VEGETABLE SEEDS Aubergines Beans Beetroot Broccoli & Rapini Brussels Sprouts Cabbage Cauliflower Carrots Celery Chard & Greens for cooking Chilli Peppers Courgettes & Summer Squash Cucumbers, Gherkins & suchlike things Fennel Flowers Grains Kale Leeks Lettuces Melons & Watermelons Mustard Greens (for cooking) Herbs Onions Oriental Salad Greens (also great cooked) Parsnips Peas Pumpkins & Winter Squash Radishes (salad, & cooking types) Salad Vegetables Sweet Corn Sweet Peppers Tomatoes : Bush Types Tomatoes : Vine Types Tomatoes : New Centiflor types Tomatilloes & Groundcherries Turnips Unusual Tubers: Oca & Ulluco Mini-Collections Useful Books   SEEDSAVING SeedSaving Instructions Seedsaving Courses   INFORMATION Read past Newsletters Give us Feedback Browse the Reference Section   PAYMENT

The Real Seed Reference Library: 'How To ....' Guides to help you save your seed & harvest grains As time allows (always busy growing seed!), we add to this section: How to process Amaranth Grain by hand. Making Low-cost Isolation cages for Peppers & Aubergines Threshing Grains with a Rubber Mat Small seed threshing with the rubber mat How to refill those HP deskjet cartridges that insist they're empty What's Ben up to in the Potting Shed? Weird Stuff Yellow Cousa Courgette Project Magic Chard Diversity Chard Early Squash     Some Thoughts on Good and Useful Tools you may not know about OK, this is a short list, but here are a few tools you really should know about. Quite simply, these tools will change your life. The first is a scythe. No, seriously. Modern scythes come in many sizes including small ones specifically designed for the garden. Having fought with various petrol and electric strimmers over the years, it was a complete revelation when we finally tried a scythe just for fun. Two strokes and Ben was convinced. A completely superior tool, and not just for cutting corn. Simon Fairlie from Tinkers Bubble has found some of the last few real scythe manufacturers in Austria. A one-man scythe revival, he's doing a great job. Check out his website at www.thescytheshop.co.uk ! It really helps to be taught by someone, as there is a 'knack' to it, but there is now a how-to-scythe DVD available, Simon might have them. Secondly, a European digging mattock, called an Azada. Not the heavy pointy thing we call a 'mattock' in the UK! Most small-scale peasant farmers in europe have only one tool - and this is it. Hard to describe but simply incredible in the way that at last you can dig without backache. We couldn't possibly grow all that we do without them. Luckily, Simon Drummond is importing them from Spain, and you can get them from his website at www.get-digging.co.uk although you'll need to cut the handle down to proper length (1m); his come far too long. And, two hoes that will make keeping your garden weed-free a much more painless task: Firstly, the Collinear hoe - an ultra light-weight, extremely sharp hoe that slices the weeds off with minimal effort. Use in the 'thumbs up' position as described by Eliot Coleman in his book (see below) for easy weeding with no backache. For those with a big plot and too much weeding for a hand hoe, try the wheel hoe - and hoe your whole plot in the time it would have taken to do a couple of rows. The wheelhoe isn't cheap, but definitely worth it if you garden on a bigger scale. We tracked down both and bought them direct from their Swiss manufacturer after reading about them, but Dave Taylor at Blackberry Lane has now had had the time and energy to organise importing both the collinear and wheel hoes into the UK - see his shop at www.blackberrylane.co.uk for more details.