SeedBroadcast Report for 2014

“It is not enough to save heritage seeds.

The culture of those people to whom each seed belongs must be kept alive along with seeds and their cultivation.

Not in freezers or museums

But in their own soil and our daily lives.”

- Martín Prechtel. The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic

People and seeds have long been intertwined in a complex field of relations. Throughout history plants have cycled from seed to seed and humans have interjected their desire to be a part of this process, selecting, storing, and growing out these plants year after year for millennia. This relationship was fed with an intention towards care and resiliency, to nurture not only people, but also a polyculture community of the familiar and an intentional community of plants, animals, humans, among the earth. Relatively recently this intention has shifted towards engineering botanical processes to build mono-agricultural empires, create populations of dependent passivity, and dominate the more than human.

Compartiendo Semillas en Anton Chico Program and prayers for rain

Since 2011, SeedBroadcast has been examining these territories through performative engagements as artists, farmers, gardeners, teachers, and collective operatives, while rethinking the term agri-Culture. Project concepts and methodologies are founded in a space of the grassroots, where culture, creativity, collaboration, and agency are coupled with open/free-source processes, seeds, agro-ecology, rhizomatic networks, and most importantly the relationships and stories that bring these all together.

During 2014 programming, SeedBroadcast initiated Seed Story Workshops and SWAP. These two new projects grew with local, regional, and national partners to extend the reach of Seed Story Broadcasting potential, while facilitating the active participation of communities from the inside out. SeedBroadcast also continued to engage local and regional agri-Culture and seeds through the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station (MSSBS) as it traveled across New Mexico and Southern Colorado. The SeedBroadcast agri-Culture Journal grew tremendously in 2014, with Spring and Autumn editions which brought together seed wisdom from backyards, gardens, and farms locally and globally. It was a year of wisdom, support, and action, globa-locally!



The Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station (MSSBS) spent 2014 in partnership with regional seed libraries, farmers, gardeners, schools, and at public events recording and broadcasting seed stories, sharing resources, pollinating open-source seed networks, and blogging from the field. The blogging is instrumental in reporting these events and honoring the efforts of these communities and individuals in their food and seed sovereignty efforts. This is also the first platform for broadcasting Seed Stories. Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station (MSSBS) Blog can be found at: http://seedbroadcast.blogspot.com

Anton Chico seed keepers, Marianita and Pat, share seeds and stories at the 2014 Compartiendo las Semillas en Anton Chico, which Fodder Project Collaborative Research Farm, SeedBroadcast, and Pearl Maestas co-founded in 2013.

Smuggling tactics for sharing tomato seeds internationally: stash them inside a vellum tablet for architects and ship via postal service to nourish a global/grassroots seed network.

The 2014 regional MSSBS tour took us to seed exchanges, seed libraries, agri-Cultural gatherings, and out to peoples’ farms and gardens across New Mexico and Southern Colorado. We partnered with organizations and individuals to present the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station where we distributed open-pollinated seeds, recorded seed stories, and broadcast seed stories. Locations included, our home base of Anton Chico, as well as, Mora, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Tucson, Mancos, Dolores, Ridgway, Telluride, and Westcliff. Throughout these travels, we met people from all walks of life and all ages excited about the creative capacity of seed stories and interested in cultivating seed stories in their own lives and communities. Here are some images and seed stories from our 2014 Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station Tour.

SeedBroadcasting at the Albuquerque Premiere of Open Sesame: The Story of Seeds, a feature film that we are in.

MSSBS at University of New Mexico Earth Day Celebration and Sustainability Expo, broadcasting and recording Seed Stories. Albuquerque, NM.

MSSBS at Santa Fe Public Schools Special Planting Day at New Mexico Land Office where students gathered seeds, listened to seed stories, recorded seed stories, and contributed to the Seed Story Bulletin Board with fantastic seed drawings inside the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station. Santa Fe, NM.

MSSBS partnered up with the very first Public Seed Library in New Mexico to celebrate and shout-out their opening! ABC Seed Library at Juan Tabo Public Library, where librarian Brita Sauer has been building seed saving capacity across the Albuquerque Public Library System. We shared our MSSBS resources, broadcast and recorded seed stories, and shared seeds. Albuquerque, NM.

MSSBS at the Montezuma School to Farm at Dolores Elementary School sharing seeds, seed stories, and seed saving inspiration. Dolores, CO.

Here are some selected Seed Stories from the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting 2014 Tour. You can also find more Seed Stories online at:
https://soundcloud.com/seedbroadcast

















In early 2014, we were invited to present SeedBroadcast at Luna Community College in Las Vegas, NM. This opportunity allowed us to explore yet another collaborative and generative Seed Story process where we cultivated group conversations around seeds and seed stories. This led to the fruition of Seed Story Workshops. We were invited by New Mexico Land Office and Santa Fe Public Schools, the Santa Fe Children’s Museum, Institute of American Indian Arts, and Native Seed/SEARCH to lead Seed Story Workshops with their students and programs.

Seed Story workshops are an expansive frame for building capacity through collaboration and solidarity, while enabling others to learn how to reach out into their communities to support seed stories. During these workshops we share the SeedBroadcast video, Letter from a SeedBroadcaster, and Seed Stories we have recorded. We then circle round for conversations about Seed Stories. After this, we have participants go through a series of creative exercises, writing, drawing, and telling stories. Then at the end, participants record each others’ stories and share them back with the group. This very simple, yet profound work has led to several expansive collaborations across the country and world, from New Mexico to Arizona, and Cleveland, Ohio to India. It has also opened up a deep partnership with the Institute of American Indian Arts to assist in the creation of their community Seed Story Library.

Here is a Seed Story of Listening and Thanks by Elizabeth Pantoha from our Seed Story Workshop at Native Seed/SEARCH:

Another of SeedBroadcast’s various dispersal, broadcasting, and collaborative tactics is the bi-annual SeedBroadcast agri-Culture Journal, a newspaper we cultivate, print, and distribute throughout the year. The intention of this journal is to activate a forum of exchange to intensify the discourse around seeds, food, and grassroots action. Contributors include farmers, gardeners, activists, artists, cooks, educators, and others concerned with the state of seeds and food. In 2014 we printed 7000 copies of the Spring and Autumn editions and distributed these freely around New Mexico through the MSSBS and through contributors. We also share these as downloadable pdf’s on our website at:
http://www.seedbroadcast.org/SeedBroadcast/SeedBroadcast_agriCulture_Journal.html

Finding ways to build collaborative partnerships beyond our region has led us to a new experimental platform called SWAP. The kick-off for this project occurred in the heart of corn country, in Iowa. It was in partnership with an organization called Exuberant Politics and directed by local farmer and artist, Carolyn Scherf. SWAP shared the technological Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station structure as an experimental pop-up “grow-kit” to interrogate agri-Culture and local issues. Local community members used it to record seed stories, bring awareness to issues of GMO, pesticide drift, seed saving, and help inspire local open-source networks. Events took place in Iowa City, Decorah, Ely, and Cedar Rapids. Carolyn blogged from the SeedBroadcast social media network and she sent raw Seed Story recordings back to us in New Mexico to edit and broadcast.

Here is one of the Seed Stories from Laura Krause talking about the challenges of producing open-pollinated, organic corn seed in GMO laden cornbelt.



SeedBroadcast Media Platforms:
http://www.seedbroadcast.org
http://seedbroadcast.blogspot.com
https://soundcloud.com/seedbroadcast
https://www.facebook.com/seedshare

We had tremendous growth in 2014. Here is a list of our 2014 Partners...and many apologies if we forgot anyone! Please let us know!

ABC Seed Library, Juan Tabo Public Library, Albuquerque, NM
Albuquerque BioPark, Albuquerque, NM
Earth Day Santa Fe, NM
Fodder Project Collaborative Research Farm, Anton Chico, NM
Gaia Gardens, Santa Fe, NM
Guadalupe County Extension Service, NM
Guild Cinema, Albuquerque, NM
Homegrown Santa Fe, NM
Institute of American Indian Arts, NM
Luna Community College, Las Vegas, NM
Mora Seed Library, Mora, NM
New Mexico Acequia Association, NM
New Mexico Land Office, Santa Fe, NM
Santa Fe Children’s Museum, NM
Santa Fe Public Schools, NM
Santa Rosa NRCS, NM
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
UNM Sustainabilities Program, Albuquerque, NM
Mancos Seed Library, Mancos, CO
Montezuma School to Farm, Dolores, CO
Ridgway Seed Library, Ridgeway, CO
Southwest Institute for ResiLience (SWIRL), Telluride, CO
Telluride Institute, CO
Telluride MountainFilm, CO
Westcliff Seed Library, Westcliff, CO
Hummingbird Project, Cleveland, Ohio
Native Seed/SEARCH, Tucson, AZ
Carolyn Scherf, Iowa
Exuberant Politics, Iowa City, Iowa
Legion Arts, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Public Space One, Iowa City, Iowa
Seed Savers Exchange, Decorah, Iowa

2014-15 Press
Cindy Conner, Seed Libraries and other means of keeping seeds in the HANDS of the PEOPLE, New Society Publishers, BC, Canada, 2014
Elizabeth Shores, “Art and Ecology,” Edible – Food as Art, Issue 36, Feb/March 2015.
Jeanette Hart-Mann, “SeedBroadcast Featured at MountainFilm Ice Cream Social,” TellurideInside.
May 17, 2014.
Jeanette Hart-Mann and Chrissie Orr, “SeedBroadcast,” Here, La Frontera/Borderlands, 2014.
Open Sesame: The Story of Seeds. Sean Kaminsky. Open Pollinated Productions, 2014. Feature
Film.
Renata Christen, “Seed Libraries in Iowa,” The Heritage Farm Companion, Summer 2014.
Seth Cagin. “The SeedBroadcast Project Promotes Deeper Awareness of Seeds.” The
Watch, Vol. 18 No. 21, May 22, 2014.
Tom Yoder, The Zine, KSJD Dryland Community Radio. May 22, 2014. Radio Interview.

We thank everyone we work with and met for this amazing year of SeedBroadcasting....stay tuned for our 2015 Schedule coming very very soon!

“Seeds are the memory of life. They have their own stories and those stories have to be told every year so they do not get forgotten.” - Isaura Andaluz.

Iroquois Corn and the beginnings of a Seed Story Library.

Iroquois corn kernels from the original Haudenosaunee variety.

SeedBroadcast is honored to be partnering with the Sustainable Studies program at Institute for American Indian Arts http://www.iaia.edu/ to activate an interactive Seed Story Library. This vision was spearheaded by Annie Haven McDonnell who is core faculty of the Essential Studies Department and the Chair of the Campus Climate Committee.  Annie invited SeedBroadcast to collaborate on a series of Seed Story workshops to introduce students to the importance of not only saving our traditional seeds but also saving the stories that are encapsulated within them. The process has begun and the students will be collecting seed stories from their communities and working with the campus library to create the IAIA Seed Story Library.
On one of our recent visits to the campus we met with James Thomas Stevens who is the Chair of the Creative Writing program. James is a member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, his Mohawk name is Aronhiótas ,"Where the sky goes up." James graciously shared some of his heritage flint corn along with his story of the resilience of the Iroquois people and this ancient variety of corn  after the destruction of Iroquois villages and crops during the"Burnt Earth Campaign" of 1779.



Both James and Annie are creative beings in their lives, teaching, and they have received many well deserved accolades for their poetry. They are inspired by culture, a deep love of nature and concern for the land they seek to protect.  They observe, listen and truth tell.
 Annie's poem "Seeds"  can be found in the SeedBroadcast Spring agri-Culture Journal http://seedbroadcast.org/SeedBroadcast/SeedBroadcast_agriCulture_Journal_files/SeedBroadcast-Web_Final_1.pdf
SeedBroadcast is looking forward to our continued collaboration and partnership in 2015.
It is an auspicious beginning !

SeedBroadcast agri-Culture Journal, Autumn 2014

 

The latest SeedBroadcast agri-Culture journal is hot off the press. It can be found in printed form at various locations around the nation and on the web at this link:

 

http://www.seedbroadcast.org/SeedBroadcast/SeedBroadcast_agriCulture_Journal_files/SeedBroadcast%20Autumn%202014%20Web_1.pdf

Thank you to all our contributors for making this a diverse and poignant edtion.

Next deadline for submissions is February 2nd, 2015.

Contact us at seedbroadcast@gmail.com

Open call : SeedBroadcast agri-Culture Journal.

SeedBroadcast agri-Culture Journal is a bi-annual collection of poetry, inspired thoughts, essays, photographs, drawings, recipes, How-to’s and wisdom gathered together from a national call out to lovers of local food and seeds.  This journal supports collaboration and the sharing of seeds, stories, resources, and inspiration within local communities and between individuals, while also providing pollination through diversified regional, national, and international internet-media networks.

SeedBroadcast agri-Culture Journal 

http://seedbroadcast.org/SeedBroadcast/SeedBroadcast_agriCulture_Journal.html. 

It is also available in print at various locations and directly from the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station. If you contribute you will receive a stack of printed copies.

                       Contribute! Participate! Propose!

Send us your seed inspired poems, images, photographs, recipes, articles about your work, provocative essays, calls for seed action!

The deadline for the next edition is August 31st 2014.  

Please send your inquiries, proposals, and contributions to seedbroadcast@gmail.com.

Images should be 300 dpi and include a short bio.

We are looking forward to your contributions.

Seed Stories from the New Mexico Land Office

 Here are Seed Stories from several of the fourth graders who attended the special planting celebration for Earth Day at the New Mexico Land Office.

SeedBroadcasting at New Mexico Land Office

The New Mexico Land Office hosted a special planting celebration for Earth Day in April. This event brought together the State Land Commissioner, Ray Powell, Tesuque Pueblo, Agricultural Director, Emigdio Ballon, Jade Leyva and the Community Seed Mural, SeedBroadcast and the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station, and over 75 fourth graders from several Santa Fe Public Schools. This cross generational spectrum would spend the day sharing the knowledge of ancient seeds, cherishing the beauty of seeds, making sound waves with local seed stories, and in general and with specific intention planting these seeds of wisdom for the future.

During the event, Camilla Romero, who works at the Land Office in Accounting, was spending her day outside in the circular landscape beds along the building. She worked with all the fourth graders to create a healing garden of culinary herbs, medicinal herbs, and local vegetables, while discussing the uses of these plants and their history. This demonstration garden is meant to inspire curiosity about plants and our relationship to them through acknowledging the botanical culture which heals, nourishes, and brings such diverse beauty to the world.

Here is Camilla’s Seed Story:

Seed: A Collective Voice, Community Seed Mural completed in 2013 was on view in the Land Office Gallery for all to view, while at the front of the building the newest seed mural was underway with students helping to secure seeds to the color coded boards.

Right along Old Santa Fe Trail, the main street in front of the Land Office, a small rectangular urban garden was underway with the three sisters, which is an indigenous polyculture of corn, beans, and squash. Leading this project was Emigdio Ballon who is a plant geneticist and teacher. He spoke with the students about the importance of these ancient food crops and their cyclical relationship with people from seed to seed. The students then worked with Emigdio to plant the small rows of blue corn and squash.

SeedBroadcast had a particularly special time with the groups of students during this whirlwind Seed Story shindig. These kids were filled with great ideas and a knack to tell stories. Many contributed fantastic drawings of seeds, favorite plants, gardens, and botanical ecology to the SeedBroadcast bulletin board, while others put down a few notes on the marker board inside the van.

Seeds were the highlight of the day.

There is something special in the air when you ask a kid if they would like to take seeds home to plant and they mob you with gleaming eyes of excitement, ready to head home with a handful of seeds and get to work in the dirt. Beans, corn, melons, peas, sorghum, cilantro….and others ended up in the pockets of fourth graders to be planted somewhere in a Santa Fe backyard and be shared in bounty through a child’s love of possibility. Many of the students chose varieties or types that they liked to eat, but several had a discerning eye towards something more…there was something about the seed that spoke to them and said take me home.

A very special thanks and shout out to Max Otwell who came by to help out in the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station. Without you it would have been extreme seedy madness. Thank you!

SeedBroadcasting at Pollinator Day, Albuquerque BioPark

Young seed researcher.

Pollination is the process by which pollen is transfered from the anther (male part) to the stigma
(female part) of the plant, there by enabling fertilization and reproduction. This takes place in the angiosperms, the flower bearing plants. (Definition taken from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollination).  Only about 10% of flowering plants are pollinated without the assistance of animals this is called Abiotic pollination and the most common form is by the wind.  The more common form of pollination is Biotic which requires pollinators. There are about 200,000 species of pollinators most of which are insects.

One of the discovery stations at the BioPark

 On the summer solstice the Albuquerque BioPark http://www.cabq.gov/culturalservices/biopark held its Pollinator Day providing many discovery stations and experiential exhibits to inform visitors of the importance of these pollinators to keep our eco-systems healthy and resilient.

Paika with her seed drawing            The BioPark Pollinator Garden

SeedBroadcast was invited to participate by Tallie Segal the education co-ordinator who shared her time and stories with us.



Tallie explained to us that the BioPark is actively saving the seeds of the Sacramento prickly poppy
http://nmrareplants.unm.edu/rarelist_single.php?SpeciesID=14 which is an endangered species and the New Mexico beardtongue, http://nmrareplants.unm.edu/rarelist_single.php?SpeciesID=137 an important host for rare Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterflies. The park has a designated seed bank area for this conservation and works in co operation with the U.S. Fish and Wild Life Service, the state of New Mexico and the University of New Mexico to re-seed native habitats.

Exploring how seeds move!

Tallie also provided SeedBroadcast with three enthusiastic interns, who helped to facilitate the running the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station by helping visitors to access the archive of seed stories on the IPads, to looking up and printing seed saving information, helping kids to explore the diversity of seeds and adding to the SeedBroadcast drawing wall, thank you Dominique, Brandon and Renne. Brandon and Renne also shared their own seed stories:

 
As flowers attract the pollinators, SeedBroadcast attracts the people who are willing the share their seeds of wisdom, then we share this wisdom to keep the cycle alive and resilient. The following is one of these wonderful wisdom stories and if you have not visited the Albuquerque BioPark you should.

SeedBroadcasting at Westcliffe Seed Library

The last stop on the Rocky Mountain Tour was to the Westcliffe Seed Library at the West Custer County Library in Westcliffe, Colorado.

“A Collaborative Effort of People, Non-Profits and The Public Library”

The Westcliffe Seed Library began in 2010 with the joint effort of the library director, local grower Penn Parmenter, and Colorado State University Extension Office. It brought together donated seed from BBB Seed, Tomato Bob’s, Seed Trust, and High Mountain Seeds.

All this seed provides the largest inventory available, but tucked away inside the custom made library cabinet are several packets of locally grown and saved flower, herbs, and vegetable seeds.

Like many seed library systems they use “Easy” “Medium” and “Difficult” to denote the challenge of saving seed from particular varieties and use a check out system to keeping track of the seeds and patrons.

The curation of this living archive is truly a collaborative effort between many interested gardeners, seed savers, librarians, and educators. Being local, growing local, and honoring the local is key. And this does not only apply to the seeds. It is also evident in its location among the stacks of local history, local telephone books, and local references. Local matters here.

Situated next to the Seed Library was a shelf with a potted Hoya plant and a framed picture, which seemed uncanny given the connection of sharing plants, seeds, and stories.

"This plant had grown from slips shared between historic neighbors in Silver Cliff and Westcliffe. Here is the story of this Hoya and its originator Lew Key: “This plant was grown from a slip taken from a plant that stood in the Silver Cliff laundry of Lew Kee. The Hoya plant slip was sent from California by Carolyn Anderson. Her mother (Nell) Cornelia Wadeigh attended the Westcliffe School during the time her father was the Westcliffe train station manager. Mr Key gave Nell’s mother a slip from his original plant and she in turn gave slips to her children and they to their children. These plants have traveled across the United States in places that Lew Key never dreamed of traveling.”

Current library director, Amy Moulton sat down with SeedBroadcast and shared her thoughts on the Westciffe Seed Library and their goals to make it grow. Here is Amy’s seed story:

SeedBroadcasting with Penn and Cord Parmenter

In 2012, right before the Mobile Seed Story Broadcasting Station national tour from New Mexico to Vermont, I spoke with Cord Parmenter on the phone and he talked about the many exciting high-altitude crop adaptations and greenhouse experiments he and his wife Penn were conducting. But, the plan to kick of the tour with them in Westcliffe, Colorado had to be changed at the last minute due to retrofits to the Broadcasting Station and time constraints.

But finally, two years later, on the last leg of the Rocky Mountain Tour, SeedBroadcast meandered (slowly) up over the Continental Divide and eastwards towards Westcliffe, Colorado, to meet up with these two joyous and dedicated small scale, four season, extreme gardeners, seed savers, and greenhouse innovators.

Penn and Cord’s garden began in 1991 with a camper, woodstove, and mixed wooded-meadow land in the Wet Mountains at 8120’ above sea level. With determination to prove wrong the accusations of assured failure, Penn states, “We grow food here because we were told we could not.”

And this, they have surely done.

Over the last 23 years they have experimented with designing and building thermal-mass greenhouses, implementing biomimicry as an efficient and provocative garden teacher, passing on this knowledge to others through workshops and lectures, and developing high-altitude corn, pumpkin, and Penn’s real passion, tomatoes. This has also encouraged a life-long relationship with their plants as seed keepers.

Cord recollects his first inspiration for his greenhouse design from a book called “Food and Heat Producing Solar Greenhouse,” which someone had long ago borrowed and never returned. He remembered as much as he could and began building experimental prototypes in the garden and tweaking these to accommodate new design innovations.

The basic premise is to create a greenhouse that requires no additional heating or cooling from resource intensive outside energy inputs, such as electricity or gas. The key to this passive system is the sun, a southern facing structure with angled glazing, and the back wall lined with 50 gallon barrels of water to regulate high desert temperature fluctuations. These basic elements can pull tomatoes through a -31 degree F winter night!

This simple structure is not only hyper-efficient, it can also maximize growing potential with both permanent perennial beds and hanging gardens accommodating hundred of start flats and pots.

They have also designed many other passive structures that function as permanent bed high tunnels, half tunnels, boxes, and understory beds and hanging baskets, which are protected by the natural canopy of evergreens.

In their permanent growing areas, Penn and Cord use John Jeavon’s Bio-Intensive method of growing which allows for closer plantings, creates resilient soils, and retains moisture, reducing the need to water in this arid mountain climate.

Penn’s seed saving adventure began with her desire to grow tomatoes where everyone else gives up, in the high mountains. She attended Seed School in 2010, came home and harvested over 10 lbs of seeds, and never looked back. She now grows over 130 varieties and offers her adapted seed for sale through her seed company called High Mountain Seeds, through Seeds Trust, at the local Westcliffe Seed Library, and she is now a part of the newly formed Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance.

She said, “I didn’t know I was a seed saver until it happened to me.” And this begins her life long acquaintance with not only seed, but also other seed keepers around the world.

Here is a one of many seed stories that Penn shared. This one about Pop’s Tomato, an heirloom tomato entrusted to her and the journey it took to reconnect with its lost heritage.



You can also hear more on this story at A Sense of Place, Episode 2: Pop's Tomato, by Sarah Stockdale at http://krcc.org/post/sense-place-episode-2-pops-tomato

Penn not only grows out all these tomatoes and seeds she also is developing an online archive with images and descriptions. She relishes this time sitting down with each tomato in hand and tasting its delicate nature, while poetically naming its characteristics.

And with all her success growing and adapting Candy Mountain Sweet Corn, Kinko 6” Chantenay Carrots, Northern Bush Pumpkin, and a motley crew of tomatoes, all this effort does not always end in success. Sometimes failures are also important, teaching us to stretch our thinking and our practices to learn and grow with seed.

In 2013, Penn agreed to grow out the instantaneously famous Carl’s Glass Gem Corn for Seeds Trust. With an unusually cool and rainy summer all the crops where thriving in green. As Penn said, “It was bizarre, but the corn seemed unconcerned about its destiny to reproduce and make seed. It just seemed happy growing and swaying in the breeze.” By late August and with the relatively short growing season at 8120’ Penn began to worry when no tasseling occurred. It just kept growing and growing, until a hail storm became its destiny, stimulating this corn's need to get moving, tassel, pollinate, and make seed…..or was it Penn’s Corn Dance?

In the end, it was too late. Even with the effort to build an instantaneous greenhouse around it, all the corn grew, tasseled, and began pollinating, but not before rains and the heavy cold of fall settled.

Penn relates this as extremely devastating, but not the end of her effort. In fact, in 2014 she is planting another trial of Carl’s Glass Gem and she is determined to keep trying what might seem impossible.

“If a ponderosa can grow out of rock, you can grow seed in soil” – Penn Parmenter

To keep up with Penn and Cord visit their garden blog at: http://www.pennandcordsgarden.com