Growing for the community

I'm participating in three growing projects this year:

• I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
• I'm growing chard with One Seed Chicago
• I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project

Populuxe Seed Bank
This is my second year growing seeds for Populuxe. This is serious seed saving, with isolation bags to make sure they don't get cross polinated. Last year I grew Roma VF, a tomato which I didn't really like very much, but Kelly has her seeds now!

This year's toms were started indoors on March 20, and they're looking gorgeous. The Bramki in particular are a marvelously sturdy, hardy seedling. They've been outside in cold boxes for about 2 weeks, through some very low nighttime temps, and are thriving. I have nine of these, so in addition to the 3 I'm planning to plant, I'll be donating a couple to a Plant a Row project, and to a homeschool group, as well as selling some at the Peterson Plant sale. It's impossible to find information on this tomato. Hilariously, nearly the entire first page of Google hits are either me or Populuxe.

The Ferris Wheels did not germinate as brilliantly as the Bramkis, but I have three strong seedlings. These are liking the cold less, even in the cold boxes, but are still healthy. All of these will go into my own garden.

The Blondkopchens were fine last I found them, but it was freezing cold and pouring rain when I looked for them in the cold box just now, so we'll have to take this on faith.

Find Populuxe on Twitter as @seed_bank and @xitomatl and on Facebook.

One Heirloom
A new project this year, modeled on the One Seed Chicago (itself modeled on One Book Chicago), I got involved in this through my friend Gina at My Skinny Garden (which was also the very first garden blog I ever followed--if you want to b̶l̶a̶m̶e̶ thank someone for all this crazy blogging I do, blame, um thank her). Green Home Experts is supplying everyone with inexpensive 4" seedlings; they'll go into the cold box next week. (I never plant out my toms until the first week of June, because you just never know in northern Illinois. Today, for instance, the low was 44°F/7C.)

One Seed Chicago
Kinda of the local granddaddy of growing projects, this is the brainchild of Neighbor Space and MrBrownThumb (you can blame him for the blogging too). My choice of eggplant didn't win, but I love chard too, so this will go in this week (since the rabbits ate all my early chard).
Find the project on Facebook, and on Twitter (@oneseedchicago), and join all of us on Mondays and Wednesdays on Twitter for #gardenchat and #seedchat.