New World Seeds & Tubers

New inventory uploaded

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!

Update: The Cavalry is on its way

Uncategorized 2 Responses »

Jan 152012

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.

More stock coming as soon as possible

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Jan 152012

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!

2012 listings are uploaded

Administrative 1 Response »

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

As for Tom, I wish I had better news, but I don’t. I’ll go see him the next possible occasion and see what I can do to make life easier for him while I’m there. In the picture he’s eating the ice cream I brought over last time I was there. Thanks, everyone, who have sent along your warm thoughts and prayers. We appreciate that.

ETA on seed listings: Jan 8th, 2012

Administrative 1 Response »

Jan 042012

All the notes, thoughts, and prayers of concern have touched our hearts, and we appreciate them. Tom has been spending a lot of time with the doctors this week. Nevertheless, the old boy is going to try to get some seeds sorted for me to pick up later this week. Meanwhile, I will be packaging up those seeds that are already in my possession, which tend to be everything OTHER THAN the potatoes and tomatoes you’ve been waiting for.

It’s a little nip and tuck, but I expect one batch of seeds to be listed by Sunday, January 2012. The rest will trickle in over the next few months–sorry for the inconvenience, but the good news is that we cover postage for most orders and even the ones we don’t we don’t charge much, so you won’t feel reamed by shipping and handling costs if you make multiple orders. Most of the cost of shipping and handling is on us.

To make it up to you for the wait, we’ve got a little treat in store for those who are signed up to receive posts like this one.

Personally, I just can’t wait to see seedlings popping up. I haven’t planted anything too warm-growing yet, but I did plant some Cyphomandras (“Tree Tomatoes”–except they are neither trees nor tomatoes) under florescent grow-lights in my basement, and shortly I will plant some Physalis. Both grow a little cooler than Tomatoes do. My basement is probably warm enough for tomatoes, but it could still be a bit chilly (not to mention crowded) in my polytunnels once they outgrow their seed trays.

I need to obtain, and plant, some species potatoes, too, for a breeding project I want to work on this year. Tom has shown me how to cross-pollinate, so it’s time I tried my hand at it. I don’t particularly want to even try to fill his shoes; this is just a specific project I have a personal interest in.

We’re going to make some changes to the company. We still plan on getting Tom’s backlog of tomato and potato varieties to you one way or another, but the market focus of our business will evolve into supporting local production. That means supplying crops covering the major food groups that either have wide tolerances, or are adapted to specific challenging situations.

It also means supplying crops that are either easy-to-store, or have a long harvest season. I’m constantly on the lookout for long-storing root crops, and cut-and-come-again greens. We assume that most of you, like us, don’t have access to hydro-cooling, nitro-packing, and commercial-quality refrigeration. “Canning” (bottling, actually) and lacto-fermented pickling (think “Sauerkraut” and kimchee) are fine, but home-canning gets expensive. Few people do lacto-fermentation anymore, but we’ll cover it as one relatively inexpensive way to store food. A lot of our favorite crops are self-storing, like dry beans and squashes.

Does this shift in our line of business make sense to you? Are you interested in having more home-grown produce, available over a longer time frame, with less overhead to preserve it?

I’ll send another post once the listings are up.

Still waiting for recovery

Administrative 5 Responses »

Dec 222011

Thanks to everyone who have sent their wishes for a speedy recovery for Tom.

Last I heard from him, he was alive but miserable.

Listings will come back online once he recovers and we’ve had a chance to pack and list our inventory. Our apologies for keeping you waiting.

Berried treasure in your landscape

Fruit, Fun stuff 2 Responses »

Dec 062011

Botanical explorer Captain F. Kingdon-Ward wrote a book titled “Berried Treasure” published in 1954. He was interested in looking at the berries, not so much eating them. It’s a book about shrubs suitable for England that produce attractive fruit.

I like looking at attractive berries too, but these days I’m also interested in eating them. In fact, now that I’m psychologically primed to notice overlooked sources of food, I’m finding them all over the place, often in unexpected places. This particular post will focus on a few garden plants I’m familiar with that have berries prone to being overlooked as food. These are mostly not things you would plant primarily for fruit, but rather, things you might make good use of if you already had them in your yard.

My list isn’t necessarily going to be the same as yours, because the mix of shrubs and trees that I am familiar with or happen to have in my garden is likely to be different from yours. This is mostly just an exercise in thinking about food resources that might not have occurred to you before, though a few in my list are quite common.

: Typical Vireya

Ornament is probably what the proprietors of Bovee’s Nursery in Portland have in mind for their Vaccineums and Agapetes. They call them “companion plants” for Rhododendrons. Their specialties are the beautiful Vireya Rhododendrons. Vireyas are distinct Rhododendrons of the tropical highlands (mostly). They’re not edible by the way; I just happen to have a picture, and want to put the story into context.

I was happy to have finally gotten the chance to visit, and meet Lucy Sorenson in person. We have corresponded a bit for decades but had never actually met. She was absolutely charming, and delighted to meet someone who appreciates Vaccineums and Agapetes not to mention Vireyas.

If the genus is Vaccineum, it’s worth evaluating the berries for potential food use. Vaccineums include Blueberries, Huckleberries, and Cranberries. The names are not used consistently, but here is one theory: Blueberries have more, smaller, unobtrusive seeds, and berries in clusters. Huckleberries have fewer, bigger seeds, and berries that show up singly or in pairs. Cranberries have red berries. That said, these distinctions don’t seem to be particularly meaningful with respect to actual usage.

At Bovees I bought Vaccineum ovatum x V. floribundum. One parent of the cross, V. ovatum, is the Evergreen Huckleberry of the Pacific Coast states. It’s a fairly common, big, bushy, shade-loving but tolerant plant with abundant but unfortunately small and usually fairly sour fruit. V. floribundum is the Andean Blueberry, also known as the Mortiña, from around Ecuador through Columbia, and apparently also in Costa Rica. Both plants are evergreen and have beautifully colored new foliage. Mortiña berries are harvested where native but have never become popular outside of habitat. I’ve planted some seeds in pots outside; we’ll see if they were viable. The hybrid might be useful for combining a very tough, hardy plant with a species that probably has bigger and better fruit.

Lucy gave me what might be a Vaccineum erythrinum, the Javanese Cranberry. It’s a rare plant, though I have seen it in old botanical prints; it’s one of the showier of the genus. No idea how cold-hardy it is and I find varying estimates on the few webpages I can find for it. Probably not very.

: Agapetes blossoms

Almost but not quite as rare, and perhaps even showier, are some of the Agapetes of tropical and subtropical Asia. Notice the Greek root-word agape, which ever since the New Testament has come to mean something like “divine love”. Agapetes are closely-related to Blueberries and you can see the relationship if you use your imagination. They live a different lifestyle though, which accounts for some of their differences; they’re quasi-epiphytic (they often grow perched on trees) and clambering. At their base is a woody caudex, from which sprout long slender shoots that weave their way around. They are beautifully suited to hanging baskets.

They produce edible, blueberry-like fruits.

As is common among highland tropicals/subtropicals, they require fairly mild, equable climates. They do well along the Pacific Coast and much of maritime Europe, with the understanding that they need protection from deep or prolonged freezes where those occur. The hardiest one I am aware of in cultivation is a hybrid called ‘Ludvgan Cross’; it can make it down to around -10C/14F once the caudex is well-established. Sometimes Agapetes freeze to the caudex but re-sprout.

Viburnum trilobum has sour bright red berries that are said to make good substitutes for Cranberries, hence the common name “Highbush Cranberry”. It is not, however, a cranberry, being in the wrong family. It is very rarely exploited, due to having been mixed up with its lookalike European cousin, V. opulus. I’ve been told “one bite and you’ll know the difference”: V. opulus has fruit that is bitter in addition to being sour. V. trilobum fruit is sour but not bitter.

To render the fruit of Viburnum trilobum palatable, first you freeze them and thaw them to soften them, then you strain out the seeds, which are bitter. Then you make mock cranberry jelly or mock cranberry juice out of them.

Last time I tried the berries of the native Gaultheria shallon (“Salal” in its native range; known to flower arrangers elsewhere as “Lemon Leaf”), I remember being skeptical of their palatability. The berries of its eastern cousin G. procumbens are reputedly better and used to be a common flavoring especially where they are native.

Gaultheria’s counterparts of the southern hemisphere, the Pernettyas, which some taxonomists are lumping into Gaultheria, have a reputation for intoxicating or even delirium-producing berries. Some of my friends claim that their reputation is exaggerated. I am reluctant to find out by personal experience–names like “Pernettya insana” strike me as being ominous.

Pernettya mucronata undoubtedly has poor-eating fruit anyway–even birds rarely touch them–but those berries are certainly very attractive. The plants vary in how many male or female flowers they have, so make sure you’ve got both to get fruit.

“Strawberry trees”–Arbutus unedo–extremely common around here, but the mildly sweet fruit is bland and mealy. Maybe it’s only a matter of coming up with a use for them.

Mahonia berries are beautiful and look like they should be delicious, but when I tried them I found them resinous in taste. The same is true for a number of other berries native here. I have however heard of other people eating them, probably cooking them and adding sugar and maybe lemon. Lemon seems to be a common ingredient to improve the flavor of unimproved fruits. Sometimes certain spices help too.

Berberis is related to Mahonia, and reputedly some of the Chilean Berberis have good fruit. The plants tend to be rather attractive too.

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Calling all independent plant breeders

Administrative No Responses »

Nov 262011

I suspect that Tom Wagner is himself a “rare breed” not to mention a “Zebra of a different Stripe”. I don’t think there are many independent plant-breeders left.

So far I’ve met in person exactly two, and not for lack of trying.

Well, fancy that: it’s hard to make a living as an independent plant breeder. There are reasons for division of labor. Systems of production work best when each “unit” within the system can concentrate on part of a more complex process, instead of trying to do the whole thing by themselves.

Why? Because if one person tries to do everything, he goes broke buying tools and other resources that sit idle most of the time while he’s working on a stage of the process that doesn’t require that particular tool. It results in high capital overhead and inefficient allocation of tools.

We’re chronically short on “seed money” (no pun intended) too. We can’t just buy our way out of the production bottlenecks we’re constantly in.

What would make more sense is for us to expand our business by partnering with OTHER independent plant breeders who themselves need income. We provide the sales and marketing overhead that we’ve already invested a lot of time in, and someone else supplies the seeds.

The interesting thing about commerce is that one person’s by-product is someone else’s valuable commodity. For example, Tom was producing lots of seed as a by-product of his breeding work, most of which either got eaten or composted (he doesn’t seed every tomato from every plant). He had tried to run his own seed business, but that’s too much overhead for a one-man operation.

There are probably more professional and amateur plant breeders out there, and in a few cases, growers, who have a surplus of something sufficiently interesting, unique, or useful, to be marketable. Having us sell it could bring someone some needed income. In this economy, I suggest not turning up a nose to small but fairly effortless income streams.

I’ll post a semi-permanent link on this page to solicit offers. Wish us luck; it could be a win-win-win situation for our future partners, our customers, and us too.

What we’re thankful for

Friends, Fun stuff 1 Response »

Nov 232011

I often find myself surrounded by beauty

“If the only prayer you ever said was ‘thank you’, that would be enough.”
–Meister Eckhard

Here in the States it’s almost Thanksgiving holiday. I asked Tom what he was thankful for, but haven’t heard back from him. He told me that his family keeps him busy during the holidays and that they go “all out”.

I think he’s got watching some football with his sons in his near future. He really enjoys that time with his sons.

I know him well enough that I can probably answer for him. Above all, I know Tom loves and is thankful for his family. He often talks about his children, fusses over them a lot, and often expresses his feelings on the importance of family.

I’m thankful for my family too. I have a wife and four beautiful children. The youngest arrived relatively late in our lives but having her has worked out better than we anticipated. She’s been the light of our lives since she was born.

I’m also thankful for…

My extended family.
Having good friends who help each other.
Our home and our farmland.
Having enough good food to eat.
The gift of life.

I’m thankful that my parents raised me until I was old enough to be on my own.

I’m grateful for the Internet, for the opportunities it created to make business connections, and for the ability to meet people I never otherwise would have met, some of whom are truly amazing, and all of whom are special and have touched my life.

I’m thankful for my friendship and partnership with Tom.

I’m grateful for relationships that didn’t work out, but that I’ve learned and grown from.

I am thankful for hard lessons I’ve learned from enemies. Even the worst enemy I’ve ever had taught me one of life’s most valuable lessons: the universe does not revolve around my needs.

I’m thankful that every day, I make my own plans, go where I think I need to be, talk to whom I think I need to communicate, and run my own business doing what I think needs to be done. I fear that this cherished freedom might not last all that much longer but appreciate it all the more so long as it does.

I’m thankful to have a life-purpose, and for as much time as I’ve already been granted to pursue it. I am thankful for the doctor who saved my life some years ago and gave me a second chance to pursue goals that otherwise would have been out-of-reach.

My life has been surrounded and infused with beauty and wonder. I have been blessed. May my life and my actions be a blessing to others.

Playing mad crop-scientist

Fun stuff 12 Responses »

Nov 192011

My friends and I have fun coming up with all sorts of hair-brained schemes for crops, both utilizing resources we’re aware of that are currently unutilized, or recombining traits to package them in a way to make them useful. I think we’re all dreamers.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing:

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”
George Bernard Shaw

In a sense you can’t help but to change the world. It’s known as “the Butterfly Effect” (ie, the flapping of the butterfly’s wings influences the weather): small differences in initial conditions result in huge changes in outcome over time. The question is how to make those changes that make the world a better place.

I would like to start a project to grow out crops that are currently not utilized at all, or are under-utilized compared with what we think is their potential, and then identify obstacles to utilization and ways to work around those.

I have at least one specific objective in mind:

Identifying crops that can make local production possible where otherwise it is not

For example, hardy substitutes for tropical commodities, or easy-to-grow backyard substitutes for strictly commercial crops.

That’s sort of what we’re already about anyway; we make local production possible including of a number of staple crops rarely grown anymore other than in large-scale globalized plantation operations.

For that very reason, though, we need to make sure that our core business is getting enough attention before we experiment with crops that will take time and effort, that we’re not even sure there’s a market for. The photo by the way is of …

“…a demonstration site, embodying the principles of permaculture and perennial polyculture systems from around the world. It is a community-based garden that displays the dynamic relationship that humans have with nature”.

(That’s what the sign says)

I don’t mean to rain on someone else’s parade and I have a feeling I will be stepping on toes, but it needs to be pointed out that this project lacks credibility: the most common of plants in this “permaculture and perennial polyculture system” are mildly to extremely toxic to all mammals, while others are merely indigestible.

One of the less toxic inhabitants is Russian comfrey. I looked up online if there’s any actual use for it. Wikipedia states that it has essentially replaced comfrey and says of it:

Contemporary herbalists view comfrey as an ambivalent and controversial herb that may offer therapeutic benefits but can cause liver toxicity.

One of the country names for comfrey was ‘knitbone’, a reminder of its traditional use in healing bone fractures. Modern science confirms that comfrey can influence the course of bone ailments.

The herb contains allantoin, a cell proliferant that speeds up the natural replacement of body cells. Comfrey was used in an attempt to treat a wide variety of ailments ranging from bronchial problems, broken bones, sprains, arthritis, gastric and varicose ulcers, severe burns, acne and other skin conditions. It was reputed to have bone and teeth building properties in children, and have value in treating “many female disorders”. Constituents of comfrey also include mucilage, steroidal saponins, tannins, pyrrolizidine alkaloids, inulin, and proteins.

Internal usage of comfrey should be avoided because it contains hepatotoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs). Use of comfrey can, because of these PAs, lead to veno-occlusive disease (VOD). VOD can in turn lead to liver failure, and comfrey, taken in extreme amounts, has been implicated in at least one death.[6] In 2001, the United States Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against internal usage of herbal products containing comfrey.[7] There are ways to remove the pyrrolizidine alkaloids from comfrey, and some herbal product manufacturers have begun doing so (although the products will still be labelled “for external use only”).

Excessive doses of symphytine, one of the PAs in comfrey, may cause cancer in rats.[8] This was shown by injection of the pure alkaloid. The whole plant has also been shown to induce precancerous changes in rats.

So it might be medicinal in some context that is not clear at the moment, but it’s not food and probably doesn’t make sense for it to be one of the main crops. Medicinal herbs I’ll cover in another blog post another day. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to get to your bones to knit them if you can only apply it externally. There may be some bugs to work out on this one.

The Hedge Morning Glory (Calystegia sepium) is edible but I’m not convinced anyone is really eating it. Young dandelion is probably more palatable.

So, we tread cautiously and rationally into unknown territory, where be dragons. Here are some ideas:

Fruits adapted to colder or more maritime climates than is typical of most tree crops. Also, preferably, that do not require expensive and labor-intensive grafting.
Wild and semi-domesticated crops that are tough enough to grow more-or-less feral, but good enough to be practical for human tastes, as emergency backup food; this becomes more critical the more reliant you are on local food versus being able to buy imports
Herbs and spices that are not tropical
Long, strong plant-fibers that are not tropical
Long-season, non-bolting greens that are not tropical

Some projects not quite fitting any of those categories, but still relevant to localizing production, would include Tom’s high-protein potato project and my frost-resistant potato project.

“High protein” for a potato just means that it has something like 40% more protein than a typical potato; these aren’t soy. The thing is tho that they’re a lot easier to grow in usable quantities in a backyard than soy is. Potato protein also happens to be quite good quality; it’s the quantity that’s lacking, but only relative to the calories; on an acreage basis potatoes are quite generous as protein-makers. Eat them skin and all–the protein is all concentrated in the then waxy layer right under the skin.

The idea for a frost-resistant potato is to take advantage of the fact that potatoes are easy-to-grow and surprisingly adaptable to high latitudes despite their highland tropical origins, EXCEPT that unfortunately most of them have practically no frost tolerance in the foliage.

If a frost hits, the “seed potato” (as a dealer in true potato seeds, that expression is exasperating to me) might survive in the shelter of the earth, but the foliage gets nipped back–possible too much to recover from, or at least the potatoes will be set back (but potatoes are remarkably forgiving). For growing them in places like Alaska, Montana, Finland, and even Minnesota, it would be worthwhile to have potatoes whose foliage can survive at least a mild frost. Combining that with early tuberization needed for the shorter growing season would get you a potato that is more resistant to crop failure at high latitudes–which someday soon I think will be a matter of much higher stakes than it is at the moment with the possibility of bought imported crops as a backup. Just a small difference in frost tolerance and precocious tuberization makes a huge difference in crop reliability.

In order to implement the project, I would need to organize local people willing to make a commitment to contribute labor and resources to it in consideration of their share of the food produced. I would front the land and some inputs including some transportation to and from the farm.

I’m not sure that conditions exist to make it work. When economic times are good, this type of project is a hobby people dabble in, hence the anonymous project mentioned earlier. That’s what I don’t want to replicate; there is room for failed experiments but not for a total waste of precious time, money, and resources. When times are hard as they are just starting to become (sorry, the worst is yet to come), it’s every man for himself. I point out that if you can’t find full-time employment at “living wages” then you cut down your expenses by using your free time to produce some of your own goods, to cut down on what you need money to buy in the first place. I actually know a few brave but sensible people doing this.

For me, local food production is not an abstract or ideological concept; it’s a matter of practical necessity as global finance breaks down and production is going into decline in many key crops. Already a number of countries have had food riots because they became dependent on imports of cheap wheat. Now that wheat prices have more than doubled, and because food purchases were already a high ratio of typical family budgets, people are going hungry and going broke in these countries.

I know of at least 2 of the countries that have been hit by food riots that have plenty of capacity to not only grow more than enough food for their populations, there would be enough to export, but they don’t. Instead, they’re bogged down with lack of farmers, chronic capital depletion (they “eat their seed corn”) so they can’t just mechanize it, and corruption (loans for farm equipment, seed, and fertilizer end up paying for an unearned luxury lifestyle for the ruling class).

We have the same problems on some scale. We’re next. Is there enough time left to ramp up local production? What could we come up with successful local substitutes for?

What do you think?

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