Gettin’ Permacultural: the new Fedco seed catalog is here
Yesterday I leapt from the keyboard and dashed outside to harvest the last of our red and green cabbages (a whole wheelbarrel full!). These babies handle moderate frost, but the forecast confirmed what my skin told me: winter is upon us. Hard frosts are here ’til the end of Feb.
It started snowing while I was de-leafing the cabbage, and standing in the bluster I was proud I’d procrastinated until the last second. Harvesting food in December! Looking around, I appreciated the contrast between the verdant green of our enclosed-garden and the sere brown grasses and woods beyond. For a few years, I’ve sought edible plants that handle frost and perhaps over-winter—and there they are! Symbols of resiliency that feed the children—
Even better was the arrival of the new Fedco seed catalog.
Incorporated over 30 years ago by a back-to-the-earth homesteader named C R Lawn, Fedco seeds is cooperatively owned and run (I got a dividend check last year!). They’re based in Waterville, Maine and specialize in plant varieties that flourish in their cool, wet climate. Their seed selection is excellent; and I imagine that, given our fat black soils and warmer, drier climate, everything they carry does better here than there.
In fact, Fedco’s seed selection is unparalleled: an absolute treasure worthy of a UNESCO award. Each seed description is a mini-masterpiece of gardener-wonk info, rootsy culture-history and simple aesthetic appreciation. Interspersed like daisies in a pasture are short essays about practical perma-gardening and edible landscaping, and the savage politics of bio-pirate multinationals like Monsanto (whose genetically-modified “terminator” soybeans now—after a decade of intense market monopolization—account for 90% of the national US crop). But best of all are the graphics—the catalog is festooned with antique images, many of them hilariously re-arranged, in the spirit of Terry Gilliam (see above).
OH: if you want frost-friendly plants, look for the descriptions that include a snowflake.
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