Seeds from Italy Grow Italian 2018

-
Grow Italian is one of my favorite seed catalogs. The company is actually called Seeds from Italy but it doesn't matter. If you enjoy growing vegetables this is one resource that you will treasure. 

 Seeds from Italy offers kitchen and garden gear, 500 varieties of heirloom Italian vegetables, flowers and herbs.

Started in 2001 by Bill McKay, Seeds from Italy was born because McKay couldn't find the Italian vegetable varieties he wanted to grow.

By luck, he happened upon Franchi Seeds, Italy's oldest family-owned seed company, which offers an extensive selection of traditional Italian varieties. Franchi didn't have an agent in the U.S., so Bill started importing the seeds and reselling them. 

In 2011, Bill sold the business to Dan Nagengast, a long-time market gardener in Lawrence, Kansas. In addition to growing vegetables and flowers for local markets, Dan was director of the Kansas Rural Center, a nonprofit that advocates for sustainable agriculture and family farms. The Lawrence Journal World wrote about Dan taking over the business and posted a video interview that you can watch here.

Dan is married to Lynn Byczynski, the founder of Growing for Market, a national periodical for market farmers, and the author of several farming and gardening books, including The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers. The couple's adult children, Will and Laurel, also work in the business. 

With all that said, the reason I buy from this company is because the packages of seed are large enough to share, the germination rate is the best I've found and the varieties are terrific.

For example, a pack of long, Italian, cucumbers (Lungo Verde Ortolani) is $3.50 for 150 seeds. The thin-skin Mideastern cucumber (Beth Alpha) is also 150 seeds for $3.50.

I bought their leek seeds one year and they were quite productive. Each year I left two plants to go to flower and those seeds gave us five years of leeks for the kitchen.

The vegetable names are in Italian and English, the online catalog is searchable and there is plenty of growing advice. Just go to http://www.growitalian.com/2018-catalog/ and browse around. It's a delightful experience. 

I always request a print catalog to savor with hot tea while deciding which repeat selections I'll get and what I'll add to my order to experiment with.

New this year, they are offering purple carrot, Marvel of Italy pea, trio of bush beans - go check them out.












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moldy Tulip Bulbs

-
Image
Moldy tulip bulbs are a big disappointment when you are hoping to fill a bed or some pots. It is not that unusual for their skins to have a bit of penicillin mold but these are beyond that tad bit stage. Mold penetrating tulip bulb  Mold on emerging tulip bulb growth  So, what to do? The plant references say to throw them out and buy new ones but I already spent $22 for 50 of these white tulip beauties. First, they got a soak in 1% bleach solution in the kitchen sink in the hope that the bleach would stop the mold from continuing to grow without killing the life force in the bulb itself. After a good slosh around, I wiped them off to see how much damage was beneath the blue and black.  This tulip bulb is soft to the touch and there is little chance it will thrive in the soil. This basal root on these have been ruined by mold. The final step I took to try to salvage part of them  was to spray them thoroughly with fungicide.  They are all planted in the
Read more

Propagate Begonia Stem Cuttings in water - Cane-like Angel Wing Begonia

-
Image
Propagating by stem cuttings is just about the easiest way to make more begonias for next summer's garden. During the fall, I regularly trim off 3-node long cuttings and put them into the growing pots where they take root. Now that cold weather has arrived, I root the stem cuttings in a vase of water. It's a great way to produce more pots of Begonias for next summer's garden. Water the plant well the day before. Take a cutting about 4-inches long, with 3 nodes, from a healthy stem. Use a perfectly clean container. Rinse the container with a drop of bleach if you are uncertain about its spotlessness. Remove all but the top leaf or two. There should be no leaves in the water. The cutting should  have a healthy leaf node at the bottom. Don't leave a stub below the node. Place the cutting into the water, and place the container out of the sun. In a couple of weeks, you will see new roots beginning to form. Check the water periodically to make sure it is still f
Read more

Create Nesting Areas for Birds and Wildlife

-
Image
From the website, Choose Natives , this lovely and instructive article helped remind me to continue to increase the amount of habitat and nesting that we provide in our garden. Many, though not all, are native or considered to be native in Oklahoma. So, I did a little research on each recommended plant and provided a link to more information. You'll see the plant name in italics - those are my links for your edification. Here's the post Derek Stoner, Project Coordinator for the Delaware Nature Society, helped restore the 860-acre Middle Run Natural Area by “intensive habitat management”, including planting 12,000 trees and shrubs.  His lecture, ‘ Native Plants for Nesting Birds: Connecting Flora and Fauna’,  given to a group of enthusiasts at the Millersville Native Plant Conference   in Pennsylvania, focused on his observations. Here are Derek’s landscaping recommendations for attracting birds: Plant shrubs in clusters (“habitat circles”) that will create the dense
Read more