Growing Flint Red Corn

It's been quite some time since I've posted anything, but now that fall is ever so slowly approaching and the gardens are just about done for the season, I am finding the ambition to sit down and write again.

We are still searching for our farmhouse in Vermont with enough land to start a small organic farm. While we aren't quite ready to move just yet (we still need to finish renovations and repairs on our current home), we seem to be getting closer to finding that perfect house. In the meantime I am trying to work with the space I have with my current property, and at the school garden, to feed my desire to farm!

One of the many reasons I garden is to try to grow as much of our own food as possible. Knowing that our food is grown organically, comes from open-pollinated or organic seeds, and is picked fresh and is nutritious means a lot. Nothing compares to freshly harvested and prepared food! What we don't grow, which seemed to be quite a lot this year, we try and get from local farmers.

Building a seed inventory is another goal of mine. I've been selecting varieties to grow out and save based on several different criteria including, flavor, variety, and regional history.

This year I tried growing Roy's Calais Red Flint Corn.
Here is a little bit of history (from slowfoodsusa.org):

"Roy's Flint Red Corn is an open-pollinated heirloom variety which was originally cultivated by the western Abenaki people in Vermont, and grown and maintained by pioneer farmers, including Roy and Ruth Fair of North Calais, VT. In 1996, Tom Searns obtained the seed from local farmers like Mike and Doug Guy, who had received the corn and seed saving information from Roy Fair. Tom Searns crossed all of the inbred strains and grew out the variety introducing it through his company, High Mowing Seeds of Wolcott, VT."
If you are interested in reading more about the history, click here.

Roy's Flint Red Corn is an heirloom variety that is said to be ideal for cornmeal, flour and hominy. It is an eight row flint variety that has a short growing season which is ideal for northern climates. According to Fruition Seeds, "it has a significantly higher amount of protein than other varieties of corn. It requires long cooking to break down the hard starch, but you will never go back to off the shelf polenta after this."

We had planted quite a few seeds at the school garden in hopes of doing an activity of grinding the corn into meal and making corn bread, but we ended up with fewer ears of corn than we had hoped for. We did however grow enough seed to over plant next year to try again growing this variety!

As you can see in the photos below, the variety of colors are truly fall-like and amazing.

We now have several pounds of seed for next year, and are planning on building the soil over the winter with either cover crops or compost and leaves, and amending again in the spring so there are plenty of nutrients available for this heavy feeding variety.

We are hopeful that next year we will be able to grow enough to grind to try making flour or cornmeal!

This will be another variety that will be added to my seed bank and grown out each year. It's very rewarding growing your own food, but it makes it even more meaningful when you are preserving a part of history and your food has a story behind it, something I hope to pass along to my children!

~Rob~

Organizing and storing seed

 

Now that the growing season if officially over, after having been hit with our first frost, it is time to start sorting through the numerous paper bags, cups and envelopes full of seed I saved throughout the year and organize them for the next growing season.

 

Seed saving is as exciting to me as the growing of the crops. It will never cease to amaze me how many seeds can come from a single flower or fruit, and just how easy it is to save them for next season's garden. As you can probably tell, saving seeds has become a bit of an obsession for me. 

This year I saved seeds from some new varieties like Stowell's Evergreen Sweet Corn,  Black Hungarian Peppers, Bell Peppers, Purple Tomatillos, Good Mother Stoddard Pole Beans, Thai Basil. I also saved seeds from some of our flowers including, Marigolds, Sunflower, Zinnia, Morning Glory, Heliotrope, Dahlia, Petunia and Wild Iris.

Over the years it has been harder and harder to find organic corn, so I was excited to successfully grow and save seeds from this heirloom variety. We now have 150 seeds to plant for next year!

 Although I wasn't able to grow as many beans as I would have liked, I was able to grow enough for seed. I am looking forward to planting these next year.

 A favorite herb we often like to cook with, and is hard for us to find, is Thai basil. This summer I grew several plants and successfully saved hundreds of seeds. We are planning an extensive herb garden next year, so hopefully I will now have a steady supply of seeds.

For the smaller seeds, I use glassine envelopes to store them in, which can be purchased from Seed Savers Exchange.

If you want to learn more about saving seeds you can check out some of my earlier posts about saving basil seeds and making your own seed envelopes like the ones pictured above.

There are several books available that walk you through the steps of saving seeds for each variety, with my favorite being Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth.

One of the many books on my winter reading list this year is The Organic Seed Grower by John Navazio.

 We are working towards saving almost all of our own seeds so we don't have to purchase them each year. We have been pretty successful so far and now only buy seeds for new varieties that we want to try and potentially add to our seed saving project.

There have been far more successes than failures, the latest being not harvesting the lettuce seed before the rain and it ended up getting too wet and molding, but there is always next season to try again!

Do you save your own seeds, if so what varieties do you have the best success with?

~Rob~

Guest Post: Kale seed saving by Fruition Seeds

I am thrilled to present this guest post on saving seeds 

by Petra Page-Mann and Matthew Goldfarb of Fruition Seeds!

~

Saving seed is the origin of civilization.  It is also easy as pie!  Truly, some are easier than others and kale is one of the easiest. 

Kale is biennial, so it gathers energy the first season to produce its seed the second season.  In our temperate Northeast climate, kale may overwinter as a full-size plant uncovered but we plant our seed crop of kale in early September, finding the overwintered young plants more reliably resilient.  Some plants will inevitably not survive, but those that do will be that much more adapted to your conditions!

Petra with overwintered kale, ready to go to seed

Kale may be Brassica napus (Siberian types, such as Red Russian, sharing the species with rutabaga) or Brassica oleracea(all other types, sharing the species with cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts and more).  It is critical to only have one of these species flowering at any given time, unless you want them to cross! 

Three foot kale flowering in May.

In the Spring the bedraggled plants will begin to grow again!  Be sure to select for strong, vigorous regrowth as well as leaf shape and color.   It is also important to thin plants for increased air-flow around the plants as they go to seed.  Our kale planted in September overwinters young and thrives when thinned to ten inches between each plant, give or take a couple inches.

Nathaniel Thompson of Remembrance Farm with flowering kale.

Second year kale will bolt (go to seed) fairly quickly.  Enjoy its tall, stately stalks lined with pale yellow flowers covered in pollinators!  Each flower will turn into long green pods that swell and turn brown as they mature.  Once the lowest pods have turned brown, dry and have shattered, harvest the whole stalk and set it on a clean, hole-free tarp in a dry place for a few days to further dry down. 

Petra surrounded by flattening seed pods.

Separating the seed from the fully dry stalk can be done in any number of ways!  We have several sticks we are fond of that knock the seeds out of their pods quite effectively.  I also love to wrap up the stalks in the tarp (like a burrito) and dance/stomp on it!  

Wading through an ocean of kale going to seed.

The seed has now fallen onto the tarp, along with all the chaff (bits of the dry plant).  To clean the seed from the chaff, use a colander or another screen you might have in the garage.  Also, pouring the seed and chaff before a box fan and into a bin will allow the chaff to be blown away while the heavy seed falls straight down.  

Screening seeds.

It is important to keep your seed well labeled, in a cool, dark dry and rodent/insects-free place.  If stored well, your kale will last for years and years!

Saving seed is easy, fun and incredibly satisfying.  Your seed will be uniquely suited to your soils and climate, your particular taste and garden style.  

 ~
 

Fruition Seeds

There is a new organic seed supplier here in the northeast, called Fruition Seeds, and their mission is to preserve the diversity of seeds.

I am an avid seed saver and whole heartily believe in preserving heirlooms and varieties that are becoming extinct. I believe in knowing where my seeds came from, who grew them and what farming practices they use and I like to support organic farmers and non-gmo, non-hybrid seed growers, so I was thrilled to learn about Fruition Seeds. They are located in Naples, NY. and use local growers to grow some of their seed crops.

I commend them on what they are doing as their views on food and farming are the same as my own. I wanted get some of their seeds to plant in my winter garden so I ordered some Choi, Hon Tsai Tai, Mizuna, and Amaranth. The seeds arrived today and you can tell by their seed packets that they really care about what they are doing!

Each seed packet comes with growing and seed saving instructions and they encourage you to save their seeds!

I can't wait to plant some of these varieties in my summer and winter garden and look forward to getting other varieties to plant next year!

Fruition Seeds has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for their venture. They are trying to raise $25,000 and you can help by making a pledge to support them. With each pledge you will get discounts or free seeds and will help make a difference by supporting an organic company that is trying to save the diversity of seeds!

They need to have $25,000 in pledges by July 18th and they are already at $18,445!
I have already pledged my support because I share the same views on food and farming. I feel what they are doing it is extremely important and will affect everyone in some way. Saving the diversity of seeds and preserving our open-pollinated, non-gmo varieties is critical and I am happy to support them!

~Rob~

Seed Saving

Saving seeds from this year's plants will help save you money next season and help preserve some of your favorite varieties.

Each year, in late winter, I used to pull out the seed catalogs and start making lists of what I wanted to plant in the garden in the spring. The costs of seeds would start to add up and with more and more people putting in backyard gardens each year, it was harder to get the varieties I wanted.

Hybrid vs. Heirloom

Saving seeds is a fairly simple process, although it can vary greatly from plant to plant. The first thing to remember is to start with the right type of seed when choosing a variety to save from. You want to make sure it isn't a hybrid or GMO seed.  Hybrids are created by crossing two different parents to create a variety that will produce certain traits, give higher yields and are resistant to diseases, but they should be avoided for seed saving because they won't grow true to the original plant. Seeds from hybrids will either be sterile, incapable of producing any fruit, or they will revert back to one of the parents and won't give you a true variety. Hybrid varieties are usually labeled as "F1". Open-pollinated and heirloom seeds will produce "true-to-type" (produce plants like their parents) if they don't cross with similar varieties nearby. There are several places to buy organic, open-pollinated, heirloom seeds such as Baker Creek Seeds and Seed Savers Exchange.

The Process

For this example I am saving Basil seeds. The plants were grown from organic seed so I know they will produce true. I harvested most of the basil throughout the summer, but left some plants to produce flowers, which in turn produce the seed. Each flower produces four seeds, and as you can see from the photo, there are quite a few seeds per stalk. The flowers mature from the bottom to the top of each stalk, so when the flowers at the bottom start to turn brown they can be cut and dried. I cut the stalks when they are dry (not in early morning or after a rain), tie them together in bunches and hang them upside down inside brown paper bags. Some of the seeds will fall into the bag as the stalks dry, but to get the rest, rub each dried flower gently between your fingers and the seeds will fall out, or rub over a fine mesh. Once the seeds are separated I store them in paper envelopes in a cool dry place until next spring. A great resource on seed saving is Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth. 

Saving seed is a fairly simple process that will save you money next season. Just be sure to start with open-pollinated or heirloom seeds. Having a hand in preserving a certain variety and preserving our food supply will leave you with a good feeling.

Seed Saving

This year I planted all heirloom, organic, non-gmo, non-hybrid plants with plans on saving seeds for next year's crops. This is my first time saving seeds from the vegetables I grew, so it has been a little trial and error and a bit of a learning process. I have already saved seeds from my bell peppers, chile peppers, lettuce, and carrots. It's amazing how many seeds you can get from one bell pepper!

I have researched methods for seed storage and it all seems to come back to a dry, cool, dark place. I have also looked for seed envelopes and have found a variety at Seed Savers, and also found several sites where you can print out templates to make your own.

Making Your Own Seed Envelopes

Making your own seed envelopes is easy to do. I have tried making my own templates with seed information printed on them that I could cut out, fold and glue together. They were nice, but were very  time consuming to make and seemed to waste a lot of paper. 

Here is one of the simplest ways I have found to make a seed envelope and you can make it any size you wish. I usually make two different sizes by starting with either 3-1/2" or  5-1/4" square paper.

Start with a 5-1/4" x 5-1/4" piece of paper.

 



Fold in half from corner to corner.

Fold the center point down, about 1/8" from the bottom.

Fold one corner to the center

Fold the other corner to the center

Lift up the center points and tape the end flaps.

Now you're ready to fill!

Seeds should be stored in a cool dry location. The paper envelopes alone aren't enough to protect your seeds from humidity and temperature so the packets should be stored in an air-tight container such as a mason jar. For long term storage they can also be stored in the freezer.

One of the best resources I have come across for learning how to save seed is Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth. This book goes into great detail on the process of saving and storing seeds. It also gives in depth detail on the proper technique for each plant variety. I think it s a great tool for anyone interested in learning how to save their own seeds.

Does anyone else save their own seeds?