Too much seed
In winter I ordered packets and packets of seed. Far more than I can use. In dreamland by the fire in the coldest days there is no thought of the weeding, the digging and the watering that will be needed to get them all growing.
In winter it seems logical to plan for fifteen different varieties of lettuce, and three of broccoli, and five types of runner beans. After a period of indulgence looking through my seed box, my head is full of the language of seed and the practical hints purveyors of seed offer so generously.
For example: as a rule of thumb you should plant seed at a depth three times its width. Thus potatoes go deep down, carrot seed in a shallow drill, bean seed a finger’s poke into the dark, while chervil or poppy seed needs only to be tamped down with your boot and not buried at all.
Or try this one. If you are saving seed, examine the plant as a whole – not only the parts or characteristics you want, such as big fruit or flowers or plenty of leaf. The merit of the plant lies in its completeness. Those who seek too hard for what they want can end up frustrated.
Seed from hybrid varieties does not reproduce true to type. Non-hybrid seed, with careful selection, reproduces true to type for four or more generations, but evolves in the course of time. After all, everything changes.
My favourite seed company is Phoenix Seeds, based in the reassuringly named town of Snug in Tasmania. (They don’t have a website, but a google will find more information about them, and snail mail goes to PO Box 207 Snug TAS. 7054)
I can’t imagine anything bad ever happening in Snug. The proprietor, Michael Self, writes that the company will dispatch seed the same day whenever possible. He says that the focal point of his business is a Snug house. I imagine, probably too romantically, the Snug kitchen table with envelopes on it, and seed being weighed and packaged as carefully as illicit drugs before being sent out into the world. (Perhaps elves or hobbits lend a hand?)
Jungles issue forth from this kitchen table. Whole market gardens and flower gardens and forests of trees. They sell tree seed too, you see. In my previous home, I had a walnut sapling that came from the Snug kitchen table, and doubtless from some fine old tree before that. I am told that when fully grown, walnut trees are worth nearly $100,000 for the timber. The grandchildren of whoever owns that house now might appreciate it.
You can buy the seed of amaranth, or of artichoke, or Sweet William, or lovage or yam. How can you resist buying them all? I can almost taste the pumpkin, the broad beans, the sorrel, and the marigold petals…
But the truth is, I have no idea where I am going to find the room for it all!