All 2013 Tomato Seeds Packaged

Here’s the last stack of tomato seeds from the 2013 season, packaged today:

And here are all the seeds (2013 tomato seeds only), roughly sorted:

Lot’s of wonderful new varieties “discovered” among these!  But final sorting, data entry and website work still to come.

Other seed drying and packaging completed in the past few days:

Peppers, lettuce, chard, radish, flowers, eggplant, melons, cucumbers, herbs, okra, amaranth, ground cherry, goji berry, tomatillo, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, celery, spinach, onion, garlic, chives, squash (except a few winter squash), spinach, arugula, other greens, beans, corn and peas.

In 2013 I attempted to expand the business somewhat by contracting some part-time help.  This turned out to be a very bad idea from a financial perspective.  Through 3 quarters, they put in 17% of the hours but took home 98% of the profits.  [This left me with a starvation wage, even by the standards of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – but fortunately my work involves food production so I have not starved…]  Accordingly and regrettably, this means I will be cutting way back on the seedling and vegetable production aspects of the business in 2014, focusing on seeds, and pursuing additional means of income.

 

Stages 4-6

Stage 3 (seed extraction) is done! So the tail end of seed drying, packaging, and organizing are in progress. Data entry will start in earnest shortly, with lists of seed availability posted soon thereafter – hopefully all done by December 25th.

There is still one partially ripe Reverend Morrow’s Long Keeper sitting on the shelf.  Who knows how long it will keep this time around (see post of June 18, 2012).

Status Update – Stage 2 Completed

I just completed Stage 2 of processing tomato seeds for 2013; all tomatoes (except 3 boxes of ripening fruits) are into the fermenting phase:

These 16 boxes (I ran out of containers so several are fermenting in zip-lock bags) represent about another 35 hrs. of intense work.  Since temperatures are very cold now (12° F currently, 5° forecast), seed separation (Stage 4) will have to be done in the garage.

Minus these tomatoes and the 300 or so batches drying on plates, here’s what my tomato seed collection looks like now:

Plenty of data entry and organizing still to do – not to mention winter squash, lettuce, chard, bean and many other types of seeds at various stages of processing.  But at least the most urgent and hardest part is done!