Best Seeds for a Bigger, Better Garden
(Page 5 of 7)
December 2008/January 2009
By Barbara Pleasant
14. Forage Food for Fowl
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“If you want your chickens to produce eggs with those high omega-3 fatty acids, they need to have fresh greens,” Nichols-McGee says. She chose the plants for her Chicken Greens Mix based on their ability to regrow after cutting. After the tyfon, lettuces, mustards and kale have been cut back two or three times, you can pen your birds over the planting and let them finish it up, or pull up the plants and toss them into your chicken yard. The plants in the Chicken Greens Mix can be eaten by people, too, but the blends Glenn Drowns sells at Sandhill Preservation Center are meant to be buffets solely for poultry.
15. Hard-Working Flowers
Sweet alyssum, bachelor buttons, corn poppies, and many other easy annual flowers attract nectar-seeking beneficial insects and make the garden a more beautiful place. Look for ways to put flowers to work doing multiple jobs. (To learn more, see 10 Easy and Useful Flowers.) For example, you can eat the blossoms and immature seeds of nasturtiums, and their spreading growth habit smothers weeds. Dwarf French marigolds help starve out rootknot nematodes, and dried calendula blossoms can be used to make skin-soothing lotions. These and many other flowers are easy to grow from seed, and some reseed themselves year after year.
Is There a Seed Shortage?
Last summer, most seed companies saw sales of vegetable and culinary herb seeds soar by 20 percent to 40 percent, which led to rumors of an imminent seed shortage. But don’t worry. Most seed companies saw it coming. There had been modest, steady growth in sales for the previous two years, so most companies were ready with a two-year supply of their most popular varieties. But do be prepared to order early, because gardening to put food on the table is truly catching on. When Dan Jason, owner of Salt Spring Seeds in British Columbia, put together a “Zero Mile Diet” collection that included regionally adapted grains, beans and vegetables, the supply didn’t even make it until July.
More seeds than ever are being readied for this year’s gardens, and even if unexpected crop failures cause spotty shortages, companies with online catalogs can quickly offer substitutions. “The Net lets us be much more nimble,” says Denise Smith, horticulturalist for Park Seed. “If a grower has seeds or plants that are ready between catalogs, we can offer it to customers right away as an Internet special,” Smith says. For example, last summer Park used the Web to offer 10 types of organic vegetable and herb seeds that were not in the catalog, and that number continues to grow.
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