The Populuxe Seed Bank

…. Here I come!

Just a quick post today to say that my whole day will be spent at Seedy Saturday (10-4pm at the Victoria Conference Centre). If you’re in the CRD, be sure to come. There’s of course the seed exchange, a bunch of talks, and a whack of vendors selling seeds and local foods. Seedy Saturday is where I get most of the acquisitions for the seed bank each year, so it’s always something I highly anticipate. Not to mention I’ll be volunteering with a great bunch of people, so it’s sure to be a blast.

In seed bank news: the grow out list is almost complete and will go up either tonight or tomorrow afternoon. Same with the seeds for distribution this year. I know a bunch of you have been asking for both, so stay tuned! I will be sending a newsletter out when that goes live (sign up for the newsletter is at the top of the left-hand column).

Have a good day faithful blog readers – I know I will today.

What a quiet year it’s been here on the ol’ seed bank blog. I do definitely plan to change that with this upcoming season, although the actual growing part might end up being a little tricky (more on that later when things are coming closer to being finalized).

I just finished up saving all the seeds from 2012 – and while I usually have an actual seed sale, this year I think I’m just going to do this distribution for cheap through this site this year (it hasn’t been updated yet, but this page is where you kind find what is going to be distributed). This year was a tough year for the garden, so while I don’t have as much as I’ve had in previous years to distribute, I do have some varieties that I am very glad to be distributing. Hopefully the quality will make up for the lack of quantity.

Over the next few weeks you’ll see this website being updated to reflect the new year – including my growing lists for 2013, as well as varieties that will need volunteer growers (I know I’ve already gotten a few interested people asking me about it – the enthusiasm is awesome!).

I’ve also been working on a Wiki located here that will house growth notes and photos of the varieties grown for the bank, and I’m hoping it’ll be a fantastic resource not only for myself, but also for you folks looking for information on seeds in the bank. It’s a little bare right now, but I am working on going through the multitude of photos and varieties myself and the volunteer growers have grown. It’s definitely a work in progress, but feel free to poke around for now.

That’s it for now – but if you are interested in becoming a grower, please do use the form located on this page to get in touch with me.

The leaves are all turning red and yellow and orange here in Victoria, and the nights definitely are a lot crisper than they used to be. I’ve whipped out my cardigans and jackets, and it seems too damned cold to walk around in shorts and tank tops anymore. Fall is here!

This blog has been very under-used this year. I had a few frantic emails from friends of the seed bank asking if it was gone; never fear, it’s still here! We’re still here and totally in operation, unfortunately there just hasn’t been much to share.

The tomatoes that did survive the prolonged stay in their seed starting pots are now just starting to ripen. Unfortunately with the dip in temperatures, I’ll probably have to ripen the majority of them off the vine and inside. The injury to my right wrist that delayed all my plantings seems to have been worse than just a sprain, and it’s still quite painful, which has lead to a very lacklustre year with gardening, because I just haven’t been able to put in the time required this year.

But, the nice thing with gardening is that it’s never a one-shot deal; there will always be next year, and that’s what I’m looking forward to now.

I’ll probably end up growing almost the exact same thing next year since I got such a poor harvest (if any harvest) this year. I’ll be bringing my peppers in to overwinter – of course they’re all flowering like crazy now, and I’ll have to pull those all off before bringing them in.

I have a second sowing of Slocan Snow Peas growing nice and strong right now, and the potatoes will be dug up imminently. There’s some Gabriola Garlic in the ground, and I’m looking forward to eating that next year.

The Cotztomatl are just starting to ripen now, and I’m looking very forward to sampling them, and hopefully saving enough seeds to share.

The ‘Agona Local’ tomato from PGRC has proven to be one of the best growers this year – it’s absolutely loaded with fruit (most of which I’ll probably ripen indoors) but it’s compact size and great production would make me think this would be a great variety for container growers. Stay tuned for taste and a more in depth post about that variety in a bit.

Thanks for sticking with the seed bank during a quiet year, and keep checking back for more updates coming soon!

Despite some definite quietness from this blog (and the mailing list!) I just wanted to post a quick message that the seed bank is still alive and well – I just sustained what turned out to be a pretty good injury that’s hampered most typing and (gasp!) gardening activity for the past several weeks.

If you’ve sent an email in the past 2 months – I have it, and it hasn’t been ignored, I’ve just been unable to answer.

Stay tuned – I’m healing up and updates and emails will be on the way. I’m sorry to say that the garden is a little lackluster at this point, but here on the west coast there’s still plenty of season, even if I did miss out on some of it already this year.

Oh, there have been lots of updates around the old site and with the seed bank lately! With spring here on Vancouver Island I’ve been getting my ducks all in a row for the upcoming season, and am very excited with how it’s shaping up already.

Last year with the wrath of La Nina, we were still experiencing snow, and the cold, wet weather pushed through to the end of May. It was a bad season, but this year is shaping up to be much better already (despite threats of another La Nina, which didn’t seem to affect us too much).

The annual seed bank fundraiser is now on!

I want to take a minute to thank everybody who’s already purchased seed through the shop. There are more seeds available, and a great selection of my favourites. The seed bank is almost completely run out of my pocket as a labour of love, so the funds raised from this annual sale go a long way to helping the seed bank out through the year. If you’re looking at purchasing some tomato seeds, take a look at what I have available, which include many rare varieties, several of which aren’t available through any commercial source.

As usual, the seed for distribution page is currently on hiatus until the fundraiser is over (generally around mid to late May).

2012 Grow List is available!

Picking which varieties to grow every year is always one of my favourite things to do, and involves many hours of humming and hawing over which seeds to plant. This year I’m pushing 40 different tomato varietiesagain, and am really excited with some of them! If you’re interested to see what’s in store, go here to take a look at the list. I’ll actually be expanding the garden again this year, so that list is due to increase as I take account of the new space.

Current holdings now available

Click here to view the most updated list of what is in the bank. Getting close to the 200 mark!

2012 Growers

I will be needing growers again (as usual) for the seed bank. There are a lot of varieties that require a big increase in quantity for proper storage. If you are interested, please send me an email via this form with your interest, and I’ll get back to you ASAP. I’m still catching up after some computer issues – if you’ve sent me a message the last four weeks and you haven’t heard back, please send me another one!

Website Maintenance

This is not nearly as interesting, but I know there are some broken images/links around the site and I’m working on getting those all fixed up. I moved servers a few weeks ago and am still playing catch up. Please bear with me!

Until next time!