird netting in addition to a whole lotta other stuff. First job: clean it out.

I cut all the milk jugs in half. With holes punched, the bottoms can be used as planters. The tops can be used as miniature greenhouses to place over planted seedlings in case frost threatens.

I also paused to do something I should have done last fall: planted some acorns. Arching over our booth at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival is an enormous burr oak tree. This type of oak drops huge acorns, some of them almost two inches across. Last fall our booth managers send me a bagful of acorns for me to plant. I finally got around to it (and hope it's not too late).

I also had a bagful of regular acorns (not sure what species) that I scooped up last fall under a line of very pretty oak trees in Spokane. You can see how much smaller they are than the burr oak acorns. I planted some of these in pots as well.

When the seedlings sprout and get a little established, I'll plant them around the property in hopes some will survive.

Anyway, this is what the greenhouse looked like after it was cleaned out.

Next step: chipmunk-proofing. The floorboards are so widely-spaced that chipmunks would slip through them and devastate my seedlings.

There were also large gaps up near the roofline, perfect for chipmunks to come through.

So Don and I measured and cut some hardware cloth...

...and fitted it across the floor.

He used metal staples to hammer the hardware cloth down firmly.

By the way, this hammer belonged to Don's father, who died in a car crash when Don was a young man in the navy. He cherishes this hammer and uses it often.

We stapled smaller pieces of hardware cloth over the holes near the roofline.

Next we needed to do something about the big gaps in the door, top and bottom.

Don put boards at top and bottom to block the gaps.

In short, we plugged every hole we could find. Let's hope it works!

Next I decided to plant a few seeds. Not many, since we can't expect truly frost-free weather until the beginning of June; but onions have a 120-day maturity, so I need to plant them early. I decided to plant a few broccoli seeds, as well as two tomatoes (just for fun). Needless to say these are all heirloom-variety seeds.

First I had to make some potting soil. I always make my own out of composted manure...

...topsoil (bought last year for the strawberry beds)...

...and sand.

After mixing, I filled some pots.

First I planted onion seeds with the help of a seed spoon, which is just a plastic gizmo with a tiny depression at either end into which a single seed fits. I have two seed spoons with scoops of different sizes, for a total of four scoops.

I planted four seeds per pot, in twenty pots, for a total of eighty onions.

I also planted ten broccoli plants, one seed per pot. I'll plant more in a couple weeks, rather than planting a whole bunch at once.

For slips and giggles, I also planted two tomato seeds. I'll probably end up bringing these in the house if the weather turns cold.

I gave everything a good watering.

A nice day's work!