Part 2: Seed Catalog Addiction

Part II  How to get through a cold spell in Minnesota in January without eating...

It's January and the seed catalogs are arriving every day.

I've fallen off a few mailing lists....just not enough time to buy something from all of these companies the last seven years.  A few seed companies have given up on me.  Trust me...that won't last long now that I have a minute of free time : )

But, I've received catalogs  to fill up several hours of looking at pictures foods without eating.  Try it to reach your annual New Year's Resolution.

Territorial Seed from Cottage Grove, OR, produces a

wonderful ALL COLOR catalog!    A family-owned company, they are charter signers of the Safe Seed Pledge...vowing that they will NOT knowingly buy or sell any genetically engineered seeds or plants.  You can buy products from this company with peace of mind.  

The hard-to-find French sorrel, a wonderful

soup ingredient is high on my list.  For the last few years, I've been obsessed with planting cardoons...big in Italy (even cooked on TV by Mary Ann Esposito on Ciao Italia) but pretty much unknown here (gee, I wonder if 'they're any good?').  Let's see if I can find a soil where these will work.

I see that Seed Savers Exchange is thinking like me!!  Years ago, I noticed mangels in the Shumway's catalog (more about that catalog later).     Mangels are sugar beets (you know, the origin of the cheap sugar in MN...sugar that's not from sugar cane..like Crystal Sugar...most of the generic sugar brands are beet sugar grown in the Red River Valley in NW MN).  Yes, you can use mangels to make your own sugar---if you're nuts enough to do THAT kind of work (trust me, I'm nuts enough to have thought about doing it one year; luckily sanity prevailed).

Mangels of often used as cattle feed, but some are small enough or tender enough when young to be used like the beets you're used to eating (like pickled beets).  

This year, in Seed Savers' new seed offerings, they have a yellow intermediate mangel.

It looks like a yellow chioggia-style beet (a beet that has rings like a bullseye).   They have a wonderful sweet flavor and can be used like the traditional beets we're all used to.   I may have to think like a farm animal and taste these babies.

Oh, Shumway's.  They've used some of their black

and white pictures in their catalog for decades (how do I know---besides being old?).  In the 1980s, when we owned "Today's Paper" greeting card and gift stores, we sold a tee shirt that said 'Give Peas A Chance'...and the artwork on that tee was the same picture that's on page 44 of Shumway's catalog this year for Little Marvel peas.....the same picture that's been there as long as I can remember.  

The first and last 8 pages are color and the middle of the catalog is black and white.   They've been doing this for 148 years.  The color pages have great old-fashioned drawings of veggies and flowers--I'm particularly fond of the kitchy drawing of the Moon and Stars watermelon that we first grew in the early

1990s.  This year they're selling seeds for Red Warty Thing for the first time...a fun orange Hubbard-style squash that we used to grow because it can get to 20 pounds (I don't think we reached that in Zone 3...but we did manage to ripen some of them).  

And, if you like to garden, everyone should, at least

once in their life, plant #08216 Grandmother's Old-Fashioned Flower Garden (page 60---a color page--this year) that they've sold since 1938....a mixture of more than 20 varieties of old fashioned flowers all in one neat little package.

I highly recommend seed catalogs.   They're the kind of publication that grandma or grandpa should peruse with the grandkids....get away from the electronic devices for a few hours and spend some time talking about where food comes from, looking at the different kinds of food or flowers that they might grow, and maybe order a packet of green bean seeds.  

When they arrive (at the grandkid's house--because I think kids still like to get real mail)---grab some paper cups and potting soil and plant some bean seeds and watch them grow and then put some outside when the weather is ready.  

This would also be a good time to explain that pizza does NOT come from seeds : )

Other good catalogs include Jung's from Wisconsin, John Scheepers Kitchen Garden seeds (the first place I ever ordered seeds for Florence fennel; they have cardoons this year, too), and if you like to grow unusual and tasty fruit, try Raintree Nursery in Washington State or One Green World in Portland Oregon.  They brought me seaberries, many varieties of lingonberries, honeyberries, fruiting Shipova ash trees and much, much more---but note the zones for these because they have a 'milder' climate than we do.

Seaberries

This is how I get through cold days in January...perusing the catalogs, reminding myself of what good food is and where it comes from and what it takes to grow it.  

Days of enriching the soil, turning soil, planting, weeding, watering...picking that first fresh produce from the garden...eating it raw right on the spot!!!  Warm days are coming! Spring planting, summer tending, harvest and standing in a garden that showcases the fruits of your labor are not far off.

There are days of standing over a canner so that next January, as the seed catalogs are arriving in the mailbox....when you get hungry--you can open a jar of jam and remember the flavors of last summer....as you plan for the spring that is just around the corner.