1 Dear Valued Customers & Gardening Friends, 4 Easy Ways to Order Welcome to our 2020 catalog! Online www.SouthernExposure.com This year we welcome 25 new Our online store contains everything varieties to the catalog, and welcome in our catalog and more! Browse our website or back other varieties. save time with our online Quick Order form. Some interesting new varieties: Mason Marvel, Ph. D tomato (p. 52) Phone (540) 894-9480 is a tomato selected for more than 55 Our phone hours are: years for great flavor and vigor. 9 am–5 pm, M–F, January 1–May 31, and Yellowstone (p. 12) is a sweet and 11 am–3 pm, M–F, June 1–December 31 vigorous yellow carrot, great for (EST). making rainbow carrot salads. Chou Please have your order and credit card ready. Cheh Red watermelon (p. 58) is a Chinese variety that was the favorite Fax (540) 266-1021 in our 2019 watermelon tastings. Fax your order anytime 24/7. Please use the Looney (p. 15) is a rare old Southern order form on page 87 or download one at white dent corn famous for its great www.SouthernExposure.com flavor. Jaloro (p. 43) is a lovely yellow weeks, as a way of breaking down Mail P.O. Box 460 jalapeño pepper that really impressed us in our 2018 vegetation faster without machinery Mineral, VA, 23117 jalapeño trials, with big, early yields of colorful peppers. (see The Market Farmer, p. 78). And Please use the order form on page 87. And Lion’s Ear flower (p. 69) is a huge plant with orange we set aside a field to try out no-till flowers that’re well-loved by butterflies and growing, doing a LOT of mulching, Complete ordering instructions & hummingbirds. thanks to a neighbor we’ve been conditions can be found on page 86. Back this year are Red Metamorph marigolds (p. getting a lot of wood chips from. The 69), Violet’s Multicolored Butterbeans (p. 9), Kevin’s field’s doing well so far (it’s in the Early Orange sweet pepper (p. 40), and Mayo Indian group photo on this page) – we’ll see amaranth (p. 74). We were fortunate to have had pretty how it does in future years! A new book this year, The good weather this summer here in our area of central Organic No-Till Farming Revolution (p. 77), has Brief Index Virginia – mostly about the right amount of heat and interesting ideas from growers in many different areas Complete index on page 91. rain. August and September were hotter than usual, and trying out different techniques. October was mild – frost was two weeks late. Climate change is worrying. On our farm, there’s a Vegetables......................... 5–59 2017 and 2018 had been cooler and wetter than back pasture that we’ve never kept up with well enough usual here, so for 2019, we mostly erred on the side of to get good hay off of; we’re letting those 5 acres go back Cotton ............................. 67–68 planting into raised beds for all our crops, to make sure to meadows and woods, so as to provide more wild Garlic .............................. 20–21 that we wouldn’t have crops drowning and rotting. So, habitat, and help offset deforestation elsewhere. Mushrooms...................... 30 of course, we mostly didn’t need to do this… but some Ira’s been busy writing! Her book Growing heavy rains in September and October did have us glad Vegetables for the Southeast continues to be popular, so Perennial Onions.............. 35 that some crops were still in their raised beds! her publisher asked her to write some state-by-state Herbs .............................. 60–65 Elsewhere, growers didn’t have it as good – heavy versions of the book. In March 2020 the local versions spring rains in the Midwest made it hard to get corn for Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Flowers ............................ 66–73 crops in, and Arkansas had heavy rains as well. and Tennessee will be published – see p. 77 for more Grains & Cover Crops...... 74–77 Tennessee folks were super dry in late summer, and out info! West, all the growers we know had early fall frosts As always, we had a great time at 2019’s Heritage Books & DVDs ............... 77–80 hurting their crops. Harvest Festival at Monticello. We hope you’ll join us at Supplies............................ 80–81 Besides growing seed crops, we enjoyed getting to next year’s festival in September. See page 4 for more! trial a lot of new varieties this summer, including beans, Mixes & Sampler Packs.... 82 flowers, peppers, okra, and tomatoes – look for a lot of We wish you an abundant harvest! Potatoes ........................... 83 interesting new varieties to come in the next few years! – All the Folks at SESE In recent years, we’ve been trying to Sweet Potatoes ................. 84 reduce the amount of tillage on our farm, for a variety =of reasons (conserving Our Events See our full calendar at Seed Savers Exchange nutrients, using less fuel, keeping more SouthernExposure.com or like us on Conference July 17–18, 2020 carbon stored in the soil, etc.) We’ve been Calendar Facebook. We donate 10% of winter Decorah, Iowa seedsavers.org using tarps to cover fields, usually for 2-4 event sales (through March 21) to Virginia Biological Farming benefit the Organic Seed Alliance. Polyface Farm Mother Earth Conference January 11–13 News Fair July 17–18, 2020 Roanoke, VA vabf.org Swoope, VA Mother Earth News Fair motherearthnewsfair.com Future Harvest CASA February 15–16 Belton,TX Garden Planner Cultivate The Chesapeake motherearthnewsfair.com Heritage Harvest Festival at SouthernExposure.com/gardenplanner Foodshed January 16–18 Monticello September TBD Organic Seed Growers Charlottesville, VA Hyattsville, MD Conference futureharvestcasa.org February 12–15 heritageharvestfestival.com Could you use help with garden planning? Corvalis, OR seedalliance.org Our simple, powerful online tool helps Southern Sustainable Mother Earth News Fair manage your garden throughout the season Agriculture Working Group 2020 OAK Conference March September 25–27 Seven oak-ky.org and from year to year. (SSAWG) Conference January 6–7 Louisville, KY Springs, PA 1 Easily map plantings 22–25 Little Rock, AR Organic Growers School motherearthnewsfair.com 1 Organize crop rotations ssawg.org Spring Conference March 7–8 Mother Earth News Fair 1 Twice-a-month email planting reminders PASA Farming for the Future Asheville, NC October TBD Topeka, KS organicgrowersschool.org 1 Order seeds directly from the planner Conference Feb 5–8 Lancaster, motherearthnewsfair.com Try it free for a week – then you decide PA pasafarming.org Nashville Mother Earth News Annual Sustainable whether to subscribe for just $29 per year. Georgia Organics Conference Fair May 16–17 Nashville, TN Agriculture Conference, CFSA motherearthnewsfair.com February 7–8 Athens, GA November TBD Durham, NC 2 georgiaorganics.org carolinafarmstewards.org remarkable world of heirloom tomatoes, told Remembering Carolyn Male their stories and is beautifully photographed. It is June 26, 1939–June 14, 2019 such a pleasure to have contributed seeds to By Craig LeHoullier, North Carolina Tomato Man & author of Epic Tomatoes many of the varieties that she featured in the book. My heirloom seed-strewn friendship with When it became difficult for Carolyn to start Carolyn Male began in 1990 with a letter that her seedlings, she still wished to grow her many arrived in the mail. It was a Seed Savers Ex- recent heirloom tomato acquisitions. Some of change request, and the beginning of a long her garden friends started plants and shipped and fruitful friendship. Carolyn was a New them to her to grow. In 2011, Sue and I traveled York gardener just dipping her toes into the to Massachusetts for our niece’s college gradua- SSE herself at that time, putting our heirloom tion. We chose a route that took us to Carolyn’s paths in proximity; my long-time association house, allowing an in-person plant delivery and with SSE began just a few years before, in my first chance to meet her face to face. Sue and 1986. Shown below is Carolyn’s profile in the I spent hours there, talking tomatoes and more. 1996 SSE yearbook, showing her typically for “commercial heirlooms” listed by seed com- Above left is a picture of our meeting. folksy and informative style. panies before hybrids became the big thing. We Most recently, Carolyn, with growing physi- Carolyn’s passing in June brought an end to a both found pleasure in reintroducing varieties cal challenges, maintained her presence on the frequently close, sometimes stormy and ultimate- that were thought to be extinct, such as the Liv- internet sharing her knowledge and opinions ly fragile friendship that spanned 29 years and ingston variety Magnus. (which she never ran short of!) and grew what she countless sharing of seeds of all sorts. Mostly, we We co-published the heirloom tomato news- could, helped by local friends. We drifted apart shared lots of seeds. By 2009, Carolyn supplied letter Off the Vine. We always felt like we were in these later years as our lives took very different me with 130 different varieties of tomato seeds. running behind, had no idea really what we were paths - inevitable, but sad, nonetheless. Some real favorites from her generosity include doing (except sharing our parallel passions with Carolyn was part of a stellar group of the SSE Soldacki, Opalka, Eva Purple Ball, Jaune heirloom tomatoes), but it was a fun three years tomato people - Ben Quisenberry, Thane Earle, Flamme, Cuostralee, Sandul Moldovan, Druzba, doing so. (I hope to make the newsletters avail- Faxon Stinnett, Edmund Brown, Gary Staley, Zogola, Orange Strawberry, Indian Stripe and able again someday, perhaps in a small book).