Green Zebra

The picture that accompanies this entry is a source of great joy for me- I met one of my tomato heroes!

I had the wonderful fortune of travelling to Decorah, Iowa in the summer of 2007 to attend the Seed Savers Annual Convention at Seed Savers Exchange headquarters, Heritage Farm.

And the reason this trip was so important to me was because I wanted to meet Tom Wagner and hear him speak.

Tom Wagner is a tomato and potato breeder extraordinaire. He began cross pollinating tomatoes as a child, it was in his blood and his families blood. He has created hundreds of tomato varieties, thousands of potatoes, and his work continues to this day from his base in Washington State. He's the Tater Mater man!

The Green Zebra tomato is perhaps his most well known and loved creation. Open up countless seed catalogues and there it is. Not a true heirloom but what Tom would call a created heirloom( as are all Tom's tomatoes) dating back to 1985, when Tom stabilized this variety.

To meet Tom was priceless: he is a character. He loves to talk, tell stories and explain his life's work. What surprised me the most though was he fact that so many people are making money from Tom's hard work by reproducing and selling seeds, but Tom himself continued to teach high school science to eek out a living. He had made nothing from his creations although many people have and he lives in virtual poverty.

It is hard for me to imagine how this can be.

I am selling seed for Green Zebra tomatoes this year and plan on helping Tom out a bit-see how by reading my 2010 seed listing.

I also sell the Green Zebra seedlings and they always sell out, no matter how many I grow.

If you don't know the Green Zebra, make this your year to love it too! It is of course green, a bit bigger than a ping pong ball with beautiful yellow striping. It has a distinctive zing-y taste.

Although I do grow hundreds of striped tomatoes now, it was my first (!) and it is the one people always ask for by name. You'll love watching it develop and turn into one of the prettiest tomatoes you can imagine.

Bless you Tom for your inspiration!

Niagara Seedy Saturday

Dreaming of a great garden this year? Well now is the time to dream — isn't that what winter is for?

No place better to dream here in Niagara, and perhaps make that dream garden come true, than the fourth annual Niagara Seedy Saturday.

This year, this wonderfully popular event is being held at Ball's Falls Conservation Area Visitor Centre, Vineland, on Feb. 13th (my Mollie's birthday!!!), from 10-4 p.m.

I have confirmed most of the attendees at this point. Selling seeds are The Cottage Gardener, Urban Harvest and Tree and Twig (that's me!)

Ann Brown will be back selling her popular sea grass baskets and I am awaiting confirmation from Acorus Restoration (native plantings).

As usual there will be free coffee and tea, but also this year a light lunch by The Wildflower will be available for purchase.

Displays by Garden of Eating (that's Tiffany), the National Farmers Union (yay!), Ecological Farmers Association, Seeds of Diversity and Master Gardeners round out the roster.

The speakers will be Mary Brittain of The Cottage Gardener, who will discuss saving your own seed, Wendy Dunnville, Master Gardener, discussing starting your own seeds, Linda Crago (me), showing a power point tour through an Heirloom Garden (mine), and Tiffany will do a talk on her very worthwhile Garden of Eating — Niagara project, through which hundreds (or is it thousands?) of pounds of fruit, which would otherwise have gone unpicked, was donated to area food banks in 2009. We will also show the short film, USC's "The Story of Food" throughout the day.

There will be a small charge for admission this year, $1 or a donation, to help me cover the cost of the beautiful venue.

BUT of course there will be FREE seeds upon admission, a FREE seed exchange and garden exchange (bring your unwanted gardening magazines, clean pots, etc), FREE coffee, and FREE and wonderful camaraderie! It is really such a great event and I hope to see lots of people there... and bring your friends. Spread the word. Please contact me if you have any questions.

And never stop dreaming!

A New Year and a New garden to Consider-Stupice.

Now all the rush of the holidays is nearly over and done with , it is time to start considering the 2010 veg garden. Before long some indoor planting will be a necessity...for me onions and leeks are the first things to start indoors, before setting out in April.

But of course I would like to first talk about tomatoes when I look at some of the varieties of seed (and plants ) that I am selling this year.

So let's talk about one of the best little tomatoes there is-Stupice,(pronounced STOO_PEACH-KA)

This fine Czechoslovakian potato leaf tomato is a gem, and if you grow it once, you will probably always want to grow it. It has such a wonderful tomato flavour for a small flattened golf-ball size fruit, and is it early! I have had it produce fruit in 50 days, so if I am clever and plant in the hoophouse early, say April 15, and cover it with Reemay, I will most certainly have fruit in June. And it continues to produce steadily and reliably all season,being both the first to produce, and the last.

When I have my big "Tomato Days" sale in May, I consistently sell out of this one. So this year I will plant more Stupice for my sale, but you can try planting it from seed and I do have the seed for it this year.

My website will have my 2010 Seed Listing up within a week. Please continue to check back to my blog for a bit more info on some of the varieties I carry. I have grown them all and will review them here!

For the Love of Green Goliath

I am always really excited this time of year when the seed catalogues roll in and I can discover some items that perhaps I know little about or have never grown before, (although as I grow more and more I am surprised less and less.)

There are also some staples that I don't always save enough seed for , so I depend on certain seed companies willingness to continue to offer my tried and true favourites.

So it was with great dismay that I opened my hot off the press William Dam catalogue today and saw...horror of horrors, that they don't offer Green Goliath Broccoli anymore! To many people I'm sure this doesn't sound like a big deal, it is only broccoli. But to me it is THE broccoli.

I have trialled many , many open pollinated and hybrid broccolis over the years and for me, on my soil, this is the standout. Imagine if you couldn't buy your favourite wine anymore, or your favourite snack food. To me it is that bad.

So, onto Google I go. Seeds of Diversity lists other companies that(used to) carry it, but from what I can tell, all Canadian seed companies, and a good number of American ones have dropped it. I ended up ordering a whole whack of it from Oregon of all places, so if anyone is interested in trying it I will have a bit of extra seed for sale.

Thank goodness though it is open pollinated, because now I know I have to save seed from it for next year, because it seems clear to me that one day in the not too distant future, it may not even be available in Oregon, and I will need to be self reliant in producing and saving this seed if I want to have it. There really are so few good open pollinated broccolis, that losing this would in my humble opinion, be tragic.

New broccoli hybrids are popping up everywhere, but if I choose to love one of them, then I am reliant on seed companies. I can't save and reproduce hybrid seed, and of course if I found a hybrid I loved nearly as much as Green Goliath, and then the seed company dropped it, back to more trialling.

And of course so many wonderful varieties of vegetables have been lost over the years...most varieties in fact. This loss of diversity is tragic, and an over reliance on huge multi-national chemical and seed conglomerates is scary in it's own right.

I choose to offer support to and sell seeds for Seed Savers Exchange, based in Iowa, because as an organization and a movement, they have done more to bring vegetable varieties back from the brink of extinction than any other organization world wide. Many small seed companies would have limited offerings if Seed Savers had not done all their good work first.

Some people bristle at the fact that this organization is not Canadian, and I sell their seed. But good has no borders, and proceeds from the sales of this seed goes back into this non-profit organization so they can continue with their mission, which is to stop this loss of vegetable diversity worldwide and circulate the seed as widely as possible.

I have been to Seed Savers Heritage Farm in Iowa several times now and am always so taken with the level of commitment and expertise of this organization. I am so pleased to be a member and to list seeds in the exchange, as well as offer some fabulous seed for sale. I grow all varieties I offer, and have for years. Try some yourself...you only have to buy it once- then it is yours to save and safeguard forever!