March 13, 2022 @ 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Join Celt and others as we prepare garden beds, fill greenhouse flats with seed and plant cool season crops, starting off Salish Seed’s second year of local seed growing. Dress for the weather and bring gloves and snacks if you want.
April 10, 2021 @ 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
March 20, 2021 @ 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
It was a beautiful sunny crisp day for our first Salish Seed Garden gathering. A group of core organizers and friends came together for the first initial planting of few seed beds.
A group of about 9 gathered a give a blessing to the first event of the season for the new Salish Seed Garden project.
We planted three beds of crops. The first two were biannual plants that Krista had grown out last year and over wintered in storage. This year they are planted out and allowed to continue their cycle of growing on to flowering to produce seed this season.
Onions and beets are biannual. This means that they do not go to flower until the second year of growth. Sometimes you can leave the roots in the ground and let them over winter and continue growing the following year. While this is the easiest thing to do it is not always the most reliable. There is always the risks of them being eaten by critters of freeze so hard they rot in the field. It is safer to harvest them in the fall and store in a root cellar type situation to be planted back out the following Spring. So this is what we did to ensure we get a good seed crop this year of these two items.
We also direct seeded a bed of Fava beans. This is one of the few bean seeds that can germinate in the cold wet Spring soil we have this time of year.
While one group was working on planting these beds another group mixed up a wheel barrow of potting mix using on site compost, horse manure sand and some amendments of lime, rock dust and inoculated biodynamic biochar.
We sifted this mix into flats and planted tomatoes, basil, fennel, onions and leeks. These flats are now germinating in the house on a rack in the warm laundry room.
It was a good day with fun folks who love to play with soil and seeds.
We got a lot accomplished, had fun, and dreamed and schemed of how to proceed with the the Salish Seed Guild Garden Growing.
They are beautiful, easy to grow and easy to save seed. What a wonderful place to start. Beans are easy because they are mostly self fertile, and so isolation from other varieties is less of a concern, and because when growing dry beans as a crop, the harvest is also the seed. Make sure to wait to harvest the beans until the pods are dry and brittle on the vine and select seed from the healthiest plants and the largest, earliest and healthiest beans, and you are bound for success in seed saving.
I grow beans for the same reason people grow flowers, they are SO beautiful.
I love the plants and the flowers, but mostly I love the shiny jewel seeds that pop out of the pods at harvest. I find Scarlet Runner Beans, with their big, bright mottled pink seeds to be satisfying in so many ways. Eat them as green beans when they are young and tender, shelling beans fresh out of the pod, and mostly as dry beans, saved for winter soups and tortillas. They are delicious and nutritious and a little less work, due to their large size.
Plant beans direct in late spring when the soil warms, Mayish. Runner beans mature later than bush beans, so give them a good running start, but after it warms up. It is recommended to separate different bean varieties to avoid crossing but beans are mostly self pollinating and it has been my experience that they seem to remain true to type even when shamelessly planted all hodge-podge together. (Though I have seen a bit of crossing with the runner beans.) Give your runner beans a good trellis and they will climb high. (Bamboo teepees, T-poles with string, a fence..) Keep the soil moist while the baby beans are sprouting and irrigate when needed in summer.
To save seed, again, wait to harvest the beans when the pods are dry and brittle on the vine and select seed from the healthiest plants and the largest, earliest and healthiest beans. Dry thoroughly (in a paper bag in the sun or by the wood stove or in a gas oven off with the door cracked). Shuck before or after drying (in front of a good movie). Bean seed is dry enough to store when your tooth doesn’t make a dent in it while biting it.
Store in a glass jar in a cool, dark place. Label with year and type. Bean seed should stay viable for 3-5 years (or more). Share and Replant. “Magic Beans” make great gifts.
Contributed by Terri Wilde a homesteader, herbalist, community organizer, seed saver. Hawthorn Hearth Homestead
