Seedy Saturday: Free Garden Seeds

Yellow/white Heritage Beet

This is the first of my Seedy Saturday, free garden seed giveaway. You must comment directly on this post to be eligible for the drawing for free seeds. Read all of the rules here.

This weeks give away is for seeds for the yellow/white beet shown here. Back around 2003 or 2004 I ordered a packet of mixed Heritage beets from Bountiful Gardens. When I grew them out there were a couple of really huge white beets and a large slightly pale yellow one (as near as I remember now; of course I didn't write anything down at the time....). I saved seeds from these beets in 2005.

Beet Seeds

So the seeds are on the old side, but they had good germination this fall. I would like to get these out into the world so others can enjoy them.  I would plant them a little thicker than you would fresh seed. Most of the seeds will sprout, but they will only sprout one plant, not multiples like when they are really fresh, at least that is what happened with my planting this year. There is some variation in the color of the beets, some are more of a pale pink. But they usually grow pretty large and are very sweet, not nearly as 'earthy' as some varieties. Also, even when large the tops are sweet and yummy also.

Hopefully whoever receives these seeds will also save some seed and send them out into the world. I am sending out a good size handful of seed, about half of the seed I have left from 2005. I'll be planting more myself and collecting some fresh seed next year.

I am thinking about getting one of those linky widgets to add to the Seedy Saturday posts so that if you also have some seeds to give away you could join in with me. If there is any interest in doing this then please let me know. I envision lots of us with extra seed sending them out into the world and spreading and saving valuable varieties of vegetables, flowers and fruits from extinction.

Garden Tour

south side of the house, green house under construction

Here are some pics of the small back garden along with some progress on the green house. The greenhouse is a pretty simple structure, lengths of PVC are attached to a baseboard with the other end stuck in a hole in a 2x4 that is attached to the side of the house right under eave. About 3 feet down from the top a small board is bolted to the pipe for rigidity and the bottom 5 feet is covered with concrete reinforcing mesh. The helps support the plastic and becomes a trellis in the summer. In this first pictured you can see the nearly dead morning glories and the still trying to grow gourd vine. In this picture you can see the first part of the greenhouse which I got done a few years ago. Right now I'm working on carrying it completely along the south side of the house. Because the garden area is about 3 feet higher than the house and the house eaves are just over 6 feet tall the greenhouse is not very wide. But at least it's something.

Backyard Garden

This is an over view of part of the back garden looking towards the east. The junk pile at the front is the last bed that needs to be dug and put into production, the edge of it is where there was a giant tree stump that took forever to dig out of the way.

yellow beets plant Aug.

Broccoli and Cauliflower seedlings

carrots and clover

baby lettuce and clover

lettuce bed after cutting; Bleushokker peas on left

another bed of lettuce

Today's Harvest: lettuce, beet, tomatoes

Harvest 11-11-11, baby lettuce, yellow marble tomatoes, a yellow beet

Today's harvest is small compared to how much food I actually eat, but things will get bigger and better as I go along. I picked 8 ounces of mixed baby lettuce, 4 ounces of Yellow Marble tomatoes and the biggest beet in the patch. The beet & greens together weighed in at 1 pound, 3 ounces. The root alone weighed 5 ounces.

The root really is that bright of a golden yellow. When cooked it loses most of the color and is a very pale yellow, almost white.  The ratty outer leaves and the tough stalks went to the rabbits; the tender leaves were part of tonight's dinner along with the root which is super sweet and not quite as earthy as red beets I grow.

I don't know the name of this beet and I'm not sure but it might even be a cross between a couple of kinds.You see I bought a mixed package of Heritage beets from Bountiful Gardens probably about 8 years ago. There were several really huge white beets in the mix, which I let go to seed. There might have been a yellow one in there too, I really don't remember now. That would have been about 2005. I still have more than half a pint of seeds left, but germination is beginning to drop off a tad. Most of the seeds sprout, but instead of several plants from one seed ball, they are tending more to just one. Which is OK, it means a lot less thinning for me.  I will probably let some of them go to seed next year, just to replenish the supply.

Also I'd like to draw your attention to the tabs across the top of the page. These are extra pages I've added to the blog which I'll be updating from time to time, especially the amounts harvested and worth of produce but also the varieties I'm growing. That page will eventually be in alpha order, but for now it's a little random. The worth of produce is the price I'd have to pay for a comparable product at the local market.

And since I didn't harvest anything else since Friday, I'll list this post for Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions, a great place to connect with other gardening bloggers and what they are harvesting from their gardens.

Harvesting Has Begun ;-)

Shelly beans, lettuce, beets, Oct 21, 2011

Very strange. I know that I wrote this post yesterday, and that I published it, yet it is not showing up on the blog nor is it in my list of posts or showing up as a draft. Just strangely disappeared. So if in the future you see this twice, you will know it is because the original post magically re-appeared somehow! (edit: I have discovered that somehow the missing post has appeared on my art blog. Have no idea at all how I managed to do that!)

Anyway this was my harvest Friday, 2 pounds, 6 ounces of Hopi Purple Pod beans that shelled out to 8 ounces of beans, 3 ounces of mixed baby lettuces and 1 pound 12 ounces of beets & greens, the roots alone were 10 ounces. All of it quite yummy! Oh I love my garden!

Fresh raw Hopi Purple Pod Beans

Some folks are puzzled by the term 'shelly beans'. This refers to eating fresh those beans that otherwise you would eat as dry beans, like pintos, kidneys, black beans, etc. As you can see I picked some pods that weren't as mature as they should have been and the beans are a little small. The pink ones are about right. The ideal time to pick shelly beans is when they have completely filled the pod and the pod walls have thinned out but are not yet beginning to dry up.