Mashua harvested 11-13-2011
We can ship tubers only to US destinations. Seeds worldwide to most destinations.
Apr 142012
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Mar 042012
TOM…WHERE ARE THE PICTURES?
I know, I know….I am lax on posting pictures. The Verde Claro is one of my favorite tomatoes…and I have lots of varieties. As our website sells out of certain varieties, I need to list and release new ones to replace those that cannot be ordered due to lack of seed.
This is from my breeding work during the early 1990′s to make improvements on the Green Grape tomato which was first released in 1983…Tater Mater Seed catalog. Verde Claro …meaning clear green….. has a clear epidermis unlike the Green Grape tomato which has a yellow epidermis. VC is also sweeter than Green Grape. It gets sweeter as you leave it on the vine….once it bursts…it doesn’t get any sweeter. If your fingers don’t get as sticky as a bear robbing a bee hive..you don’t have VERDE CLARO!
Large indeterminate vines with green flesh cherry tomatoes with a slight grape shape. Again, the epidermis is clear therefore it won’t have that amber/green look when ripe. Besides the sweetness it has a rather subtle but strong tomato flavor…hard to describe! Toying around with near seedless versions of VERDE CLARO was frankly…a misguided adventure….how do you sell seed if there aren’t enough to sell? This clone has enough seed so that you and anyone else down the pike can grow them out and save seed.
To get the best flavor grow VERDE CLARO in a warm environment…and please grow them organically. Better yet….don’t over-water….try to keep the subsoil moist, but avoid watering directly if you can. Here in Washington….the flavor was superb in a greenhouse setting on river bottom ground where the greenhouse was never watered all season outside of transplanting the seedlings. The hotter clime in the greenhouse…compared to the cool weather outside…captivated my friends upon sampling the fruits.
Note, this seed may not show up directly until Rob updates the listing.
- VERDE CLARO TOMATO
New listings are online. Go to any of our sales pages and follow the link down to the end of the previous listings. 10 new tomato listings, 20 new potato listings, and 14 new other vegetable listings.
I couldn’t resist posting this picture, because it reminds me of two things.
The first is where these wild violets came from: I brought them up from Tim Peters’ dad’s place after he passed away. Too bad I never had the chance to meet him; I think I would have liked him. Tim has told me about what a great dad he had. His property where we did a salvage operation is where I met Tim Peters, and that’s where a lot of Tim’s breeding work was done starting, like Tom’s, when he was just a teenager.
That reminds me: I’ve got to sow more of his perennial Sorghum! And a few other odds and ends.
I originally shot the photo because it reminds me of the name of Tom Kleffman’s NEW BABY DAUGHTER: “Violet”. I’m pleased to report that she’s thriving…just like the wild violets.
The violets are blooming next to the steps going up to my back-yard. I don’t know what species they are, but they seem to be natives, not naturalized, in the mountains of southern Oregon. They look a lot like the sweet violets (V. odorata) of Europe, and bloom the same times of year (autumn and late winter), and I suspect they are even slightly fragrant, though it’s hard for me to tell. We have similar natives here, not as common, and it might be the same species. Our most common one is a creeping evergreen with tiny yellow blossoms, that blooms in February, Viola sempervirens.
I also brought back the beautiful local Iris that grows there.
It won’t be blooming until spring. I have pix but I’ll wait until it’s seasonal. Instead here is an Iris that is seasonal now, I. unguicularis, a native of parts of Greece and parts of the southwestern Mediterranean basin. I think this one is scented and if my memory serves me correctly it smells like ionine–the fragrance of violets. It lives next to the front sidewalk for passers-by to enjoy.
How about a purple vegetable to go with my purple flowers? Here it is: the famous “Tree Collard”. Some people call it “Tree Kale”. It looks sort of intermediate between a Kale and a Collard to me, and they’re different species with different chromosome counts. Whatever it is, it’s semi-sterile, rarely blooming, though they do from time to time and I’ve heard of people getting seedlings from them, but no followup. Are the seedlings perennial? Or is perenniality a side-effect of not regularly blooming and setting seed? Some biennials that are “monocarpic” (die after blooming) will behave as perennials if they don’t set seed.
It is one of the most productive vegetables I’ve ever grown. Unfortunately, being propagated vegetatively over and over and over again, first of all that might be the cause or one of the causes of the semi-sterility issue, and ultimately it will doom the plant to loss of vigor as viruses build up, much as has been happening with the banana for the same reason. Second, I suspect that if it did bloom regularly, it wouldn’t be as productive as it is. It’s the fact that it doesn’t bolt that makes it so incredibly productive. I get about 9 month’s worth of light harvests off it.
They don’t get as big here as they do down in California. Mine peak out around 4 feet tall or so. In California they can look truly tree-like in a few years. They’re not built for snow; the leaves trap snow and the stems are weak. I would guess that Seattle is getting close to the limits of their hardiness.
I think that a cut-and-come-again true perennial vegetable for a non-tropical climate will need to be one with an indeterminate growth habit, whose leaves do not turn bitter when it blooms. A few of us have been talking about it; some of the hardier members of the genus Hibiscus might be a possibility. What do you think?
One perennial vegetable that probably will work out better is Hablitzia. I’ve got pictures of the new shoots, but I’ll save those for another time. Will it finally bloom this year? And set seed that we can then offer to you? Stay tuned.
Feb 112012
HEY, WHERE’S MY ORDER?!
We’re down to the last 11 of the initial flood of orders we got hit with when we opened up shop. If yours is one of the last 11, apologies for the wait. We’re a two-man operation and can only pack about 5-6 orders a day. We could do more than that if the seed were already pre-packed, but it wasn’t because Tom’s long illness put us behind schedule…not to mention that we’re always pressed for time anyway.
The backlog prompted a number of customer service inquiries. When we’re answering them, we’re not packing, so, ironically, it adds to the problem.
Tom has long been generous with his time to talk about potatoes. At this point in his career, time spent consulting with specific people, especially as regards pedigrees, specific genes, and other detailed information, takes time away from packing seeds, packing orders, planting a new crop, and everything else we need to do to serve the rest of our customers.
If you do have a need for customer service, please either use our contact form, or send mail to
help “at” (name of this domain) dot com
Sending customer service requests to
- Tom’s or my personal email
- Post comments
- Forum posts (on any of several different forums…)
- Forum PMs
- Facebook messages or posts
ties us up and makes your wait even longer. Time spent copying inquiries from inappropriate venues to customer service forms, so that credit card numbers and other private information doesn’t appear on a public web-page, or simply fall through the cracks, is time not spent filling orders.
Thank you for your patience with your order; we intend for all of them arrive in time for starting your seedlings. We understand that some folks live in hot climates and need to start them early. It would have helped if we were open for business late last year (we weren’t), and we intend to start earlier this year. Our ultimate goal is to have inventory on hand ready for shipment year-round.
At the moment much of Europe is frigid and the eastern USA has turned cold. We’re lucky to have mountains betwixt us and the cold fronts, though in recent years sometimes they burst right through the Columbia Gorge to the south and the Frasier River Valley to the north.
Better not turn too cold, as late winter blossoms are starting to show up. Some of them are pretty sturdy, like this snowdrop. It could turn pretty cold without significant damage to it. They’re built for cold weather, as are a lot of winter-bloomers.
Less sturdy are these Tazettas. They beat even Rejnveld’s Early Sensation which normally blooms this time of year (and isn’t quite open yet!). The Rejnveld’s Early Sensation is in my front yard, inches from the sidewalk, and unfortunately attracts thieves. The Tazettas are safely in my back yard, with a “hortcultural fleece” standing by in case it gets too cold for them.
Their fragrance is just wonderful. Not just typical Tazetta scent; these have some more exotic overtones. They’ve got some wild Tazetta genes in their backgrounds. I thought they might have some Narcissus viridiflorus genes in them, especially since they’re primarily autumn bloomers (which, like everything else in my life at the moment, got a late start), but no, they don’t. Ironically, the one that does have some N. viridiflorus background, doesn’t bloom in the autumn. Still waiting for that one to show her lovely face and spread her fragrance.
The Tazettas are next to a bed I prepared for Green Mountain Multiplier onions. Had to bring the survivors from the farm to my back yard, to rescue them from the deer. A surprising fraction of our inventory comes from my urban back-yard, because our farm is poorly suited to anything that needs to overwinter (or for that matter, is a deer-magnet). The low-lying riverbottom ground is too wet in the winter (indeed, it floods), and the higher ground has thin, gravelly soil that dries out in summer! Hard to grow things at the farm that need to be in the ground a long time.
When I’m not packing orders, I do a little digging in the back yard. Still need to transplant some Brassicas. We’re going to expand our Brassica selection.
In the mean time, more varieties of more seeds will show up before spring. Stay tuned. Now, back to work for me…still time to ship some orders for Saturday pickup.
First some news about your orders: as you’re probably aware, we were flooded with orders even before I announced that I had listed new seeds. Someone did something like a pingback to watch our site, was alerted instantly when I posted the new listings, and spread the news before I had a chance to make the announcement myself. I wish some of my other lines of business would go viral like that!
What you probably don’t know is that we were also flooded with customer service inquiries. A lot of them have to do with outstanding orders, such as people who want us to change their shipping address or billing method. Hopefully, I spot those before the orders get shipped out. If not, we’ll do our best to fix the problem; we want you to be satisfied with your order.
Some of them are questions people have before they can make an order, and they’re probably feeling anxious about not getting what they want. Some items have sold out, but the good news is more items will get listed as soon as we catch up with our backlog and have time to inventory and list them.
Some of our backlog of inquiries are setting high expectations for how much attention we can give any one potential customer. In order to serve everybody, we’re going to have to make some of these interactions brief. The problem is probably a result of scaling up operations; Tom used to have plenty of time to interact with customers when he was only sending out dozens of potato packets and seeds. What might make sense as a solution is for us to provide more information up front, so that we’re not answering the same questions over and over (though we do get a lot of questions that are already covered in our “Frequently Asked Questions”). It’s just one of those growing pains that will get sorted out when we have enough “efficiency of scale” to handle the overhead.
Speaking of which, kudos and thanks to Jane for volunteering to help Tom organize and pack orders. We really appreciate that. I’ve talked to Tom regarding how we can reciprocate. Tom has been blessed with the generosity of many people like Jane.
Now that administrative matters are out of the way, here’s another important matter you might have heard about in the news:
A few weeks ago, shipments of Brazilian orange juice destined for the United States tested positive for a fungucide called carbendazim. Not surprising as it is legal to use in Brazil. European regulations allow higher concentrations, and Japanese and Canadian regulations still higher; the juice would probably be allowed in those countries.
Here is what Wikipedia says about carbendazim:
Carbendazim is a widely used broad-spectrum benzimidazole fungicide and a metabolite of benomyl.
The fungicide is used to control plant diseases in cereals and fruit, including citrus, bananas, strawberries, pineapples, and pome.[2] It is also controversially used in Queensland, Australia on macadamia plantations.[3]A 4.7% solution of carbendazim hydrochloride is sold as Eertavas and marketed as a treatment for Dutch elm disease.
Studies have found that high doses of carbendazim cause infertility and destroy the testicles of laboratory animals.[4][5] Carbendazim was included in a biocide ban proposed by the Swedish Chemicals Agency [6] and approved by the European Parliament on January 13, 2009.[7]
I don’t know what the ramifications of carbendazim traces in orange juice are at the levels found. Since I don’t know, it’s probably best to avoid Brazilian orange juice, since that fungicide is in wide use there.
I recently bought some orange juice, and it probably contains concentrates from any of multiple countries, depending on where it can be found most inexpensively. It probably contains plenty of Brazilian orange juice, that got through before the testing was done. There is discussion of a ban on Brazilian OJ imports, but I would guess that economic factors will weigh against it, as otherwise orange juice prices in the USA would rise significantly more than they already are.
I’m actually all for “free trade”, as long as it is informed trade. It is unethical to sneak anything past the buyer that he would not agree to if he knew about it. The “commodization of everything” makes informed consent unlikely to happen.
The bottom line is that if you’re not sure it’s safe, think twice about buying it. The Food and Drug Administration caught this particular problem in this particular batch, but it is impractical for them to test everything, and you have no assurance they’re going to do anything about it even if they could.
What do you think?
As for me, it’s back to work packing orders and answering customer service inquiries.
Jan 162012
If you tried to order and found that what you wanted was out-of-stock, try again. I have just updated inventory levels according to Tom’s instructions.
At the moment I am flooded with orders, the streets are covered in ice, and Tom is still recovering. Your patience appreciated. Tom will see about finding more inventory to list as soon as he’s up to it. All in all I know we have huge amounts of potato seed (thanks, Doug); I dunno what tomato seed levels are like because I was only involved one day on that process.
Someone asked about Paypal. Sorry, we don’t do Paypal anymore, because the system was just unusable. It was impossible to download as many orders as we had for book-keeping purposes, probably due to a missing index on a SQL query, or something like that (nothing we have control over; it’s not our system), and Paypal’s technical support is useless. It was also a tedious and error-prone process for looking up open orders. For most people, not doing Paypal is a relief; it’s really not a very popular system. We are pretty flexible though and we even accept checks drawn on US or Canadian banks–there is an option in the order system that accepts checks. Folks overseas please use a credit card–they do the currency conversion automatically and can transfer the funds to our clearinghouse. We can’t cash checks from outside USA or Canada; our bank won’t take them.
We can’t send seeds to war zones; they don’t make it through. If we have problems sending seeds to specific countries (as we already have), we’ll have to stop accepting orders from those countries. We don’t want to disappoint anyone. So far Canada and Europe have not been a problem (knock on wood).
Thank you for your business, we appreciate it!! Love ya!
I’m on the phone with Tom. He was taken by surprise by the rush of orders and was overwhelmed (“flummoxed” was the word he used). He says we’ve got a lot more of pretty much everything that I have run out of. I told him to package it up and get a specific count before I update the inventory. I will pack up the orders we have on Monday, which is a holiday here in the USA so the post office is closed anyway, and see if he’s ready by Tuesday.
My inbox is flooded with hundreds of messages informing me that we are out of stock “of just about everything”.
Sorry, folks. We did our best to get something back up as soon as possible. I’ll visit Tom again as soon as possible to pick up more. At the moment, the snow is coming down hard and furious in Seattle, and it’s been coming down harder and longer in Everett to the north where Tom is located. Hopefully it won’t last too long.
Thank you for your patronage and patience, and thanks for all the prayers and well-wishings for Tom’s recovery. Let’s do this and make it work for everybody. Love ya all!
Jan 142012
It was a challenge getting these listed. I won’t trouble you with the details of all the obstacles, except to mention that our shopping cart software requires a great deal of tedious one-by-one processing of items. I went over everything multiple times but if an item has the wrong button on it let me know and I’ll fix it. There must be an easier way to do this, but I bet it costs more money than the shopping cart we’re using. I went looking for an upgrade, took one look at the prices, and kept the one we’ve got! (Designcart.net)
I should also mention that I’m out of labels. I’ll see what I can do about making some more this weekend. If push comes to shove you might get a hand-written envelop or two. Luckily my handwriting is more legible than Tom’s (sorry Bud).
We will probably have more seed come trickling in, though it depends on Tom’s health, and tubers will show up later this month. There is some built-up demand so I expect everything to sell out quickly; apologies for any disappointments. We will continue to do the small potato packs, but might discontinue the big ones, due to cost (to both you and us) and effort compared to how much time we have to get other things done. There are plenty of companies doing tubers and we’re one of the few doing true seed. True seed is a godsend to home growers because it creates the option of rotating potatoes out completely before disease builds up, and saving the seeds in storage for later planting. It’s also a more sanitary and economical way to buy and ship genetic resources.
I (Rob) am currently looking for someone interested in growing out tomatoes on contract, to either sell to a bigger seed company and give us our cut, or to use in some other way and give us back the seeds. The purpose is to get more seed of our best varieties available to you, in a more efficient manner than our current system, so that we can handle it with our limited human resources. We have a huge backlog of varieties that could be grown out. The intent is to make this a profitable and worthwhile venture for all parties involved. We believe in “win-win or no deal”, and will do what it takes from our side to make it happen.
Tom eating lemon-gingersnap ice cream
