Seeds are the New Hollywood Celebrities

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Seed Stories You Need to Check Out

By Sandy Swegel

Seeds are the New Hollywood Celebrities

The importance of seeds to life on Earth is growing in our consciousness. Have you noticed there are a number of new movies and other media about seeds? “Seeds” and “Sustainable Farming” are definitely “IN.” Many films are now available online for free and others are being screened in local communities.

Here are a few that I know about.

“Seeds of Time” 2013
SEEDS OF TIME follows agriculture pioneer Cary Fowler’s global journey to save the eroding foundation of our food supply in a new era of climate change. The reviews rave about great nature photography.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2962826/

“Open Sesame” 2013
This film tells the story of seeds by following the challenges and triumphs of some of their most tireless stewards and advocates.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2962826/

“Bitter Seeds” 2011
These are sad stories about farmers in India
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2306473/

“Harvest of Fear”
A Nova, Frontline PBC special about the GMO debates.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/

“The Vanishing Seeds Film Project.”
about seeds and deforestation in Africa.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vanishing-Seeds-Film-Project/127333317308892

 

Here are a few of the TV Programs:

“Farm Kings” about farmers in Pittsburg
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2962826/

A Reality TV program “The Farm” is popular in Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farm_(TV_series)

And the newest show, Chipotle has sponsored
“Farmed and Dangerous” on Hulu
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852872/

Photo credit:http://www.mindful.org/the-mindful-society/activism/sprouting-seeds-of-compassion

When Hard Frost Finally Comes

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How to Prepare for the Cold

by Sandy Swegel

We’re supposed to get freezing temperatures soon, and it’s getting beyond the point where a bed sheet thrown over the tomatoes is going to help.  This is when the hard frost finally comes and it’s time to harvest those green tomatoes and put them in the house or cool garage.  I personally don’t start immediately making green tomato recipes because I’ve found most of the tomatoes will ripen and turn red if they’re big enough and don’t have wounds where mold will form before ripening happens.

I also harvested cucumbers and some late-season beans and three red peppers hiding under some tomato foliage.  A blanket is going over the big pumpkin that the neighbor’s kid (he’s 30 years old) wants to keep growing until it’s heavier than he is. Last year he made it with a 147 pounds of pumpkin!  All the greens and root crops and cabbages will be fine.

As I walked around the garden yesterday afternoon, I noticed the biggest threat to the remaining plants was drought.  The weather has been cool so I didn’t think about water, but the low humidity all week is sucking all the moisture out of the air and out of the plants.  So I do need to run the overhead sprinkler for an hour or two to return moisture to the leaves.  That extra water on leaf surfaces will freeze at night and help protect the plants.

Water is important now if you garden in an arid place because we tend to let the garden’s needs slip from our minds while we’re enjoying the fall colors.  When we see foliage browning we first assume it’s just the season, but as my poor limp Comfrey showed me, everything needed a good soak.  Rain a week ago has long evaporated from the surface of the topsoil.   A local plant expert told me once that he found the key to helping plants overwinter was making sure they went into winter well watered. Water in the soil will freeze and help protect roots.

One more thing I’ll do before it freezes tonight:  get out there with my camera and take pictures of the garden in its final days of glory. Something to warm my heart on dreary gray winter days.

The Ants Go Marching

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The Journey of Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

Seeds have a big challenge this time of year. They’ve matured and are turning into the hard seeds we recognize in seed packets. Now their job is to disperse themselves near and far so they reproduce their species next year. This is a challenge because seeds have no feet for walking. So they have to get somebody else to do the work for them.

We know some of the most common ways that seeds get around. They get eaten by birds and pooped out in their next home. The wind takes some seeds and spreads them about. And then there are the workers who go a lot of trouble to disperse seed such as the humans who right now around the country are collecting seeds from plants so that we at BBB Seed can send the seeds to you.

Humans aren’t the only servants of our seed taskmasters. All over the world today, especially in woodland wild areas, ANTS are waking up this morning to disperse seeds. About five percent of flowering plants worldwide are dispersed by ants. There is a fifty-cent word to describe what is happening: Myrmecochory or seed dispersal by ants. Myrmecochorous plants coat their seeds with a fatty elaisomes (“food bodies” rich in lipids, amino acid, or other nutrients) that are excellent food for ants to eat and take back home for breakfast.

This is such an excellent survival method by the seed because the ants just eat the outside of the seed and then abandon the seed in the ant nest or under some nice decomposing leaves, slightly buried away from bird predators and covered with composting materials. A perfect place to germinate next Spring when temperatures rise.

So in my little part of the world, seeds on the move. Winds are blowing some. The birds are eating lots for winter. Some are being dispersed by the United States Postal Service delivering our seed packets. Squirrels burying bigger seeds in hidden treasure troves. And out in my neighbor’s garden where little cyclamen grow under pine trees, ants are lifting and pulling or pushing seeds across the yard down into their ant lairs. Right now I’m drinking coffee while little baby ant larvae are slurping yummy elaisomes all food of fats and sugars from the outside of the seeds.

The seeds. They’re enjoying the ride. They love to travel.

 

Best Wildflower Seeds

Heirloom Vegetable Seeds

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A Positive Twist on Garden Problems

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How to Learn from Garden Frustrations

by Sandy Swegel

Gardening guru Elliot Coleman came to talk at the Denver Botanic Gardens last night. One message that he repeated consistently is that he doesn’t focus on problems but he does get excited to find solutions. One’s first thought might be, “Well he hasn’t seen my garden problems, then.” But as we asked questions about our problems, it was clear he was not someone burdened by problems in the garden.

One refreshing way to think more positively about the “opportunities for solutions” our garden gives us is how Elliot thinks about pests. He says, “Pests aren’t problems, they are indicators.”

In his greenhouse, for example, if he gets an aphid outbreak in January, he asks himself, “Why do I have aphids? What are they an indication of? What are they showing me about the health of my plants or soil.” In his cold greenhouse in January, there was often a Nitrogen buildup in the soil. He remedied that by starting irrigation even though the plants weren’t dry but because he wanted to wash away some of the nitrogen. And his aphid problem began to clear up.

For many of us who focus on getting rid of the problem…the pest, we don’t come to the solution that would have resolved the problem and we just have to keep getting rid of the pest.

So this year as you’re closing up your garden, or reflecting on the season, a list of problems is likely to come up in your mind. Re-phrase your approach and don’t think about the problems…ask your self what the problems are trying to indicate to you. Next time I see an aphid, I’m going to stop and ask, “What are you trying to tell me?”

 

Decrease Chemical Use

 

 

 

 

Best Wildflower Seed Mixes

Heirloom Vegetables

Grass Mixes

 

 

Let them Sweeten

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All About Cold-Sweetening

by Sandy Swegel

I spent the week with my sister Anne.  It’s enough to make me doubt the entire idea or theory of DNA and genetics that suggest we are related in some cellular way.  Except for the fact that we look like sisters, we are so different, the family joke ran this way.  “You’re so weird.  You must have been switched at the hospital.” “No, you’re so weird. You were the one switched.”  After some bickering my mother would chime in, “I don’t know where either of you odd ducks came from.  I must have been the one switched at the hospital.

It was evident as we were sitting around the kitchen table that she is a finisher, somebody who gets projects finished.  I have to hold on to my coffee cup if I don’t want it cleared off the table half full.  She wants breakfast finished and the table cleared.

It can be hard to share a garden with a finisher.  Her idea of dealing with the garden as the leaves start to fall is to pull everything out right now and rake the soil nice and tidy and be done with it till next April.  So naturally, I was howling as she’s shoveled up the beets and yanked the kale.  “No, leave it alone. It’s finally getting really good. Don’t you know this is when the root vegetables get really good and sweet?!”  Fortunately, we are adults and I skipped the “how can you not know that” remark and she threw up her hands and walked away muttering “Whaaateverr.”

Let them sweeten, cold-sweetening in vegetables is a real thing. Plants produce sugars through photosynthesis and store the sugars as starches.  But in cold temperatures, plant break down the starches into “free” sugars and store them in cells to protect against frost damage.  Scientists describe the process as “Sugar dissolved in a cell makes it less susceptible to freezing in the same way that salting roads reduces ice.”

 

And it makes the vegetables taste so good too!  As long as you can pry the soil open before it freezes solid, you should leave the root vegetables like beets and carrots in the ground.  Kale, chard and spinach full of sugar can be frozen solid first thing in the morning and be delicious and undamaged to eat at dinnertime.  Cold-sweetened Brussels sprouts are worth fighting for.

 

The only vegetable you don’t want to cold-sweeten are potatoes, because you want them full of starch.  That’s why you don’t store potatoes in the refrigerator.  All the extra sugars make cold-sweetened potatoes turn brown during cooking. You reverse the process in potatoes by keeping them in a warmer room and the sugars convert back to starch.

Cold-sweetening is also why you store your winter squashes and root vegetables out in the unheated garage…someplace that doesn’t freeze but also isn’t as warm as the house.

Vegetables to cold sweeten:

Carrots, Beets, squash, kale and chard, broccoli, Brussels sprouts (Yes!), leeks, spinach, parsnips and radicchio, and best of all, Apples.  Leave those apples on the tree as long as you can…they get better every day in the fall.

 

Photo credit: http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/storing-vegetables-for-the-winter

http://lopezislandkitchengardens.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/sweeter-after-a-frost/

 

Natures Goofballs

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Noticing the Silliness of Nature

by Sandy Swegel

Nature’s such a goofball. Friday afternoon I was busy carrying the weight of the world. My mom has become bedbound. My dog has pancreas problems and has to eat and poop every two hours. I broke a tooth and there was nothing for dinner because I forgot to go to the grocery.  You know the kind of day.

So I took the poodle for a quick walk at a nearby lake.  The dog ran free and I look at wildflowers.  As we hiked there was a crazy flash of yellow all around. I tried to see what it was but by the time I looked, it was gone. The dog jumped at one of the yellow flashes.  A few feet further and there were more…and then I understood.  The sulfur butterflies had just migrated in. Everywhere tiny Sulphurs were frenetically flying in great swoops or zig-zagging so fast I couldn’t catch a picture.  They had just filled up on the nectar of a field of bright yellow wildflowers and now were wildly playing in a sugar rush of joy and delight.  What goofballs I thought.  How am I supposed to be depressed and downtrodden when natures goofballs are flittering all over?

As if that wasn’t enough joy, we came upon the lake and it looked like it was Labrador dog day at the lake.  No less than seven labs were there bouncing in and out of the water chasing imaginary sticks or biting at the water.  Labs are definitely the goofballs of the dog kingdom.

It was all just too silly so I forgot about impending deaths and money worries.  Butterflies and labs are here to tell us that life is to be enjoyed like silly goofballs.

Photo credits:

http://www.cirrusimage.com/butterfly_orange_sulphur.htm

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yW4XLl0p8Mc/TjH1HvxVwBI/AAAAAAAAArw/LuHkqNB5k_M/s1600/IMG_3918.jpg

 

Coming Soon: Grand Finale of Color

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Coming Soon: Grand Finale of Color

by Sandy Swegel

Quit tidying up.

There’s something you seldom hear. Sanitation in the garden is important year-round, but September is special in that we are slowly building up to the grand finale of Fall Color that changing leaf color brings. You can help make that more spectacular in your garden.

Leave colorful fruit where it falls.

Keep the leaf blower locked up. This is the time to let the red hawthorn berries litter under the tree.  Likewise, crabapples and plums can be beautiful fallen amid leaves. In the vegetable garden, pick the huge squashes that are past their prime, but leave a few gnarly yellow gourds or huge white patty pan squashes next to the plant to show off in the crisp fall light.

Plant fall plants.

Fall blooming crocus are sending up vivid purple heads now. I’ve spread them around so they come up like wildflowers here and there. I do the same with fall mums at the garden centers. I pick the smallest pots I can find and plant them here and there throughout the garden…like little mushrooms of bright color popping up.

Water if it’s dry.

Lots of places had a drought this summer so you need to water to be sure that trees and perennials go into winter well watered. You also want to water so that the last leaves on plants stay in place and turn color instead of just drying up brown and falling off. A fall garden that is too dry just desiccates into brown ugliness.

No more deadheading.

Let the rose hips turn brilliant orange on spent flowers.  Leave the finished sunflowers in place for little finches to land on.  Keep picking up diseased leaves and apples so rotten they call every raccoon in the neighborhood to gorge. But otherwise, get out the rocking chair and wait for the show.

Photo Credits: http://shysongbirdstwitterings.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html; 

 

Best Wildflower Seeds

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Organic Vegetable Seeds

What’s Wrong with this Leaf?

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Identify What’s Wrong With Your Plants

by Sandy Swegel

What do you do when one of your plants suddenly starts looking like it’s sick.  I mentally go through a list of things I’ve seen before. Is it powdery mildew? Is that grasshopper damage?  If the plant is next door to a yard that doesn’t have a single dandelion, I might ask myself if the problem is pesticide overspray or runoff from the neighbor’s chemical use.  But I learned yesterday there’s a whole category of plant injury I don’t often think about.  Ozone or air pollution damage.

A scientist from CU-Boulder and NCAR, as part of climate change research, planted two ‘ozone” gardens in Boulder to test the effects of air pollution on plants.  Yikes!  Unseen air pollution like ozone can really hurt plants. It may just be speckling on leaves, or it might be damage that kills the plant.  Our air looks and feels clean and crisp, but our plants tell the real story that invisible air pollution can hurt plants (and us).  Ozone air pollution especially affects plants close to the ground like watermelon, beans, even raspberries.

 

NASA has also done ozone research and concluded: “Ozone interferes with a plant’s ability to produce and store food. It weakens the plant, making it less resistant to disease and insect infestations.

Yikes, there’s not a lot you can do in your garden plot about ozone damage in mid-summer on plants in full sun. The plants are breathing in the ozone just like you are.  Some plants are more susceptible than others so if you live in an area with a lot of air pollution, you can grow more resistant plants.

Now when something is wrong with your plants, you have to ask yourself:

Is it a fungus? Is it a pest? Is it the water? Is it the soil? Is it the air?

Photo credit
http://plantdiagnostics.umd.edu/level3.cfm?causeID=312
http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/ozonegarden/detect-effects.php

 

 

Is Gardening work or play?

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How To Garden Wisely

by Sandy Swegel

 

I had to laugh this week when reader Mike Hood commented earlier on one of our sweet inspiring quotes about the virtues of gardening that “Gardening is a Battle.” Now maybe Mike was just trolling, but I am all too familiar with the feeling that gardening is a battle.  When I’m having that experience is usually when I’m about to injure myself.  I was fighting with dandelion roots in hard clay when I torqued my wrist and gave myself carpal tunnel for a few weeks. I was hacking out old lilac stumps with a mini pick ax when I nearly tore my rotator cuff.  And then there was the time when I was furiously trying to get all the work done before dark when I tripped on a stupid piece of metal fencing and impaled it in my leg.  I keep my tetanus shots current for a reason.  Mother Nature is quite solid and stubborn and I rarely win the battles.

However, all the battles are what have taught me how to garden wisely.

Wearing the brace for carpal tunnel on my dominant hand taught me several important things about weeding.

Keeping my tools sharp means less work.
Forget wussy dandelion diggers and get a real weapon for weeds: a Hori Hori knife does a much better job with less work.
It’s the torquing and anger that causes injuries.  A straight wrist and sharp tools and a mindful attitude isn’t so much work.
The non-dominant hand can learn to do an awesome job of pulling annual weeds in soft soil.

 

Over rotating my shoulder with the pick introduced me to a favorite tool, my battery operated Sawzall.  Dig up an entire bush? Easy if you just systematically go round and round the plant using the Sawzall and an Ugly blade for rough wood. Cut through a root, scoop out dirt to get to the next root, repeat.  No sweat.  Divide massive grass clumps or daylilies.  The Ugly blade slides through like going through butter.  The brain and a sharp tool are always better than brute force for getting the job done and for not hacking through irrigation.

 

The best lesson came from getting impaled on the metal fencing.  A puncture wound in the back of my thigh meant I could stand up or I could sit down…changing positions caused all the pain.  That’s when I learned how much gardening can be happily done sitting on my butt right next to the garden bed.  Much less work than bending over. I can even do better pruning if I can see the structure of the plant from the ground level. Pests are easier to spot too.

So yes I do a lot of work in the garden, but it feels like play because I always work in the shade or cool parts of the day. I often sit before the garden bed while working in it. I use really sharp tools and I have colorful orange and purple trug buckets to make me smile. Those are my weapons in battle.

Photo Credit http://www.amleo.com/leonard-soil-knife/p/4752/

 

 

Organic Gardening

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More Wildflowers

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All About Wildflowers

by Sandy Swegel

The fields and meadows of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado are awash in wildflowers this year.  Lots of moisture in the Fall and Spring has turned our mountains into riots of color that started early and keeps going and going.  We, gardeners, keep playing hooky from our weeding tasks to hike along mountain meadows and enjoy the beauty of nature that doesn’t have to be weeded or watered.  We also get excited about how wildflowers make us very happy and we try to plant more of them in our gardens.

There’s a deeper story to the wildflower bloom.  It’s that we’ve actually been having longer wildflower seasons for years now.  I look at a good wildflower season as a reason to rejoice and do more wandering and hiking.  Scientists at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory looked out their windows in Crested Butte, CO forty years ago and said, “Hmmm. What’s that about?” “Let’s collect some data.”  So for the last 39 years, they sent out scores of graduate students to count wildflowers.  They recorded when the flowers first bloomed, how many flowers were produced, how long the flowering lasted, etc. Now many years later, the wildflowers are telling an important story about climate change.  Turns out we do have more wildflowers.  Almost a full month’s worth more.  The flowers bloom earlier in the Spring and last longer in the Fall.

It’s still too early to know exactly what it means that we have an extra month of wildflower season.  Clearly, this is evidence of climate change. But what it means is less clear.  We get the first bloom six days earlier than 40 years ago. That means birds and pollinators have food earlier.  But we still get the same number of flowers which means the actual amount of nectar hasn’t changed.

Up in Crested Butte, the scientists still look out and ask “Hmmm? What’s that about? Let’s collect some data.”  Graduate students still count the number of flowers in little 30 foot plots across the mountain.  A new study is putting tiny radio transmitters on hummingbirds to see how their feeding is changing.

Meanwhile, the wildflowers give us abundant beauty …and… hard data that climate change is happening, rather rapidly.

Photo Credit: www.constantinealexander.net/2014/03/rocky-mountain-wildflower-season-lengthens-by-more-than-a-month.html