Seed Sharing Circle 2015 and growing progress

[martinburo]

Grains come in both autumn sown and spring sown varieties. For wheat, nowadays autumn sown varieties tend to be facultative winter wheats that will produce seed in the first year if sown in spring. I've only ever grown autumn sown wheat, but I'd think that even spring sown barley could be sown well before the last frost.

[martinburo]

[Silverleaf]

Yes I agree, there's barley for winter sowing and barley for spring sowing. I don't know which mine is! The winter stuff is poorer in quality and is used mostly for animal feed, and the spring stuff is used mostly for malting.

The barley I have came from last year's straw bale garden experiment - I basically persuaded the bales to rot by watering them and adding fertiliser, and then grew plants in them. The conditioning process is supposed to be hot enough to kill off any seeds, but the outsides of the bales obviously didn't get very hot and I had lots of nice green shoots which made lovely nutritious hay for my rabbits as well as some ears of grain.

I bought the bales in April and the barley sprouted very quickly, with the ears starting to ripen in August, if I recall correctly.

[galina]

Thank you both for this growing info 

[Silverleaf]

Also my seeds for the swap are now bagged up and awaiting a padded envelope and some stamps. Hopefully I can get them off tomorrow, apologies for being so slow!

I've put in:

*Hannan Popbean chickpeas
Dead easy to grow and they don't mind neglect. They taste nice raw or cooked fresh like peas, and this variety pops in hot oil when dry as well. I've tried popped chickpeas before and they are yummy. They don't puff up huge like popcorn - more of a split than a pop. I recommend seasoning with salt and smoked paprika or ras el hanout or even a Cajun or Mexican spice mix, they can definitely take spicing. Black/brown chickpeas like this one are smaller, firmer and taste nuttier than the cream-coloured ones you get in cans.

I don't know enough about how to grow them to give proper recommendations on cultivation, but I'll tell you what I did. See what works for you! Mine were spaced at 15cm/6" at the edges of my raised legume bed. I didn't fertilise at all and basically ignored the whole bed unless it looked really dry. The plants set lots of pods with 1-2 chickpeas in each. The pods fill out before the chickpeas actually grow, so don't get caught out and pick too early - give them a squeeze to see how the seeds are doing. I actually lost a good chunk of my crop because we had such a wet late summer that the pods went mouldy (this was at least partly due to my reluctance to go out to pick them in the torrential rain and distraction of getting adorable baby rabbits at that time) but I think they'd do very well in a drier year. They certainly prefer full sun because the plants on the south side of the bed grew bigger and produced faster than the ones on the north side which were shaded by bean/pea poles.

*Landrace broad beans
Lots of different types from small "field bean" types to bigger commercial ones, from plants that did well for me last year. They've likely cross-pollinated like mad but that was what I was aiming for! Some of my seed last year was a landrace from France which was mostly small field bean types crossed with larger commercial types which had been selected for cold tolerance and therefore are suited to autumn sowing, the rest of my seed was as many different commercial types as I could easily find. Half were winter-sown, half spring-sown, all germinated well and produced well despite it being a horrible summer for blackflies and extremely windy here when the plants got tall. I found that the smaller-seeded plants produced significantly earlier and resisted aphids much better. They obviously have smaller seeds and there are fewer of them in the pods (sometimes only 3) but there are a lot more pods so it balances out! My hope is that we'll get a really good diverse mixture with these, and if you save seed you'll naturally select for the ones that produce best for you.


*Cara TPS
*Russian Blue TPS
*Skagit Magic TPS
*Snookie TPS
If you haven't played with true potato seed before then I definitely recommend giving it a go because it's really fun and rewarding! Because potatoes have some strange genetic quirks every single seed will produce a new variety right from the beginning. All you have to do is grow them out, find some plants you like, save the tubers and plant them next year. And name your new varieties of course...

I sowed mine in mid-March in a propagator with a growlight, in 7cm pots with just an inch or so of compost in the bottom, deliberately putting lots of seeds in to force them to compete really early. As they grew I earthed them up several times until the pots were full and then pricked out the individual plants into small modules. I don't think you have to restrict them as much as I did, but I think it helped me to select the most vigorous young plants when I transplanted them into the beds, and they grew tiny tubers really early so I could select for tuber colour as well at that stage. The plants look on the fragile delicate side at first but they really grow fast once they get going. I got a decent amount of good-sized tubers from many of my plants despite planting at twice the density I'd normally give tuber-grown plants.

And I have some really nice new varieties to grow this year. :)

Russian Blue and Skagit Magic seeds were from last year's TPS sown plants which showed a lot of variety in colour and pattern, so who knows what will turn up? Cara seeds were from a plant grown from a tuber I got at a local Potato Day, and Snookie seeds from a tuber that jayb (who originally bred it) kindly sent me.

Hope everything does well for you! :)

[Silverleaf]

Also, apologies for the essay, I may have got a bit carried away there!

[galina]

Also, apologies for the essay, I may have got a bit carried away there!

Absolutely perfect and to the point information Silverleaf, can't wait to grow them. 

And of course I will let you know when your envelope arrives here.  No you are not late, still several outstanding.  Don't think we will manage to complete the share-out by the end of January now.  Let's hope for a 'seed-love'ly Valentine Day's present.   

[Robert_Brenchley]

That's two TPS varieties (if that's the right word!) I don't have, Silverleaf. I don't have enough of anything else to share round yet, but hopefully next year.

[ruud]

yes i love broad beans and when they are crossed you finally got one you like by selecting.

[markfield rover]

Think I may need to give barley a go, as a child barley was well and truly off the menu as my mother was force fed it in the early forties  I think it may have skipped a generation.

[Silverleaf]

That's two TPS varieties (if that's the right word!) I don't have, Silverleaf. I don't have enough of anything else to share round yet, but hopefully next year.

Oh that's good to hear, I hope they do well for you!

I picked three varieties from the potato day deliberately because they tend to set berries, but Cara was the only one that did. I seem to remember it actually flowered twice but only set berries the second time. I didn't know potatoes could flower more than once.

I assume Skagit Magic and Russian Blue are the ones you already have?

[Silverleaf]

Think I may need to give barley a go, as a child barley was well and truly off the menu as my mother was force fed it in the early forties  I think it may have skipped a generation.

I'll pop some in for you then if you want to try it. Anyone else want some? No point putting in enough for everyone if only a couple of people want it! ;)

[pumkinlover]

I'll try a bit please

[galina]

I'll try a bit please

Me too, please.

[markfield rover]

Thank-you silverleaf.

[sparrow]

Ooooooooooooh Skagit Magic. You must be telepathic Silverleaf, I have been trying to find some of those! 

[Silverleaf]

Ooooooooooooh Skagit Magic. You must be telepathic Silverleaf, I have been trying to find some of those! 

Yay! :)

[galina]

Ruud - your seeds have arrived 

My goodness!  thank you!   

Ruud has added a packet of mystery brassica seeds.  He recalls harvesting seeds of mustard greens, but the label got lost, it happens  ..........  who would like a share of these mystery seeds?  Please let me know and I'll add them to your parcel.

Just to keep everybody up to date with where we are with the Seed Circle:

I have received seeds from:   

Clumsy
Earlypea
Markfield Rover
Pumpkinlover
Ruud
Galina

No seeds from Jayb, Debs, Martinburo and Sparrow so far.  Did you get the pm with my address?
 
RobertBrenchley and Silverleaf are in the final stages of getting their envelopes together.   

I know some of you are waiting anxiously (that includes me) to treasure your new seeds, but we have to be patient for a little longer   

[Silverleaf]

Mystery seeds sound good to me! My package is on its way now Galina, should be with you soon.

[galina]

Mystery seeds sound good to me! My package is on its way now Galina, should be with you soon.

Excellent. 

Will put your portion of 'mystery brassica' aside, anybody else?   

[markfield rover]

A little bit of mystery sounds good to me too ,if that's okay?