A Winter Sewing Success Story

Back in January, I posted about this year's wintersowing. You can read that post called, "Wintersowing". (I'm not big on fancy, complicated titles...)

That project was a success! I only got around to planting one thing in pots, the echinacea "Double Decker" and it's up! I did plant a lot more seeds in a cold frame. I will have to check those today to see if they have sprouted, as well!

I'm so thrilled! The echinacea "Double Decker" looks like this.

OK, now that I know it does work, I will be trying other things next winter.

I have done wintersowing before but never had much success with it. I think it's because I used shallow trays (top picture) that dried out too quickly. This year I used a soda pop bottle cut in half.

Growing Sweet Potatoes in the North

We love baked sweet potatoes with real butter! I buy them occasionally when I feel like a treat for dinner. It was only last year that I began to research how to grow them myself and if it would be possible up here in the north.

It is, indeed, possible but does take some knowledge and a bit of preparation.

Sweet potatoes are grown from "slips" which are live cuttings from a sweet potato vine. You can buy sweet potato slips from nurseries here, shipped to you at planting time in the spring. You can also grow your own slips now and have them ready to plant out as soon as all danger of frost is past.

Sweet potatoes do not take frost so cuttings must be held indoors, in a cold frame or a greenhouse until time to plant into the garden with the other tender vegetables.

Because they like very warm soil, it is a good idea to prepare a raised row for them. Raised beds warm up faster in the spring. This can be an planter or just a row in your regular garden that has been piled high.

Another way to warm the soil early and almost a must for sweet potatoes is using black plastic mulch. The black mulch will quickly get hot in the spring sun and the soil underneath will be a good temperature for your sweet potato cuttings when they are ready to plant. I have read that the big box hardware stores, like HD and Rona, get shipments of wood covered with large sheets of black plastic which is discarded. I have both of these stores near me and plan to ask them if I can take some of this off their hands.

Black plastic mulch can be used to kill weeds in fields before planting in the spring, as well. Cover the field with it and it will quickly become so hot underneath that it cooks the grass, weeds and weed seeds in the ground, or so I have read. I am hoping to get enough black plastic this spring to try this or, at least, enough to cover my planned sweet potato rows.

To grow your own sweet potato "slips", you need whole sweet potatoes. Stick three toothpicks into the potatoes and suspend them in water. If they are warm enough they will root in the water and grow sprouts. Its these sprouts that you can cut off, root inside and plant in the garden in spring. The sweet potato cuttings or "slips" will quickly root and grow into large vines in no time. It gets big quickly. As the vines grow inside, while you are waiting for spring, you can continue to cut them into smaller pieces and root those, as well.

It is very important to keep the sweet potatoes warm while rooting. I bought two last year from a small grocery that were labelled "Ontario grown". Figuring these would be the short season variety I would like to try, I bought a couple. I suspended them in water for months and they didn't root until it got warm in the house in early summer. I kept them by the back door and they were always cold.

This year I bought three from a large grocery. I don't know if they are northern ones or not but I will try them anyway. I put these in the room above the wood stove and they rooted quickly. All three are well rooted and one has sprouted.

This will be my sweet potato sprout rooting tray. It is just potting soil from the store kept slightly damp at all times. There is one sprout that is big enough to cut and root. Always use a knife when taking any cuttings. If you use clippers or scissors you might crush the bottom so much that it cannot take up water.

This is the one cutting big enough to root. Pick ones that have a couple of leaf nodes on the stem that can be planted under the soil. This is usually where roots grow on cuttings, although not always. Some plants grow roots all along the stem, i.e. brugmansias.

Remove the bottom leaves or they will rot in the soil.

Use the knife to make a hole for the cutting and put it in the hole, filling in with soil and covering the leaf nodes If you have rooting hormone you can use it on these sprout but I don't think it will be necessary. Keep the sprouts very slightly damp until you see new leaf growth.

I am hoping to grow enough sprouts to fill several trays with growing plants before spring.

Sweet potato vines grow across the ground while the sweet potatoes themselves grow under the ground, like regular potatoes. They will cover a large patch quickly in warm soil.

(Sweet potatoes are NOT potatoes. Its a different plant altogether.)Harvest your sweet potatoes in the fall before frost. Do not wait until frost takes the vines or the sweet potatoes will not be as good.

After harvesting your sweet potatoes you will need to let them cure for several weeks. This is the time the starches are turned to sugars. If you eat them before they have cured, they will not be as sweet. Put them on a screen, out of the sun, in a place where they will not freeze, where they can dry for weeks. They will keep until the following year if stored cool and dry, but not too cold.

You can grow your own sprouts for the following year from some of these potatoes you have grown. You can also take cuttings from the vines to grow indoors until time to cut them up into small pieces for next spring.

This will be the first time I have grown sweet potatoes. I am very excited about it! It will be one of my pet projects for this year.

Winter Bulb Care

That is my favourite dahlia, growing in the chair in the picture above! It's a 'Keri Blue', called that because of the slight blue tint in the very center. It's beautiful and I take no chances with these during their winter rest in my cold cellar. Also wintered over in the cellar are other dahlias, cannas, glad, 4 O'clocks and geraniums (pelargoniums). Many winters, if left alone, the small dahlias will dry up. Some of the other ones do too. This has always been a great disappointment to me in the spring!

This year I decided to take steps to make sure that didn't happen! I read that it helps to take them out of storage in early January and soak them for a day or so, then dry well again and pack in cold storage for another couple of months.


I did that this past week. I took out the small dahlia divisions and small new dahlia bulbs, as well as the 4 o'clock roots and soaked them in room temp water for a few hours. I then laid them out on the kitchen floor on newspapers to dry for a few days. Today I repacked them in wood chips in plastic bags in the basement.

I had planned to leave them for a few more days but our wonky male cat, Shadow, who has cabin fever in the snowy winter, spent his morning attacking them and shredding the papers. lol! Since they were dry again, I put them away. It won't help him. He just attacks the little rugs and the furniture, rolling around on the floor and killing them with all four feet and teeth! lol! Abby, the female cat, prefers to play with and carry off any little hard things she finds around. Anything is fair game. Hubby swears that she has stolen a couple of his tiny wrenches from the desk. I have seen her batting other things to the floor and knocking them around, as well as finding wood pellets scattered all over the house in the morning! (I won't be the only one glad when spring comes! lol! We love them both dearly!)

I only soaked the small and new dahlias that would, in past years, be dried up in the spring. In past years I have tossed them down there to be completely forgotten until spring. This year I have new ones that are important to me, so I am tending them carefully, checking on them whenever I am down there and making sure they are not getting shriveled.

The geranium roots are hanging up, dry. This is the first year I have wintered them over in this fashion. Usually I pot them up and grow them as houseplants all winter, and I did do a few like that, also. Geraniums love spending their winter growing in a sunny window and bloom continuously, right up until they go outside in the spring. I didn't have room for all of them this year. I am considering soaking the bare geranium roots hanging in the basement, too. Has anyone done this and does it help or will they be fine hanging bare root in the cold cellar until spring without intervention?

I had calla lilies and some dwarf white cannas last year, but neither survived last winter in storage. I grew them all from seed and was very disappointed when they didn't make it.

Saving Seeds

Autumn is my favourite time of the year! I love the cool, crisp weather and the wonderully diverse, bright colour scheme. I also like the lack of thick undergrowth and weeds. Late summer and early fall are the time of year when the plants decide it is time to reproduce for next year. I try to prevent this stage in the weeds, but get excited when my favouite flowers seeds are ready to harvest.

In order to have flower seeds, a plant has to have flowers. No flowers, no seeds. The flowers also have to stay on the plant to develop into seed pods. If you cut off the flowers for bouquets or cut off the dead flowers, you won't have seeds. I know it looks a bit messy with dead flowers aging in the garden, but it is necessary in order to have seeds from those flowers. If you want pristine gardens, perhaps you should have your "seed gardens" somewhere out of sight where the long dead flowers and stalks will not be seen.

I also like to save my special vegetable seeds. We grow a very sweet and fat cucumber that we like a lot. We have grown it from our own seed for a few years now. Cucumber and tomato seeds need special treatment in order to germinate the following spring. I will describe how to do that later in this post. This year I hand pollinated my squash to get more produce. I should have tied the male and female flowers closed before and after I hand pollinated them to keep the seed very pure, but I didn't. I will do that next year.

While I love my flowers and gardens, I also love seed collecting. Sometimes I have to remind myself that having a large and diverse collection of seeds is not the goal. I should be actually planting the seeds in order for them to be of any use. I not only plant the seeds for more plants in the garden, but use them for trading as well. This way I can trade all over the world for things I cannot buy here. It is very exciting to grow something rare and spectacular from a seed acquired by trading with another gardener from another country or even another continent.


I have a large unused field by the road that I plan to use as a repository for old flower seed. If the seed gets to be a year old and I still have it, I will scatter it in that field in the fall. This will be the first fall that I have done this. I am hoping for a field full of flowers next spring. I have a lot of cosmos, feverfew, calendula, peony poppy and pink yarrow seeds from three years ago to scatter in there soon. All are prolific reseeders. I am sure many will grow. I won't be using these old seeds for trade or sell, as the germination rates will not be as good as the newer seeds, but I can reap the harvest that does grow from those seeds for use the following year.

I started a seed bed this year for direct planting of seeds and to hold seedlings I started indoors until they are big enough to hold their own in the flower bed. I have helleborus seeds in there now, planted in July. They will need at least two months of moist warm summer temps planted in the ground and then two months of cold before they will germinate. I will be looking for these seedlings next spring. I did, also, plant some in trays on the front porch to bring in after their cold spell. I will put these indoors on the windowsill in Jan and hope for some tiny helleborus several weeks later. These are special seeds and must be sown while fresh, immediately after harvesting from the plant. If they are allowed to dry for very long, it will take several warm-cold spells to break dormancy and can take a long time. The seeds that I have were sent to me directly from the plant in a small plastic bag in damp perlite.

My flowers have been producing seed for a few weeks now. I have harvested many from the flowerbeds. These are the peony poppy seed pods drying. Each plant is labelled in the garden so I know what colour the seeds are, even though they are open pollinated. With seeds, you never know what you are going to get. With special seeds from a trade, I will plant all of them.

The poppy seed pods are cut to dry when the leaves turn brown and the plant starts to die. There is no point in trying to ripen the seeds any longer.

These are cranesbill geranium seed candles. They tend to pop when the seed is released and the seed will fly out of the container and into other seed containers drying various types of seed, so I keep them covered. The plant is covered with them now, but they are still green. Seed pods should not be picked until the pod turns brown to ensure that the seeds are ripe. Some seeds will ripen off the plant, but most of them need to grow into maturity on the live plant in order to be viable. There are many exceptions to this rule of thumb, of course.

I have just begun to get ripe ground cherries. This is the first year I have grown them and I will grow them again next year for jam. I think they are delicious! I will be saving my own seed from these this year. I have already used one ground cherry for seed harvest and dried them on a paper towel. I have read that they are prolific re-seeders, so I expect most of the seed to germinate next spring without any special preparation.


I also save the seed from our cucumbers as these are the best cucumbers we have found. They are big around and great for sandwiches. They are ripe when they are yellow, turning a bright orange-red when over ripe. When they are ripe, they are very sweet. Cucumber and tomato seeds need special treatment to be viable the following year. The fruit needs to ripen completely before the seed is harvested. When it is ripe enough on the plant it can be picked and left at room temperature to ripen further. It should be left to ripen until it is soft and mushy before the seed is harvested. The seed is then put into a glass container and left to ferment even further for a few days. After another 2-3 days of fermentation, the seed can be washed, dried and stored for the following year.

Some seeds need a winter in the ground before they will germinate. These seeds are either planted in the ground in the fall or planted into flats and put on shelves on the front porch. They will have a month or two of warm weather, then they will be exposed to the fall and winter temps. I will bring them indoors in Dec-Jan and put in the south seed window to germinate. I have tried leaving them outdoors until spring to germinate in their containers when the weather warms up, but have had poor success with that. You can also put them into baggies with a little damp soil and put these into the freezer or the fridge for a couple of months, then plant in flats or pots for indoor starting.

All seed need to be dried before storing. I dry mine on an elevated screen on the front porch. The tiny seeds and smaller amounts I dry on a thin paper towel in a container with holes in it. A strainer or a plastic berry box from the grocery store are good containers for this. I always write the name of the plant on the paper towel or on a piece of paper drying with the seed. Seeds can take weeks to ripen and dry completely and I will forget what plant and variety they came from if they are not labelled.


After the seeds are completely dry, you can store it in a small plastic bag or glass jar. I prefer to store mine in labelled paper envelopes in a basket, ensuring that they stay dry and do not rot or mold in storage. Do not store them in the refrigerator or freezer unless the seed requires this for germination but do keep them in a cool, dry spot. On top of the refrigerator is too warm.

Wild Grapes

We have wild grapes! We have probably always had wild grapes and I just didn't know it. We have a large grapevine on our old TV antennae attached to the back of the house, but I have usually cut it down every year. Last year I left it alone, mostly due to a lack of time and energy to deal with it. (Last year was the "year of the dogs" and a lot of things got "left".) 


This year I discovered grapes on it and the world of wild grapes opened up! It is covered with them, but there are even more growing and fruiting in a  back fence areas that I didn't know were there. 

At this time of year our back fence is unapproachable due to the goldenrod and wild raspberry bushes. With the hope of wild grapes in mind I blazed a path through the weeds to the fence and found several enormous vines filled with grapes!

Half are ready now and half still need to ripen another week or so. Next week on Monday morning I will go grape picking again. The grapes growing in sunny areas are all ripe now. It is the ones in the shade against the woods that need to ripen a bit longer. 

The picture at the top is what I picked now. I will probably get at least half that again in another week! This is about 13 pounds of grapes. We weighed them at 11 pounds, then I found about 1/4 of a bucket more and added those. So I am estimating it at about 13 pounds. I will make some wild grape jelly (recipe below) but we don't eat much of it so I won't be making a lot. Some wild grape jelly I will make in fancy jars and use for gifts. The rest of the grapes will be frozen until winter, when I have the time make wine.

We have truly been blessed with an abundance of wealth here on the land The Lord has given us! He continually amazes me with His gifts daily! There is just so much here in the way of herbs, fruits, mushrooms and wildcrafting abundance!

Wild grape jelly recipe:

3 lbs wild grapes, stemmed
3 cups water
4 1/2 cups sugar
1 (85 ml) package liquid pectin

• In large saucepan, crush grapes with potato masher; pour in water and bring to boil.


• Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes or until fruit is very soft.


• Transfer to jelly bag or colander lined with a double thickness of fine cheesecloth and let drip overnight.


• Measure juice (you should have 3 cups/750 ml) into a large heavy saucepan; stir in sugar.


• Bring to boil over high heat, stirring constantly.


• Stir in pectin.


• Return to full boil and boil hard for one minute, stirring constantly.


• Remove from heat and skim off foam with a metal spoon.


• Pour into sterilized jars, leaving 1/8 inch headspace.

Wild Choke Cherries

These are wild choke cherries, also called "pin cherries" by some. They are very bitter, but, as with most of the small wild fruits, such as crab apples, they have a lot more flavour than their domesticated cousins. The secret is to use just the clear juice alone and NONE of the pulp, and more sugar, of course.

The choke cherry tree is a nice addition to the flower garden too, as long as you are going to pick the fruit when it is ripe. If you leave it to just fall to the ground, it will make a mess and reseed in the garden, growing baby trees all over.

The tree is small, not getting much above 10' tall and it flowers in the spring. It is really a nice little flowering tree for landscaping with the added benefit of bearing fruit!

We have several of these small trees growing wild on the property. This fall, when they are dormant, I will move one to the new, expanded section of the ornamental garden where it can provide a little shade for a nearby bench.

I also plan to make jelly and possibly wine from the fruits. I make wine from everything! I am always looking for unique wine possibilities. (I started a one gallon batch of chocolate mint wine this morning! It smells heavenly!)

Below are some recipes I found for choke cherries. Avoid swallowing the pits.

Extracting the Chokecherry Juice

10 cups washed, with stems removed 2.5 L
5 cups water 1250 mL

Add 5 cups (1250 mL) water to 10 cups (2.5 L) berries and simmer 15 minutes. Crush fruit with potato masher as it softens. Drain through a moistened jelly bag. DO NOT SQUEEZE THE BAG!! The clear juice make excellent jelly. If you squeeze pulp into the mix, it will be bitter!(If the juice is to be used for jelly, choose berries that are under ripe as well as ripe, so the pectin content of the juice is higher).

Chokecherry Jelly

3 1/4 cups chokecherry juice 800 mL
4 1/2 cups sugar 1.25 mL
2 oz package powdered fruit pectin 57g

Combine chokecherry juice and pectin in a large saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil. Add sugar. Boil hard one minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim off foam. Pour into sterilized jars. Leave 1/2 inch (1 cm) headspace. Clean jar rim. Seal. Process 5 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Yield: 7 -1/2 pint jars (250 mL jars)

Crabapple and Chokecherry Jelly
4 cups chokecherry juice 1000 mL
4 cups crabapple juice 1 L
6 cups sugar 1.5 L

Prepare crabapple juice by selecting sound, slightly under ripe fruit. Wash thoroughly, cut off and discard any damaged spots. Remove the stem, but not the blossom end. Cut the crabapples in half, or if large, in quarters. Be sure to cut through the core so that the pectin around the core will be readily released. Add only enough water to the fruit so that it is just barely covered. Boil fruit and water in a covered kettle until fruit is soft and mushy; stir often to prevent burning. Crush fruit with a potato masher during the cooking process to reduce the boiling time. Pour hot cooked fruit into a moistened jelly bag. Hang over a bowl until dripping ceases (about 12 hours). DO NOT SQUEEZE THE BAG!! The clear juice make excellent jelly. If you squeeze pulp into the mix, it will be bitter!

Make chokecherry juice, 1/3 from red and 2/3 from fully ripe chokecherries. Wash, sort, and remove stems from chokecherries. Add enough water to cover (about 1 part water to 2 parts chokecherries), and boil until soft, about 30 minutes. Strain through a moistened jelly bag.

To make jelly: Measure juices into a broad, deep pot and boil uncovered for 3 minutes. Remove juice from heat and test for pectin. If pectin test is good, add sugar slowly to hot juice. Stir until all sugar is dissolved. Return to heat and boil briskly, uncovered. Remove scum as it forms. Test for doneness using the jelly test. Remove remainder of scum with a cold spoon. Pour carefully into hot, sterilized pint (500 mL) jars leaving at least 1/ 2 inch (1 cm) headspace. Process in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes. Begin processing time when water returns to a boil.

Yield: 4 pint (500 mL) jars.

Lemon Mint

I harvested the lemon mint today! I did not cut it all today. I left a few stalks to go to seed so I can sell it this fall in the seed store.

It makes great tea and spice for cooking! I especially like lemon with chicken.

I rinsed it and laid it out on a screen for drying. I might hang some herbs to dry this year too. I do have the wire strung under the porch roof just for that purpose but this is drying on a screen. I will turn it a few times every day.

I collect large screens whenever I find them at garage sales and so forth. They are a great way to dry herbs, flowers and seeds!

Chichiquelites (solanum nigrum)

I like to experiement in the garden. Growing unusual, often old and forgotten, plants is a joy. I never plant those ordinary annual flowers people seem to buy in flats and stick in their gardens and I like to grow heirloom vegetables, who's seed I can save to grow from year to year. This saves me a lot of money in seed each spring.

One of the things I have discovered this spring are chichiquelites, also known as garden huckleberries (solanum nigrum). I got these seeds in a trade and, having never heard of them previously I did some research.

I am always looking for good to eat and easy to grow quickly, fruits for wine and pie making. These sounded perfect! They also make good jam, but we don't eat a lot of jam so I will be using them for pies and wine.

They need more sweetening than blueberries, but I am ok with that. I will add a bit more sugar.

They are easy to grow from seed, not requiring stratification. I know this because I have some seedlings sprouted on my seed windowsill. I have heard from other growers that they grow quickly, without a lot of care, into huge shrubs covered with berries. This is what I am hoping for. I will can and/or freeze all that I can get, if we like them. I will also collect more seeds to grow again next year. They will apparently reseed themselves anyway but I prefer to plant them from seed myself. Being a close relative of the poisonous nightshade berry, I would prefer to know exactly where they are growing.

They have medicinal uses, as well. This is a quote from Wikipedia regarding solanum nigrum:
"The plant has a long history of medicinal usage, dating back to ancient Greece. This plant is also known as Peddakasha pandla koora in Telangana region. This plant's leaves are used to treat mouth ulcers that happen during winter periods of Tamil Nadu, India. Chinese experiments confirm that the plant inhibits growth of cervical carcinoma (Fitoterapia, 79, 2008, № 7-8, 548-556)."

I am hoping for great things from this new and little known berry!