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Thanks for chatting with me yesterday. I am really delighted that you have set up shop, and I’m already recommending you to gardening friends. I’ll shop with you before I spend shipping $ on Seed Savers and multiple catalogs!

I tried to send an e-mail with attached photos to the address on your card, but it bounced. Photos were the different flower forms of Datura stramonium (jimson weed) that occur in the river bank and gravel bar, and silt spoil piles, right below your store; also, the pale pink European Saponaria officinalis, soapwort or Bouncing-bet. Saponaria is not listed in the CA flora; it’s probably a stray or relic from an old riverbank garden. Datura, as you know, is a potent psychotropic (and toxic) plant, widely used in N. American native initiation rituals and European witches’ brews; it’s also famous in literature (Faulkner), and quite ornamental. Soapwort is an herbal detergent, also a fish poison (used like native buckeye, Aesculus californicus).

The “heirloom” tomato I mentioned as having exceptional seedling vigor (of interest for breeding) is ‘Thessaloniki’, which I found in the Totally Tomatoes catalog (www.totallytomatoes.com …pretty interesting selections). Another trait it is claimed to have, also coveted for breeding, is fruit rot resistance after full ripeness. I have a couple extra seedlings you are welcome to try rather than order and start this late.

If you want to test the sales waters for natives with ethnobotanical/herbal uses, or some hard-to-find native seeds, I’d be happy to “dump” my bulk-collected seeds that I tend to collect but can’t really use. Some of the natives include Oenothera elata ssp. hookeri (evening-primrose, from Pacifica; seeds have some herbalist use), Lilium pardalinum (leopard lily, rarely sold, easy from seed; my stock is from Gualala River, very nice forms), Clarkia amoena from Pt Arena area and Jenner, and Cynoglossum grande, hounds-tongue, our native version of forget-me-not. California bay (a tree), Umbellularia californica, has potent antifungal/antimicrobial oils, and bears seed crops every so many years. I could go on….

One last compulsive gardening neighbor offer in the spirit of over-the-fence exchange of cuttings: If you have any interest in some very hardy fuchsia shrubs that are resistant to gall mites (that cause growth deformations in most cultivars), I’ve bred quite a few and have many (potted up, rooted) to give away. After they are a few years old, they require very little water to survive near Caz.

I wish you the best of luck in growth of your start-up enterprise, and I’m excited to have serious horticultural neighbors! Feel free to contact me if I can help with any botanical or horticultural inquiries. I’m sure I’ll see you again.

Peter Baye
Annapolis

I hope that you both are doing well and can’t wait to hear what you both have been up to.

My Hazelnut Trees are doing well and I am planting Chesnut tree this year as well.

Take care,

Gary

Your seed project also sounds amazing. I am living in Rwanda and one of the things I am talking about with some folks is starting a national seed saving program. There are NO seed saving skills here among farmers and most of the seeds that you can buy in town are single generation monsanto seeds. It is such a shame, and the audacity of a company to sell single seeds to people who cannot afford to buy them every year. Ugh.

Anyway, I am contacting you because I am working with some beekeeping associations (who work with beautiful tree-trunk hives around one of the national parks) to get some of their honey into a national market so they can generate some income and keep their beekeeping tradition alive. Though I am not sure we will ever pursue organic certification, we would like to have our trainings include organic methods and record keeping. Where can I find organic standards for apiaries if there aren’t really any organic standards? What standards do you use? And for record keeping, are there some good samples of record keeping for organic hive management. Currently there are no records being kept and so we are starting from scratch. I would really appreciate anything you can pass along. I hope when I come back to the states I can visit you. It sounds like you have some amazing and important stuff going on!

Many thanks,
Molly