Seed, glorious seed!

Who would have thought browsing an online vegetable seed catalogue could give one such absolute joy and excitement?! I received Living Seeds newsletter informing me that they were taking pre-orders for seed potatoes. I have thus placed a small order of "Buffelspoort" as my six "Mondials" I reserved from the last pocket I bought have not really sprouted well and I'm told there are far better tasting spuds out there. Sadly I couldn't find any red-skinned varieties, but I'll keep looking. Not many places keep seed potatoes...

The greatest fun however was choosing a few other seeds for the veggie patch. The tomato and pumpkin sections had me drooling!!! I finally decided to leave the pumpkins for now because they like warm summer weather and concentrate on the early spring veggies. I ordered the following and am awaiting their arrival with great anticipation:

Purple Dragon Carrots an heirloom variety, purple on the outside and orange inside

 Country Gentleman Sweetcorn first listed in 1890, has irregular rows of sweet kernels

Red Creole Onions beautiful red, mild, sweet onions

Scarlet Runner Beans perennial, vigorous grower (want to train them up arches over the gates), green beans

Albenga Bush Beans beautiful green and purple varigated beans

De Grace Peas great producer of snap and green peas

Melody Lettuce a loose leaf lettuce that one can start picking early and it keeps producing leaves

 

Wonder of Four Seasons Lettuce a beautiful butter lettuce with pink edging

Carbon Tomatoes black sweet tomatoes, considered one of the best tasting in the world

 Yellow Pear Tomatoes prolific bearer of small sweet yellow tomatoes

I also found someone in a Gardening Magazine that was happy to share seeds of a Spearleaf lettuce and white cucumber that his parents had developed. He lost the seed and was blessed to get them back via another reader in KZN. Their seeds are not commercially distributed. In return I sent him some African wild cucumber (which I got from my dad) and Malawian Pepperdew seeds.

Then my biggest and most exciting find: a gorgeous rust brown, deeply ribbed "Musket Pumpkin" according to the East London Fruit and Veg. I have never ever seen one of these pumkins before and even Living Seeds doesn't carry this variety. We simply had to make space for it in our heavily loaded car on the way to our holiday destination! Upon an internet search I could find no "Musket Pumpkins" but discovered that it is a heirloom variety from Long Island from the species "Moschata" and I suppose that does nearly sound like "musket"?! It is related to the "Butternut Squash" (similar taste and texture too) this specific variety is called "Fairytale".

The orange variety is called "Cinderella" as these are apparently the pumpkins that inspired the illustrations of the coach in the fairytale :-)