Another Seed Unboxing & Chat (Seed Enthusiast Support Group)

Hey there darlings, welcome to Roots & Refuge Farm. My name is Jess, if you're new here, and if you're not new here, welcome back. I'm glad you are all here. Today, we're gonna open a box of seeds. Yes, again, if you have anything to say about that, this video might not be for you. Years ago, my friend Lisa came over when I still lived in Arkansas, and she brought her seed collection, and I had my seed collection. We were sitting at my large dining room table, and we had all our seeds spread out all across the table, because we were trading. And Maya came in and said, y'all need a support group. And I was like, we're supporting each other right now. So that's what this is. We're gonna just support each other in our enthusiasm for seeds. I've not opened this box at all. I'm so excited to share it with you guys. So just so you know on the front end, in case you didn't notice the length of this video when you clicked on it, I'm sure it's going to be very long, because I know how many seeds are in this box, and I know how long-winded I can get about it. Think of this kind of as a podcast style. Feel free to put your headphones in and plant your tomatoes while you listen. It'll be good for that. I really love to create content that is the kind of content I really like to consume, which is when people are really just talking about their thoughts on things, their opinions on things, what's going on in their life, that I can put on and listen to long-term while I'm in the middle of tasks, because it really helps me to focus on tasks, to have something to listen to. So this is from a company called Urban Farmer. They are gonna have a coupon code for my viewers. At the time of shooting this, I don't know what it is yet, but I will put it down in the show notes. I just can't wait. It's the weekend, and I can't wait for them to get back to me on that, to open this box. So I was trying to, but I'm so excited, and it's gonna be raining a little bit the next couple of days, so it'll be a really good time for me to plant some of this stuff. I got seeds from them the first time. When I was still in Arkansas, if you guys remember my last garden that I grew there, I had a lot of black flowers, and I talked about the grief of leaving a garden that I had poured so much into. And I had some sunflowers that were super dark burgundy, that they looked almost black, and I got those seeds from here, and I can't remember the name of those flowers. But recently, I had, I had been looking for a particular variety of tomato called Climbing Triple Crop, and someone commented that they'd gotten seeds for that variety from Urban Farmer, and that it was the one I was looking for. So I grew that variety several years ago, like probably my first couple years of doing YouTube, and then I lost the seeds for it, and I couldn't find them. I ordered them from another place, but the tomatoes were not the same. It had the same name, but it was not the same, and someone described the tomatoes they had from Urban Farmer that were Climbing Triple Crop, and they were what I had experienced also. So I was like, okay, cool. I will go look them up, and then it happened. So I have had good experience with their seeds, but when I went on their website, they had so many things that I've never grown before. They had a lot of variety that was new to me, and I've grown a lot of things. At this point, I've grown a lot of the things that are widely available, and of course, there's lots and lots of things I haven't grown, obviously. But when I go to a seed company, and just like one thing after another, I'm being like, oh my gosh, I've never seen that before. Oh, I've never tried that before. That's exciting to me. So quite a few packages jumped onto my list, and we'll see how many of them jump into the garden. Some of these things that I got, I'm not gonna be able to plant them for this spring. However, I'm thinking I'm gonna do like a second round of tomatoes, because a lot of times my tomatoes get sick and need to be pulled out by like late July. And I'm thinking I'm gonna do some, it depends on how well my tomatoes in the high tunnel do if I'm gonna plant some more. But I'm gonna keep an eye on that because I can plant tomatoes as, I mean, I can start the seeds in like July and get more tomatoes, because a lot of times we don't freeze till like November. All right, so this, I usually try to sort these out just a little bit. I'm gonna do that real quick. Okay, I went and grabbed my laptop too, because some of these things I'm gonna need to look up so I can give you the details on them, because like multiple of these things I have never grown. I organized everything somewhat in groups so that I don't talk completely in circles, make a three hour long video. Though I know some of you would be here for that, I don't think I could stand to edit it. I'm hard to listen to myself talk that long. So I'm going to start with the tomatoes and set this out of the way. I usually save this for last. I got quite a few tomatoes just because they had, they had some things I've grown in the past, but I haven't grown for a little while. And they also had a few things that I really wanted to try. So first is Marglobe Supreme Tomato. I grew Marglobe the first couple of years that I garden on a larger scale. And at the time I remember feeling like it was meh because it was very uniform and like very medium sized. However, I have since gained a lot of appreciation in canning. Typically for all the things I make and can, I just use big heirloom slicers. But I think I would like to give it a try again to do like a really good canning tomato that has a very small core and is pretty uniform. And I remember this being that. At the time I didn't can a whole lot. So I think that maybe like a more mature gardening me will appreciate Marglobe more. So I wanted to give that one another shot. Then I got one called Tasty Evergreen. This is an heirloom and it's kind of like a larger medium sized tomato, green flesh. And it's supposed to be good production and just very good tasting. As far as green tomatoes go, they're kind of like a slightly peppery, little bit more tangy yellow tomato. Whereas yellow tomatoes have a lot of sugar in them. They don't have the depth, I would say, of red tomatoes. They are definitely like a lighter and brighter flavor profile. My mouth is watering right now. I need to eat something apparently because I'm thinking about tomatoes. And this one, I just have never grown it. And I thought it would be good to try. I really like Aunt Ruby's German green. And there's another one called Malachite Box. I found Malachite Box and Aunt Ruby's German green to be like fairly interchangeable. I think this one's gonna have a smaller core. So we're gonna give that a try. Next is called Little Sicily F1. This is like a micro dwarf. So the tomato plant is only like this big. And I like growing micro dwarfs in my green stalks. So that's why I got this one. I figured I would try it. Next, the Triple Crop. So I am looking forward to growing this and seeing if it is like the tomato that I grew. I got, I don't remember where my original Triple Crop seeds came from. It's been a long time ago that I got them. I mean, it's been at least 10 years. I'm on the hunt. And so I really hope that this is it. They were really big. They stayed fairly healthy. They produced a lot. I really liked them. Next is one called Dark Star. So this is actually an F1 hybrid. And it is like a beefsteak, but not just a massive one. And it's like a deep, dusky, purplish, reddish, kind of Cherokee purple. The reason that I got this one is that it was listed as an F1 hybrid. A lot of times they have these traits. It's very disease resistant. And dealing with blight and bacteria and fungus and all of that is a big issue in a very, very humid Southern garden. And, you know, in South Carolina we get a fair bit of rain, but even still it stays, usually humidity is very commonly in the 80 to 90% range. And I mean, it's hard for a human. I know it's hard for plants. And that's why a lot of times my plants get diseased early. And I love heirlooms. I am like, heirlooms have my heart. I love their stories. I love the flavor that you get with heirlooms, but I am glad to make room for some hybrids that just give me that production. So I can put products on the, you know, made from tomatoes on the shelves of my pantry. Obviously I use the heirlooms as much as I can. I typically reach for the heirlooms when I'm slicing to make tomatoes and stuff, but growing some hybrids that I can really get a lot more volume out of in order to make sauces and salsas and diced tomatoes and all that stuff. That's one less thing I have to buy at the store. So this is a purplish hybrid. The next one is called Chef's Choice Black. Also a dark green shouldered, very dusky red F1 hybrid. The fruit on this one looked a little larger than the last one that I mentioned. One thing to note about this company and the reason why I got several of these, they have, they had a lot of F1 hybrids, but the prices were really good. A lot of times when you are ordering F1 hybrids in seed form, you know, when you're ordering from a place like Johnny's, which I really like Johnny's, but you can pay sometimes $20 for a package of 15 to 20 seeds because F1 hybrids are so labor intensive to create. So the fact that they had, now there's only a lot of these, like this dark starts only 10 seeds in this package. So they are more expensive seeds because F1 hybrids require a person to cross those blooms together and move the pollen from one to another in isolation. It's just more intentional in growing the seeds out. Whereas if you're trying to grow heirloom seeds, you just grow a whole field of the same exact thing and you don't even have to isolate them. They're just all together. And so you go out and collect the seeds and you know that they're pure. But you know, a lot of these seed packages range like four to $5 and for F1 hybrids, that's actually really good. So I got this chef's choice black, gonna give that a try. This one actually is 25 seeds in that package. Like here is, the next one is an heirloom. This is an, how is, I never know how to say this. Ananus nor. This tomato, I've never grown. This is one that gets on so many people's best tasting heirloom list. I have seen this listed from many people is the best. And I know I have started seeds for this before, but I cannot remember ever actually eating the fruit. And so I don't know if I got seeds that were kind of puny and the plants were puny. It didn't do very well for me. I don't know, but like this package has 50 seeds in it. So you can look when you're purchasing from seed companies, like how many seeds you're getting, if that really deeply matters to you. Because the thing is, is like 50 seeds, I'm gonna plant, well, I'm always enthusiastic when it comes to planting and choosing how many plants. I would say I'm actually going to put maybe three plants, three or four plants of any given variety, except for my favorites, which I give more in my garden. So I may start like six, there's 50 seeds in here. This is years worth of seeds for me for this variety. So that's definitely something to look at if you're trying to like stretch the budget to see what type of tomatoes you're saving. That's the thing with F1 hybrids too, is that you can save seeds from them and you will get a tomato. When people are like, oh, you can't save seeds. You can, you can save the seeds of an F1 hybrid, you will get a tomato. If it's an emergency situation, you grow whatever seeds you can. It's just not going to necessarily have all the traits of the tomato you saved it from, because it's not stabilized. It hasn't been grown for enough generations and the genetics are still like a mixed bag. So when you are buying F1 hybrids, they may serve a purpose for you for that season, but you're gonna have to buy those seeds again the next season. Or, I mean, you can start the project of saving them and trying to stabilize them yourself as a big project. But for the kind of straightforward problem of I just want to get seeds and grow something simply, you're gonna have to buy the seeds again. So that's why I will never only grow hybrids. I will make room for some hybrids, probably about maybe, this year I'm doing more than I've done in the past. I'm probably doing about a quarter of the tomatoes I'm growing this year are gonna be hybrids. But usually it's a quarter to a fifth at the most, I will put in my garden. I would be willing to go up to half if I really felt like I needed to buckle down and grow absolutely as much food as possible. Like if grocers really did just go through the roof and say next year, I was thinking, okay, I really need to not have to get anything from the store. I would be willing to grow more hybrids if I had the seeds for them. Because in human South Carolina, they do solve that problem with disease resistance. But if I can't save the seeds and guarantee to have that same problem solved the next year, that's another problem. So balance, you know. Next is called Saucy Lady. This is also a hybrid. This one has 20 seeds in the pack. And this, as I mentioned with Marglobe, Marglobe is an heirloom. This is a hybrid. And the goal there is to try out some different things as far as growing some canning tomatoes. The next one is called Giant Garden Paste. And this tomato looks like the mix between like a Roma and an Amish paste. So it's not as ox heart as Amish paste. It's a little more fluted and rounded on the bottom, but it's large. And it was stated to be a really good mix between sweet and acid. It's just a classic solid red tomato. It is an F1 hybrid. And another one that I was trying for the sake of trying to test out some varieties for production. When it comes to these hybrid seeds, I am a little more restrained in growing them. Like I bought a package last year, and it was from Johnny's, of hybrid seeds for my greenhouse. And I think it was like 10 to $12 for a package. And I very carefully only sowed four of those. This year I got a few hybrid varieties and I only sowed what I really knew I was gonna be able to use or the people I was starting seeds for were gonna be able to use. Whereas with seeds like I saved, where I've got a bag of Dr. Witchy's tomatoes that literally has like 400 seeds in it, you know, I might be way more liberal in sowing those and be much less upset if I have extra tomato plants that end up going in the compost. I try not to do that because it makes me sad. But I'll be a little stingy with these. I'll be sowing them very intentionally. Giant Garden Paste, excited to try that. Two more, these are both F1 hybrids. Oh, the ones they had largely that I hadn't grown were that. The next one is called Buffalo Sun. I'm looking these up because I don't know their names. I can't remember them. All right, so this one looks a lot like hillbilly or pineapple, yellow with red streaks, golden orange is what they're called. Very disease resistant is what is listed, so. And the last one is Chef's Choice Purple. So earlier, Chef's Choice Black. Weirdly, Chef's Choice Purple and Chef's, so Chef's Choice Black is like a deep, deep, deep red tomato. It is kind of like Paul Robeson. Chef's Choice Purple looks more red to me. I mean, it's like a duskier red, it's got a little green on the shoulders. So apparently when ordering, I felt like I needed both of those. I don't know how many of these I'm gonna put in the garden this year. As I said, we'll just have to see how things grow. But if I do a second planting, it will be from these. Sometimes I just cut some suckers off and root them, and that's how I do a second planting. And I may just do that. We'll just have to kind of see how the garden's going before I decide that. I only got a couple of peppers. The first one I got is called Pot-A-Pineo. It is a small jalapeno plant. Again, I thought this would be really good in the green stalks. Their picture that they used on their website was it hanging in like a hanging basket. And I was like, well, that's really cool. I like to try stuff like this, not because obviously I really don't need to try to figure out space-saving ideas, but I know a lot of people who watch me are trying to start gardens on patios or small back porches, or you're in a rental and you don't have a lot of space. So if I can find things that can be a resource to you, and if it also gives me an excuse to grow something cool that I've never grown before, I will volunteer to strip you for that every time, so. Okay, and now this one is called Sweet Sunset. This is like a super sweet banana pepper. And it like ripens to red. It's kind of like yellow green when it's less ripe. And what the information on the website said was just that it was very sweet. And Ben loves banana peppers. I have had a problem in recent years and there was like a big mix-up in like national seed providers some years ago. Everybody called it Peppergate. And banana peppers were ones that were heavily affected and they were swapped out with jalapenos. And some people got banana peppers that were trying to go with bell peppers. It was just a big mess. But I've had a problem in recent years if I buy banana pepper plants, or sometimes when I have started them from seeds, that they're not sweet. They're not spicy necessarily, but sometimes they just don't taste like much at all. I guess banana peppers are kind of that way. But I know Ben loves sweet peppers and he really loves banana peppers. And so I thought that this might be one that he would really enjoy. So that's why I grabbed that. Okay, that's the tomatoes and the peppers. I got two different kind of husk cherries. So husk cherries, we also call them ground cherries. They are essentially a cherry tomatillo. And they are very, very fruity and very, very sweet. And most of them are more or less the same. There's pineapple was the first variety that I ever grew. There's another one, I think it's called Aunt Molly's. Is that Aunt Molly's too? Maybe I'm mixing that up. There are quite a few that are all the same. They're small, they're kind of yellow, golden. They have the little sheath around them, the little papery wrap around them that you pop them out of. And then you bite, it's like a little tomatillo. This is Goldie. It, to me, it looks just like all those others. I got this because I started what, I had some ground cherry seeds, they didn't come up. And so I'm gonna start these. It's a little late, but I have a long season. So it won't be a problem. We'll just be a little bit later getting fruit. Last year, I didn't get a ton of ground cherries because I grew them in the high tunnel under shade and they did not do well under shade cloth. So I am going to grow them out in the main garden beds this year because this is one of Maya's favorite things. This makes a really good jam. I've seen where people have made desserts with these like tarts or pies. I've never done that, but I would like to try it. I'd planned on doing it last year, but I never got enough to be able to have excess. So I'm gonna start those. Actually, I'm gonna put those in a start right now pile. Ooh, I'm gonna start the Patapinos and the sweet banana peppers also. They'll be late, but it'll be okay. The next one I have is called Little Lantern's Husk Cherry. I've never even seen this before. It is, it looks like a ground cherry plant, but it says that it's more compact, it's smaller. And the husks on this are like really orange. But it said that it was suitable for small space gardens. So I was thinking it might be cool to try it in a green stalk and that this was interesting on the listing. And I was like, hmm, hadn't heard of that. Excellent fresh or added to fruit salads or party trays, jams, jellies, and sauces. So I'm gonna grow this. I'm gonna start those also. I got a few different melons. The first is Prescott Fond Blanc, which is an heirloom cantaloupe, which is supposed to be one of like the best tasting cantaloupes. I wanna say I have attempted to grow this before. I just can't remember ever being successful, which that could be for a number of reasons, you know, pests or whatever. But I'm going to put this probably on a trellis is probably what I'm gonna do and just support any fruits that are growing. Or I may put it like on the edge of a bed and let it run out. That needs to go out to the garden to sow because I could go ahead and put that in the ground. A couple of watermelons that I have grown and really like, one is called Jubilee and one is called Tender Sweet Orange. Both of these are really good. Just like classic watermelons, Jubilee is red and Tender Sweet is orange, obviously. I love orange watermelon. That's, see, I feel like I can't say that's my favorite watermelon because a watermelon is my favorite. I love watermelon so much. I seriously will just, if a watermelon is small enough that I can warrant doing this, I will bust, I will literally take a spoon out there, bust a watermelon open in the garden and just sit there and scoop it out with a spoon. Or my hands, like I'm not above it. I love watermelon and like one of my fondest memories, my friend Daniel was here once and we were just walking around the garden and we found this kind of smallish watermelon and it had split because the rain. And it must have just happened because it was still clean, there was no bugs or anything. And I took it and we split it in half and went and sat on the end of the dock and just ate this watermelon. And I'm like, this is why I garden. Like moments like this are absolutely why I garden. So I'm growing both of these. They're not monstrous, like they're good size. I like a mix. I like some very large watermelons. I've pulled watermelons out of my garden that were in the 40 pound range. Obviously that's really big. But I actually prefer when they're in more like the 20 pound range where I can bring it in, we can slice it up and everybody's enthusiastic about eating it. And I'm not having to figure out, okay, what do I do with extra? Because when you're pulling them in every few days, it can get a little overwhelming. Now if I ever have extra watermelons, say I did grow a 40 pound one, and the kids are gonna eat it a lot right when I open it. Well that's gonna take care of a quarter of it. And then I'll cube up a bunch and put it in the fridge for them to snack on for the next couple days. And then a lot of times I'll blend it, pour it into Popsicle molds, or mix it with some mint leaves and some lime juice and pour it into Popsicle molds, that's really good. Or, of course, just juice it and have the juice and you can use that in multiple things. You can make jelly out of juiced watermelon, which is good. So yeah, I'm growing both of those, because I love watermelon. This one is an F1 hybrid. It's called Mini Love Watermelon, and it's a one person. So it's really small, more cantaloupe sized, and this I'm gonna grow on a trellis. I've never grown anything like that before, so I'm excited to give that a try. All right, so let's talk about the roots. I've got a few different things here. I was apparently really feeling beets whenever I was shopping for seeds, because I have five different kinds of beets here. They just had some that I've not grown. They had one called Lutz Greenleaf Pink Stem Beet, and it literally had hot pink stems. It looked a lot like chard. So I thought that was interesting. The beets are just kind of classic looking. Crosby's Egyptian. I don't think that I have grown this beet before, but it's like a dark red. I thought I would give it a shot. I think that one's supposed to do better in heat. So I grow beets in my high tunnel, and I can grow them more or less year round. They don't taste as good in the middle of summer, but the thing I use beets for the most is either pickling them, which they're gonna be cooked in a brine that has flavoring and sugar and vinegar and stuff like that. So that can mask the flavor that may not be the absolute best. And I also juice them, and I typically juice them with carrots and apples so it's sweetened. And so that also can handle flavor not being the best. So my favorite time to roast beets is right now when it's early spring, mid spring. It's not real hot yet, or in the fall when I've got them coming, because then I can harvest them when they're about this big, and I think the flavor of the beets themselves is actually the best then. That's really what I was thinking about when I ordered all these, because I'm actually eating a lot of beets right now. Like I've been roasting them, we'll put them on salads. I've been juicing beets like every day, and you know, it's good. Rainbow blend beets. Why do I need this when I have multiple other kinds individually? I don't know. It is fun to plant a rainbow blend. I used to hate them. I used to hate buying rainbow blends, because if there would be a variety in it that I didn't know well, I would be sad, because I wouldn't know how to look up more of it, because it was just rainbow blend. It didn't have the varieties listed. Let's see if they tell you the varieties on their website. Some seed companies will tell you, and they get the gold star from me. Okay. The thing now is, I know my seeds enough, and know seed varieties enough that I can more or less guess what it is. I can more or less figure it out based on the information I have. When I first started gardening, that was really frustrating to me, because I would grow something, love one thing, and be like, I don't know how to, I'd have to go on a wild goose chase to find it. All right, so this blend has a dark, dark red that's probably bull's blood, a kind of stripey gold that's probably golden boy or touchstone. Looks like Keojo, which is the white with the pink stripes. White, like a solid white. Did I get another solid white? I don't know what that variety is. It could be one of multiple things. And then a kind of streaky red, so maybe like Detroit red that looks like, they all look kind of round. Anyway, I do like growing a rainbow blend now because it's just so pretty when it's growing there in the garden, you have all the colors together. Next, I got one called Ruby Queen. This one's real classic. It almost looks real purplish to me in the picture, but it was stated that it was really good for canning and fresh eating, and that it grows like perfectly round. That doesn't really matter to me very much. I like beets of all shapes and sizes, but it's an early maturing one. So it's 52 day variety. And my thought was, if I were to get these and go ahead and sew them now, you know, at the beginning of April, that I could potentially be harvesting these before June, before it really does heat up a lot. And so that's what I'm going to be doing with those is going ahead and sewing them. Cause I would really like to get a really good beet harvest that's kind of still in that sweet window and they taste the best because they store for a good long time in the fridge. If you just cut the greens off, which I usually just juice the greens, or you can saute them, they're good too that way. But I will just cut the greens off and, you know, wash them real good and then put them in a bag and put them in the crisper drawer. And they last a long time in there. The last thing I got, I've never grown, was sugar beets. So sugar beets are commonly used to make sweeteners. In the United States, if you go to the store and you buy something and it just says sugar on it, and it doesn't say cane sugar, a lot of times what you are getting is beet sugar. Because when it's in that case, it's typically from genetically modified beets. That is interesting. I've never grown sugar beets. Now this company specifically does have a safe seed pledge for the council for responsible genetics. They've got it like listed all on their stuff saying that they'll never like knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds basically to protect genetics. So I thought I would give these a try. There's 200 seeds in here. Sugar beets are commonly used by people looking to supplement their animal's food because they do have like a higher carb level because they have more sugar in them. I just thought they would be really interesting. I have no idea what to expect from that, what I'm gonna do with them. I don't know. But it was just a curiosity to me to go ahead and try them. So I got two types of radishes. The first one is called the Cincinnati Market Radish. And it is, it's neat. This is one I've never grown anything like this. It's really long and skinny. And it's like inside is kind of white, the outside is red. And I just thought it would be really good to snack on. And they showed, I mean sliced, it's only like the little slices are only like this big around, that's how skinny it is. And I just thought that was cool. I thought that might be cool, like chopping the salad. I don't know, I just thought it was neat. I've never done anything like that before. Put that with my so soon, cause I could go ahead and put those in and I'd be harvesting them in less than a month. And then next I got white icicle radishes. I really like white radishes and I haven't grown them in just a whole terrible lot. Like they're milder than like red radishes or your colorful ones that typically have more of a bite. They're much more mild. Now with radish flavor, how they taste really changes depending on what time of year you grow them. Like if it's hot outside, you're gonna get way spicier radishes. Whereas cold, they're gonna be trying to store all their sugars in the root to survive because that's what the plant's trying to do. And when you grow your root vegetables, when it's cold, you get sweeter flavor for that reason. But white icicle stays pretty mild. And I think if I grow that in my high tunnel, it'll be just like a really mild and just be a good crunch to add to like salads or wraps or something. I got two types of carrots. At this point, it's probably too late for me to sow carrots. I've already got quite a lot of carrots growing in the garden. They're not large, but I got these two kinds and I can probably sow them out around like October and they'll grow, they'll get established and then they'll grow really slowly over the winter. And usually when I sow in October, I'm harvesting carrots in like March or something like that, which that works. One is called Thumbelina. They're like little bitty round, super cute, totally novel, not necessarily like they're gonna take up the same amount of space as like big long carrots. So kind of silly, but I thought they were cute. I have my little bonus baby Harlow here, my niece. Having little kids around, little novel things like that, like tiny carrots and cucumelons or little bitty sweet peppers or tiny little, mini, mini little tomatoes, like spoon cherry tomatoes. I love growing tiny things like that because I have found that young children who may be adverse to trying the vegetables they're used to seeing. If you say, hey, this one's tiny. This is for little kids. It's for you because it's so tiny. They will just like line up and eat it. Maybe not like always, but I've pulled that over on a lot of young children and they fall for it. Next Malbec red carrots. This is a really pretty carrot. I've never grown these. They're like deeply like, I mean, it's Malbec, which is wine and they are like a wine red carrot. And I thought that sounded good. So I'll probably sow these out in the summer, like into the summer for the cool weather. I got some pale Armenian cucumbers or Armenian white cucumbers. The seeds that I had for this, I actually started the ones that I had left. I had some. They grew and then I put them in my beds and the roly polies ate every single one of them. So I'm going to try direct sowing these and hopefully I'll get them. Pale Armenian or white Armenian cucumbers or green Armenian cucumbers, they can grow up to like three feet long. They're not really cucumbers, actually melons. And, but when you harvest them young, I mean, they're still probably, when you harvest them when they're about 12 inches or so you can go like up to 18 inches, their seeds are still really small and they're very nice. And you can use them any way that you use a cucumber. You can pickle them, you know, slice them. They're great on salads. They're great for eating raw, eating with dips, anything like that, making tzatziki or I make like the tartar cold cucumber soup. And they're completely interchangeable with the cucumber. The benefit of them is because they're not actually a cucumber because they are a melon. They will stay good tasting even once it's hot outside. You know, I've always, because I've always lived in, you know, warm Southern places, I've struggled with getting cucumbers. Now I found a one variety called Silver Slicer that I am like the biggest fan girl of because it does well. It lasts the longest with really good flavor and produces really, really well. And so I typically will grow that one. The Armenians, the green is, I like the white one better. I like the pale one better. The green one, it's fuzzy. I don't know. And it's fine. And I want to say you scrub it and it scrubs the fuzz off. But like, as far as like taking a bite out of it in the garden, I don't want to do it. Like I don't want to do, I don't want to eat fuzzy food. And I had a friend over the other day and I'm growing this one tomato called Woolly Kate, which is fuzzy. And I just wanted to grow it because of novelty and because it was fascinating, but I knew. And I said, when I started the seeds, I'm like, I'm probably going to hate this. And she turned around, she goes, but don't you like peaches? And I'm like, I can forgive a peach, it's fuzz, because of like, it's amazing. A peach, a fresh peach, I can get over the fuzziness. I don't love that. I still do not, when I'm biting it, I'm like trying to make as least contact as possible with my mouth that can feel the fuzz. But it's a peach inside, a cucumber? Like I like a cucumber, but it's no peach. So I like the white one because it's not so, it's not fuzzy. The green one is fuzzy, slightly. I'm being dramatic, and I know sometimes I am, but you need to know these things. Like if I'm going to tell you this information, what if you hate fuzzy stuff too, and you get it and you're like, oh man, I wasted my space. Oh, anyway, hopefully I can get these to grow and the roly polies don't keep us down. I got a few squashes. And I believe all of these are, let me look at this one up. The reason I bought multiple of these was because they are F1 hybrids. My biggest issue with squash in my garden is squash bugs. And sometimes the solution is an heirloom. My pumpkins that grow like crazy here are called Dutch Fork Pie pumpkins. It's a local heirloom. And because it was just developed here for, I don't know, however many hundreds of years that plant has been handed down here in the Midlands of South Carolina, it does fine. Has absolutely no problems with the squash bugs. I get hundreds of pounds of pumpkins every year and it does great. I have yet to find a summer squash that is so resilient. So I'm all ears if that's an option. So far, my solution has been to succession sow. So I sow a couple of squash, and then a couple weeks later, somewhere far away from that in the garden, I sow a couple more squash plants, and a couple weeks later, I sow a couple more. And I can typically stay in squash by doing it that way. I'm gonna try the F1 hybrids this year and see. You know, if you were just spraying, like, poison all in your garden, you could knock the bugs down. It wouldn't be that big of a deal. But I typically don't spray a lot of stuff. If I do, it's organic. And with squash bugs, man, they are just tenacious little guys. So the first one I got is called Marrow Segev. And it's like a really light green zucchini looking thing. It's very fast. It matures in 47 days. So I'm gonna be planting this ASAP. Oh, this one I was really excited about. It's called Partial Eclipse. So it's a patty pan, which is like a little flat variety. And it's pretty. It's like really, really light green cream with, like, dark green stripes on it. And interestingly, on the listing for this one, they said that it is a great summer squash, but that it can be allowed to mature to a winter squash and then taste really great roasted. So that's a total win. Because every year with my summer squash, inevitably I will end up with a few that get away from me and they become huge. And at that point, for like a zucchini, they're just, you could eat it. Like if you were in a pinch and you really needed something to eat, you could eat a baby-sized zucchini. You could roast it like you would pumpkin. It just doesn't taste like much. It's a very bland. I've done it. I have cut them up and tossed it with Parmesan and oil and seasoning and put a lot of flavor on it and eaten it, and it's okay. But really, my real favorite is to grow things that taste good for the application. And if this is a good summer squash, that is beautiful. That is resistant to pest and disease and can be roasted. It will very, very easily grab a spot at the top of my favorites list. My kids just got home, so it may be a little louder in the background. All right, so the next one, this one is really interesting. It's called Cream of the Crop. And it is actually an acorn-type, bush-type acorn squash that's white. So traditionally, acorn squash is like a dark green, and this is shaped like that, but it's white. It says that the squashes weigh two to three pounds, but it also says you could pick it small and cook it as a summer squash or let it harden for winter storage and that it's really good roasted. I've actually never gotten acorn squash to maturity before because of the squash bug situation. So I'm gonna try this and it would be really, it would be really darling if it worked. I've got a couple kinds of beans. One is called Jameson. It's a bush bean, really prolific. It's an heirloom and it's supposed to be really good for canning, eating fresh, and have good flavor. So I just, I don't have a super hardcore bean loyalty. I typically like beans that are on the thinner side. I don't like them to be real stringy. And so the really broad ones, I usually don't really care for. But I pretty much will grow whichever ones I can get ahold of. I do prefer bush beans for the most part, just because I find harvesting them a little easier. Whereas pole beans, they come on a little at a time over a long period. Bush beans are kind of all at once and that makes it a lot easier for canning. So I'll typically do succession sowing of areas of bush beans. And I figured I would try this one because I figured it would be as good as any others. Maybe it'll be amazing and blow my mind. It'll be my new favorite bean. The next, I got a yard long white bean. So I've grown yard long beans, multiple. Like I've done the noodle beans and the Thai yard long beans. And I've never grown one that is white. It's not really truly white. It's just a really light green. But they said it was stringless and that it is very sweet and is tender and that it's a white seeded variety is where the white comes from. So I figured I would give it a try. I like to have one trellis of yard long beans. I like them. They are squeaky. Like, can y'all tell I have like a texture thing? I really experienced food based on this texture. And like the noodle beans and stuff, they're good, but they really squeak. So if that bothers you, I'm curious to see if these will be like that. They may also be squeaky beans. All right, I got a couple of kinds of chicory endive lettuces. Broadleaf, Batavian, and Salad King. Both of these endive and chicories, they typically will do a little bit better in slightly warmer weather, not a ton better. So I'm gonna try to grow these and see how well they do. I'm gonna start some and try to grow them as heads now. But, and I'll do that in my high tunnel under shade cloth. But I may have to grow those in the fall to get heads. Otherwise I can grow those as baby greens. I like endives in salad mixes. I just think they add a nice flavor. I got one small pack of nectar corn. I don't intend to do a whole lot of corn this year, just because it takes up so much space. And the yield of corn for the space of growing it, in my opinion, is not necessarily always worth it. But I usually will grow at least one small area and then we'll eat corn on the cob. You know, we'll grill it a handful of times. And that's like my entire corn farming. I'm not trying to grow just a ton because I don't do just a whole lot of in-ground gardening. And this year I'm actually not growing my in-ground garden nearly as much. I'm gonna do some potatoes, but that's all I'm doing in the ground. And so I'm not intending on doing a lot of corn. That one was listed as a variety that's supposed to be really sweet. So for my purpose of just trying to have fresh corn on the cob a few times, I think it'll be really good. The next thing I got is Malabar red stem spinach. I haven't grown this in some years. I grew it a lot in Arkansas and then it reseeded. I don't think I've ever had it here in my garden in South Carolina. Malabar spinach is not a true spinach. It is a vining plant that will completely cover a trellis, an arch trellis, a wall trellis, whatever you put it on. And it grows these kind of thick leaves that have like some mucilage to them, kind of like okra. And it is, it's a little weird, but it is extremely nutritious. And in a place where when it is really hot, it is hard to grow greens. Malabar spinach is nice because, you know, they're greens that you can saute and put in a quiche or saute with eggs for breakfast. And so that's why I like it. Jeremiah really, really likes this plant. Like he really likes the look of it. And so I'm trying to think of a place that I can put this, that it will serve the purpose of food if we want to eat some of it, but that it also serves the purpose of being ornamental. We're talking about potentially building some like wall trellises on some areas where we want to make the garden feel a little more enclosed and Malabar spinach is kind of what I had in mind for those. Something that would just really cover it. If nothing else, it's also just a great animal fodder to be able to feed them. It grows so fast. And I mean, you can cut it back and it just keeps going. I put it, the way I have used Malabar spinach the most is blending it in with smoothies because it does add a nice mouthfeel to smoothies because of that mucilage, it just kind of makes them thicker. But then I'm also getting that nutrition in my kids and they're none the wiser. I got two different kinds of okra. This one is probably the thing that I was most excited about in this entire seed order. It's called French Quarter Pink and it is hot pink. It is a hot pink okra. I am really, really excited to grow this. I love okra. I am pretty non-discriminatory in the okra I will grow. I've truly never met an okra that I didn't like. Some of them definitely get woody faster. I hope this is not the case with this one. I hope that this one, if this one is tender and hot pink, I will just be so happy. This stands to also become just like a forever thing in my garden. So that's definitely happening. It's like a real pink. It doesn't look red. And the plants they said are compact. Like they only get up to like 30 inches tall. So my thought for that was that would be really, really good for growing inside a raised garden bed. So I'm very excited for that. The next one is called Blondie okra. And it's a very, very pale green. I just never seen it before. And I thought, well, that's interesting because these are two okras that I've never grown. And they will be the two okras that I grow this year. I have one that's a local heirloom called Kibler okra. Those seeds I don't think are widely available. And it does wonderfully here. So good. But the thing is, is that I don't necessarily need to grow just like gobs of volume. I usually will freeze a good bit of okra for frying out of season. And then we eat it a lot fresh. I grill okra like, I mean, sometimes daily in the summer, just because it comes on so much. But I definitely like to have a lot of it. But like one time we grew like, I mean, several 60 feet wide, probably 30 feet deep of okra. And I mean, there was so much I couldn't, I couldn't even harvest it fast enough. There was no way I would just have to spend like at least an hour and a half a day harvesting okra. And I was just like, well, this is silly. I don't need that much. So I'm going to focus on these two this year. I think that it will give us plenty. Maybe I'll do just like a few plants of the Kibler just to make sure that we have the extra volume. Cause I don't know how these are going to do, but I bet I've honestly also never met an okra that does not really perform very well in the South. That's just kind of the ideal conditions for it. This is interesting. Another new thing for me. I've never grown peanuts before. These are just, they're called jumbo peanuts. They had a few different varieties of peanuts and I debated on which kinds to get, but I decided to just try one that was listed as one that just like was productive and did well. They're large. I'm going to have to do some research to like even figure out how to do this because I've just, I've never grown them before. I have one raised garden bed, but I've grown tomatoes in the last couple of years. It's one of like kind of my medium sized beds near my pavilion and it doesn't do well. Like some things do well in there, but high nitrogen things like tomatoes, things that lack a lot of nitrogen, they just do not do well. So I've already planted some beans in that bed. I'm going to put peanuts in that bed. A friend of mine actually brought that up and said, oh, that'd be a good place to put those peanuts because I had mentioned I need to work on that soil. I'm moving the tomato trellis out away from there. And I'm going to plant these. Peanuts are nitrogen fixers. You know, George Washington Carver, if you've never read the story of that, they will really help heal soil within a season. So what you do is you grow the plants, you harvest the peanuts, and then you just cut the plants off at the soil and leave all the roots in and all of the nitrogen that those plants stored in the roots will actually release into your soil and it helps rebuild it. So we're going to try that with these. Okay, the last thing I got is this stack of flower seeds. They had some really gorgeous mixes of flower seeds. Now, some of these, you'll just have to go look at their sites to kind of like see what all they look like because they have some interesting names. But I got, nope, that's a Cosmo. I got four different kinds of zinnias. The first is Queenie Lime Orange. The Queen Lime mix of zinnias. There's Queen Lime Red, Queen Lime Peach, Queen Lime Orange. This is Queenie Lime Orange. They've been on the market for the last several years and they've gone all over the place. They're just really pretty. They are just like really like antique-y colors. They're some of my favorite zinnias. So I got a pack of those. They also had a few mixes. One was called Berry Tart and it was, as you can imagine, like shades of pink and red. One was called Cherry Perfusion, which was like really like dark red mix. And then one was called Peach Cobbler. So I'm sure you can imagine what those look like. And I just thought they were so beautiful. I'm gonna grow, I don't know where I'm gonna put them because the areas I intended for zinnias, most of them are already sown with other zinnias. But I bet we can figure it out. I might have to make some more space. Also, I got a few different kinds of Cosmos. Pika Tea was one. These are all Cosmos that I've never grown these exact varieties. I've probably grown some that are similar, but Pika Tea is really pretty. It has like, it looks colored. You know like when you color in a coloring book and you like darkly shade in the outside of the outline and then you fill it in? That's what this Cosmos looked like. One is called Rose Bon Bon. It's a double click, so that means that it's double petaled. Whereas like a regular Cosmo just has like one single layer, this has two. And so they're a lot fuller. This is like a bubblegum pink. It's really pretty. And the last is called Dazzler and it is like a fuchsia. It's a single layer Cosmo, but the flower's really big and has like this really bright orange center and like really vibrant fuchsia, hot pink flower. And so I was thinking that these three would be really, really pretty planted together and would make some really pretty arrangements together because you would have, you know, the one that looks colored, the Pika Tea, it's those same shades of pink, but here they're just separate. So that's what I was thinking there. And then I also got a mix of Buddleia. It's D-A-V-I-D-I-I, Davidi, I don't know. But it's multiple shades of purple and white Buddleia, which, you know, Buddleia is butterfly bush. And butterfly bushes get really big. Like they can get like six to eight feet and it produces these panicles, like these really big, large clusters of flowers that go along. These are supposed to get up to 12 inches. I'm not 100% sure where in the world I'm even gonna put this. Because I have a butterfly bush, now the one I have, I need to do a little bit more research on this. I just thought it was really pretty and grabbed it. And then like afterwards I was thinking about it and I'm like, mm, I'm not 100% sure like what would be the most responsible place to put that. I like that they do this in their packages. They give you the package, but for the really tiny seeds that are in a separate little envelope, they're really small. Yeah, I have a big butterfly bush in front of my house and it is a monster. I have to cut it back every year. I imagine you could let this grow for a year and then just rip it out. So yeah, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with that. It's really pretty though. Maybe, maybe I have a new area in my cottage garden that needs to be filled. Maybe I could do that. So that's my seed haul. What do you guys think? Definitely added a lot of things that I didn't have. And I am really excited to get these things growing. Thank you for hanging out with me today. I will put a link and share any coupon code that this company was willing to give my viewers. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed this. God bless you. Until next time.