Winter/Spring Planting -- Seed and Plant Resources: Agarita Creek Farms, Farming and Farm-Stay Cabin Accommodations in Fredericksburg, Texas

Well, it is the season for seed catalogs in preparation for Spring. Several of our friends have asked us who we order from. This season we have Ordered from the following companies so far:

Seeds of Change, www.seedsofchange.com (assorted heirloom/organic vegetable seeds. We love their selection of summer and winter squashes particularly, as well as eggplant, radishes, and tomatillos. Great greens mixes as well.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, www.southernexposure.com. These folks have hard to find heirloom seeds from seed savers across the south. We find varieties of beans there that we find nowhere else, as well as heirloom summer and winter squashes.

Willhite Seed, www.willhiteseed.com. Another great source for salad greens and other vegetables. They are a Texas company, and there seeds seem particularly acclimated to our region. We do not grow many hybrids, but we do fall hard for some of their hybrid squashes.

Harris Seeds, www.harrisseeds.com. A larger seed house, used by lots of growers throughout the country. Like others, they have a vast collection of greens and greens mixes. Like Willhite, they have some great hybrid squashes that we continue to buy.

Peaceful Valley, www.groworganic.com. The Neiman-Marcus of seed stores. They have a great variety of fruit trees, and we have found that the trees arrive a little larger and in a little better condition than the other fruit tree providers we have purchased from. They also tend to be grafted on to root stock that does better in the South and West than that sold by suppliers further north. We planted ten new ones this winter. We shall see how they do.


Dixondale Farms, wwww.dixondalefarms.com. We used to buy onions all over the place, but we learned that a lot of them were coming from Dixondale Farms. In keeping with our philosophy, we now cut out the middleman and buy directly from Dixondale. Great selection.

Ronniger Potato Farms LLC, www.ronnigers.com. Ronnigers is to potatoes what Dixondale is to onions. From Colorado they supply a great many of the middlemen you can more easily find. They have a huge selection of heirloom colored tomatoes and fingerlings, and our farmer's market customers crave them. They are simply awesome.

Gourmet Garlic, www.gourmetgarlic.com. A Texas company that like Dixondale and Ronnigers produces much of what is sold to gardeners in the U.S. by others. A huge variety, and a very informative website, including strong recommendations about what to plant in each area of the country. Garlic is planted in the South in October and November, but be sure to remember them next year. We are growing ten different Southern garlics this season, and they have all come up and seem to be doing well.

A cautionary note. Most of the seed sellers you have heard of are not on this list for a reason. There is nothing wrong with them, we just have a strong bias that they have a strong Northeastern bias. The information in their catalogs, and most of the seeds they sell, are meant from gardeners in Zone 7 or North. We urge you to consider the smaller Southern and Western sources we have listed, among others. We hope this helps.

To find out what works for you, check the website of the ag extension office where you are. Texas A & M has pages on its website that recommend varieties for fruits and vegetables, as well as planting dates, for almost anything that you might want to plant (unless you tend to push the envelope just for fun, as I and some others like to do).

You may notice that there are no tomatoes or pepper sources listed. This is because we do not have a greenhouse yet (although that is only weeks away), and these seeds need to be started now in the winter. There are many great suppliers of heirloom tomato and pepper seeds out there, some of which are listed here. We have had success using starting seeds in June for fall tomatoes and peppers outdoors in a protected area (we use a side yard), gradually exposing them to more sun, and moving them to larger containers, as the seedlings mature. We plant fall tomato and pepper plants in late July or early August, and of course baby them until Labor Day. The effort is worth it. If you have gardened in Texas or the South for long, you know that the fall production exceeds that of the summer. There is simply less heat, humidity, and bugs. For Spring tomatoes and peppers, we by plants from others. In Houston, we recommend Another Place in Time. They generally have plants in late February or early March. With tomatoes, if you live in our part of the world you will find the small to medium size tomatoes do well here. The larger beefsteak tomatoes require too long to do well here -- they are trying to ripen in the worst of our summer heat. An exception is the Russian tomatoes and Cherokee Purple. The most prolific tomato we grow is Yellow Pear. We grow only open pollinated and indeterminate tomatoes. In milder summers, we are able to cut them back, bury a few branches, and cut them away from the main plant to form separate plants for the fall. This worked well in 2007, when we had plenty of rain; not so well in 2008 and 2009 when we were in drought.

We try to answer all questions that come our way, to the best of our ability. When we have questions we go to the books or to the Texas Organic Farmer's and Gardener's Association. We are linked to TOFGA through our Facebook site. There annual meeting is the last weekend in January in San Marcos. Their workshop, for all levels of gardeners, is March 11 and 12. We will be there, and encourage those of you in Texas to join TOFGA and to come out as well. They are also doing a series of visits to farms who are getting it right, with the first such visit being to a farm in Brenham from 11 to 2 on January 16, in conjunction with Slow Food Austin. All of this information is on TOFGA's website and Facebook page.

Happy planting, and we hope to see you soon.


Tom
Agarita Creek Farms
Fredericksburg, Texas
http://www.agaritacreek.com/