Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Summer Moon (7% illuminated)<\/p>\n
Ancientrails spent the weekend in the company of gardeners and small farmers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They blur the line between horticulture and agriculture, not to mention the line between 2009 and 1969.\u00a0 Seedsavers Exchange<\/a> in Decorah, Iowa had their 29th summer conference.<\/p>\n This was the largest of their conferences to date with 400 +\u00a0 attendees from all over the country.<\/p>\n Today we learned how to graft a bud from a scion onto a trunk of root stock and came home with a new apple tree.\u00a0 We also learned about methods for extending the garlic harvest:\u00a0 dry sliced garlic then use a cheap coffee grinder to create home made garlic powder and why we should eat 5 pansies a day:\u00a0 ruthin.\u00a0 A.T.\u00a0 is a skeptic about medicinal claims so we’ll have to check the data.<\/p>\n Yesterday a lecture traced both garlic and carrots from their homelands in central Asia to their current locale\u00a0 in our gardens.\u00a0 Here’s an interesting piece of information.\u00a0 Though garlic does sometime reproduce from seed in the wild, it never does in our gardens.\u00a0 This means that garlic can be said to be cultivated but not domesticated.<\/p>\n A.T. toured the Seed Savers operation.\u00a0 They offered back office tours during the conference.\u00a0 We saw the room where 500 to 7oo hundred thousand seeds go from store room to seed packet–by hand.\u00a0\u00a0 A seed sorting machine is on the way that will automate this task. We also saw the seed sorting operation, the root cellar and the greenhouses where the preservation plants go to seed.<\/p>\n There are two different streams to the SSE operation:\u00a0 commercial and\u00a0 preservation.\u00a0 They inter-relate though the commercial side supports the preservation side.\u00a0 Preservation of heirloom varieties is a key mission of SSE so they have a huge seed vault, a regular germination rate check program for the vault and a regular grow out operation so the seed stock gets replenished on a rotating basis.<\/p>\n If\u00a0 you love gardening, you would enjoy a trip to the Heritage Farm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Summer Moon (7% illuminated) Ancientrails spent the weekend in the company of gardeners and small farmers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They blur the line between horticulture and agriculture, not to mention the line between 2009 and 1969.\u00a0 Seedsavers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa had their 29th summer conference. This was the largest of their conferences to date with … Continue reading A Seedy Weekend<\/span>