Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook

Crotte d'Ours micro tubers, one of the 281 varieties in the Kenosha Potato Project

I became a member of Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) last year in large part to get the Yearbook. I’ve been waiting anxiously for it to arrive, and it came last week. I am not disappointed.

The thing is a regular phone book, 500 pages and packed with curiosities. I had two goals– to find seed being grown/saved in Minnesota (or Wisconsin or the Dakotas) and to find some zapallito seed.

The yearbook provides listings for people who save seed from their annual crops and offer them for sale to others. There is a set price for the seed and you send the order form and payment directly to the seed provider.

The yearbook consists of two sections: the list of members offering seed organized by state, and the seeds available organized alphabetically by vegetable type. There are arcane codes you have to follow to match the veggies with the suppliers. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not hard (I’ve signed up for the webinar in February!) and many of the seed sellers have e-mail addresses you can use to ask them questions about varieties.

I found my zapallito seed from a grower in Sacramento, California. Zapallito are round summer squash that look a bit like zucchini. I had them one summer from my friend Lydia’s mother’s garden. She brought them to Southern California from Argentina and has grown them for years in her community garden plot. They’re firm and flavorful, buttery, more like a yellow squash than a zucchini. I’m so excited to grow them. I also bought tomatillo seed from this grower, as I saw she was the person who provided SSE with their original seed for the green variety. 

I also found a potato guy, Curzio Caravati of Kenosha, Wisconsin. His ultimate goal, through the Kenosha Potato Project, is to grow 99 lbs of potatoes in a 3 x 3 foot box. He’s looking for people to join him on this mission. He offers 281 different varieties of seed potatoes. Or maybe it’s potato seed. I’m working on finding that out. He grows potatoes from seed pods, and you get the impression from wandering around the website that he has potatoes growing everywhere on his property. “Perennials” that winter over and potatoes in bags and potatoes in boxes and potatoes in the woods and fields.

It’s also clear that it’s not easy to grow potatoes from seeds. You have to start early (like now) with grow lamps and by the time you’re putting them in the ground (end of May up here) they will be tiny little tuberlets on fragile stems and still might produce mostly micro potatoes. (If you’re ambitious, you can try grafting these to tomato vines, which are sturdier.) But you can save those micro potatoes and plant them next year! Let’s just say that if I can’t get seed potatoes, only seeds, from Curzio, I will be forking over the $14 to SSE for a little red mesh bag of La Ratte I can plant!

My favorite Minnesota seed guy has to be Zachary Menson of Lino Lakes, Minnesota. He offers 24 different kinds of seed. He has a very long comment/description section, which begins by asking you to please spell his e-mail address correctly. “After June 15 it may take a while to fill requests, but I will try to get to them ASAP,” Zach writes. “I’m a high schooler with a busy schedule and I’m not sure if I will list next year.”

Zach prefers payment in rare seed or, better yet, in silver coins (1/4 – 1 oz silver coins, rare or bullion). If you pay this way, you just note the “spot price” on the day you send your order and you can round up. “It is well worth the trouble!!!! We’re talkin’ big savings!” Zach will also take cash or check. Among his seed offerings are two grains, amaranth and quinoa.

A guy in Minneapolis offers only parsley seed, but he has nine varieties. Another in Cannon Falls offers ten varieties of garlic (very exciting). Many only have two or three types of seed, a melon and bean, for example, or a farmer in Finland, Minnesota, who has onion and parsnip seed to offer (I’m thinking this is far northern Minnesota). There is only one member in North Dakota, offering one variety of grain, and one in South Dakota, offering a squash and tomato.

I’m sending off a couple envelopes with my orders and checks tomorrow, and look forward to reporting on the progress this summer!