unusual seeds, with nate kleinman of experimental farm network

Gardening for some provides the daily bread, for others, it’s an escape from reality and for you, it might be your favourite hobby. Nevertheless, a garden decorated to your own preferences will act as a source of inspiration and will provide you a place to gather up your thoughts.

Since I put this list together 7 years ago but I have now started to favour Kings Seeds (Suffolk Herbs) for my vegetables. I also get many more seeds from clubs and organisations rather than merchants.

Lilacs are members of the Syringia family and are named for the colour. There are deep lilacs verging on violet and light pinkish lilacs even some pretty floriferous white flowering Lilacs.

A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.

Visual nature can be found all around in your garden, local park or field. Keep a look out for interesting or unusual shapes, patterns and textures and take a camera around with you. I like the contorted Hazel branches that weave their own pattern.

I came upon Kollibri (below, curing tobacco leaves), and his farming partner, Nikki, thanks to their listing in the online collective called Local Harvest [dot] org. Why, I wondered, was my endless Nicotiana search, already many pages deep into Google results, taking me there?I knew Local Harvest as a great place to find a nearby CSA farm to buy a share of, or to order farm-made cheeses or meats or even wildcrafted salves and soaps and such—but Nicotiana? Turns out that Kollibri and Nikki are former CSA farmers from the Portland, Oregon, area, and so the connection. And I couldn’t resist their online claim, under their internet store called Daggawalla Seeds and Herbs, founded in 2012 [UPDATE: Daggawalla is h

IN SOME THINGS lonerism backfires, like when the ladder needs steadying to get at the top of an errantly sprouting espalier, or a truckload of eight cubic yards of mulch is dumped by the far gate. Though ordering seeds is not heavy work, it is best not done alone, either; I have always had a companion for the task. My latest one, of considerable years’ duration, got it in his head to move to Oregon recently, for greener garden pastures, taking with him not just the in-person dimension of our friendship, but also access to the nearby greenhouse that was, of course, a perfect complement to the shopping we did together all that time.“I’ll buy the tomato seeds if you’ll grow them,” the conversation with Andrew would always begin, as if he needed my ten- or fifteen-dollar annual enticement, when of course we never really paid careful mind to who bought what or really kept a running tab of our years-long botanical barter. It hardly mattered; what counted was the chance to look together, to compare notes, to react collaboratively to the possibilities—ooh! aah! ugh!—and eventually to relish the harvest (or to commiserate when something was a flop and there was no harvest, or

Joseph and I are two peas in a pod, you see, but also apples and oranges. Joseph, who gardens in Michigan, and I are both seed-catalog madpeople—but we’re mostly mad about different catalogs, and different items.Back on the first of December, I wrote to Joseph, author of “Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener,” to ask him if in, say, a month he’d be ready to talk about the latest catalogs.Silly me.“I just finished puttin

The evolving rainbow of peas at Peace Seedlings—with more colors to come—got its start with decades of breeding by Alan Kapuler, Dylana’s father, a longtime public-domain plant breeder and the founder of Peace Seeds.(More on him, and on some of the other combined Kapuler treasures, from marigolds and zinnias to edible Andean tubers like oca and yacon, to a rainbow of beautiful beets, is at the end of this story.)“We’re doing a lot of crosses and selecting ourselves now, too,” says Dylana of the work she and partner Mario DiBenedetto continue in collaboration with Alan and his wife, Linda, in Corvallis, Orego

A little about Michael:“That’s Michael Dodge,” I say, when I show people around the fall garden, as we pass a large group of show-offy, yellow-fruited Viburnum I enjoy all fall into winter. V. dilatatum ‘Michael Dodge’ is truly a standout plant.But the original Michael Dodge, the one that great shrub was named to honor, is a well-

I’VE BEEN EXPERIMENTING with a wider palette of brassicas—those good-for-you plants in the mustard family, a.k.a. cruciferous vegetables, or cole crops.

David Mattern, who oversees the vegetable garden at the splendid public space called Chanticleer in Pennsylvania, is my latest target. You may recall that last fall, David helped us take a critical eye to our vegetable gardens as we took them apart during cleanup, and challenged us also to consider tilling less in the year to come for improved soil health and fewer weeds.David is a graduate of Longwood’s Professional Gardeners Training Program, and after that interned in England at some prestigious spots including West Dean Gardens in West Sussex, with its famed walled vegetable garden.He rejoined me on the January 9, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to h