Free Seeds!

In Louisiana there's a Cajun French word, lagniappe.  It means a little something extra.  Something free that you get when you make a purchase, like a baker's dozen (you get 13 when you buy 12).  I always like stuff like that.  Murray McMurray hatchery used to have something like this.  When you purchased 25 baby chicks, they would throw in one mystery chick for free.  You wouldn't know the breed of the bird until it grew up and you could match it with photos and discover what type of bird you got.  It was fun.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds has a policy when you buy ten packages of seeds, they throw in 1 package for free.  Lagniappe.  You don't select the free seed that you want.  They select it.  It comes as a total surprise.  Over the years I've been introduced to many types of vegetables and herbs and flowers that I would NEVER have purchased.  Some have actually made it into our crop rotation.

Let me show you the latest offering we got in our free package of seeds.  Here's a clue.  It's a type of tomato.  You can see a photo of the unripe mystery tomato variety right here.  I wonder what they'll look like when they are ripe?

Well, they'll look just like this when they are ripe!:

My hands aren't huge.  Those tomatoes are tiny.  In fact, the free seed offering was a tomato variety that are appropriately named "spoon tomatoes."  They're called that because you can put a whole bunch of them in a teaspoon!  Tricia said they taste good.  She's been putting them in a cucumber and tomato salad.  I told her they should re-market them as "Pearl Tomatoes" since they're about the same size.