NEW FOR 2012: FARM-ORIGINALS, HEIRLOOMS, AND COMMERCIAL STANDARDS
These are our New Additions for 2012, and as always they include our latest on-farm breeding refinements, and some good proven varieties that organic growers have found reliable and adaptive.
We have chosen not to seek PVP or other intellectual property protection for our original varieties. We have studied, argued, consulted, and meditated on the relative virtues and hazards of IP protection in the food sector of life. We've tried recently to contrive some variation on the use of Creative Commons 'Copyleft' or Open Source Software models to provide open forum use of crop genetics, without fear that corporate entities will Patent what others have freely offered.
This turns out to be extremely complicated, completely untested in the courts, and fraught with real world differences between creative intellect, software code, and new seeds for food crops.
To begin with, seeds are alive, and the rest is not.
Regardless, these new crop cultivars, their genetics, and the traits they express are freely offered to the Public Domain, and they are not intended for any kind of privatization or ownership by others, though others may use them in their breeding, farming, or garden-related enterprises.
Wild Garden Seed appreciates recognition for its breeding work by those who use it.
Oro de Valle Quinoa
 This gold-headed strain has been selected out of our 'Brightest Brilliant Rainbow' for growing in the heart of the Willamette Valley. The head is composed of relatively loose seed clusters, which helps prevent molding or head-sprouting in humid conditions. Stocky plants are about 4' tall at maturity. Seed is golden-brown when harvested at the peak of seedhead color.
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Karma Peppers
How's your karma? Judge by your fruitfulness. If you would like to enhance that, try the latest fruit from our ongoing "out of hybrid" Italian pepper breeding project. This more refined red Italian type is a bright orange-red (Crayola scale), smooth walled, 6-7" long, sweet salad, frying or roasting pepper. 'Karma' comes out of 'Stocky Red Roaster' heritage, with selection for bright vs. dark red at maturity, a broader-flatter crown, and more 3-lobed fruits that make large straight peppers.
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Green Lotus Lettuce
Another new form from the fountain of Merlox variations. 'Green Lotus' is a dark glossed green minihead, compactly formed from dense layers of short broadly cupped leaves, the largest being the size and shape of a cupped hand. The texture reveals the blending of romaine and crisphead parentage, with the disease package of 'Merlot.'
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Red Ball Jets Lettuce
When I was a young kid, everyone wore Red Ball Jets on their feet. Summer started with a new pair, and ended with your toes poking through the canvas. The Red Ball in the center of every sole could make you "run faster and jump higher"—perhaps the first claim for athletic enhancement via shoes. Looking down on a maturing bed of this new intensely red lettuce, its round, savoyed, ruffle-edged leaves lifting upward around red crystal-crisp ballheads, was enough to make me think of firing rocket engines...in fact, I thought of Red Ball Jets. No tip-burn, no downy mildew, no bolting—just amazing.
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Minigreen Merlox Mix Lettuce
A combination of three miniature "iceberg" types from the Merlox variations. Shades of different greens and maturity dates, forming heads from tennis to softball size that make nice one or two-serving salads. Leaves are sweet and crisp for cutting salads even before head formation, with rounded to toothed margins. Strong mildew resistance and a beautiful gloss inherited from 'Merlot.'
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Frank's Unsung Crispy Mix Lettuce
This is another take on the 'Morton's Secret Mix' concept—an early release of unnamed breeding material related to upcoming varieties. The 'Unsung Crispy' include variations on 'Red Ball Jets,' a tight crisp coppertone minihead underlain with red splashes, a dense bright green toothy-edged and wavy-margined crisphead, and a bigger than average Merlox green heading type. All of these have disease resistance derived from 'Merlot,' combined with the fancy-leaf crisphead qualities of 'Reine d' Glaces,' and tastes from various romaines. A lot of crunchy critters in this one.
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Green Oakheart Lettuce
The densest, most compact oakleaf we've seen. The crisp texture and uniform leaf size make this a candidate for converting heads into salad mix pronto. Can be spaced 6" apart to maximize production. From a cross of 'Emerald Oak,' 'Reine d' Glaces,' and 'Merlot.' Downy mildew resistant.
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Manoa Lettuce
A special mini head from University of Hawaii, grown widely in the Islands for its resistance to heat and tip-burn. 'Manoa' is actually a tropical-stress selected version of the century-old 'Green Mignonette,' itself recognized as a standout heat resistant lettuce. Medium deep green, semi-savoyed leaves form small, compact plants that may be baby cut with an open head, or allowed to mature into a blanched round heart. Can be tightly spaced (6" in all directions) for 38-45 day summer production of baby cut. Great thanks, "Mahalo," to UH Extension dude Glenn Teves for turning us on to this paradise isle standard of excellence.
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Red Ruffled Kale
This new release is actually an old denizen of our own evolving Wild Garden. It has been part of the surviving kale tribe since the deepest freezes of the mid 90s. When we grew it at GTF last winter, the vigor, health, and performance in a commercial setting was impressive to everyone, including Rodrigo, who harvested a treasure of "kale raab" from it during the hungry gap, before spring has arrived and markets are spare. He commented on the caliper of the tender stems, their weight, and sweetness. Leaves grey-green with purple-red veins and stems. Sow mid-July through late August. First leaves are flat, becoming more rumpled, edged with ruffled margins, and extra heavy by time bunching begins. In climates with winters above 5-10°F, most plants will live to produce red napini (aka "kale raab") from late March through April—a welcome finale to production here. Super quality seed!
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Wild Red Kale
The return of an old theme, first composed by GTF padrone John Eveland in 1998, when he selected his favorite red types from a patch of 'Wild Garden' kale, then let them flower together. The results were spectacular for the depth of color, the wide range of leaf shapes, and the degrees of dissection that the leaves attained. Some of these are truly 'moss curled' kales of the sorts found in the 1885 classic seed catalog, The Vegetable Garden by MM. Vilmorin-Andrieux. They can make great bite-sized kale leaflets for salad mix.
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Old Growth Palm European Kale
Growers in the west, where winter slowly becomes spring and spring lasts until after July 4th, commonly winter-sow 'Lacinato' kale for earliest transplanting. Spring kale is a welcome addition to first CSA boxes and markets, but by summer, the kale appeal has worn off, and harvest ceases. Some growers till the crop in. Others, like my friend Josh Volk, leave it standing until the cool of autumn returns, then revive the standing (giant) plants with weeding, water, fertility, and attention to aphids. By time of first frost, the kale has returned to vigorous growth, and harvest resumes. 'Old Growth Palm' kale is selected with this production plan in mind, to recreate a "black palm kale" that doesn't flower during summer, die of heat stress, or succumb to aphids, as well as having strong unforked stems, good color, and Tuscan taste. The result looks a lot like 'Palm-tree Cabbage' and 'Cavolo Nero' described and illustrated in The Vegetable Garden (1885).
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