Henny Penny Farmette

In my Henny Penny Farmette garden this year, I grew different varieties of heirloom tomatoes: German Queen, Mortgage Lifter, Paul Robson (a Russian heirloom), Mt. Vesuvius, San Marzano, and others.

It’s the end of the season and my work now is to save seed and compost other plants that are no longer producing. Over the next couple of months, I’ll turn the soil and add amendments.

heirloom tomatoes taste great

Since my tomato plants are open-pollinated, heirloom types (as opposed to patented hybrids), I can have a reasonable expectation of how the seeds will perform once planted in a future garden.

A word of warning about using patented hybrid seeds–growing plants from hybrid seed will not come true in your next year’s garden. They will likely be inferior plants compared to their parents.

However, open-pollinated seeds produce tomato plants that remain true to the parent plants (of course, some slight variation in nature is possible). But you can know with certainty that those seeds will remain true just as they have through generations of gardens.

These are heirloom blue tomatoes. Avoid planting tomatoes in the same garden location year after year because of tomato blight and black rot. Let the soil recover for three years–tomatoes are heavy feeders.

When choosing which tomatoes to save seed from, keep two criteria in mind:

1) Choose tomatoes from vigorous plants, free of disease.

2) Select seed from tomatoes with characteristics (like the taste, skin thickness, size, and abundance) that you prefer.

I utilize a simple three-step method for saving my tomato seeds. I always select a prime tomato specimen that has reached its peak to be used for harvesting seed.

1. Use a sheet of paper towel for each type of tomato seed you are saving. Write on one corner of the paper towel the type of tomato seed and the year grown and whether determinate  (often called bush) or indeterminate (vine which will keep growing until killed by frost). Most heirloom tomatoes are indeterminate.

2. Cut open the tomato and then scrape out seeds and spread them out across a paper towel. I put these towels on my kitchen counter or in a window to dry for 10-14 days.

3. Fold the paper towel and slip it into a paper envelope to use for your next year’s garden. I use one envelope per paper towel to ensure air circulation for good drying.

Come spring, these seeds can be planted into cell packs to become seedlings. Or, you can plant them directly into the garden after all danger of frost has passed.

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The pool in this Miami sun room provides moisture for orchids, ferns and even tomatoes

My husband and I grew exotic flowers in and around our Miami, Florida home. We had a sun room that sheltered a swimming pool in which I swam laps in every day. The space seemed near perfect for growing orchids in cycles of perpetual bloom. They loved loved the heat, light, and moisture provided by the pool and a fountain we installed. We also had an angel trumpet tree (Datura arborea) in the front of the house, adding drama and a luscious scent to the entry area.

But with the freezing winter temperatures on our Northern California farmette, such plants would not survive unless grown in a conservatory type of room with lots of warmth and light.

Since buying the farmette, my hubby and I have toyed with the idea of building such a space, also known as sun room, greenhouse room, tea room, and solarium.

A major consideration besides money and materials would be the direction the room would face. For our farmhouse, the direction (also known as “aspect”) could be north where the patio is already located or if positioned at the front of the house (where we had planned to create a wraparound front porch), the sun room or conservatory’s aspect would face south.

This Camellia japonica produces attractive blooms in early to mid spring and would do well in a cooler sun room

A north-facing aspect permits plenty of light but less heat. In a cooler conservatory or sun room, we’d use more foliage plants such as camellia, begonia, geranium, anthurium, Australian bottle brush, fuchsia, ficus, gardenia, campanula, hypoestes , and various types of ivy and palm. We could also grow Cymbidium orchids that like dappled shade during summer but bloom in the dead of winter.

A south or west direction ensures intense light and heat and would allow us to grow  more flowering plants (especially ones found in the subtropics and tropics), including exotic orchids.

My husband grew up on a Caribbean island and loves orchids. The cymbidium orchids do well enough already outside. We put them in protected areas on frosty nights. But many of the exotic orchids require light, heat, and, in some cases, additional moisture.

We know Phalaenopsis, odontoglossum, and slipper orchids would thrive in a conservatory room that faces south or west as would many other plants such as hibiscus, jasmine, nephrolepsis, passion flower, plumeria, and African violet, to name a few. Also, many hybrid rhododendrons that profusely flower for long periods can be grown in containers in a warm environment.

I’m really an outside garden girl, but a conservatory room with a lot of interesting architectural detail and gorgeous blooming plants could make me want to spend more time indoors. It doesn’t matter to me whether it faces north or south. But dare I bring up the idea of adding a pool?

Packets of Ferry’s Seeds imprinted on the reverse with the words, “Packed for season,” and stamped 1958

Saving and sharing seed dates back to thousands of years before our forefathers brought their favorite heirloom seeds from their countries of origin to plant in their American gardens and fields. My grandmother, a frugal Scots-Irish farm woman, taught me by example how to save seed. I was six when I went to live with her in Boone County, Missouri. Our daily chores began before dawn.

She would strain  the warm milk my grandfather brought from the barn after he had milked the cows. I was dispatched to the chicken house to collect eggs, sometimes from underneath hens still sitting on them. She would begin cooking the first of three hearty meals for the day.

With the breakfast dishes done, my grandmother and I would tend the vegetable gardens. We would hoe and weed by hand until the sun got high or until Grandma  had decided which vegetables she wanted to include in the noonday meal. If her choice included tomatoes or beans, for example, they were gathered in baskets along with produce from her favorite plants from which she would remove and preserve the seeds.

She dried and stored the seed in paper envelopes or bags or glass jars. These she kept for planting in future gardens. The saving and sharing of seed among farmers and gardeners of my grandmother’s era and her ancestors was a traditional practice. Today, the practice continues with organic and home gardeners who share the belief that seed biodiversity must be ensured in keeping with natural evolutionary processes.

Today, commercial seed companies and corporations commonly file patents on seeds they have hybridized or cloned, making it illegal for farmers and gardeners to sell or otherwise distribute the seed. The hybridization produces a particular plant (that may have resistance to certain diseases or pests or display an unusual color, for example) in its first year, but second-generations of such hybrids may not come true. More alarming is the suggestion that reliance on commercial hybridized seed means the loss of thousands of varieties of open-pollinated plants such as those my grandmother grew.

Open-pollinated plants remain true to type and yield when planted from seed collected from the parent plant during the previous year. Some backyard gardeners, farmers, and plant growers today eschew using seed that has been genetically modified. They favor organic heirloom seed and are fueling an enthusiastic grass-roots effort to preserve the practice of saving and sharing seeds.