Collecting Globe Artichoke Seeds

I made an interesting observation this weekend past, let me take a minute to share it with you.

Last year we grew globe artichokes in our backyard garden and they were a great success. The plants that we grew were holdovers from the year prior which had been purchased at a local greenhouse. At the end of last season I decided to leave a couple of the artichokes blossoms to complete their life-cycle. mostly just because my wife and I love the electric blue punk rock looking spiked flower that develops.Those flowers eventually grew dry and brittle and died off as the rest of the plant went dormant for the winter. This weekend I cleaned up that garden bed and collected those last blossoms.
I imagined that, based on the shape and appearance of the final blossom, the spiky pieces (the choke) of the flower head that had dried might contain the tiny seeds of new artichoke plants; similar to a dandelion. I was partially right.
As I peeled back the layers of dried petals and choke, hoping to find small seeds connected to the ends of the choke strands, I did... sort of. What I found much to my surprise were actual seeds, and not even the dainty little dandelionesque seeds I had expected, but sunflower seed sized real seeds tucked right in there amidst the choke. Who knew? Well I assume someone did, but not I. The garden never ceases to amaze me. Just letting Mother nature do her thing so often results in little wonders.

So now what? Will they grow? I would assume that they will, and you know I will certainly try, but I don't know if they will produce true to type. It will definitely be a fun experiment to watch though. I'll make sure to keep you informed.
Have any of you ever grown artichokes from seed? Ever grown them from seed that you kept from your own plants? I'm always open to learn from your experiences.
Till next time...
P~

Supporting the Local Economy

I mentioned a couple of posts back about a Utah seed company that I generally get seed from.

One of the main reasons that I patronized them was because I like to try to support local businesses if I can and to keep those dollars in our state. Well I have a new sponsor to point out to you that you should take a look into for any upcoming seed purchases that you need to make. Hometown Seeds. They are also a UT local company and they have what seems to be a reasonable GMO free policy. You can find a link to them --> right over there in the side bar.

I will add the caviat that I am receiving from them a free herb seed collection and that I have not prior to this ordered from them. I will certainly let you know in the future about my experience, and would love to hear about any input you have.

Support your local companies when you can.
Best
P~

Goings on.

Still much happening around the homestead. I'll narrate, while letting some pictures tell most of the story...

Plants have been in the seed starting unit in the east window for almost a month now and are coming along nicely. Lights under reflective material. I used one of those .99 cent survival blankets that you can pick up in the outdoors section of may stores to concentrate the light back onto the sprouts. This picture was actually taken 10 days ago and the difference is impressive. (I'll try to get some more of them up soon.) I started running my oscillating fan over these a couple of days after this picture was taken. It simulates the weather that the plant would be exposed to outdoors and helps to keep the legginess down and build stronger plants. Iceberg lettuce sprouts under the lights. Starting these indoors let's me get enough of a head start that I can get some from them before they bolt. Last year they did OK. Hopefully even better this year!For those following the progress of my last robust little cutting from last years tomatoes. I've now got it split into the original cutting and two other "daughters". I placed the cuttings into soaked vermiculite and let them sit for about 2 - 3 weeks until I began to see roots along the edges of the cups. They've now been transplanted into soil and are coming along well. She's a tuffy!Here's a little plot of salad greens that I'll be using for cut and come again salad harvests until I can get more from outdoors.
LOOKOUT!! ALIENS!! OK I'm a dork, we all know that, but don't they kind of look like the invasion of the body snatchers or something? These are some "Garden Cloche" that I picked up at a local thrift store for 1.50 each last year. I've seen this same exact type of Garden Cloche for sale for 20.00 a piece so I was pretty happy to find these. So is my Chinese Cabbage I think.Here's a close up. The only noticeable difference with these is that they don't have the neat little glass knobby thing at the top. I think they were for displaying figurines or something originally. See, just goes to show, a little imagination goes a long way.I finally got out and got the greenhouse cleaned up over the last weekend too. It needed a lot of work but is in a much better state now. Soon the nights will be warm enough I won't feel bad putting out the sprouts! Those are recycled buckets of water to help hold some of the days heat through the night.Did you notice that little bit of green in the back of the G-house? Those are one of my biggest greenhouse successes and for some reason I have yet to mention them. Last year I tried to grow Artichokes in two largish pots. They didn't do well. Didn't die, but never thrived. I did, however, manage to overwinter them in the pots in the greenhouse. As soon as the weather started to warm at all, they started to throw up new shoots and really took off. This past weekend I split the second of the two plants into new starts and now have a total of twelve! The four on the left were split from the first plant a couple of weeks ago. I have a place I'll be planting these babies out by the potato garden this year and with any luck, I should have at least enough artichokes to enjoy fresh through the summer and then can get them thriving enough to over winter again!This weekend also had me cleaning out and prepping some of the harvest baskets that we use. Just seeing them there makes me excited about filling them!
As you can see, Things are coming along. There's more queued up, but just not enough time to get to them.

Hope Spring's coming along well for you all as well. Care to share your progress with everyone? Drop a comment and feel free to link to your own blog if you have one too. This is a community isn't it?

Namaste all...
Paul~

Local Seeds.

Well, local company anyway. After all the catalog shopping that I've been doing, I was at our neighborhood farm supply store and found that they stock garden seeds distributed from a local company; Mountain Valley Seed Inc (MVS). I called the company to see if I could get any information about their business and their products, a nice part about having the company local, and actually got a hold of a real person!

While we talked, I found out that MVS carries primarily open pollinated seeds that can be kept for seeds storage and also goes to great effort to make sure that they identify the few seeds that are hybrids. They even carry an interesting product, Storage seeds, that are all open pollinated and packed in individual hermetically sealed packaging and then sealed in a hermetically sealed #10 can. These are estimated to last around eight yrs in storage from what I gather.

I was really excited to find a company that I could go to to not only support open pollinated, non-hybrid seeds, but also to support a local company and the jobs that go with it at the same time. A~ and I went to the farm store last night after work and stocked up on a bunch of the seeds that we are going to be needing this year. I hope to be able to get out and get some peas and early season greens (Collard, lettuce, broccoli) into the ground before the end of the weekend. My neighbors are looking at me a little odd when I tell them I've already been out prepping the beds, but like last year, they may be scratching their heads wondering why I have peas already??