At long last, our seed garlic and potato onions are ready for sale! We apologise for the delay and for the fact that our shallots are still curing, so watch this space, they will come available soon, we just need to get them a bit drier before we send them out. We will probably announce their sale with our seed potatoes.
As so many folks have experienced add on effects from COVID-19, we have felt it most acutely this season with a lack of help in the seed gardens! Our intern from Italy who had pre-booked, was of course unable to get in the country. We were able to make it through spring with some lovely wwoofers, but this channel seems to be going dry as the travellers slowly head home when their visas expire. And to top it off, my beautiful Ma, who comes each summer to live with us is stuck in the USA in her singular bubble. I am sure our story is not unique. Just letting everyone know that we are down the best babysitter we got and with no interns or wwoofers our labour force is paired back. Please do get in touch if you, or someone you know may be interested in an internship or part -time work.
This lack of help in the garden has had a positive side. We have hired our first ever employee, our amazing Administrative Assistant Rebecca Perez. I am not sure how we would have been able to get through this season without all of her help! I hope you have all found it okay to be receiving emails from someone other than me. Rebecca, Roddy and I are always in close communication, she is a lifesaver! I am certainly enjoying this new freedom and have more time in the garden then I have had since our daughter was born. I am making more connections and finding better ways to do things here, on this land. And I am remembering, I really like gardening, and I am actually rather good at it 😊
We know many of you have been waiting for our seed garlic to come available on our website, and the moment is now. We are able to offer for sale our early varieties and the elephant garlic. We successfully grew and have gotten a crop of all our main crop cultivars, although the amount we grew is still too small for commercial sale. We hope to have Rocambole, Henry’s Soft Top and Takahue available again in the future, but the Early Pearl and Early Purple specifically are holding their own better with the rust. We had a good year with garlic in general, and we feel confident the strategies we have put in place to produce a crop in the presence of rust are effective. To see what we have been doing check out our newsletter from last year. We have learned a lot along the way, and want to share this knowledge so everyone may still be able to succeed with their garlic crop!
Things to Sow in the Garden Now:
January, February and March are the months to sow seeds for your winter garden! I know it is hard to believe that we need to be thinking about our winter veges now, but if you want broccoli in June, sow now! Here is what we are planting:
Broccoli De Cicco and Romanesco, Broccoli Raab Spring Rapini, Silverbeet Fordhook Giant, Spinach Bloomsdale, Orach Red, Coriander, and Salad Burnet. We sow lettuces each month to keep in constant supply, now we focus on the cooler season varieties like Winter, Lollo Rossa, Tree, and Speckled. Now is also a good time to get Asian greens like Mizuna, and Tat Soi in, as well as Rocket and Wild Arugula to keep in supply. Remember with all brassicas they are susceptible to the white cabbage butterfly, so to protect from this, we recommend covering your crops while they get established with fine frost cloth, or remove the caterpillars by hand. Of course, there are organic sprays available, but we do not use these. We prefer instead to create a barrier so the butterflies cannot lay their eggs. Problem solved.
Don’t forget about flowers for the winter garden! Calendulas, Poppies, Lupins and Sweet Peas are frost hardy and beautiful!
We often follow the biodynamic calendar and their recommendation to sow seeds at Moon Opposition Saturn, for these dates, check our website.
Our Website is the best place to find the most up to date information on what we have available at all times during the year.
We encourage orders through this medium, but of course we will still accept orders via email from our Catalogue or via the post using our printed order form.
And here is our Order Form PDF or Order Form Excel
Email orders from the catalogue to: sethasseeds@outlook.com
Or post order forms to: Setha's Seeds PO Box 60, Tutira 4181
And a reminder that selections of our seeds are also available from our Retail Outlets around the country.
Happy gardening,
Roddy, Setha, Rebecca and River Rose
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