People are addicted to tomatoes

I joined the Seed Savers Exchange a few months ago, and was excited to get the annual Yearbook in the mail a couple days ago. It is big -- 482 pages of rather fine print descriptions of plant varieties people have available.

I was rather curious to see what sorts of things it has, and have enjoyed it a lot. It is all fruits and vegetables,with a wide range of family heirlooms, and even more exciting to me, a surprising number people's personal breeding projects. I instantly gravitated to options like Kale 'Gulag Stars' which is described as: "Incredibly diversity unlike anything else, a mix of napus kales that have been crossed with B. rapa, bud pollinated by Tim Peters of Oregon to bypass species incompatibility mechanisms, crazy diversity of colors and shapes." (if you are not a SSE member, it is also available here) Be still my beating heart. How can I resist ANYTHING described as having "crazy diversity of colors and shapes" especially if it is the result of a cool and difficult to make interspecific cross? I'm such a plant breeding nerd...

I was a little surprised, though, when I got to the tomato section. I love a good tomato, but seriously? There is some insanely tomato love going on here. This is me holding the section of the book devoted to just listings of tomato varieties:

Fully 200 of the 482 pages with nothing but tomatoes. It is almost enough to make me stop breeding tomatoes and start focusing on everything else... tomatoes are good, but spread the love, people!

Spring 2011: The Official Theatrical Trailer

Happy Friday! I've got another video this week... Celebrating the arrival of spring, if it ever decides to actually get here.

It worked! Effortless bulb forcing!

A little over a year ago, I read that Iris reticulata doesn't require a cold period to flower. I got all excited, and planned to try growing them indoors for effortless winter color, but it was too late and I couldn't find them for sale anywhere.
So this fall, I bought a couple bags. I kept forgetting to pot them up, but in early January I stuck them in a pot, and put them in a sunny windowsill.

This afternoon, I came home and saw a few bits of purple blue:

I instantly ran in closer to soak up the pure joy...

And then started trying to take artsy backlit pictures

In short: It works! I have glorious fragrant irises blooming while there is a good six inches of snow outside, and they were no work whatsoever. As easy as paper whites or amaryllis, but without the need to stake or douse with alcohol to keep them from falling over. I think these are my new favorite bulb for winter flowers! Next year I'm going to buy oodles of them and start planting them up earlier so I can have them all winter.