Seeds of Life

Every day we make choices.  When we get out of bed in the morning we choose how we will spend our day.  When we pick what we will eat for lunch we make a decision that can bring us closer to or further from health.  And when we order seeds for our gardens we choose what industry we wish to support.

One pound of Reid's Yellow Dent Corn, an heirloom feed corn

In planning our garden for this year, we decided to plant only heirloom seeds.  Another word for heirloom seeds is "Open Pollinated" or "O.P.".  Until the 1930s, all commonly available seeds were O.P.--that is, they bred true.  If you save seeds from an O.P. tomato plant this year and plant them next year, barring cross-pollination by other tomato plants, you will grow tomatoes that look and taste like the tomatoes from the original plant.  So, when we made the choice to grow O.P. varieties, we were also making it possible for us to save our own seeds for next year, if we want to take that step.  

Lancaster Sure Crop Dent Corn--look closely; it looks like
candy corn--turns out that's what corn used to look like!

Our primary reason for choosing heirloom seeds, however, is nutritional.  Many of the heirloom vegetable varieties have greater nutritional potential than their modern hybrid counterparts.  An heirloom vegetable will only grow as large or as well as the nutrients it draws from the soil dictate.  This makes the resulting food more nutrient dense than the hybrid varieties which have been bred to grow large and colorful regardless of the nutrient uptake of the plant.      

Super Sugar Snap Peas--a sure sign of spring

Today, we spent the day planting some of those beautiful seeds in the garden.  Eighteen cauliflower plants, 8 broccoli plants, 10 pounds of seed potatoes, 200 onion sets, and 4 1/2 pounds combined of feed corn, sweet corn, and popcorn were all planted today.   

Broccoli and Cauliflower seedlings adjust to garden life

We seeded a little over a quarter acre today in corn alone--a tiny amount compared to our neighbors' tractor-planted fields of RoundUp Ready GMO Corn, but way too much to seed by hand.  To make the job more manageable, we used an Earthway Garden Seeder.  

The Earthway Garden Seeder,
filled with Orange County Dent Corn

The Earthway seeder did the job in under three hours, one row at a time.  (Of course, our entire 16 acre field was planted to soybeans with a huge tractor pulling a 24-row drill in just two hours last year...)

Kathy, midway through the corn planting

Meanwhile, Robin and the kids were working in the garden beds, adding a straw mulch to help keep down the weeds.  In our Brookfield garden, wood chips did this job nicely.  But now that we have increased our scale, we need to use a material that will break down quicker and be an asset to the compost heap at the end of the season.

Robin, adding that beneficial mulch that will help
hold in moisture and prevent weed seed germination,
while a few of the chickens look on

All in all, a very productive day at Morning Star Family Farm, as we continue to strive to make the best choices for our family--and yours.