I had the privilege of representing Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company at the Montauk Mill Celebration at Montauk State Park near Salem Missouri, on Friday, May 11. The celebration was geared toward students and provided demonstrations of many old-time trades and crafts.

Understanding that children are the future of our country, Baker Creek owners Jere and Emilee Gettle believe in their mission to educate young people about the importance of growing their own food. They work extensively to provide seeds for school gardens and other educational projects. It is their goal to educate everyone about a better, safer food supply that is free of genetically altered food.

Students at the celebration watched soap being made, participated in hands-on sewing, viewed baskets being woven and wool being spun, and much more. Many of these trades now fall only into the ranks of “hobby crafts” and are in danger of becoming extinct as fewer and fewer people know how to perform them.

One such activity that had lost favor over the years but is now making a comeback is home gardening. As more and more people learn the advantages of growing their own healthful food, particularly with heirloom seeds that can be saved from year to year, there is a resurgence of back yard gardening that is even moving into many front yards.

Baker Creek photographer TJ and I enjoyed the opportunity to share Baker Creek seeds with a wide audience of interested children and adults. Students in grades Kindergarten on up visited our table to participate in 20-minute sessions of activities in groups with their classroom teachers. The first thing we did was to ask students how many of them had gardens at their homes. We were encouraged to see that in every group an overwhelming majority of kids raised their hands and wanted to talk about their gardens.

We had a display of 6 different types of seeds and asked for volunteers from the groups to identify them. Not surprisingly, nearly all students, even the youngest groups, could identify the watermelon seed. Some of the other seed types such as radish, lettuce, zinnia, pea, etc. were more difficult for some groups to identify. The seed-identification game led to discussions about characteristics of different types of seeds and what they need to make them grow. Even the younger groups could understand that we would not serve up a dish of watermelon seeds but that we might serve up a dish of pea “seeds” before maturity.

While both public school and home school groups participated in the activities, all teachers were delighted to receive a copy of the Baker Creek 2012 Heirloom Seed Catalog and all students were given a package of seeds to take home with them. Our hope is continue to plant “seeds” in the minds of children that will encourage them to plant seeds in the ground and grow their own food for their families.

Kathy McFarland is a Baker Creek employee and a life-long Gardener.

If you are a fan of Agatha Christie murder stories, then surely you are familiar with her famed character Hercule Poirot. His last name is a pun, since it rhymes with poireau, French for leek, surely the most unlikely name for anyone aspiring to solve crimes! But a-ha! My little gray cells also tell me something about Christie and perhaps a wink and a brilliant idea that came to her over a warming bowl of leek soup. Who is to say this did not inspire her?

You cannot explore Belgian cookery (the homeland of Poirot) unless you also get to know leeks. I grow many varieties, have them in the ground all year around, and very glad of that fact when I price leeks at any supermarket. But what kind of selection do we find? Normally there is one bin of leeks. Let’s see, Baker Creek offers five distinct varieties and I have nine more than that, and yes, each one has a unique flavor. But you have to sample them side by side in order to detect the subtle nuances.

My great-grandmother, Esther Hannum Hickman, studied at Mrs. Rorer’s cooking school in Philadelphia in 1884-1885, and one of the first things she was taught, was the fine art of cooking leeks in white sauce. Her favorite variety was Musselburgh, a market leek developed in Scotland in the 1700s and still valued as one of the hardiest for overwintering in the ground. Don’t forget that those leaves that you trim off the top of leeks are one of the best things to toss into the stock pot. They will give stock a delightful flavor, so don’t waste them!

The Musselburgh leek has been grown for such a long time that it has produced a number of progeny, new sub-varieties selected out for special traits, like size, hardiness, or ability to stand up under heavy rains. One of the most popular of these is the sub-variety called Giant Musselburgh, which also goes by the names American Flag, Selected Musselburgh, and Scotch Flag. It is generally larger than the original Musselburgh strain, and seems to do better in our American climate. Regardless of which variety of leek you like, you should be starting your seed now (March to mid-April) so that the plants can get themselves well established before the heat of summer. It is important that they develop a good root system to help them overwinter, and if you have seeds left over try adding one or two tablespoonfuls to the next batch of bread you bake. They will give the bread a zippy onion flavor, just like Indian chapattis.

William Woys Weaver is a culinary historian living in Devon, Pennsylvania, were he maintains the Roughwood Seed Collection consisting of some 4000 varieties of food plants. http://www.williamwoysweaver.com/

We are excited to have William Woys Weaver Speaking at Our Spring Planting Festival, May 6th and 7th.

]]> http://rareseeds.com/blog/gardening/growing-leeks-with-william-woys-weaver/feed/ 1 http://rareseeds.com/blog/gardening/how-we-get-those-rare-seeds/ http://rareseeds.com/blog/gardening/how-we-get-those-rare-seeds/#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:50:15 +0000 plumtree http://rareseeds.com/blog/?p=2589 Continue reading →]]> by Randel A. Agrella

Many of the approximately 1400 varieties of heirloom seeds offered by Baker Creek are extremely rare. Some have been introduced and offered by us alone. Customers often ask: where we do we get such a stunning diversity of rare varieties?

Well, our seed comes from lots of sources. Fortunately, many heirloom varieties are still available through several small seed producers. These we buy, just like any other seed house would.

However, a large amount are NOT readily available. These are grown here on the Baker Creek farm, or are assigned by us for grow-out, to our network of over one hundred growers, who custom produce the seeds for us under contract.

On our own farm, we produce as many as one hundred varieties annually. Growing that many varieties involves careful planning, plenty of space, and a lot of hard work! To keep pure strains, each variety must be properly isolated from other varieties of the same species. Isolation distances vary according to species. Self-pollinating types, such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, don’t require nearly as much isolation as out-crossers like cucumbers, squashes and melons. Those types require a half-mile of isolation from other members of the same species. So we grow only a single variety, or else we build cages around the plants, to keep bees from carrying in pollen from other varieties.

Caging is pretty easy to do if you have the materials, but it does involve extra work. We build our cages by creating a temporary frame of PVC pipes over the beds. Then we stretch floating row cover over the frames, and anchor the edges firmly by burying them in the soil. Since access inside the cages is nearly impossible, we lay drip irrigation lines when we plant. That way, we just have to connect those lines to a water souce when the plants are thirsty.

Since the cages exclude bees, we must add bees of our own, since out-crossers won’t produce quality seed without pollination. This is done by bringing in hives of bumblebees, which we then give access to only a single cage. (Honeybees don’t work: the cages are too small for them.) After we’ve obtained good fruit set, the cages are removed and the materials stored away.

When the crop matures, the seed must be harvested. Extraction methods vary, depending on the species–each species has its own requirements. For seed that is extracted wet, like tomatoes and squashes, there is usually a fermentation process involved. Types that dry right on the plant, like beans, cowpeas or okra, is merely harvested, threshed out, and cleaned. Finally, the seeds are tested for proper germination, and then packaged into our colorful, trademark seed packets.

But we cannot grow ALL our rare varieties on the Baker Creek farm–there simply isn’t enough room here. So each season we assign growouts to our contract growers. These folks are usually small-scale farmers, growing crops for market or to feed their own families. So for them, it has been a relatively small step to doing seed production. Some produce seed for other companies as well.

Each spring, we pore over our inventory lists and try to make our best determination of which varieties will need to be grown that season. Then we begin the process of matching up varieties with growers. We send the growers selected foundation seed, at just the right time for planting. Our growers then work all summer, providing proper isolation, carefully tending their plants, and finally bringing in their hard-earned harvest. They send the seeds to us, we get them tested for germination, and finally credit them for payment.

It’s a lot of careful work for all involved. But, if we do everything just right, the result is quality seed, viable and true to type, which we can then distribute to gardeners throughout North America and beyond. It’s the only way we know to safeguard and increase these wonderful, deserving old varieties. It’s really a labor of love!

Seventeen years ago, Tim Stark, began raising heirloom tomatoes, chili peppers and zucchini from seed on the fourth floor of a brownstone walk-up in Brooklyn. He was a freelance writer and consultant at the time, living a somewhat unsustainable existence. He was also a frustrated gardener, whose “real” garden was a tiny plot of land miles away in the country. The urge to plant indoors was driven by a desire to grow and nurture a garden close to home, one he could keep an eye on and whose bounty he could enjoy before the gophers and other pests.

There were other challenges of course, like the shock his indoor-sprouted seedlings went into when he transferred them from their grow-light existence to their new, sunlit home on the roof. Yet despite the many challenges, that first year, Tim, and his then-girlfriend-now-wife, Jill, raised 300 plants, including fifty varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

Tomato growing passion ‘grows’ a book, a farm

That initial experience of “city farming” and the subsequent years, during which his heirloom growing business flourished, became the inspiration for Tim’s book Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer (Broadway Books, a division of Random House, 2008). And soon after his book was published, Tim purchased a 58-acre farm in Pennsylvania. Last year, he raised 30,000 plants and 100 varieties of tomatoes, mostly heirlooms, some hybrids, as well as heirloom chili peppers and several other varieties of produce. He has a staff of farm employees now and sells his just-picked vegetables to the general public as well as over 100 New York City restaurants, including Restaurant Daniel, Jean Georges, 4 Seasons, Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and Bouley from the back of his farm truck at the Union Square Street Market. He also makes special deliveries to city eateries and tries to grow something new each year to have some surprises for his customers. Last year, it was cardons and micro greens.

Tim with His Tomato Plants

Tim’s love of raising “love apples” and of farming is still smoldering. “There is a very nice reward,” he says. “People are very happy with the product and will thank you for your time.”

Of course, heirloom tomatoes and fresh farm-raised produce in restaurant dishes are not a new phenomena, not as “exciting” as they were almost two decades ago when he started growing heirlooms, says Tim. What keeps his customers pleased and returning to his truck at the street market is the flavor. “Virtually all our produce is picked two or one day before it’s sold. It’s that fresh, never refrigerated.” (Of course, there is also the rich flavor inherent in heirloom varieties, which is part of their attractiveness as a whole food or ingredient.)

Some of his customers’ favorites are the darker colored heirloom tomato varieties with their strong, musky flavors, including Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, and Black Prince.

Heirloom versus Hybrid

Heirlooms are open-pollinated (purebred) and raised from seeds passed down through generations. Having access to these “heritage” seeds provides a huge choice of varieties for any given vegetable or fruit. Heirlooms are also touted for their richer flavor, beautiful and unusual colors and shapes, and more potent nutrient content.
Heirlooms also support biodiversity. As many plant species are dying out, heirloom gardeners and farmers are growing and saving seeds, protecting them from extinction and supporting diversity in our food supply.
Raising heirlooms is also a frugal way to grow a bountiful garden, as seeds from each season’s crops can be saved for planting the next season.

(Go to http://rareseeds.com/shop to choose from among the over 1,400 heirloom seed varieties offered by Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.)

Hybrids are the result of cross breeding two or more varieties of a particular vegetable to achieve uniformity and vigor. Depending on the varieties crossed, hybrids often produce sterile seeds, which cannot be saved and used to raise the next year’s crops. Hybrids are often chosen for their disease and pest resistance and their heavy yields over flavor. Consequently, commercial growers chose hybrids for their durability, which also provides ease in harvesting and “ship-ability.”

Heirloom tomato growing tips from Tim

Tim is happy to share his tips for growing happy heirloom tomatoes:

• Give them a lot of sun. All-day exposure is better—don’t try to get away with three hours. Not enough sunlight can cause tomatoes to fall off.
• Provide well-draining soil and incorporate rich compost and calcium.
• Water deeply, soaking well and letting dry out—but not completely to bone dry—between waterings.
• Watch for blossom end rot, which can be the result of low calcium levels in the soil, drought stress, excessive soil moisture, and/or fluctuations due to rain or over watering.
• Tomatoes like a light breezy environment. Air circulation is beneficial, as humidity can make the plants disease-prone.
• Always stake your tomato plants.

Farming then and now

Whether large or small, the business of farming is susceptible to many challenges.
“I still like it,” says Tim, “but spring is a scary time, no money coming in. It’s bone dry here. No rain right now.”

Bringing In The Harvest

Also, one of the things Tim really enjoyed about gardening when he first started raising heirlooms so many years ago was the peacefulness of the pastime. “I had a garden, a peaceful place for me.”

Today, people still think I have this bucolic existence, he shares, with a chuckle. During this phone interview, he reveals, he’d been planting seeds and then sat on the steps of his greenhouse, looking out at his property. It was 6 p.m. on a day he rose at 3 a.m. to sell produce at the street market in the city. “Right now,” he says, “it’s pretty peaceful.”

I have been enjoying the benefits of hardy lettuce all winter and still find myself astounded by the huge haul of greens I harvested for dinner on New Years Day 2012. Global warming may have a silver lining for those of us want to eat from our gardens all year around, but this should also remind us that we may soon need to revise what we mean by “winter” greens. One of the hardy winter lettuce varieties that has always done well for me, even under the snow, is Cracoviensis, which you can find in the Baker Creek catalog here.

This is actually a medieval lettuce that turns quite bronzy when grown in cold weather. The cold stunts its growth, so it stays close to the ground until spring rather than shooting up the way it does in warm weather. It was originally grown as a stem lettuce like Celtuce since its succulent stems could be cooked like asparagus, although without the asparagus flavor.

Mennonite horticulturist Jacob B. Garber (1800-1886), who lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, reported in 1855 that he had been growing this lettuce for a number of years and that his wife cooked it just like asparagus. Garber had gotten his seeds from a man with missionary connections in China and was thus growing it under the vague Chinese name hoo sung. This only goes to show that Cracoviensis probably originated in China, but moved west during the Middle Ages. By the 1350s it was growing in the royal gardens of king Casimir the Great of Poland, hence its name Cracoviensis in reference to Krakow where the royal castle was located. The castle is still there even though the royal gardens have long since disappeared. Just the same, we are left with a puzzle: how did the Poles cook the lettuce in the 1300s? Most likely it went into soup or it was poached in vinegar and served like an appetizer. Lettuce was considered “cold” in the medieval dietary system of humors, so it was always served with something “hot” like ginger, or with strong spices like cloves, cinnamon, or even garlic. Yes, one can easily imagine medieval Polish cooks preparing the stems with garlic sauce, in fact, I tried it and it is not too bad!

William Woys Weaver is a culinary historian living in Devon, Pennsylvania, were he maintains the Roughwood Seed Collection consisting of some 4000 varieties of food plants.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds contracts with more than 200 farmers to grow and harvest seeds. When our seed grow-out manager approached me about growing and harvesting seeds, I thought I would give it my best shot. I have been a gardener for many years, but until fairly recently had never really considered that I should be saving my own seeds. It was easier to just buy new seeds to plant every year.

Needing someone to grow and harvest Lemon Drop hot pepper seeds, Randel gave me a very small zip-lock bag containing 30 tiny pepper seeds. I took them home and very carefully planted each one in its own cell in plastic seed starter packets filled with seed starter medium. I set them on my dining room buffet which is one of the warmest spots in our house. Even though we heat our house with wood and keep it warmer than most homes, I knew those little pepper seeds would need something even warmer to help them to germinate. Failing to find my heating pad that I was sure I had stored in one of the closets, I resorted to pulling out a rubber hot water bottle. Filled with hot water twice daily and placed under the seed tray, it worked great to help those little guys along to germination.

I was excited to soon have a single tiny pepper sprout growing in one of the seed starting cells. From thereon, I checked those seed trays first thing every morning and first thing after arriving home each afternoon to see how many new sprouts had reached up out of the “soil.” The number of sprouts kept growing till it topped out at 22. Realizing that a 73% germination rate wasn’t exactly terrific, I accepted it as what I had to work with,.

I tended those little starts, trying to give them just the right amount of moisture and as much light as I possibly could. And then I realized that I had a trip to NYC planned and knew that I couldn’t leave my little Lemon Drops untended for a week and expect them to live. A co-worker graciously came to my rescue and volunteered to look over them a few days. Knowing her green thumb, I quickly took her up on the offer. One problem solved, with more to come.

Back from my trip, I found that those little pepper plants were ready to take back home and begin the hardening off process. Getting them home in the late afternoon and expecting a couple of more hours of warm sunshine, I set the tray of pepper starts out on the driveway while I went for my daily 4-mile walk. I was on my way back home when the dark clouds rolled in, the temperature dropped, and huge raindrops began to fall. After deciding to run the rest of the way home to beat as much of the approaching storm as possible, I quickly ducked into my husband’s workshop just as the hailstones began to bounce around on the ground.

I was listening to those marble-to-golf ball size hailstones hit the metal roof of the shop when I suddenly remembered that my pepper plants were out there taking a severe beating! Fearing that I would get a concussion if I ventured out into the hail storm, I waited till the pounding on the roof decreased before running out to check my tray. While I found that a few of the plants were indeed bent and broken, I was pleased to see that many of the tiny plants were still standing upright.

I continued putting out the tray of starts daily to harden off. The next problem was that I realized the pepper plants were outgrowing their tiny cell packs and we were still having frost at night so that I couldn’t yet set them out into the garden. I had no choice but to find larger cups and repot those little guys until I could be sure we were having frost-free nights.

Finally, I was convinced that it was safe to plant out in the garden. Living on a quarter-section (160 acres) of Ozarks farmland, I had to decide where to root those valuable plants. Knowing that peppers needed to be isolated by at least 500 feet to prevent cross pollination if the seed were to be viable for replanting, I had to plant them somewhere other than my kitchen vegetable garden where I wanted to grow my already-favorite varieties of peppers.

I decided to add the Lemon Drop pepper plants to my perennial garden that I had located in an older garden plot at the former homesite a quarter-mile away on the property. I had access to water and kept garden tools in an old shed there. What I didn’t think about, though, was that my dogs are a great help in keeping wild animal pests out of my garden. Having no dogs at the old garden, I quickly discovered that something—most likely deer or turkey—were munching the tops off my Lemon Drop pepper plants. I had to put fences around them to stop that.

By the time those pepper plants had become about 2 feet tall, they were quite bushy and loaded with small elongated green peppers. Being in a drought year meant that I had to water frequently and nurture the plants along till the peppers matured from lime-green color to bright yellow. Finally, it was time to harvest the seeds, which turned out to be much more time-consuming that I had appropriated time for. Donning rubber gloves, I sliced each pepper lengthwise and scraped the seeds into a large shallow pan, saving the pepper flesh for freezing and dehydrating to season dishes later. Soon sneezing and coughing and with eyes tearing, I learned very quickly that I needed to work in a well-ventilated area.

After hours of slicing peppers and removing seeds, I placed the seeds on the table under a ceiling fan in the sun room to dry for at least 2 weeks. Feeling a little discouraged when I put the seeds into a ziploc bag and took them to Randel, I was surprised that he appeared to be pleased with my amount of seeds, though I thought I didn’t have very many. He pointed out that Lemon Drop pepper seeds are very small and I had, indeed, harvested a couple of ounces (more than he had expected of me apparently). That encouragement kept me harvesting more seeds as they matured till frost. More importantly, I had fulfilled my commitment to Randel and Baker Creek, having produced enough seeds for a listing in the 2012 Baker Creek Seed Catalog.

Farming and gardening are always risky business. There are always the unknown variables of crop-damaging weather, lack of or too much rain, destruction by wild animals, etc. It is easy to see why seed companies vary their seed listings a little from year to year. The seed from particular varieties simply may not be available in a given year.

Kathy McFarland is a Baker Creek employee and a life-long Gardener.

They also made nice decorative additions to the mixed vegetable pickles that locals in my region call chow-chow, well, the culinary uses are as endless as your imagination.

Wethersfield Red onion

Red Wethersfield onions are flat, about four or five inches in diameter, so they are wonderful when braided up with the White Portugal (also called Silver Skin) heirloom onion that was a great favorite in Pennsylvania where I live – they do well because we are on the same latitude as Lisbon. White Portugal is also flat so the combination of the Red Wethersfield and the White Portugal onions in a three-foot braid is really eye-catching. Too bad we don’t see this more often in farmers’ markets; it’s a great way to attract customers and both varieties have similar keeping qualities. Happily Red Wethersfield was one of the stock onions that have made Comstock, Ferre & Company famous since 1811, and the firm continues to promote this onion classic to this day. In fact, it has become something of a company mascot, and no harm in that because this is one mascot that is also good to eat!

Wethersfield Red Onion is available form Comstock Ferre Co. at http://comstockferre.com/onion/wethersfield-large-red.html

William Woys Weaver is a culinary historian living in Devon, Pennsylvania, were he maintains the Roughwood Seed Collection consisting of some 4000 varieties of food plants.

With herbs, you’re pretty much guaranteed two things: the plant is an heirloom (as herbs, for the most part, have not been crossed, selected or hybridized) and they’re “going to pay the rent.” In other words, they’ll give you something back for the space they’re taking up in your garden.

If you’d like to know more about herbs, you can discover almost everything from one source—master herb grower, herb columnist, author, and creator of all-things-herbal, Jim Long of Blue Eye, Missouri.

A back injury and a series of serendipitous events helped transform this former landscape architect into Mister Herb, a walking-Wikipedia of herb lore, herb growing and gardening tips, herb recipes, and herbal remedies, which include everything from an herbal dream pillow that encourages sweet dreams to an herbal nail fungus soak that’s recommended by medical professionals.

Jim grows 250 to 350 culinary and native medicinal herbs in his herb garden located between Branson, Missouri and Eureka Springs, Arkansas in the heart of the Ozarks.He has been a columnist for The Herb Companion magazine since 1990, has a regular column in The Heirloom Gardener(http://rareseeds.com/magazine) and The Ozarks Mountaineer magazines. His syndicated “Ozarks Gardening” column runs in newspapers across the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks, and he’s authored 25 books on herbs, gardening and cooking. He also travels extensively throughout the year lecturing to groups and at national conferences and travels abroad in search of new culinary plants to grow, photograph, and write about. Jim will be a featured speaker at the National Heirloom Exposition (http://www.theheirloomexpo.com/) coming up Sept. 11-13, 2012 in Sonoma County, California.

In a recent phone interview on a 75-degree February day in Missouri with roosters sounding off in the background, Jim shared all kinds of interesting and inspiring tidbits about herbs.

Eight Important Herbs You Should Grow

If you’re new to herb gardening—and even it you’re not—Jim recommends growing this staple garden of culinary herbs: basil, chives, mint, thyme, parsley, marjoram/oregano, fennel, and cilantro. There’s nothing like fresh herbs for cooking.

Conducting nationwide surveys of retail nurseries, wholesale plant and seed companies, Jim found that the most popular and most used herb today is basil. The secret to keeping this popular culinary herb sweet, he shares, is to keep the plant clipped. If you don’t keep basil harvested, the leaf flavor changes from sweet to somewhat bitter, he stresses. And don’t be shy, he adds. Think of the plant as you would a hedge, don’t just pick a leaf here and there. The more you harvest basil, the faster it puts out new leaves with the best flavor. Harvest sprigs, even limbs, he says, it won’t hurt the plant.

There are, of course, all kinds of basils to enjoy. In his garden blog: http://www.jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com, Jim mentions growing Genovese, sweet, Thai, lemon, lime, boxwood, spicy globe, clove (also known as Indian sacred), green pepper, and Greek columnar. Imagine a slightly different flavor for your homemade pesto sauce this year.

Meet the ‘Hardies’: The Most Adaptable Herbs
Wherever you live in the country, these herbs, for the most part, will adapt fairly easily: basil, parsley, chives, sage, rosemary, thyme and oregano. They don’t require much pampering, according to Jim, and can stand moderate drought.

Do visit Jim’s Website (http://www.longcreekherbs.com/virtual-tour.php) for a virtual tour of his herb garden—you’ll be inspired to try growing some less common varieties, too. (In-person visits are by appointment only.)

The “Herb of the Year”

To celebrate “The Herb of the Year” as designated by the International Herb Association, Jim’s Website currently features recipes for this year’s lucky winner—the rose. Yes, the rose is an herb and a very tasty one at that.

All roses are edible, says Jim. They are a relative of the apple. You want to be careful, however, he warns, and stay away from roses from floral shops and grocery stores, as they have often been treated with chemicals to aid in maintaining their perfect, bite-free appearance and to extend their longevity. It’s best to dine only on roses you know have been grown organically. The most fragrant, usually the older heritage roses, which are bred for their fragrance, are the most flavorful, he adds.

A quick and easy way to embark on this perhaps new-to-you culinary experience is to pluck some rose petals from a bush in your garden after the morning dew has gone and the heat of the day has not yet come and toss them into a green salad, Jim recommends. Or, chop up some rose petals, mix into cream cheese and spread on toast. Jim’s blog also includes information and videos on how to create rose petal syrups and butters as well as a delicious-looking rose petal cake. Munching on rose petals also provides you with a little Vitamin C.

Medicinal Herbs from Civil War Days

Medicinal herbs from this era had a big impact in providing improved healing remedies, Jim shares, for everything from quickly stopping a soldier’s bleeding to hormonal balancing in women.

One quick and easy Civil War era remedy is thyme tea, good for gargling with to soothe a sore throat and rinsing your mouth with to help heal bleeding gums. Thyme is actually the primary active ingredient in Listerine, Jim reveals. The recipe for an herbal mouthwash: Simply pour 3 cups of boiling water over 2 heaping tablespoons of dry or 4 tablespoons of fresh thyme; cover with a plate or plastic wrap and let steep for about ten minutes. Strain and let cool to your comfort level before using to gargle with.

From Early Newsletter to Perpetual Blog to Books
When Jim was healing from the back injury he sustained working on an architectural landscape job so many years ago, he entered contests to pass the time. He won a few, including a ski trip to Colorado, which, of course he couldn’t use. But he flew to Colorado anyway and visited a friend who he discovered had a new MAC computer. Jim had already toyed with the idea of writing a newsletter featuring information about herbs, but a “test drive” of the new computer cinched the idea for him and is what launched his decades-long herb and garden writing career. You won’t find his newsletter any longer, but you can find scads of information on growing herbs, cooking with herbs—everything herb—on his blog, which he updates frequently, as well as in his over two-dozen herb growing and cooking books.

If you’ve always wanted to learn more about growing and cooking with herbs—and even if you haven’t—Jim’s writings will inspire you. I can’t wait to pluck some rose petals from my backyard bush and toss them in a salad!

Susan Audrey is a Northern California writer, editor and photographer. She can be reached at tosusanaudrey@gmail.com

A sweeping bill to require labeling of GMO ingredients in processed foods was discussed before the Connecticut General Assembly’s Environment Committee on February 22, in the states capital, Hartford. Testimony was taken from opponents and proponents of the bill, designated HB5117, and entitled AN ACT CONCERNING GENETICALLY-ENGINEERED FOODS. (Read the full text of the bill here.)

The bill calls for labeling of foods that contain, or may contain, GMO ingredients. Agricultural products would have to be labeled with labeling containing the words “Genetically Engineered,” either on the label or upon signage prominently displayed at the point of sale, or, in the case of processed foods, the package would be required to carry the words “Partially Produced with Genetic Engineering” or “May be Partially Produced with Genetic Engineering.”  There would be exemptions for meat and alcohol.

Moreover, the bill would require the Connecticut Department of Agriculture to create regulations around “best practices,” for Connecticut farmers “who cultivate commercially any genetically-engineered crop. Such regulations shall require the implementation of practices by such farmers to:

(1) Eliminate or minimize the degree to which such genetically-engineered crop affects neighboring lands, and

(2) minimize the amount of herbicides used by such farmers to eradicate herbicide-resistant weeds.”

The bill also contains consumer protection language, would require the state to publish and update a list of agricultural commodities known to contain GMO’s, and would set up procurement guidelines whereby the state would give preference to non-GMO products.

Representatives of the food and grocery industries, as well as mainstream farmers’ trade organizations, gave testimony opposing HB5117. Their arguments generally took the position that such regulations are unnecessary, since there already exists national-level labeling laws, such as USDA Organic/NOP certification and labeling, by which consumers can already tell when products are GMO-free. Other concerns included the fear that compliance will raise costs in an already uncertain economy, and that regulating the issue on the state level would be unfair to Connecticut producers and retailers, since Connecticut is a very small state.

Many opponents went further, claiming that GMO products are exempt from current labeling requirements, such as those that mandate listing preservatives, chemical, and allergens in foods, because the USDA has already established that GMO foods are perfectly safe and in no way different from conventional food products.

Proponents of the bill disagreed, claiming that there has been little actual testing by USDA, and even that negative information about the safety of GMO products has actually been suppressed. A host of organic farmers, green-and sustainability advocates,  organic trade groups, and individuals offered testimony as well, citing their belief that the public is definitely afraid of GMO content in foods, and of GMO crops in the environment. Several of the proponents indicated their belief that, while several other states are considering similar proposals or ballot initiatives, the fact that none has yet been passed presents Connecticut an opportunity to provide leadership to the states, since labeling requirements clearly are not going to be created anytime soon at the federal level.

(Read the full testimony here)

The bill, which is a “raised bill” meaning that it originated within the Environment Committee, will now be further considered by the committee leadership, which may decide to eventually submit it to the General Assembly for possible passage.

Randel Agrella is a Baker Creek Employee, an avid anti-GMO activist, and owner of Abundant Acres Heirloom Nursery.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company is excited to be a part of the quickly expanding heirloom revolution. The movement is growing by leaps and bounds as more and more people understand the importance of preserving our plant heritage and diversity.

Baker Creek has teamed up with YourGardenShow.com to provide gardeners a chance to grow great gardens and win great prizes in the Grow It Forward contest. YourGardenShow.com is a social network for gardeners by gardeners. It provides a place for gardeners to share their garden photos, tips, and more.

First of all, 1,000 gardeners across the USA will receive free packets of Baker Creek heirloom seeds to plant in their gardens. Participants will then photograph the progress of their gardens and post the photos on YourGardenShow.com.

Enter the contest for multiple chances to win monthly prizes of garden tools, supplies and more. The GRAND PRIZE winner will receive accommodations and air travel to attend The National Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa, California, in September. Go to http://www.yourgardenshow.com/grow-it-forward to enter the contest and your chance to win.