eNewsletter #9, March 8, 2000

Dear Gardener,

We are getting ready for the new season on our New Mexico farm. This week, Micaela and the crew are sowing onions, peppers and tomatoes in flats...next week will come lots of perennials. We are also direct seeding the sweet peas and poppies, then come the garden peas.

Other chores include spreading compost, making potting mix, and completing final repairs and maintenance on the water pumps and tractors.

Come visit us this summer on the farm. See below for dates and times.

Thanks to you, we are having our best seed-selling season ever and hope the coming garden season is also, for you, the best ever.

Dave Smith, Editor

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In this issue...

• Garden Tips from our eGroup Forum
• Green Prints garden story
• Our Certified Organic Seedlings going fast
• News You Can Use
• Books of the Month
• Tools of the Month
• Visit our farm in New Mexico this summer
• Now you can order in catalog sequence
• Customer Comments

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Garden Tips From Our eGroup Gardening Forum

"I found a perfect way to torture weeds. It's also useful and beneficial to gardens. As you know, weeds don't get diseased. They have been naturally selected to resist an extremely wide spectrum of diseases and pests. Why not use their properties to benefit our plants that have been unnaturally selected by humans. This is what you do:

• Get all of your weeds and put them in one pile. But only get the healthiest weeds. I've never seen a weed that has been "sick" before.


• When you collected enough, puree them. I don't care how, throw them in a blender or a morter. Get them mushy...


• Set aside with water and leave it alone for a day or two.


• Strain the mixture and throw the pulp into the compost heap. Spray your mixture on the plants.


• Enjoy the benefits of organic gardening...

I got this idea when I noticed how Retinone uses the powder root of a certain tree. This tree had a spectrum of "goodies". So I thought that if I can make my own using a plant with a good spectrum of resistance, I could achieve the same thing. I thought of mint, garlic, peppers, etc... But I noticed how weeds never got sick. Voila, I had the most perfect candidate. No gardener will ever be weed free, and most of us (like me) have an extremely ample supply of weeds. So use weeds to your advantage. It does work, depending how strong your weed tea is. Within 2 applications, I rid of myself powdery mildew on roses, and it has made plants very untasteful for fungus gnats. Some of them died after eating leaves with my tea. They're moving away to the next door neighbour. Try out my tea, and tell me how it worked for you."

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"Red Wrigglers are for vermicomposting, where you make a box and fill it with wet newspaper or peat moss and food scraps and keep it relatively cool and moist and harvest worm dirt and lots more baby worms after about 3 months. Worms Eat My Garbage is a wonderful book describing this easy process. Red Wrigglers are also the kind of worms that will eat what's in your septic tank (I've been told). Red Wrigglers are fish bait and are what are sold usually in the ads in the backs of organic gardening type magazines. The earthworms that one usually sees in cooled compost piles or in your garden soil are usually gray, sometimes with reddish streaks. But they're not red wrigglers. If you see a short gray stubby larva, it's probably going to be a root chewer, and I would toss those out."

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"My grandmother was a tiny farmer in Mexico. She had fish from rivers, chickens in the pen, and other live stock. What she did to get rid of the fish and chicken guts was to bury them deep in the earth. She always had a tiny plot of land to bury stuff. The earthworms and microbes eats it all. Then the next year she plants corn where she buried the guts. It improves the land. Sadly, she doesn't do that anymore now that she's in the US and doesn't have land. Oh well..."

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"In Mexico, corn "smut" is highly praised. Its part of our diets, along with cactus, prickly pears, beans, corn, and many times, amaranth. Ever since the Spanish "conquered" Mexico, amaranth has lost its popularity. Did you know that they tried to extinguish the morning glory? They thought it was evil because the seeds could have been used for hella-crazy drugs. Smut is very good, and my grandmother used to purposely infect her corn fields with it. I can't spell the Aztec name we use for it, but I can pronounce it. Very delicious... It costs a lot of money too. If you guys cringe at the thought of eating corn smut, just let me tell you that it isn't different than eating mushrooms or truffles. They too are funguses. Its made like a tortilla, but really thick and topped with homecooked beans. It tastes terrible if you use canned beans. That's why I grow my own beans, but haven't grown this year. Pintos, black, and pink beans are best. Of course, I don't infect my own corn with smut. I don't have enough space to enjoy both smut and ears of corn..."

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"I have composted seaweed here in CT. All you do is compost it as you would any other material you find. Add it to the pile. Or you could place a fair amount into a 55 gallon or smaller drum, add water and let it decompose. Strain it off and dilute it 1 to 5...1 part seaweed to 5 parts water. I've done both. I love what seaweed does for my compost. It kicks it into high gear. And the finished product is so much richer than one made from leaves and grass alone.

Join our eGroup Forum.

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Green Prints:
Garden Rules, Don't Mess With Fleurette's!

Another charming garden story from Green Prints magazine begins: In my mid-30's, I was blessed to work for an extraordinary gardener named Fleurette, then in her mid-70's. For 40 years she had single-handedly run a cut flower business. She grew every blossom on her seven acres on the eastern end of Long Island. Her business came from the estate section of our resort town, and her elegant arrangements had graced every important social function for decades. For three years I worked in Fleurette's garden, never advancing beyond deadheading and the crudest cleanup work. As a beginner with a good heart but a dreamer's soul, I had to learn the rules at Fleurette's over and over again. These are the rules at Fleurette's....

Read the rest of the story: Garden Rules

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Certified Organic Seedlings

Our Certified Organic Seedlings going fastIf you plan to order seedlings from us, better get your order in soon. They have become one of our most popular items since we introduced them last year. We offer seedlings for flowers, culinary herbs, medicinal herbs, peppers and tomatoes, although we are already running short of some tomatoes and peppers.

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News You Can Use: U.S. To Propose Tighter Organic Food Rules
From stories in Reuters/N.Y. Times/AP

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration has decided to propose a ban on genetically engineered grains in any food labeled organic.

The move is part of an administration effort to create the nation's first official definition of "organic." New regulations will be formally unveiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The guidelines will also ban pesticides on crops labeled organic, bar the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer, prohibit irradiation and tightly restrict the use of antibiotics in farm animals.

In addition to trying to satisfy a small but growing number of American consumers who shop for organic foods, the rules are also seen as a way to defuse trade conflicts with Europe.

Of the more than 275,000 comments received in response to the original proposal in 1997, virtually all of them opposed those three processes, which the Agriculture Department had considered allowing. The new rules indicate an about-face in the department's attitude toward organic farming and represent one of several steps it is taking to help the small and medium-sized farmers who have mainly been ignored or even discriminated against by the agency for decades.

Dr. Margaret Mellon, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group, was quoted as saying, "This could turn out to be the most important rule the U.S.D.A. has issued in 20 years. The Agriculture Department's policies have made small farmers an endangered species."

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From RAFI, February/March 2000
Terminator 2 Years Later: Suicide Seeds on the Fast Track

"We've continued right on with work on the Technology Protection System [Terminator]. We never really slowed down. We're on target, moving ahead to commercialize it. We never really backed off." - Harry Collins, Delta & Pine Land Seed Co., January, 2000

ISSUE: Despite mounting opposition from national governments and United Nations' agencies, work on Terminator and Traitor (genetic trait control) moves full speed ahead.

IMPACT: Without government action to firmly reject Terminator and Traitor, these technologies will soon be available commercially, with potentially disastrous consequences for farmers, food security and biodiversity.

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Books of the Month: "Passalong Plants" and "Stolen Harvest"

Passalong Plants

In this lively and sometimes irreverent book, Steve Bender and Felder Rushing describe 117 such plants, giving particulars on hardiness, size, uses in the garden, and horticultural requirements. They present this information in the informal, chatty,and sometimes humorous manner that your next-door neighbor might use when giving you a cutting of her treasured Confederate rose.

Chapters include:

• Smells for the Sidetrack: Those childhood plants we treasure for their sweet fragrance.


• The Plants That Get Away: Rampant plants that will pass themselves along if we don't get around to it.


• Aunt Bea's Pickles: Passalong plants that friends insist on giving you, whether you want them or not.


• Weirdisms, Oddities, and Conversation Pieces: Plants noted for certain strange features, like many of the people who own them.


• Gaudy or Tacky? A celebration of garish plants that show your good taste.


• In the Bare-Root Bin at the Plant-O-Rama: Some not-so-hard-to-find passalongs sold by the bundle each spring at your friendly, one-stop garden shop


• Well, I Think It's Pretty: An exploration of passalong gardeners' fascination with fine yard art, including pink flamingos, goose windmills, plastic flowers, and milk of magnesia trees


• Organizing Your Plant Swap: How to get a passalong club started in your town

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Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply

Vandana Shiva, a member of the Seeds of Change Hall of Fame, has written a primer on the GMO debate and the ownership of life being imposed on southern countries by northern countries.

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Tools of the Month - Bulldog Forks and Spades

Bulldog Tools of England continue to provide their legendary, heirloom garden tools. We tell the Bulldog story and continue to offer their tools to serious gardeners who treasure craftsmanship and durability.

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Visit Our Farm In New Mexico This Summer

We are opening our New Mexico Research farm for tours this summer. If you are out our way, stop by during the dates and times listed below. Our farm is located less than an hour north of Santa Fe.

• See our Certified Organic seed and varietal testing plots where many varieties are compared side-by-side with a diversity of plants not normally seen on one farm.


• Sample tastings of varieties we are testing.


• Sample tastings of Seeds of Change Certified Organic foods such as our branded salsas and pasta sauces.


• See how we clean seeds.


• See our cultural and production practices: plant starting, transplanting, and furrow-irrigation from the acequia (mother ditch) fed by the Rio Grande.


• Get answers to your gardening and farming questions...practical advice on preserving biodiversity in your own backyard, composting and cover cropping.

Dates for this year's tours are Saturdays: July 8, August 12, August 19, and Labor Day Weekend, September 2. Tours will start at 10 a.m.

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Now You Can Order In Catalog Sequence

Many of you go through our catalog marking the items you wish to purchase, then go on our website to take advantage of our 5% discount for web orders. We have just added a feature that lists the links to each item in sequence with our catalog presentation so you can quickly shop on our website using your catalog. To use this feature, go to the front page of our website and click on the button labeled: "Order In Catalog Sequence" (Note: This feature was available on our previous website.)

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Customer Comments: We love hearing from you...

"Just wanted you to know how pleased we are with the Soy Milk Machine we bought from you. It is fantastic!!!! We are so pleased with the quality of the machine and the quality of the soy milk it processes. Also wanted you you to know how pleased we are with the seed we have purchased. We spent our Christmas money with you this year. The Lion's Tail is popping up and the Safflower is up. The French Squash and Crookneck Squash are going nuts. We are so happy that we found your company this year. Thanks." - Diane and Regine (by eMail)

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"The Texas Hummingbird Sage is magnificent, now on my favorite plant list, but you have to change the packet info that says it's 18 inches tall. Mine was easily 4 feet tall, and shaded out everything planted behind it! But I can credit it for some of my best memories of last summer. In the late afternoon I would collect seed from flowers planted in front of the Texas Hummingbird Sage and, as I worked, I would feel the air moving on my neck from the whirring hummingbird wings just above my head and raise my head to come eye to eye with one hovering inches away. Truly magical." - Laurie Forsberg, Saint Paul, Minnesota

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"Peace be unto you and yours. Thank you Seeds of Change, and to all of the wonderful folks that make it all possible. Coming in through the website front door is a breath of fresh air. The Website is well laid out, without a lot of clutter. Even the checkout counter worked well, a big AA++. My order arrived in good time. It was in my mail-box yesterday morning. Now if the nice people at Seeds of Change would come and lend a hand with the plowing and planting." - N.P. (via email)

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"I want to thank you for the donation of seeds you made for our school garden last year...our garden was a big success. Some of the seeds we harvested we are using in this year's garden. We have already tested the viability for a few and will test others next week. There is snow on the ground today, but my horticulture class has made plans to start seedlings next week in our little greenhouse. We will use 50 gallon barrels of water to stabilize the interior temperature while our little seedlings grow. It is such a pleasure to be able to start a garden with seeds one has provided for oneself. You gave us that start with the gift from last year." - L.C. (via email)