Seed Exchange List

The Seed Exchange is a network of people offering seed.  My own seed is now all saved by myself here in France.

Please come back and visit this page again soon, I intend to update it regularly as I establish what seeds I have available.

Anyone can ask for seeds by emailing me at kitchengardeninfrance@gmail.com .    If you have a blog then why not offer some of your own spare seed?    To find out more about the Seed Exchange Network, why not take at look at Patrick's comments on

Bifurcated Carrots

Please note.  This is only the second year I have offered seeds for exchange and I have tried to keep the seeds pure.

Seeds for 2011

Beans

• Black Turtle Beans  -  These are a pole bean. The seeds were saved by myself.
• Purple Podded Pole Bean.  These beans are beautiful.  They are a deep purple on the vine and change to green when cooked.  The pods are long and full.  Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Borlotto Bean - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Poletschka Bean - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Pumpkin, Courge and Melon etc

• Monsieur Gary's Charentais Melon. M. Gary is a local farmer here at the Kitchen Garden in France and for years he has grown his own sweet Charentais melon, saving the seeds from one year to the next.  I'm pleased to have grown a few of these myself and kept the seeds to offer here.
• Courgette d'Italie - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Queensland Blue Pumpkin - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Butternut Pumpkin - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Bari Cucumber - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Tomatoes

• Ian's Red Cherry Tomato.  A delicious variety of cherry tomato which grows successfully here, giving truss after truss of delicious rich red cherry tomatoes.  These are seeds I've saved myself after several years acclimatising the plant to the climate here.

Capsicums

• Cath's Red Cornos Capsicum - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Yellow Cornos Capsicum - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Cabbage and Lettuce

• Joy's Cos Lettuce - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Lollo Rosso Batavia Lettuce - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Reine des Glaces Batavia Lettuce - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Red Cabbage - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Herbs

• Dill - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010
• Chives - Seeds saved by myself at the end of the season 2010

Email me if you would like any of the above seed.

Seeds

What do you do with your seeds?

When I started vegetable gardening a few years ago, I obviously, acquired a lot of seeds.  To start with I just threw all the packets in a box, after all, most of the seeds had been bought at local stores.  Then over time, the box became two boxes and soon a third was added.  As I collected my own saved seeds jam jars, used carrier bags and coffee filter papers were all pressed into service.  The boxes were joined by the kitchen Welsh Dresser, which proved a great place to keep coffee filters containing all manner of seeds as they dried.

I have found I have a couple of problems with this approach.   The first is that, although I tend to remember what I've collected, I never remember what packets I have bought.

I'm not one of those people who meticulously spend their winter evenings poring over seed catalogues wondering what to buy this year.   I'm the guy who sees a packet of radish seeds in a supermarket whilst picking up some toilet cleaner, and buys them because the picture is nice!   I try to make my garden generally organic but I've never worried about my seeds.  As long as they are good seed and not from hybrid stock I'm happy.

Well, all this discussion has come about because, this week, I sowed my first seeds of 2011, some of my Cherry Tomato seeds, saved last autumn.     I found the seeds, still in a coffee filter, tucked behind a rather nice designer vase on the Welsh Dresser in the kitchen.  This was after I'd looked in the four drawer plastic storage unit, an empty paint container and a couple of used carrier bags.....

You get the picture.  Now, one of the consequences of the second problem..... is that I have loads of packets of seeds, some full, some half empty, and, quite often, I forget to sow them until a couple of months after the time.... causing either, a game of catch up, or more often, that plant to be abandoned for this year!

It was whilst reflecting on all this that I decided to make 2011 the year of seeds!

I have organised my seeds and, hopefully, as I go through the year, I can make decisions based on something more relevant than my memory.

I decided the first thing was to break the year down into segments.  At first I thought about seasons but quickly discarded that idea in favour of months.  Once I had made that decision, it was simply a case of putting some marker cards in for each month and then sorting the seed packets.

Firstly, I dealt with all the seeds in packets.  If the packets were open, I simply folded the top over and fixed it with a paper clip.  Then I filed each packet behind the month marker corresponding to the earliest sowing date.  Of course, I'd only just got going when I came across the first packet that could be sown all year round.  So I soon had a few packets filed before the year started in that interesting space created before the start of January, but which is not in the previous year!!!!   Before long I had sorted all my seed packets and could see exactly what was due to be sown this month.  This was quite a shock.  I think of March as being the start of the sowing year.  I know I sow a couple of things before then but I was quite surprised to find about 20 things in the February file!   I'll need to get sowing underway if I'm to keep up.

This was a great start but I still had seeds in bags, seeds in coffee filters, seeds in jam jars, seeds in little plastic pots,, in fact, seeds in virtually anything that would contain them.  In fact, all the seeds that I have either been given by other gardeners or seeds I have saved myself were stored like this and none of these fit neatly into my file!

What I ended up doing was making a card for each loose seed   The card just  names the seed and gives the month to sow it.   It might in the future tell me where the seeds are stored!!!! and of course, I'd only written the first couple of cards before I thought, "Oh, I could make a note about that on the card!!".   So now, as I look at my seed file, I can choose a month, look at all the seeds I need to sow and all my saved seeds are included in the same system.

Another side effect of this sudden burst of organisation, is that I have ended up with a coherent list of seed that I have saved and that I can offer through my participation in the Blogger's Seed Network.  For details of what seeds I am offering take a look at my Seed Exchange List.   Now I just need to update that list of the seeds I'm offering!!

Oh, at the end, here, there was supposed to be a photo of the newly organised seed boxes....  However, I got them out of the storage unit to photograph them but decided that I'd just file a couple of packets I had found since I finished....   As I put them down on the table I must have completely misplaced them and pushing the first seed packet in was sufficient to drop the whole lot on the floor.  Of course, the boxes decide to animate them selves and turn upside down, before mixing all the packets in big mess!!   The photo will be along soon!

Tomatoes

On 14 June last I recorded 32mm of rainfall and the week prior to that 51mm.  However since then, now more than three months ago, we've had no rain.

Actually, to say we've had no rain is a blatant lie.  Of course we have had rain in the past three months... on one day I recorded 2mm of the stuff and on another just 1mm fell.  But, apart from those two days, we've had no rain.

Now I know that to lots of people, this is perfectly normal....  after all, I am talking about the period of high summer... and this year it's been a very high summer....my unheated above ground swimming pool reached over 30 degrees for a few days and the temperature I record each day (air temperature with no reflective surfaces nearby) reached well into the upper 30's, fortunately staying just below 40C.

However, this week the drought has relented and we had 35mm fall and again today we have a light drizzle, soaking gently into the ground.

Many of you will know that before I came to live in south west France my home had always been in Britain and for the last 30 years or so it was in a particularly wet part of Britain, Wales.   Indeed some family members who lived near Washington DC at the time used to claim that whenever they crossed the river Severn, which forms the boundary between England and South Wales it would always start raining.  So, it's not really surprising that I have absolutely no idea how to deal with drought.  Drought to me means it's stopped raining for a few hours!!!!  The problem with gardening in Wales is keeping the land drained, not trying desperately to get enough water into it. And, of course, all that rain means a very damp atmosphere, I remember Kate coming to visit and happily ensuring that everything was carefully stored in plastic bags in the fridge, only to be horrified to discover that actually, putting things in plastic bags is a particularly bad idea in our climate when she removed a black soggy mass that had once been a tasty lettuce.

Consequently, I have lost most of the crops I tried to grow this year.  Don't get me wrong, I have had some successes, and of course, the orchard has produced, but things like salad greens, cabbages, onions all dried up into shrivelled heaps.  Even my garlic was looking distinctly dry by the time I got around to harvesting it, although it is delicious and I'm hoping to plant some of the cloves again next month.

I lost all my bush beans to this drought.. just simply not being used to the fact that they needed watering so frequently.    Those who read my blog rather more frequently may remember that I had already lost much of my seed stock to mice over the winter so the two things combined together mean that I now have none of the Black Valentine bush beans that were so generously given to me by Miss Fuggle, or Patrick's delicious Dog bean that I have had quite a bit of trouble growing but had at last got enough to eat a few last year and keep a few beans to grow!!!!  Or so I thought.

Melons are another crop that have suffered quite badly for me...  I managed to harvest just six melons although I do have plenty of new seed from those.

One of the things that seems to have hung on despite the drought, helped with my kind addition of liberal amounts of water, is my tomato crop.  I grew six varieties of tomato this year....   Ananas, grown from seed I saved last year, but originally given to me by Chaiselongue, Veeroma, a very tasty Italian plum tomato originally given to me by Miss Fuggle.   A couple of new varieties that I bought seed for this year were Moneymaker and Marmande.   I decided to grow Marmande as the town is no more than 30 kms from the Kitchen Garden in France.   I also grew some Golden Sunrise.  I brought these seeds with me when I came from the UK and have spent five years acclimatising them to the climate here.  This year they have produced beautifully tasting fruit, and produced it copiously.  The sixth variety for this year was my own Ian's Red Cherry.  This is a variety I have developed here in France and again this year I have been rewarded by truss after truss of dozens of wonderfully sweet cherry tomatoes.

I'm intending to save seeds from all my varieties of tomato this year and offer them under the Blogger's Seed Network later this year.  For more details of the seeds I'm offering take a look at http://kitchengardeninfrance.blogspot.com/2010/09/seed-exchange-list-2010.html.  In the picture above you can see Ian's Red Cherry, Veeroma and Golden Sunrise.

The other day I went to collect water from the local spring.   Yes, many of you will buy French Spring Water in plastic bottles but I'm lucky enough to be able to take my container and collect litres of it direct from the source.  Indeed, the local town hall even tests it from time to time to make sure it remains drinkable.  The location of the spring is such that I have to park the car and then walk a little way down an old track.  The views when I get there are quite spectacular.   However, I was walking back up to the car and arrived at the village square only to notice a vine of beautiful tomatoes growing just to the side of the road.   They looked delicious but I couldn't believe they were wild so I left them  for their owner to harvest.

Another red cherry tomato

Once again this year, I'm growing a tomato that I have grown and saved for the past couple of years.

A few years ago, I bought a couple of nice looking tomato seedlings from some people who specialise in growing organic  seedlings.  The sellers just said they were red and cherry....

The first year I grew them, they produced a nice crop of cherry tomatoes which proved to be sweet and tasty.

At the end of the season I saved a few of the tomatoes.... but didn't do anything other than wash and dry the seeds.  I cut the tomatoes open and washed the seeds out from the pulp.  Then I dried them in a paper coffee filter.  and put them away.

The following year I grew them again and again they produced a nice crop of bright red cherry tomatoes and again I saved seeds from the three plants I had.

Sadly, over that winter, something happened in my workshop and the envelope the seeds were stored in got wet.   I discovered this in about late January/early February of this year, when I found the seeds all stuck, in a mass, to the envelope.

Eventually, I decide to sow the lot and see what happened.  I simply scraped all the seeds off the paper onto a seed tray of sowing compound, watered it  and left them to it.

To my astonishment I got what must have been a couple of hundred seedlings.

I thinned them down and nurtured them.  I potted them on as they developed, pinching out a dozen tiny seedlings into a pot.  Later I split those pots into individual plants. I gave away some of the pots of 12 and also the individual plants until,eventually, people were crossing the road when I approached for fear of being off loaded with another tomato seedling. 

I called them Ian's Red Cherry Tomato as I felt they had survived unfair stress and I owed them some recognition.

Again, the one's I planted cropped heavily and I saved seeds at the end of the season.  Last year they seemed to crop better than ever and I had great reports from those who had grown on the seedlings foisted upon them.

Now, I'm not the world's best seed saver and, as I have already written on here, again, over last winter I lost many of the seeds, this time by being eaten by mice.  However, emergency action was taken and seeds were saved from some of the later crop and again, I have produced hundreds of seedlings.

I'm just about to put them out in the garden and am looking forward to another good crop of tasty cherry tomatoes.

I'm again intending to save seeds from these tomatoes and offer them under the Blogger's Seed Network.

If any one would like some seeds, please drop me a line at kitchengardeninfrance@gmail.com and I'll keep some for you.

Weeds and seeds....

	My late return from the UK coupled with guests in the holiday accommodation has made a significant impact on my seed sowing and  garden preparation for the 2010 season. The no fly zone over northern Europe has also resulted in some unexpected meals being served. However, I am at last getting down to some serious work in my garden.  Well, when I say getting down to some serious work, I guess I really mean getting down to some serious thinking about the work I need to be doing.
	I sowed a few courgettes the other day and as you can see they are developing nicely.  I have prepared a bed in the garden and shall be putting them out in the next few days.  These are Courgette d'Italie and were very successful last year.  I have grown these from seed I saved.
	I've had a great deal of success with this little red cherry tomato which last year I called Ian's Red Cherry. The seeds have survived the best attempts of all the mice in south west France to devour thyem and as you can see, rather a lot germinated. These were saved late in the season and I did nothing whatsoever to help them on their way.  The seeds I originally saved were eaten so I took a few tomatoes I had left and scraped the seeds out onto paper kitchen towels.  By this spring, they were such a mess that I simply put the whole towel in the seed tray, covered with potting compost and hoped.
	Last year I grew some Veeroma tomatoes from seed I was given by Miss Fuggles.  They were big and juicy and beautifully elongated and made fabulous sauce.  I enjoyed eating them fresh but I know the rather fleshy texture is not to everyone's taste. Well, I'm growing them again this year and am very seriously hoping to haveboth  Ian's Red Cherry and Veeroma tomato seed to swap next year on the bloggers seed network. sadly, I lost all my Ananas tomato seed over the winter but I gave a few seeds away last year and am hoping to get a few plants back from that gardener.  I saw them today and they are a bit slow starting but doing ok.
	I've also sown some Marmande Tomatoes and just a few Moneymaker Tomatoes.  These will both be new varieties for me, although I love the taste of the Marmande Another success last year was some "Joy's Cos Letttuce" grown from seed given to me by Kate of Tasmania, originally from the Hills and Plains Seedsavers of South Australia. They grew well and I enjoyed eating the tasty cos lettuce. I'm hoping that this year I'll have enough plants to add significantly to my salad garden
	And finally, I thought you might like to see what I still have left to sort out. This bed is my winter salad and brassicas bed which had quite a rich variety of things including lettuce, cabbage, beetroot and chervil.  By the time I got back from the extended stay in the UK, it had quite a rich variety of weeds as well....

Poletschka Beans.

I've not had a great success this year with my seed saving as two trips and two invasions by mice have seriously depleted what stocks I had.  Following recent advice, my seeds have all now been moved to better storage jars or boxes of either heavy plastic or preferably, glass.

However, one of the things I was successful with last year was the Poletschka bean.  A purple pole bean, which has a beautiful small variegated bean.  I don't really know whether I can call a bean variegated...  but I'm sure you'll all know what I mean.  I originally got the beans from Miss Fuggles at A blog called Fuggles, and grew them here for the first time last year.  They were very successful.

I'm just sowing these now and it's a little bit late but if anyone would like to try them then I have a few beans I could let you have.  Sadly, the offer can only be made to those people resident in Europe as the problems of shipping seeds beyond our borders is simply too complicated.

If you're interested, please leave a comment here or better still, email me.

A Wet Autumn Day

Today is the first day for many weeks when it has been raining here in the south west of France so it was time to attend to all those indoor domestic jobs that inevitably need doing before the onset of winter.   You know, things like fitting a new light in the kitchen and rehanging a door that had fallen off a cupboard, things like adjusting the time clocks on the central heating the more pressing needs of the cooler wintry air, (we had minus 2C(28F) overnight this week).  Actually, there was quite a list of such jobs which was quite daunting.... so I decided to sort my saved seeds!

Over the year I have saved from numerous fruits and vegetables.   I tend to collect the seeds and then store them in a paper coffee filter in the kitchen whilst they dry.  This seems to work well, as the filter paper absorbs any moisture that is still in the seeds and also provides a medium to write the identification information on.  You know, things like "Seeds from that delicious melon which we bought from the lady that sells leeks at the market at Villereal".  So today I have been moving the seeds into better storage jars for their winter rest.

Actually, this whole operation has been precipitated by a recent holiday.

Last week we suddenly decided to go away for a few days and take advantage of the autumn sunshine that this part of France was enjoying.  A couple of hours here on the Internet and I had found a secured a beachside apartment just a couple of hours drive away.  It was in a resort which is far busier than I like in the middle of summer but which I felt would be interesting again, now the crowds have thinned.   So we upped and went and enjoyed a whole week of doing very little, swimming in the Atlantic, lazing on the beach and drinking good French coffee and eating good french patisseries.

Before we went, we moved all the seeds from our kitchen into our utility room for the sake of tidiness!

Sadly, on the day we left, a mouse, or maybe a whole horde of mice moved in.  Maybe in this instance I should use an alternate collective noun for the mice....  a mischief of mice!!!!

Anyway, the result was that the mice feasted for a whole week and I have now learned that mice prefer melon seeds to pumpkin seeds, are particularly partial to tomato seeds, especially those varieties where I only had a few seeds saved and generally can make a great deal of mess.... indeed mischief... when confronted with rows of paper coffee filters full of tasty seeds.

Ian's Red Cherry Tomato,

I will be saving seeds this year from a cherry tomato plant that I have grown for the past couple of years.

I bought a few nice looking small red cherry tomato seedlings from some people who specialise in organic growing here about three years ago.  The sellers just said they were red and cherry....

I grew them on and they produced a nice crop of cherry tomatoes which proved to be sweet and tasty.

At the end of the season I saved a few of the tomatoes.... but didn't do anything other than wash and dry the seeds.  I cut the tomatoes open and washed the seeds out from the pulp.  Then I dried them in a paper coffee filter.  and put them away.

Last year I grew them again and again they produced a nice crop of bright red cherry tomatoes and again I saved seeds from the three plants I had.

Sadly, over last winter, something happened in my workshop and the envelope the seeds were stored in got wet.   I discovered this in about late January/early February of this year, when I found the seeds all stuck, in a mass, to the envelope.

Eventually, I decide to sow the lot and see what happened.  I simply scraped all the seeds off the paper onto a seed tray of sowing compound, watered it  and left them to it.

To my astonishment I got what must have been a couple of hundred seedlings.

I thinned them down and nurtured them.  I potted them on as they developed, pinching out a dozen tiny seedlings into a pot.  Later I split those pots into individual plants. I gave some of the pots of 12 away, I also gave away individual plants until,eventually, people were crossing the road when I approached for fear of being off loaded with another tomato seedling. 

I called them Ian's Red Cherry Tomato as I felt they had survived unfair stress and I owed them some recognition.

Now, some 6 months later I have about 20 plants fully grown in the garden, and today, I picked the first Ian's Red Cherry Tomato this year.  It was delicious.  They seem to be cropping better than ever this year.

I'm going to save seeds from these tomatoes and offer them under the Blogger's Seed Network.

If any one would like some seeds, please drop me a line at kitchengardeninfrance@gmail.com and I'll keep some for you.  I will be asking for a small contribution towards the postage costs.

Rainy Day Sunday,

 

We have had a lot of rain here.  This seems to be in keeping with the entire world right now, but no, we have not had the 92mm that Kate in Adelaide is reporting... But still, 30 mm yesterday is a lot for South West France, and it has kept on raining all morning.

This has led me to do some much needed work inside.  After the usual round of chasing bits of paper I moved to my workshop and started to sort out a few things.

First, I had some herbs to sow into pots.  I have sown Sweet Basil, Sage, Dill and Sweet Marjoram.  I already have a pot of Basil but it is looking very sad so I decided to get ahead and sow a new lot.

I have also sown a pot of Aster this morning in the hope that the fragrant flowers would attract lots of insects.

I have a little bit of space at the end of my pumpkin bed so I also put a couple of  "Potimarron" seeds into pots.  This is a pumpkin, not the character in the French version of Bob the Builder, Bob le Bricoleur .

Then, I got onto sorting out seeds, basically looking at what I haven't sown which I should have and there were plenty.

First of all, an apology goes out to Miss Fuggles (A Blog Called Fuggles) who back in February very kindly let me have some seeds including some Poletschka beans.   I regret to say that they had been completely overlooked and did not feature at all in my list of sowings and proposed sowings published the other day.  However, that won't stop me growing them and they have very firmly been put in the box where I keep the seeds that I am sowing next....Just as soon as the garden is dry enough to get out there again....

Next into the box went the successional sowings.   I am absolutely hopeless at successional sowings.  This year I'm growing an 18 day radish and it will be ready before the second batch even leaves the packet!!!!  The same with salad stuff, I know I need to be sowing every couple of weeks but, somehow it just doesn't happen..  So radish and lettuce are in the box.

I really enjoyed my Red Cabbage over the winter and picked the last a couple of weeks ago.  I noticed that an April sowing will produce cabbage in November/December so I thought I'd give that a try, to supplement my usual Autumn sowing.  So red cabbage in the box!!!!

Already in the box were some Dwarf French Green Beans given to me by Sarah.   Sarah is a lovely lady who gardens not far from here in Charente-Maritime  I visited her a few months ago and am intending to get over to see her again soon.  She doesn't write a blog though, she has this idea that spending time in the garden, actually growing things is what counts!!!!

As you can see, there will be plenty to sow next week!!  The good news is that my cold frame is fairly empty, as is the heated shelf in the workshop where I germinate seeds, so I should be able to quietly get on with growing the lettuce, the pumpkins and the cabbage and then get the beans and radish in the ground just as soon as I can.

Actually, maybe I could call on Bob le Bricoleur's friend Potimarron to come and give me a hand.

Yaĉon - an update

  Back in January, Patrick of Bifurcated Carrots sent me a couple of Yaĉon tubers.

I potted them up as instructed and subsequently, one of the tubers germinated and then, a few weeks ago, the first leaves appeared in the pot.

However the second tuber showed no sign of life.

The first tuber has continued to grow and as you can see is now a healthy plant just waiting for any chance of frost to pass before getting out into the big wide world.

I kept this one watered and checked daily to make sure conditions were right for the second...but nothing

UNTIL

this morning, when, comme d'habitude, I watered big brother and there, just peeping out into the daylight were the tiniest pair of leaves.

So Yaĉon the baby brother has made it and hopefully will catch up with his big brother in the big wide world in just a week or two.

Yacón, Lettuce, Rhubarb and lots of Tomatoes

After my trip, I spent the first day back home, in the garden.   It was a beautiful day and I spent the most part of it catching up on watering and just enjoying the great progress that had happened over the few days I was away.

	Earlier this month, Patrick, of Bifurcated Carrots, let me have two Yacón tubers and this is the first one to appear.    It has also been on a short holiday, residing in a neighbours greenhouse...... well, actually their swimming pool house, which is like one huge greenhouse!  The other tuber is now safely back in the dark of my boiler room, where it will enjoy a constant temperature of between 17C and 20C until it, too, decides to come out into the world.
	We had also sown some Joy's Cos Lettuce seeds before we went away and left a rather spindly collection of tiny seedlings to find their way in the big world.   I'm not sure someone isn't playing a joke on me as these cannot be the same seedlings that Kate and I left just over a week ago.
	Whilst thinking about lettuce, this is a firm favourite of mine,  Lollo Rosso.  It's deliciously tasty and crunchy and is certainly enjoying this year's spring weather. We also left a tray of Oak Leaf Lettuce seedlings.   Well, to be honest I thought we were leaving a tray of pots of soil with a few stalks in it.
	Look how they have grown.  I have a covered terrace area on the south side of my house.    It is open but enjoys full sun for a good part of the day and the roof keeps out the frost at night.   Whilst I was away, these seedlings were just left on on a table with a neighbour popping in occasionally and giving them a drink
	I saved some pumpkin seeds from the pumpkins which another neighbour has grown for many years.  I figure that if he is successfully growing them right next door to me then, even a newbie like me, should stand a chance. They are obviously going to be quite tasty, because you will see that one of them has already been eaten. The others seem to be doing ok though.
	Back in November 2008, one of our friends gave me three pots which she assured me had rhubarb seeds sown in them.  I carefully nurtured them over the winter and, to be honest was beginning to think they had failed me.  However, about a month ago, one of the pots showed the tiniest sign of life so I persevered. Now all three are up and growing and getting ready to enjoy their new home.
	And then there were some tomatoes....  Last autumn I saved seeds from my cherry tomatoes.   I got advice from friends and bloggers in Europe, the United States and as far away as Australia.    They all gave me great advice about how to collect the seeds.... pick a tomato!!! and how to save them.... dry the seeds!!!  I followed this advice and saved my first seeds. Sadly, all these people did not give me any advice about keeping the seeds, once saved, and when I came to sow them, I found my packet had got damp and there was just a collection of mouldy seeds all stuck to the paper.

After some discussion I decided to just sprinkle all the seeds onto a tray of seed compost and see what happened.   These seedlings are a tiny fraction of the result.   I have been giving away tomato seedlings to friends and neighbours now for about a month and still have far more than I can use.

I'm hoping that seeds from my cherry tomatoes will be the first seeds I am able to offer on the Blogger's Seed Network, from next year.

News about seeds

Some days ago, I posted about the Bloggers Seed Network.

I am pleased to say that I have since been in touch with "Miss Fuggles" of "A Blog Called Fuggles" and have arranged to receive a nice selection of her home saved seeds.  I shall be proud to try and grow these on during the coming year and hope to be able to report many successes in the forthcoming months.

Miss Fuggles is providing me with,

• Pea Bean,
• Poltschka Bean,
• Black Valentine Bush Bean,
• Kaibi Round Pepper,
• Purple Ukraine Tomato
• Veeroma Tomato,

all of which I'm looking forward to arriving in the next few days.

Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots has also agreed to let me have some Yacon tubers which he tells me will be here in a couple of weeks.

As well as all these,  Kate brought me a collection of seeds from the Hills and Plains Seedsavers in Adelaide.

Many thanks to all of you for your help.

Blogger's Seed Network

Patrick over on Bifurcated Carrots has for some time been promoting an idea of his to create a seed network.

The idea is simple, anyone who grows vegetables and then saves the seeds can exchange any spare seeds they may end up with.

The seed network is promoted by the individual growers and how the exchanges happen is entirely up to those growers.

I've only been growing vegetables for just a year now but am happy to say that I have received many seeds from seed savers in many parts of the world.  Patrick himself has been very generous with his support of my first attempts to grow things edible.

Sadly, at this time, I don't have any seeds to offer of my own, but I am now growing seed saved from last year's crop and hoping it will turn out ok.   If this happens then I shall happily participate by offering my own seeds as part of the network in the future.

More information on the Blogger's Seed Network is available from Patrick on his page Blogger's Seed Network.

For reasons I fully understand, Patrick has asked everyone concerned to make the list of participants widely known and so here is the list, taken from his page on 12th February 2009

Of course, Patrick is also offering a large selection of seeds, with more information on his page Blogger's Seed Network

The Seed Network

Here are links to other blogs or Internet sites who are participating and I am aware of:

Bifurcated Carrots (Amsterdam)

Ewa in the Garden (Poland)

Spade Work (UK)

Mas Du Diable (France)

Alternative Kitchen Garden Podcast or Fluffius Muppetus (UK)

MustardPlaster (UK)

Lusthof (Garden of Eden) (Belgium)

A Thinking Stomach (USA)

The Veggie Patch Re-imagined (Canada)

The Cats Tripe (UK)

Soilman (Leeks, trumpet lily hybrids and pure regale species) (UK)

CityGarden (Greece)

Bishop’s Homegrown (USA)

Braamekraal Farm (South Africa)

Bifurcated Carrots (Netherlands)

Urban Food Gardening (Ireland)

Worldwide Seed Trader (USA)

Grunt and Grungy’s Garden (Canada)

The Seed Ambassadors Project (USA)

Jardim com Gatos (Portugal)

Lowarth Brogh — Offering round courgette, anna schwarz winter squash, rainbow quinoa, mexican sour gherkin and maybe some black cherry tomato seed. Interested in anything used to the cold, and anything strange,exotic(and tasty-not asking for much!) (UK)

Gardening Fool (USA)

Agrarian Grrl’s Muse (Canada)

Crazytomato (Netherlands)

Paquebot (USA)

Saith Ffynnon Farm (UK)

Blue Ribbon Tomatoes (USA)

Daphne (flat leafed parsley and dill.  US addresses only) (USA)

Brown Envelope Seeds (Looking for trades!) (Ireland)

A Blog Called Fuggles (UK/EU addresses only) (UK)