02 Jan - Seed List For The New 2016 Season

It's the New Year and my thoughts turn toward the upcoming growing season. I read somewhere, years a go, a piece about how people who grow crops and raise animals tend to think differently about the passing of the seasons and years. It's not just the loss of 'awareness' of Spring moving into Summer, or Autumn drifting into Winter that so many people today are largely out of touch with. After all, who can blame them given their limited exposure to the 'outside' world? Merely encountering a few second interlude from centrally heated house to air conditioned car or gazing out of an office window isn't enough to experience the seasons on anything more than a cursory level.

No, not just the fading awareness of the seasons then, something more, it's related to the idea of 'expectation'. Most people, in the normal course of events, expect an improvement in their lives; that the economy will improve, that their wages will rise, that they will acquire more worldly goods, that their standard of living will increase. In other words, their expectation is that things will be better than the year before and, that this modern belief is natural and justified. That is not to say that these things will inevitably occur but, the general expectation is that they will happen, that things will be better than the year before.

Those that grow things have a different view, they realise that the weather and environment will impact greatly on what they accomplish over the year. Just because there was an indifferent growing year in 2015, it does not follow that there will be a better one, or a worse one for that matter, in 2016. Growers know that there will be 'good' years, 'indifferent' years and 'bad' years; there is no expectation that things will improve each season. On the contrary, many of us who tend our little plots can relate tales of halcyon growing seasons of yesteryear!

Yes, our growing techniques can improve with experience, our new technologies can help with cultivation and, our seed choices may contribute to a better harvest; nevertheless, we are at the mercy of our environment and all we can do is try and give ourselves the best chance of a bountiful harvest. Our expectations are always tempered by nature.

So then, to 2016. With no expectations of a better year above blind faith and hope in my heart, here's my 2016 seed list:

(Those marked 'new' are a variety I've never used before so are new to me).

Onion
Leek - Musselburgh
Garlic - Germidor (saved cloves)
Onion Sets - Sturon
Spring Onion - White Lisbon

Brassica
Kohl Rabi - White Vienna

Swede - Wilhelmsburger
Cabbage Summer - Primo II
Cabbage Winter - Tundra (new)
Brussels Sprout - Bosworth F1
Kale - Nero Di Toscona

Turnip - Snowball

(Might give Cauliflower - Autumn Giant another go)

Legumes
Broad Bean - Bunyard's Exhibition
Runner Bean - Firestorm self-pollinating (new)
Climbing French Bean - Cobra

Dwarf French Bean - Nautica (new)

Pea - Hurst Green Shaft

Root
Parsnip - Gladiator F1
Beetroot - Detroit II
Carrot Large - Sweet Candle F1 

Carrot Small - Nantes 5
Potato Early - Rocket

Potato Main Crop - Sarpo Mira

Salad
Radish - French Breakfast
Lettuce - Lollo Rossa, Mazur & Iceberg
Sweet Corn - Incredible F1

Spinach (Perpetual) (new) 

Squash
Winter Squash - Turks Turban

Winter Squash - Crown Prince (new)
Butternut Squash - Hunter F1
Pumpkin - Big Max

Pumpkin - Jack O' Lantern
Courgette (gold) - Atena F1

Courgette (green) - Defender F1 (new)

Greenhouse Plants
Tomato - Alicante

Tomato - Super Marmande
Bell Pepper - California Wonder
Cucumber - Marketmore