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The Parkdale Community Garden is an interactive learning garden. Located in East Aurora, NY on the grounds of Parkdale Elementary. This site is full of resources for school gardens, community gardens and home gardens. Enjoy!

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Garden Club Is Busy Sowing Seeds

The Garden Club sowed radish and carrot seeds this week.  Here is what we learned:
The radish is indigenous to Europe and Asia. Domestication is believed to have occurred 5,000 years ago. Radishes were well known to the Greeks and Romans.  One of the oldest varieties is the Black Spanish Radish dating back to the sixteenth century. In all likelihood, the variety grew well before that time, but without documentation, seed historians can only guess at exact dates of introduction. We are sowing more than 15 different varieties of heirloom radishes today, including the black Spanish variety.

Wild carrots grow from the Mediterranean to Asia. Queen Anne's Lace is America's wild carrot relative.  The first cultivated carrot variety had branching purple roots and is believed to have been developed in Afghanistan. There is some evidence of a few red varieties around that time period. It migrated to the Mediterranean in the 14th century and then Northwards.  The orange varieties were developed in the Netherlands by the Dutch in the 17th century. Many of today's better known orange heirloom varieties were developed by the French seed company Vilmorin-Andrieux starting in the 1850s, such as Nantes and the Chantenay varieties. Yellow carrots were first recorded in Turkey around the end of the 1st Century.  We are sowing examples of each of these colors today.

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