Saturday, January 24, 2015

Local Saturday - Italian Seeds

A snowy morning in upstate New York.

It's time for some seed daydreaming.

One of the catalogs we ordered was called Seeds from Italy

It advertises itself as "Heirloom Italian Garden Seeds" and, since my husband's ethnic background is Italian, we thought it would be interesting to see what an Italian seed catalog contained.
Some of the seeds are organic ("biologica").  Most, not all, are open pollinated.  Many of the veggies are familiar to those of us in the United States, but others are not a familiar part of our gardens.

Like capers. ("cappero")

Or a zucchini bred to produce mostly flowers.

Or parsley root, a parsley that produces a root that is also edible.  (It is not the same thing as parsnips).  Years ago, I grew parsley root. A supermarket here sells it seasonally in November and December.

This is the fun part of gardening - the dreaming, and the ordering.  I don't know if we will order any of these Italian seeds, but their Italian soaps are interesting, too.

The hard part of gardening is yet to come.  With the ground frozen, there is still plenty of time to dream.

Do you garden?

7 comments:

  1. Oh, how I cannot wait to start ordering seeds and preparing for my spring/summer vegetable and herb garden! Thanks for the reminder of what is yet to come. :)

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  2. Alana,
    I don't but I wish you could have known my sister. She loved to garden and they had lots of unusual vegetables. All organic. You would have had a lot to talk about. I really enjoyed your post, especially about the daydreaming while the ground is still frozen. =) I like that image, and heaven knows I do enough daydreaming about life in general in the winter. It seems to be the time to do it.
    Amy

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  3. I don't but I would love to. I've always talked about having a garden. In fact, a local church wanted to put a community garden in my backyard and I thought that would be nice. Hopefully they will be able to start this year :)

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  4. Good luck with your garden. Unfortunately gardening isn't one of my strengths or passions.

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  5. That parsley root sounds wonderful. I've never sen it here in England, although we have many Italian veggies available. I must look out for it at the market stall.

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  6. It would be nice to have a garden but has never been practical with my being back in the States most of the summer, and I think I have finally accepted that it may not be for me or I would have done it by now. I really admire people who have one because I know it is plenty of work -- or pleasure, depending on your point of view!

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  7. I love flowers but never tried my hand in gardening. Don't have that passion. :)

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