The Seed Ambassadors Project

An announcement from Nick Routledge, Seed Ambassador and volunteer nurseryman:

This Friday (Aug. 28th) and next Friday (Sept 4th), from 10.00 a.m. thru 2.00 p.m., the Community Transitions Nursery will be selling organic veggie starts at the Springfield Farmers Market – on Main Street between 5th and 6th. Their offerings focus on fall, mid-winter and over-wintering vegetable crops, and include many Seed Ambassadors Project varieties. Please see link below for a full listing of varieties.

Above photo: Just a few of the variations in The Kale Coalition, an “adaptivar” resulting from crossing up 17 varieties of B. oleracea kales collected on our 2006 – 2007 Seed Ambassador trip to Europe. These starts, and many others, will be available for sale at the Springfield Farmer’s Market as a fundraiser for the Springfield Transitions Garden.
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Anticipating that most gardeners are unused to fall and winter cropping schedules and will have missed the early August transplant window crucial for sizing up most of the mainstay vegetable crops that will feed us through the forthcoming winter, the nursery ‘potted up’ many of these seedlings into 4” pots to grow them on, in past weeks. Transplanted into your gardens within the next couple of weeks (there is still time to prepare ground), an array of these thriving plants will feed you October thru May – the eight month period making up the longest ‘harvest season’ of the year. For those of you as yet unsure about the wherefores of fall, mid- and over-winter cropping, I will be giving a public talk on the subject at this Friday’s market at 12.00 p.m. and will, of course, be happy to answer questions there.

We are quietly confident that no nursery in the PNW currently comes close to offering the diversity and quality of winter food plants we are now making available. Our current selections reflect the results of extensive winter trialing, selection and breeding programs by public domain plant breeders in the S. Willamette Valley working with collaborators throughout the PNW and Western and Eastern Europe, in recent years.

All our transplants are raised in N. Springfield at our nursery (a program of the Community Transitions Program of the Springfield Schools District) by young-adults and adults with special needs, who come to us from Springfield schools and Lane Community College. All proceeds from nursery sales support our greenhouse.

All material offered by the nursery is open-pollinated. Varieties locally stewarded by the Seed Ambassadors Project (SAP) are noted. For cultural information see our fall and winter cropping table.

Please see our list of varieties on offer, here:

http://www.seedambassadors.org/avalon/fall2009offerings.htm

In mid-October we worked with a class from the Outdoor School to plant out the garlic crop for the Laurel Valley Educational Farm. The 17-member class was split into two sections, with one half of the class working one day and the other half finishing the job the next. Over the course of the two 45-minute class periods, the crews cracked and planted 50 bed feet of hardneck garlic, 50 bed feet of elephant garlic, and 100 bed feet of softneck garlic, for a grand total of more than 1,600 garlic plants for next year’s harvest. The class was eager to start the school year long class project of stewarding the garlic crop. Fun for all and lots of garlic too!