New Introductions for the 2007 Season
by Kelle Carter

You gotta love winter! There are no crops begging to be weeded, no tomatoes that have to be eaten or canned before they make their trip to the compost pile, and your back and knees finally get a rest. Don't get me wrong, I love fresh tomatoes and I do enjoy the zen-like work of weeding; however, it is nice to sit by the wood stove and look out at a garden covered in a white blanket of snow. The best thing about the winter months is planning your garden for next year—a reminder of the ever-changing cycle of life.

We have a lot of new and exciting open-pollinated introductions for the 2007 Garden Catalog, along with a hot-off-the-press Professional Seed Catalog, both of which should already be at your doorstep. In addition to keeping true to our promise of offering open-pollinated, heirloom varieties, this season we will also be providing market farmers with organic hybrid seed, available on our website and in the Professional Seed Catalog. These hybrid varieties have been selected for their combination of superior agronomic traits, adaptability to organic farming conditions, and culinary excellence.

Each season our Research Farm trials all our organic seed offerings in the field for quality assurance. Our farm experiments with sustainable agricultural methods such as composting, cover cropping, and crop rotations, to further our understanding of the organic system as a whole. In addition to our enduring classic cultivars, each season we trial new varieties that expand our current list of offerings to provide you, the customer, with the means to grow the latest and the greatest culinary and aesthetic delights. Increasing biodiversity is at the forefront of our mission statement, which is why we are committed to offering new varieties each year. These introductions incorporate the most up-to-date in organic hybrid breeding, as well as heirloom varieties brought back from the brink of extinction.

We trial numerous crop varieties on our own Research Farm, on different university farms, and on farms belonging to our seed growers. These farms are located throughout the country, so we can see how the crops perform in different locations and growing regions. Our Garden Catalog for the 2007 season includes a total of twenty-one new, organic, open-pollinated herb, vegetable, and flower seeds for your enjoyment. The 2007 Garden Discovery Seed Collection includes eleven of our new varietal introductions, a great way to incorporate some exciting diversity into your garden. We also have the addition of a South of the Border herb and spice seedling collection, which includes six savory mainstays of Mexican cuisines.

Five new, diverse apple offerings are now available in our catalog and on the web. Gravenstein Red is an heirloom apple with a sweeter flavor than the popular California standard Gravenstein; it matures late. Pink Sparkle is perhaps our most interesting new apple tree, with its unique upside-down shape. This apple has a red-striped skin when ripe with a deep-pink flesh. Rhode Island Greening is a classic American cooking apple that has been traced back to colonial times. White Pearmain, an heirloom green apple that has a red blush on one side, is the oldest known English apple, dating back to AD 1200. And finally, we have Macoun, a McIntosh and Jersey Black cross. This apple stores well and is delicious right off the tree.

Another new crop offering is Applegate Giant garlic. A rare heirloom softneck garlic, Applegate has large, pure-white bulbs with a slight purple blush. The taste is mild, yet richly flavored—a great garlic for roasting.

The Gardening Catalog has some great new merchandise to ease your work in the garden: durable tools to help you get the job done and organic products to keep your garden healthy and bountiful. We are offering three new sizes of Efficient High Output Florescent Lights to help you get a jump on the season. Also available are Biodegradable Pots made of organic rice hulls—a wonderful alternative to plastic. Grandpa's Weeder is a great tool we are offering; it completely removes those hard-to-pull dandelion roots, without any stress on your back or wrists. For the fashionable, yet sensible, we have a utilitarian Tool Belt to keep you organized, along with stylish Gardening Chaps and a comfortable Gardening Skirt. Be sure to register on our website to receive our free 2007 Garden Catalog or the 2007 Professional Seed Catalog if you are not already on our mailing list. If you order online, you can also enjoy a 5% discount.

The new introductions chosen for this season came from multiple discussions with chefs regarding the latest culinary trends. Some of these highlights include a gorgeous red/purple carrot with a deep-orange interior called Dragon, a spicy arugula called Sputnik, and a new purple basil with a mild mint flavor, called Petra. Other farm favorites this season were Cippolini onion, a medium-small, flat yellow onion with an exceptional pungent and sweet flavor, along with a dark-red romaine lettuce, rightly called Outredgeous. My personal favorite this season was the Amish Paste tomato. This paste tomato is a meaty giant compared to our other paste tomatoes. Its full-flavor flesh makes a deliciously thick sauce. I suggest roasting the tomatoes over an open flame until the skin is slightly blackened, then take the now-easy-to-peel fruits and blend them with garlic, olive oil, and fresh basil. The smoky flavor in the sauce makes it irresistible!

Along with tantalizing your taste buds, our new flower offerings will enliven your garden with beautiful colors and fragrances. This season we have added another calendula to our collection. Zeolights calendula is a unique variety developed by master plant breeder Frank Morton. This compact cultivar can be grown in container gardens or as a garden border. Our gardening hotline receives numerous requests for smaller, shorter growing flowers, so we have added the Dwarf Thumbelina Mix zinnia to fulfill those customer desires. This zinnia has vibrant double and single blooms that are easy to grow and great as a border or in a mass planting. We are also pleased to offer Red Flame celosia, a scarlet beauty with a classic cockscomb shape. This celosia makes a great compliment to our Crimson Violet strawflower in a dried flower arrangement.

True to our commitment to biodiversity, we have included additional heirloom varieties within the 2007 Garden Catalog. Hickory King Dent corn dates back to 1875, originating from the hills and hollows of Virginia. This corn was traditionally made into hominy grits and is ideal for grinding into cornmeal. Cherokee Purple tomato is another Southern heirloom, reportedly of Cherokee origin. The fruits are large with a purple hue that infiltrates throughout the inside of the juicy flesh; this tomato begs to be sliced and eaten with salt and pepper—Southern style.

We hope you are as excited as we are for the upcoming 2007 growing season. Seeds of Change is committed to offering the best in organic varieties of seeds selected for superior flavor, beauty, and vigor. We hope you will join in fulfilling our mission of growing heirloom, rare, and traditional cultivars to increase and promote biodiversity on your own garden plot. Enjoy your "time-off" this winter, and return to the field with a renewed sense of the limitless possibilities for your backyard ecosystem.

Kelle Carter
Field Coordinator

Photo captions: (1) Numex Big Jim chile pepper (2) South of the Border seedling collection (3) Gravenstein Red apple (4) Dragon carrots (5) Zeolights calendula (6) Cherokee Purple tomato