Something exciting in the mail

Yesterday, something exciting came to us via USPS---- our Wintersown SASE seeds! You can see this post to read more about what that is.


Pretty exciting! I couldn't wait to open it.

Inside was a bounty of heirloom seeds. All we asked for, and more.

Apricot Brandywine
Black Cherry
Purple Tomatillo
Gartenperle
Green Zebra
Italian Salad Blend
Oxheart
Ornamental Mixed Gourds
Luther Burbank's Wonderberries


I'm really excited about the Wonderberries, which are also known as Sunberries or Garden Huckleberries.


Supposedly they're not very sweet, but have a very-berry flavor that's wonderful for jams, preserves, and pies. The growing requirements are somewhat like tomatoes, but less picky.



We won't be starting these seeds for a few months, but we're excited to have them.

Heirloom Tomatoes

People are so eager to give away heirloom vegetable seeds. Big, modern, hybrid, GMO companies (Monsanto comes to mind) never ever want to give away their seeds--- in fact, they've sued many farmers for growing their crops accidentally without paying to possess Monsanto's intellectual property.
But, back to the original point: Heirlooms are often up for grabs. Garden enthusiasts are eager to preserve these historic varieties, and often set up seed exchanges. In these exchanges, fellow gardeners can swap some of their heirloom saved seeds in exchange for other varieties. Wintersown.org has been highlighted on plenty of other gardening blogs for their wonderful seed exchange. For nothing more than the cost of a self-addressed envelope, they will send you six varieties of heirlooms, and there's dozens to choose from.

We decided to ship off for some seeds, and see what kind of awesome tomatoes we could grow. It's not going to be tomato season for quite some time, but we were too excited to wait to get our seeds.
Wintersown gives you the option to pick six varieties you'd like, and four backups. What were our choices?

Cherokee Purple
Black Cherry
Gartenperle
Green Zebra
Luther Burbank's WonderBerries
Tomatillo, Purple

Backups: Wildcard, Oxheart, Goji Faranji


We should get our seeds back in three weeks, and we plan on sending back some of our own saved seeds once we get a chance.