Have you been thinking about growing seeds on your farm? I’ve put together a little New Year’s Seed Resolution to get you inspired. (This can be done alone or with your farm team. With family members or with friends. Heck, if you want to record yourself and broadcast your resolution to the world on social … More A New Year’s Seed Resolution
We’ve been harvesting green onion seeds. These green onions are in the species Allium fistulosum. They overwintered outdoors in mini tunnels under a couple of feet of snow. We want flowers that have at least 50% mature seed showing The seed team walks the bed looking at each flower and chooses those with black seeds. … More Harvesting green onion seeds
Is this an exciting lettuce? This is an F2 population of Jericho Romaine lettuce crossed with Deer Tongue lettuce. What that means is that last year, I found one strange plant in our Jericho lettuce planting. In this case strange meant that it looked different from the other plants. And it didn”t look like any … More Jericho x Deer Tongue lettuce breeding
The seed harvests have been coming in. We generally cut whole plants when the are about 75% mature and bring them in our seedling greenhouse to finish ripening out of the rain. They are spread on tarps which helps capture seed as it shatters on the drying plants. Earlier in the season this greenhouse was … More The seed harvests have been coming in.
Veg grower: “Let’s hurry up and cut those leaves before that lettuce bolts.” Seed grower: “Will that lettuce ever bolt? Then we can cut those leaves. Oh, and also get seed.” ???? ???? ???? ???? ???? We strip the bottom leaves off the lettuce plants to improve ventilation and reduce the chance of lettuce seed … More Veg growers vs seed growers – lettuce
So Julien said, “what if we used the sickle bar mower on the BCS to cut down that Red Russian kale for seed?” I said, “I’m not so sure.” But we headed out to the greenhouse to give it a try. And Julien, Hélène, Jasmine, and I harvested that bed in under half an hour. … More Harvesting Kale with a Sickle Bar Mower
These corn poppies all started from some seed I got a while back through the Seeds of Diversity Canada member seed exchange.(@seeds_diversity) When I first grew them out they were all red and pretty similar to one another. I saved the seed and grew them out again. 1 or 2 pink flowers appeared amidst the … More Finding new colours in my Corn Poppies
Onion update. This is what those onions I replanted for seed look like these days. Still a few weeks until seed. My next free online workshop is on Thursday May 19 at 2pm Eastern … It will be about harvest efficiency – more details coming soon!
Monday, we took a bunch of flags and marked our favourite Rainbow Tatsoi plants. When it’s time to harvest seed, we’re going to harvest the flagged plants separately. The seed from these plants will be our stock seed for next year. In this way every generation is a little more what we want it to … More Flagging Rainbow Tatsoi
Sweet pods full of fat green Kale seed a few weeks from harvest. And to the right, onions are about to bloom. My next free online workshop is on Thursday June 16 at 2pm Eastern …