A Seed Saver's Garden

[Pulsegleaner]

Now one of the Favas also has a flower, though whether I will get any mature seed at this point is a sort of grey area (fava pods can take a LOT of time to mature, and the summer heat often makes the plant wither before they are done.)

Lablab beans are also starting to come up. At the moment, they look a little pale and yellow, but I assume they'll green up with the sun.

 

[heirloomgal]

Now one of the Favas also has a flower, though whether I will get any mature seed at this point is a sort of grey area (fava pods can take a LOT of time to mature, and the summer heat often makes the plant wither before they are done.)

Lablab beans are also starting to come up. At the moment, they look a little pale and yellow, but I assume they'll green up with the sun.

Favas in your area are long season? I guess it's variety dependant? Crimson Flowered and Black Russian are quite early maturing for me, but Ur Kupina last year did take quite a bit longer than those two. It was almost in line with the pole bean pods. Mind you, I always use fava transplants. Maybe that's why they've been relatively early for me?

 

[heirloomgal]

I fell off the plant prohibition wagon today. I saw a really good deal for some fruit bushes - $10 each. There was a unique berry variety, a Jostaberry. This German bred fruit cross dates to 1955 (though attempts to breed this plant go as far back as 1833). It's actually a cross of three berries - black currants, North American black gooseberries and European gooseberries. It seems to possess the health benefits of the black currant with the flavor of the gooseberry predominating.

I have a productive back currant, and I really like the fruits, but there is no question it's a medicinal. I made a tart with them this summer, and while there were good fruity flavours in there it still tasted 'curative', with a pinch of bitter in there too. So, more a tea berry for sure. I had family make jam with them and it's good too - but again, medicinal.

I hope this is as good as it seems to be. It seems to be appropriate to my zone, hardy to -40. That's promising. And, it turns out that it self pollinates but does better with a friend, and I happened to get 2 of the bushes, so that was lucky. I now have a white currant, a black, 2 red currants, a green gooseberry and this jostaberry. I'm trying to build a 'fruit wall' at the back of the garden. I thought voles had done damage to my two reds that are planted there, but they seem bigger than ever this spring so it's looking like the wall is gaining traction despite competition from bush weeds behind them.

Oh, and I found a rare rhubarb variety too. Something also German I believe, the name was not in English so I can't recall it but it might be the variety called 'German Wine Root'.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Favas in your area are long season? I guess it's variety dependant? Crimson Flowered and Black Russian are quite early maturing for me, but Ur Kupina last year did take quite a bit longer than those two. It was almost in line with the pole bean pods. Mind you, I always use fava transplants. Maybe that's why they've been relatively early for me?

It's not so much that they are long season as that they are heat sensitive. Around here, the time between too cold to safely plant anything and to hot for cool weather crops is extremely narrow, and it's often TOO narrow for most things. We generally don't get a nice neat transition from winter to summer, spring is often a jagged period of alternate hot days and sudden re-freezes.

That's one of the big reasons I'm so interested in those tiny peas I'm growing, besides being very small in stature, they are very small in maturing time, so THEY can make it where larger peas can't.)

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Tiny bit of luck today. While in H-mart I located a leftover bag of senna seed with an expiration date old enough to be "in the range" for what I was looking for, and so I now have four more wild mung beans seeds, as well as one small black cowpea and one more of the unknown flat legume seed to try again with.

I also now have the "right" date for what I am looking for, rather than just knowing some of the "wrong" ones. In theory, that might help when and if I return to the city, both in regards to other H-mart branches and for other brands.

With the date being November 2024, the odds are that, by the time I return to the city, any bags that old will be either long since sold or tossed out for being expired. But, if it's a matter of who supplies the companies at what time of year, what was the "right" month this year might be the "right" month in future years, giving me some clues.

Correction, SIX more wild mungs, I found two more when I went through a second time, plus a wild soybean.

On the downside, the mystery legume seed I found might just be a second, rather squashed wild soybean. Better confirm before I plant (wild soybeans are vigorous enough to count as serious weeds, so I don't want to plant them in a year when I need the railing for other things.)

 

[heirloomgal]

The gardening tiredness is really beginning! Feeling a bit creaky to get going in the morning, too much sedentariness during winter I guess. Got the garden tilled and a general map made up of where everything will go. So much to do right now I feel a bit overwhelmed, but I'm focusing on one task at a time.

I wanted to start more seeds for flowers etc. but I feel like I'm running out of time and what's left may have to be direct seeded. I have these nice red zinnias and I was hoping to put them in as plants, not seeds, so I'm really going o make the effort to start at least one more tray with them. Cut my trees for the pole beans today, need about another 30 I'm guessing and that job will be checked off the list. I decided I'm not going to grow the semi-runner beans in rows anymore - I should just plant 4 around a low pole, like I do pole beans, it'll take up less space. Not sure why I didn't think of that before.

More & more beans are sprouting by the day and I'm super happy with how well the last batch is germinating. Only one variety has failed completely so far on me, which is great odds considering how many varieties I'm doing this year. Will probably be the biggest bean year yet. Got Insuk's Wang Kong runner bean planted and a few have sprouted - such tiny sprouts for a runner bean! I'm very curious about what it'll look like in flower.

Got a few more perennials to mix in with the edible landscaping, perennial poppies, hollyhocks, and perennial larkspur that is bred to be dwarf. The tomato plants are really greening up now that they're out in the sun all day, and gaining size. At this point I'm starting to feel eager to get things planted in the ground.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Was quite busy today. Managed to get the tomato seedlings planted outside, the mung bead seedling outside (after having added the six extra beans I found, scarified this time), the cherry tomato seeds planted, the cucumbers planted, the Delaware creeping cucumbers planted, the beans planted (had to use some of last year's Falcon crosses. I would have liked to re-generate the African stuff, as it is far more overdue, but I can't find the container at the moment), and all of the pansies that made it this far (somewhere between five and eight of them). As I brought out the wild peppers, hibiscus like sprouts, and coriander plant out yesterday, that really only leaves digging up the corn patch and planting those, plus putting the chestnut trees in (at least until the Holy Basil seedlings get big enough to make moving them both feasible and necessary.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Was quite busy today. Managed to get the tomato seedlings planted outside, the mung bead seedling outside (after having added the six extra beans I found, scarified this time), the cherry tomato seeds planted, the cucumbers planted, the Delaware creeping cucumbers planted, the beans planted (had to use some of last year's Falcon crosses. I would have liked to re-generate the African stuff, as it is far more overdue, but I can't find the container at the moment), and all of the pansies that made it this far (somewhere between five and eight of them). As I brought out the wild peppers, hibiscus like sprouts, and coriander plant out yesterday, that really only leaves digging up the corn patch and planting those, plus putting the chestnut trees in (at least until the Holy Basil seedlings get big enough to make moving them both feasible and necessary.)

Are Delaware creeping cucumbers the same species as 'regular' cucumbers? I've never heard of that variety.

Do you grow any special variety of coriander, I know there are a few unique kinds out there. I tried Confetti last year.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Are Delaware creeping cucumbers the same species as 'regular' cucumbers? I've never heard of that variety.

Delaware Creeping Cucumber is the name the ESN gave to a very northern hardy strain of what is more commonly known as the Guadeloupe cucumber, Meliothera pendulata . It's basically like M. scabra, the Mexican Sour Gherkin, but smaller, and you have to eat them before they are ripe (ripe, they are extremely purgative)

Do you grow any special variety of coriander, I know there are a few unique kinds out there. I tried Confetti last year.

Yes and no. What I have isn't a named variety, but the original two plants (one died) came from a "seed" (actually a two seeded fruit, you break coriander in half before you plant it to separate the seeds,) I DID select from the bag I was going through for it's unusually large size. Hopefully, the trait is heritable (I have already discovered, much to my relief, that coriander is self pollinating, so the fact I only have one AND it's been inside away from pollinating bugs until about three days ago has not interfered with seed production.)

I general, I just tend to split coriander into only two to three types; Indian type (large oval seeds, usually a yellow cast) and African type (smaller, round seeds, usually a brownish cast), The third is Thai type, which is also round but usually a lot smaller (and often paler, closer to cream).

Note that these refer to the commonest place I see the type, each can easily come from somewhere else (for example, a lot of the Thai type I get actually comes from Latin America.)

I can't tell you where that one came from without going back to the store and seeing what the packets say (I didn't bother to look at the time.) It was round, but larger than African usually is. A least one weed (the mystery flower I refer to as purple pincushion*) is also in some Indian stuff (though I think the Indian was in lentils, not coriander**.)

* Do NOT as for any further identification information on this. I haven't even worked out what FAMILY it belongs to. As yet, it's still an unknown, like Elephant's Toenail Flower, Paddle Leaf, and Glue Thistle (don't ask about THOSE either.)

**I'm REALLY unsure about that, as those seeds would NOT hide well in lentils, and I remember having a LOT of them by the time I planted. But, on the other hand, since that was long after I stopped buying significant quantities of coriander from Kalyustan's (it may actually be after the Lockdown and me no longer going into Manhattan, in which case I was not going to Kalyustan's AT ALL) and I don't remember buying any serious quantities of coriander of any other brand then, so I'm in the dark.