Garden in and Seed Savers

So, its the end of May and I finally have my whole garden planted.  Better late then never. Hopefully, we get a nice warm up here along the lake to make everything grow.  Here is my listing of vegetables growing this year.

• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Yellow Summer Squash (Zucchini)
• Green Summer Squash (Zucchini)
• Peppers
• Peas
• Yellow Beans
• Green Beans
• Lettuce
• Brussels Sprout
• Kohlrabi
• Onions

When you only have a ten foot by twenty foot garden you have to stick with the basics.  Even with the basics things are a bit tight.  Really wish I had more space.

Carrots on the left, peppers and tomatoes down the middle, beans and peas on the right

Onions and lettuce growing nicely

Added some new Lavender plants

This year I have several plants growing from Seed Saver seeds. Seed Savers is a nonprofit, member supported organization whose purpose is to preserve and distribute heirloom plant varieties.  This way, unique plant and seed varieties will be preserved for future gardeners and farmers.  Not only should you think about buying your seeds (vegetables and flowers) from them but everyone should think about taking out a membership in this organization.  Here is a link to their membership page. Seed Saver membership.

Seed Savers accomplishes their preservation goal by maintaining a seed bank of thousands of varieties.  These seeds are grown in isolation gardens.  The cultural and historical information of the seeds is documented for current and future use.  Seeds Savers takes the banking process one step further by storing varieties in two back-up locations.  One at the USDA Seed Bank in Fort Collins, Colorado and the other at the Savalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.  Just waiting for a global disaster.

Seed Savers varieties contain heirloom and open pollinated seeds.  These are NOT hybrid seeds that have been modified genetically. Heirlooms are open pollinated with a long history of being cultivated and saved within a family or group.  The plants have evolve by nature or human selection over time.  Heirlooms are typically open-pollinated by insects or wind without any human intervention.

Their catalogs are really great.  Beautiful pictures with excellent descriptions of the variety. Here is the link to the catalog. Seed Savers catalog.