How do I start saving seeds?

Obviously, I love saving seeds - I wouldn't have the wee business I do if it wasn't something that fascinated and satisfied me. I don't want you to just buy my seeds though (but of course that would be lovely!) - I'd be extra thrilled if everyone learned to save some seeds too! It's a great skill to have - arguably even a vital one.

The Southern Seed Exchange has a great little guide to getting started - check it out now!

The name is Bean. Broad Bean.

Thumpthumpthump! Attention all gardeners! Now's the perfect time to start getting your broad bean successions in, and the Big Bunny seed shop has a new bean-y treat in store now!

In addition to my old favourite Coles Early dwarf broad bean, I've managed to get my paws on some Red Hughy scarlet-flowering broad beans as well! I grew them on last print and now I have a whole pile of perfect bright green seeds to pass on to you.

Both these varieties are hardy and great producers, so why not grow both? Personally, I'm thinking a candy-striped row. :-)

Enough with the wet!

Well, the rain is coming down... and down... and down. I'm pretty sure this is the wettest spring in my memory. I took the risk a couple of weeks ago and sowed some early seed: carrots, radishes, peas, salsify, and beetroot. The peas and radishes are doing well, but I suspect the rest have drowned.

I always figure it's worth the risk though - seed is cheap, so you might as well take a chance of getting some early goodies. And if the weather turns out, well, like this, you can always just re-sow when the soil dries out again.

In the meantime I'm back to the burrow to curl up with a good book!

Parsnip!

Never eat anything bigger than your own head, they say... Challenge accepted. (Average sized parsnip included for comparison.)

These parsnips were planted in early spring. Parsnips can be a bit tricky - they can take a month to germinate (so don't give up on them too soon) and they need to be gently thinned when young to a good spacing for the grown-up plants. Keep them well weeded too, particularly when they're small - they don't cope well with competition.

Apart from that fussing, you'll also need to just leave them alone until winter - and they'll taste even sweeter if they've frosted in the ground once or twice.

Bean looking for Autumn plantings?

Right now my paws are busy planting broad beans for a spring/early summer crop. I've managed to get over baby rabbit trauma with regard to this legume, and I now very much enjoy them picked young, parboiled, and then stir-fried with a little olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Add feta cheese, salami, chorizo, or bacon if you wish - they all go beautifully!

I'll also be getting my garlic in soon. Garlic can go in as cloves anything up to a month or two either side of midwinter, and gets harvested a bit after midsummer.

Winter greens like red mizuna, green mizuna, lettuce, giant red mustard and land cress can still be started from seed inside, and planted out once they're a few inches tall.

The other thing I'm planting from seed now is peas. I won't get a crop off them until spring/early summer, but they'll pop up now and sit through the winter at just a few inches high (they're very frost and snow hardy), and then they take off in spring. The advantage of doing this is that they develop a good root system over winter and get a huge head start on peas planted in spring. This trick works both with edible peas (choose from the podding varieties Alderman Tall, Dwarf Shelling, Prolific Pink Podding, and Dutch Blue, and the mange-tout variety Goliath in my Felt shop) and flowering sweet peas.

Buried treasure

Hey, look what I found in the compost! (I have a tiny, itsy-bitsy problem with secateur retention. Just a little one. There's probably four more pairs around the property somewhere. That's normal, right?)

If I left them for long enough do you think they'd grow into loppers?

Wet Wet Wet

Rained-on chickens always look pretty miserable. Rained-on, moulting chickens? The very definition of pathetic-ness. (I don't think the girls are actually miserable. Chickeny life seems to continue as usual. But damn, do they look it!)