Heirlooms in the garden

Are you familiar with Seed Savers Exchange? It's a non-profit organization of gardeners and plant collectors who save and exchange heirloom seeds from our garden heritage. Seed Savers Exchange was founded in 1975 in the home of Kent and Diane Ott Whealy in Missouri. Years later, Seed Savers Exchange and 900+ acre Heritage Farm resides in beautiful Decorah, Iowa. Hundreds of thousands of garden seeds have been handed down from gardener to gardener. The precious heirloom seeds are stored in 3 places worldwide to assure their preservation in the event of disaster.

To learn more about SSE, click here.

Do you grow heirlooms? This year I am growing some heirloom lettuce and spinach in my garden, and for a few years now I've grown heirloom flowers.

This is Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate (Polygonum orientale). It likes full to part sun and rich soil. It's a self-seeding annual that grows to about 6 feet tall.
(photo taken summer of 2011)

I fell in love with Love-in-a-mist (Nigella) the first time I saw it in someone else's garden. Since that time I've grown it, and am happy to say it self-seeds prolifically. I have large stands of this beauty in my rocky garden.

(photo taken summer 2010)

• Are you a seed saver in your own garden?
• Do you grow heirlooms?

Tell me about it!


"Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed." ~Lewis Gannit


Thanks for visiting!

Beth

Linking to Fertilizer Friday