The Peanut Harvest

It was an exciting day on the farm last Tuesday, it was peanut harvesting day! The recent frost had killed the tops of the plants which meant it was time to pull them. I've learned a lot about growing peanuts over the last few years, and compared to the last time I wrote about them yields have at least doubled per plant in our gardens. I definitely see a lot of potential in peanuts becoming a more common crop in Nova Scotia, they're one my easiest and lowest labour crops to grow and they're pretty productive too (some plants in good soil produced up to 18 big pods, each with 3-4 seeds). We filmed a short video the other day of the harvest, check it out and send it around!

Two upcoming events at the farm!

We're pretty excited to be organizing a couple of events at the farm in the coming few weeks. A seed saving workshop and then the much anticipated Tomato Fest. Hope you can make it out for one or the other!

-Seed Saving Workshop - August 31, 2:00 to 5:00 pm at Annapolis Seeds - Come learn the basics of saving seeds! As we tour through the Annapolis Seeds gardens we'll discuss seed saving techniques for many different vegetables, from the easy ones like beans to the trickier ones like the brassicas. Hands-on demonstrations too! We'll practice simple and low-tech threshing and seed cleaning techniques. We'll be covering all the basics but discussions will be guided by your interests, so more advanced techniques can be covered too. Cost: $25 - $40 for couples - or pay what you can. Contact me at owen@annapolisseeds.com or 902 825-0553 to register

-Tomato Fest - September 11, 12:00 to 5:00 pm at Annapolis Seeds - Come celebrate the tomato! Experience the incredible diversity of heirloom tomatoes that you simply can't find in the supermarket. We'll have about 100 varieties on display and for tasting... you'll be able to vote for your favourite! Guided farm tours will be throughout the day and we'll have workshops on growing great organic tomatoes and saving tomato seeds. More info to come... Cost: Free! Although donations will be welcomed

Threshing Techniques, Part 1 (Threshing Bag)

I've been meaning for some time to write a little article on our different techniques for threshing seeds (i.e. separating them from their various dry pods). We've just started harvesting and threshing certain brassica seeds here at the farm, so I thought I'd cover the ever so simple threshing bag method... my favourite technique for doing small podded seeds like kale and arugula. Coming soon will be an article on the threshing box... our main device for doing peas, beans and everything a bit bigger

#1 - After harvesting the dry pods (Mizuna in this case) I'll let them dry further for another couple days in the greenhouse or in the barn. Once the pods are super-crispy and brown and

break apart with a slight touch you know they're ready to thresh!

#2 - My strategy for brassica seeds is to put the dry pods in a pillow case (which you should be sure doesn't have any holes!) and then to smash them any which way we can. You can hit it against a wall, stomp on it, knead it in your hands, flail it, run it over in the car... those little seeds are pretty indestructible. After a minute or two of work the pods are usually all broken open (it doesn't take much if they're dry enough) and have released they're seeds inside the bag. Now you just need to separate the seeds and the chaff...

#3 - I usually just grab the large top pieces of stem and shells and remove them by hand (that's what's in the wheelbarrow here) , the seeds are heavy and almost always settle in the bottom of the bag. To separate the seeds from the smaller chaff we use both screens and winnowing.

#4 - Screens sure are handy! The seeds drop right into the bucket and the pods stay on top. We were lucky to be gifted this awesome brassica seed screen, but any old homemade screen will do. It's handy having different sizes of mesh for different sized seeds.

#5 - The final step is winnowing. The screen gets most of the chaff out but if you want them really clean winnowing is often the way to go. It's just pouring the seeds back and forth between two containers in the wind, the heavy seeds fall and get caught while the lighter chaff gets blown away. A fan works wonders on those non-windy days.

#6 - Voila! The finished seeds! These two buckets are before and after winnowing, you can see how much cleaner they are afterwards.

3rd New Farmers Gathering, June 11-12

It's amazing how busy one can get on the farm in the summer time... it's taken me a month to find the time to post a report from what was an amazing event back in June: The 3rd New Farmers Gathering at The Lorax near Wolfville.

Nearly 100 farmers, aspiring farmers and folks who otherwise have a passion in working with the land turned out for the two days of workshops, bonfires and sharing experiences. I was lucky to catch a couple great workshops on seed growing (with Andrea Berry) and roundwood timber framing (with Mark Alvis) among lots of others.

- Farmers deep in discussion...

- Andrea Berry (right) of Hope Seeds put on a great seed saving workshop, here we are putting the theory into practice by planting a seed saving garden.

- Another of the highlights was planting a three sisters garden, with corn, beans and squash growing together. We were transplanting the corn seedlings into the hills so that they had a head start on the beans.

- I gave a scything workshop on Sunday afternoon, which proved to be quite a popular event. After some instructions and demonstrations probably 20 people got a chance to try their hand at mowing with a scythe. Here I am demonstrating honing with a whetstone.

- Some of the first swaths...

-After the students got into it we made short work of our hay meadow, we cleared probably a 1/4 acre in the course of the short workshop. Many hands (and scythes) make light work.

Seed Stories Video

Here's a new video that my friend Kimberly Smith filmed during a visit to the farm last August. Really takes you back to warmer times... enjoy!

(p.s. the video player doesn't seem able to fully fit into this page, but you can click on the link to view the full screen.)

Middleton Seedy Friday, April 29

We're putting on the second annual Middleton Seedy Friday! It's once again at the Farmers' Market (held at the Railway Museum on School Street), on April 29 from 2:00 to 5:00.

Last year's event was such a success we're really planning to expand on things for this year, we'll have four free garden talks that afternoon and lots of seeds and seedlings to be had. Come trade your favourite heirloom seeds at the exchange table. But if you don't have your own seeds don't let that dissuade you, there will be free seeds available to good homes and all the local seed growers will have tables.

And please do spread the word!

Free Talks:

2:30 - Basic Seed Saving, with Owen Bridge of Annapolis Seeds

3:00 - Companion Planting, with the Hope Seeds crew

3:30 - Growing Great Garlic, with Bryan Dyck of Broadfork Farm

4:00 - Herb Gardening, with Michelle Summer Fike of Pumpkin Moon Farm

Our New Propagation Greenhouse

I'm very excited about the new heated propagation bed that I rigged together last week. It's a bottom-heated mini-greenhouse inside our big greenhouse, I'm hoping to use it to produce lots of tomato seedlings for the local markets later this Spring. A few days ago I planted the last of the seeds in it... we're up to 30 varieties of tomatoes to be available as starts if all goes well!

Here's how we made it:

-We laid down 1" styrofoam sheets from Home Hardware (duct-taped together in the shot) to act as insulation and to prevent the heat from dissipating into the ground. Each 4'x8' sheet cost around $10.

-Next we covered the foam with a layer of earth...

... and laid down the heating cables. They're just roof de-icing cables from the hardware store, this is an 80' length and cost about $60.

-Finally, we covered up the cables with another layer of soil, plugged in the cable and voila! Finished propagation bed! The earth retains the heat from the cables and distributes it fairly evenly. Once the cover is back on the mini-greenhouse it will stay above freezing even on cold nights when the kale in the foreground gets frosted. We also have small air heater (visible on the far right) that I might put under the cover and use if it gets below, say, -5 while the plants are up and vulnerable.

So the whole project took an afternoon to assemble and cost about $80 using new supplies, not bad considering how many hundred of plants it'll grow! The mini-greenhouse itself was an old one we had kicking around in the barn, it wouldn't be hard to rig up something similar using perhaps PVC pipes or whatever you have handy.

Seedy Saturdays and New Retailers...

It's a melty, early spring day and the starlings are singing, the maples are flowing and you can't help but think of new seeds to try this season. I've got a pretty long list of new varieties planned already... lots of peppers and interesting new root crops (Oka and Chinese Artichokes) to give just a small preview.

It's also the time of year to head out to your nearest Seedy Saturday to buy and exchange seeds with other growers. There are more than ever this year in Nova Scotia and across Canada, check out Seeds of Diversity for the complete list. I just got back from Bridgewater which was a big hit and we'll be at the following around the Maritimes this spring:

Fredericton, March 12

Musquodoboit Harbour, March 27

Halifax, April 2

Wolfville, April 9

Truro, to be posted...

Middleton, April 29

I've also got a bunch of new retailers to announce! More places than ever will have Annapolis Seeds this spring... so far we're in: Den Haan's Garden World in Middleton, Home Hardware in Middleton, Fulton's General Store in Lunenburg, Helping Nature Heal in Bridgewater and The Biscuit Eater in Mahone Bay. More coming soon, I'll keep the list updated!

Print Catalogues are Here

The 2011 print catalogues are fresh off the presses! The folks at Integrity Printing down in Bridgetown did a fantastic job with them, and props to my friend Jen Stotland for designing the cover artwork. Everyone who has made an order in the past two years was recently sent one in the mail, but for anyone else contact me and I'll be happy to send one out!

Sweet Dumpling Squash

Perhaps my new favourite squash, Sweet Dumpling was a real standout in the garden in 2010. This is the second year Annapolis Seeds will have it listed in the catalogue, but last year Chris Sanford grew them for me so I didn't get a chance to try them myself. I missed out!

It's originally a Japanese variety, and a fairly new one at that dating back to 1976. They initially named it Vegetable Gourd, but sales weren't good so they changed it to Sweet Dumpling. I suspect it had a lot of both acorn and delicata in it's parentage, guessing from the shape and colour and it's dry, sweet flesh. It was probably the most efficient user of space among my squash last year, the vines only grew about 5 feet and each one produced a good half dozen fruit, so they'd be perfect for cities and intensive growing. They store fantastically as well, they don't seem to require curing like other squash do and they're quite hard when raw, so they resist cuts and bruises that lead to rotting.

The flavour is the best thing about them though. The flesh is dry and sweet and tastes distinctly like roasted chestnuts! I like them cut in half and roasted in the oven for about 25 minutes, with cheese melted on top at the end. You can fill them up with whatever topping you want. The skin is tender enough to eat too.

2011 Catalogue Now Online

Today's the day you've been waiting for... the 2011 catalogue is now out! Check out the full online version at www.annapolisseeds.com, the print catalogues are coming soon too. Spread the word!

Harvest Season 2010

Well that was a fantastic growing season! The nearly ideal weather we enjoyed during the summer stayed right through to the end of the harvest season, which was fortunate because we had a lot of seeds to gather! The seeds are now long since harvested and many are already packaged up for the new catalogue, while the garden is resting for the winter under a fresh blanket of snow. Here's a long overdue glimpse of some of what we got up to this fall...

-Amaranth and sunflowers are a great pair as we learned.

- Checking the Lazy Housewife beans for maturity, they were a few days away from getting harvested.

-One of the stories of the summer was our amazing corn crop. This is the variety True Platinum, and although only on in four seeds that I planted grew (due to lumpy soil and a lack of rain in May) each surviving plant produced three or four big cobs.

-Soybeans ready to harvest in September

-The new greenhouse

- To dry the corn I left the cobs on the plant for as long as I could, and when rain threatened I harvested them and hung them in the barn from their own husks. The seeds will come off easily when they're dry.

-A kaleidoscope of tomtoes. Clockwise: Striped Cavern, Cole, Azoychka, White Cherry, OSU Blue and Absinthe. Centre: Black Krim.

- OSU Blue tomato, a very unique blue skinned tomato. It was developed at Oregon State University by cross-pollinating a red tomato with a wild blue tomato from South America.

- Removing the seeds from one of our many Musquée de Provence pumpkins. We ate way too much pumpkin soup and pie that week!

- One of the final tasks of the fall, planting next year's garlic. I'm excited about our future garlic plans, it's going to take a few more years of multiplying the seed stocks but I hope to have a limited selection of seed garlic available in the not too distant future...

End of Summer Updates

It's been a busy few weeks lately with Dan Jason visiting, putting on the seed workshops and throughout this trying to keep on top of the biggest seed harvest yet. All three workshops were big hits, many thanks to everyone who came out for them! They were so much fun I'm already trying to think about doing more... I'll keep everyone posted. Below are a few shots from the events:

-Threshing demo at the Halifax workshop, Aug 22.

-Back on The Weekend Gardener... this time with Dan! Hope you caught the show.

-The Middleton workshop was the biggest and most lively of the three, with a very keen and knowledgeable group. Here we are talking tomatoes.

-Thanks to David Baldwin for this great shot of us.

-Dan articulating the finer points of seeds.

The Watershed Music Festival and it's workshops were especially fun, unfortunately I don't yet have photos to post. Be sure to make it to next year's festival! Pollination Project is also holding the second annual Stinking Rose Garlic Festival on October 30, be sure to make it there too.

So after all this seed saving evangelism I'm pretty happy to settle back into the quieter daily rhythm of the farm and to get back to harvesting the actual seeds! There are so many cool new varieties that I'll profile in a future post, Cole and O.S.U. Blue are two tomatoes I really want to get people excited about...

Exciting news with the greenhouse, it's finally complete! We had a work party the other day and with many hands and co-operatively still air we got the plastic attached with no problems. The effect was amazing, within one minute of the cover being on you could feel a noticeable difference in temperature between inside and out. The plans now are to start drying more seeds in the greenhouse and later on to grow winter greens for the markets. Maybe I'll get into the heirloom tomato seedling business in the spring... Until then seek me out for both greens and seeds at the market this winter!

Radio Interview

Just a quick post before I go to the city, giving everyone a heads up to tune in to The Weekend Gardener this Sunday on 95.7 News FM in Halifax (I always find it easier to just go to www.news957.com and listen live). Dan Jason and I will be on Niki's show from 12:00 to 1:00 talking about seeds and about the workshops we're doing. We still need you to spread the word about the three workshops (people are the best advertising!) so please do spread it if you know anyone interested!

August Seed Saving Workshops with Dan Jason

Very exciting stuff in the works lately! Apart from the garden (which is overflowing with seeds right now... more on that later) the seed saving workshops with myself and Dan Jason are really coming together. Dan is coming out from Salt Spring Island at the end of the month and the two of us will be giving three workshops, one in Halifax, one in Middleton and one in Bridgewater. All the info is attached below, hope to see you at one of them and please do spread the word if you know anyone interested!

-Halifax Workshop: 3:00 to 6:00 at the Spryfield Urban Farm, August 22nd. Cost: $25 for the general public and $10 for Urban Farm members. An intro to seed saving at the urban farm! We'll have a garden walk and talk about as many crops as we can cover, as well as hands on demonstrations (bean threshing, tomato fermentation, etc..) and discussions on the deeper political and philosophical aspects of seeds and urban food production. Contact Su Donovaro to register: urbanfarmspryfield@gmail.com

-Middleton Workshop: 2:00 to 5:00 at Annapolis Seeds (8528 Hwy 201, Nictaux), August 25th. Cost: $25 Come visit the seed farm and learn the fun and increasingly crucial art of saving seeds. Some topics covered will include pollination, threshing, organic growing, the importance of maintaining biodiversity as well as a garden walk to discuss specific techniques for each crop. All knowledge levels welcome! Limit of 20 participants, contact owen@annapolisseeds.com or 825-4732 to register and reserve your spot!

-Bridgewater Workshop: 10:00 to 3:00 at Watershed Farm (768 Allen Frausel Road, Baker Settlement), August 29th Part of a very special weekend at Watershed Farm, the workshop is closely tied with the first annualWatershed Music Festival on the 28th (1:00 to dark). On the 28th we'll have lots of music and different workshops throughout the day, and on the 29th we'll have a slightly more advanced (and much quieter!) seed workshop. We'll go into great depth for this one covering each crop individually as well as covering broader topics like threshing and storage. Also exciting will be a lesson on hand pollination of squash from local squash guru Chris Sanford! Included is a delicious organic lunch along with snacks, you'll get to head home with seeds of both mine and Dan's as well as seed garlic from Watershed Farm. You can register online here. Spots are filling up fast!

Another Photo Update

-Lancashire Lad pea

-Leek flower

- My home glistening in the fading evening sun

-Arugula flowers (we're going to have a ton of arugula seed this year)

- These are pretty special: Crown Peas. They're the most unusual pea I've ever grown, formerly considered a separate sub-species of the common pea they have huge clusters of spectacular flowers, forming a "crown" at the top of each plant. The pods are short but tasty. It's almost like a cross between a sweet pea and an edible pea.

-Phacelia is a great nectar crop as well as a cool season cover crop. Bees are currently being drawn to it from seemingly miles around.

Haymaking

The garden is at its leafy, blossom-filled peak right now, and so are the weeds. The hot weather and regular rains that we've had since June have been a blessing for plants both domesticated and wild alike, it's all I can do to push the weeds back enough for the cultivated ones to take up a dominant place... this is not an immaculately tended garden by any means! The newly seeded hay meadows are a riotous, tumbling profusion of wild mustard, ragweed, goldenrod and bindweed, however after scything down these opportunistic meadow dwellers I've discovered a healthy carpet of my cultivated grasses, previously hidden from view - a good sign for next year.

Our own hay meadows are another year away from maturity (they were just seeded this spring after wresting the land from the forest a few years previous) but we have the good fortune of having a neighbour on one side who has more land in grass than the inclination to cut. We've been scything and making loose hay up in that field for the last couple of weeks, it's definitely a learning process for me. Following the very thorough instruction from the Vido Family (you can read one of the articles here) and from what they showed me last summer when I spent some time at their farm I built a couple of hay racks and then went at it. The rack construction is really simple, I made mine with scrap 1x3 lumber, although future models might be made from coppiced hardwood poles from the forest. They're basically two square frames leaning against each other (like an A-frame) and tied with twine at the top (they fold for easy storage and transport).

My current hay making process is to cut the grass and leave it in it's windrow for one full day. I initially planned to spread the windrows so the grass dries more evenly but I've found that mature timothy and orchardgrass (and other course, airy plant matter) dry just about as fast without spreading. After that time I rake the grass into heaps with a wooden hay rake (hand made from yurt-pole cutoffs and with wooden teeth which avoid digging into the ground - photos on the way) and stack it up on the racks, forming a hay cock. After it's stacked the grass continues to dry with air circulation underneath it, and the bulk of the grass on the inside won't fry to brown in the sun like it would if exposed. I take the hay into the barn as soon as I can, though if built with enough skill a cock (or any other version of hay stack) can stay in the field and for some time without getting damaged by rain. I haven't yet mastered the cap design (ideally it should shed water like a thatch roof) and the cock pictured here got soaked in that last thunder storm we had. It was wet and steaming away like a compost pile from microbial activity when I dealt with it a few days after, it made an excellent mulch for the tomato patch! So there's lots to learn yet... I'll keep at it between weeding and tomato staking and the myriad other jobs on the mid-summer farm.

New Photos

-An interesting experiment of mine: the potatoes on the left had fresh comfrey leaves buried in the trench with them at planting time, the ones on the right didn't. The comfrey provides a big boost of nitrogen in early spring at a time when not much is available to growing plants due to the cool soil and slow micro-organism activity.

-Green Oakleaf Lettuce

-Shungiku, an edible chrysanthemum.

-This is an exciting new plant: Chinese Salad Mallow. The young leaves like these are tender and great in salads like lettuce, older leaves even make edible bowls.

-A sea of lettuce

-Spinach going to seed

Of Deer, Greenhouses and Seed Workshops

Finally, some welcome rain and a much needed opportunity for some writing! The garden is growing better than ever this time of year, it seems like every time I look at a plant it's twice the size it was last time. Around here this is the season of weeding and staking, watching things grow and best of all of endless salads. Life in the yurt has been fantastic (I still promise that construction write-up soon!), although it seems to have had the unintended consequence of deterring the deer from the upper field only to drive them into the lower field and the main seed garden. The damage wasn't too severe, a few peas got nibbled and are now re-growing. Ever since I built my funky, improvised deer fence last week out of tomato stakes, twine, surveyors tape and pie plates the garden seems to be secure.

The greenhouse is finally coming together too. The frame is nearly finished now, it's just a matter of finishing the ends (we're having wooden ends with wide double doors) and waiting for a totally still day to throw the plastic over.

Also in the works is a very exciting series of seed saving workshops with both myself and my friend and mentor Dan Jason from Salt Spring

Seeds. Dan is coming out here in late August and we'll likely be giving three separate workshops around the province (details to follow!) the biggest one and the one that's all confirmed is the Watershed Farm Music Festival on August 28th. Organized by Pollination Project at Watershed Farm, we'll have music all day on Saturday the 28th along with organic growing and seed saving demos throughout the day. The following day Sunday will be a smaller, quieter and more in-depth course with the two of us, check out the details: pollinationproject.com/eventsview.php?eventID=85 . I'll keep everyone posted when we decide on the details for the other courses!

Also, here's a photo I've been meaning to share from my time as a guest on The Weekend Gardener the other week. Niki Jabbour hosts the show every Sunday from 11:00 to 1:00 on 95.7 FM in Nova Scotia. I ended up going in to the studio for the interview, which was a ton of fun with such a knowledgeable gardener as Niki. Check out her blog too.

Next up is a weeklong farm tour of sorts to New Brunswick, there's a lot to organize on this rainy day...