Spring Planting

[SparksBird]

For those of you who are starting to think of ordering seeds and spring planting, there are several new articles on heirloom vegetables posted in the civilian section of the Buckeye Mess website, www.buckeyemess.homestead.com.
If some of you are really serious about growing a hard to find heirloom crop or plant, you might want to check out the following website: http://www.ars-grin.gov/npgs/rephomepgs.html. This website is for the U.S. Govt.Seedbank. The site is somewhat difficult to navigate on and you have to know the scientific name for a certain plant. But, they will allow you to request a sample of what they have, 5 grams. However, you can find a lot of older crop varieties that are no longer commercially available. If you need any more information on them, please feel free to contact me.

Rick Musselman
Buckeye Mess
GHTI

[RedCordCO]

You might also want to try the Native Seeds/SEARCH site on the Web. I don't have the address on hand but you can easily locate it with a web search.
These folks deal only with historic, native seeds of the Southwest. Profits from the sales of seeds and their other products go to assist seed conservation of historic varieties and to the Native interests that promote them. I'm not sure how appropriate these sseds are for any other region outside of the Four Corners but the site is worth a peek into. I buy from these folks every year and their seeds are very good for germination and hardiness to higher, drier climes such as I live in. The harvest of chiles I was able to get last year was superb!

Regards from way West!

Rob Burchardt

[cwbelle]

I have always had a good sized organic garden and am very interested in trying a section of heirloom plants this spring/summer and using more appropriate tequinics for the period than I have been previously (no rotatiller this time for sure, means a lot of good excersize with the old hoe and rake:). Could you please give me some more information about ordering the seed samples from the U.S. Govt. Seedbank that you mentioned? I was also wondering if they are hybrid and what the requesting process involves? Thank you very much!
Miss Lisa-Marie