If you are looking for veggie seeds you can do no better than Brown Envelope Seeds who have a great selection this year. Looking through their catalogue I was particularly struck by the number of varieties that would merit planting for ornamental value alone- from the Crimson Flowered broad Bean, the Black magic Runner, to the bright Lights Swiss Chard with its bright orange and yellow stem,  amazing Painted Mountain corn, and my own favourite the astonishing romanesco Broccoli- aka “Fractal Broccoli” – there is a feast here for the eyes as much for the belly.

Peak oil gloomers and doomers should not miss the gift box selections which include the “Armageddon” Pack with 10 packets of seeds, pencil and plant labels- emergency flares not included. Sure to be a popular choice in 2009!

Please try and limit your consumption and reduce your ecological footprint this holiday season, and otherwise have a great time; but if you are not sure what to do with yourselves these long dark evenings and want to both save money AND do your bit for the environment, have a look at this. (thanks to minktoast)

Apologies for irregular blogs the last couple of weeks- loss of my wind turbine in a storm has meant restricted power. Stay tuned for the next installment of the back to nature series in the New year, and in the meantime here are a few notes and photos from recent garden activity:

Garlic This year I have planted two varieties of garlic from The Isle of Wight Garlic Farm – Lautrec Wight and Elephant garlic;

also a local variety from some neighbours. The Elephant Garlic has to be seen to be believed- one clove is the size of a whole corm of regular garlic. Alliums are easy to grow and ideal for planting through a newspaper and straw mulch -slugs don’t trouble them too much.

I also harvested occa, machua and Jerusalem Artichokes this week.

Machua- tropaeolum tuberosum is an edible tuber originating in Peru. Pretty much pest free and easy to grow, with a climbing habit and attractive orange trumpet-like flowers,I harvested about 6 egg-sized nobbly tubers from each plant, so it is potentially quite productive. This is the first time Ive grown it so I was looking forward to tasting it, but it was not exactly delicious. Plants for a Future says:

“The tubers are quite popular in South America but can probably be best desricbed as an acquired taste”. They recommend freezing them or leaving them in the ground until after a frost to improve flavour.

I thought they had potential as part of a forest garden guild with oca oxalis tuberosum planted around them as a ground cover. Ive been growing oca for a few years now and although not high-yielding it is again easy to grow and tasty. A new Irish site dedicated to oca can be found here. Next year i am going to add Jerusalem Artichokes into the guild for the Machua to climb up -a sort of perennial “three sisters”. The idea is, like the Three Sisters of Corn, beans and squash, you can get three yields in the same space because of their different habits and niches.