A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

I also am guilty of overdoing it with tomato seed acquisition and saving, going FAR beyond what I can plant, and, as a result wasting VAST amounts of seed due to holding it too long. It is a road paved with much guilt, for both tomatoes and other things (i.e. the guilt one feels when one HAD something one had a feeling was rare and revolutionary, only to squander it by waiting too long) When I think of the Eyeball Tomato (a tomato so sweet you HAD to treat it like a fruit, it and a salad just wouldn't WORK) Fuzzy Cherokee (a peach skinned version of Purple Cherokee I got from Wild Boar farms when they were just starting out and still relying on eBay to do all their selling, and which I THINK they decided not to preserve, on the grounds they didn't think anyone would want a brown fuzzed tomato.) Valisiev Green (one of a group of obscure Russian tomatoes I saw once on eBay, and never again) and so many others. And then there are the Hairy Babylonian Wild Cucumbers, ALL the exotic cukes Joe found (DID get them to grow, but planted them too early and they all froze.) Xiao Pangze (the name I gave to that interesting lima from Chinatown I tried to grow last year), all of the Armenian Runner beans (although, as none of them came up even when I planted them fresh, I suspect the problem here was with Richter's, not me) and so many more.

What happened to the Eyeball tomato? Seed expired? @Pulsegleaner you have grown some pretty awesomely exotic fruits and vegetables! I've barely been able to keep alive my Kaiser Alexander cucumbers...My caterpillar plants though are tootin' along pretty good except that they are clearly a plant accustomed to warmth & dryness because some of the rains we've had combined with cool temperatures gave a few of them dampening off.

 

[heirloomgal]

Had a spicy moment in the garden this afternoon. Was weeding out the farthest back right corner of my compost garden when I started hearing the tell tale sounds of branches snapping in the bush. I was so determined to rid myself of these blasted wild sunflowers that I didn't really pay attention. I honestly did not care that a bear was there because I was in the middle of task I wanted done asap and my kids have seen enough bears that they don't find it especially exciting anymore. I was sitting on my butt and I looked up to meet eyes with a big black bear standing on his hind legs 15 feet away looking down on me! Not the most common position to see them in. The bush grass is so tall I guess he had to stand up to see what was what. I booted it to the house to get my Tablet for a pic, but it was dead so I grabbed my daughters digital camera and ran back out. I got a pick of him as he investigated where I was sitting though it was from a distance, the closer I got the more uncomfortable he became so he left too quickly for a good picture. I'll have to learn how to get the pic downloaded on this device. It occurred to me after that I had eaten a banana right where I was weeding & tossed the peel aside on the ground to be picked up later. I suspect this drew him. My goodness their noses are exemplary. I've seen a lot of bears over the years in the garden, especially in early June, but never any of them standing on their hind legs! He had a nice face too, very brown muzzle against black inky fur.

 

[heirloomgal]

DH bought a wood chipper/mulcher. Partly because we have several trees to grind up after the last 2 years + plus a wood debris pile and also as a helper for a compost set up in the making. This is our first batch. Clearly weed fabric is still needed, but it's a start. When he runs it I shiver, just cannot get the movie Fargo out of my head.

Quillquina is SO SMALL. I hope they start making progress soon. At least I got them to sprout! I am happy that I have at least been able to deduce that unlike a lot of internet sites say, it actually is not papalo. I wondered if I wasted a few bucks buying separate packages of them. That alone makes the experiment worth it so far.

Papalo -

I don't remember the name of this flower, carnation family I think, but WOW the scent is amazing - sweet cinammon, cloves and ambrosia.

First little pops of colour are appearing in the perennial gardens. The wild irises I dug out of the bush last spring and planted in here are actually flowering much better this year.

Floragold Basket mini-dwarf tomatoes. One of the better minis.

2nd attempt at lima beans. Didn't start them as early as I would have liked but at least they went in as tranplants not seeds. I LOVE these little red limas with the white lung image on them. The lady who sent them to me said I should be able to get them to maturity. I sure hope so. I'd love to have these in the bean collection.

Very impressed with the germination rates with West Coast seeds, particularly the flowers. I think the germination with all of them has been 100%. One of them was a tricky one, Western Blue Eyed Grass, with all this unexpected vernalization info, seeds in moist towels in the fridge for weeks, yadayada... I just planted them as is, and a month later they sprouted! Mind you, staring at pots not knowing if anything is going on in there for weeks was an exercise in patience to say the least. Veggies have spoiled me - fast & quick. Here's a question - why is the'suggested spacing' on flowers always so unnecessarily huge? Even my tulips said 6 inches apart, which once they grew seemed excessive.

New Columbine I bought. Trying to spruce up my tired, dull, prosaic shade garden. Finally cut right back the Cranesbill Geraniums & huge amount of Lamb's Ears (hope there is no TP shortage...) and got rid of all the boring light pink Anemones. So I got a few columbines for something different. Not easy to find colourful additions to the shade garden that are not annuals, and flower for more than a week. Still looking.

 

[AMKuska]

Sounds like a fun project @AMKuska . I had a seed request through the exchange this year from a young fellow concerned about food security, who wanted a lot of varieties of canning tomatoes, so that he could begin selecting from the whole lot of them growing together. He was out on the prairies with quite a short season, I think a zone 3 or 2b.

Have you tried Moskvich? Moskvich is a super early, but super great red beefsteak tomato, remarkably early maturity and fabulous flavour against any of the early maturing ones I've tried. Might be some good genetics to consider bringing into selecting efforts. There are a few other great Russian ones that are early reds with great flavour, 'Marmeladnye Krasnye' (english, Red Marmalade) comes to mind too.

Do you know of a good paste tomato? I rarely eat them fresh. Mainly can my tomatoes as diced/stew/tomato soup/spaghetti sauce

 

[Pulsegleaner]

What happened to the Eyeball tomato? Seed expired? @Pulsegleaner you have grown some pretty awesomely exotic fruits and vegetables! I've barely been able to keep alive my Kaiser Alexander cucumbers...My caterpillar plants though are tootin' along pretty good except that they are clearly a plant accustomed to warmth & dryness because some of the rains we've had combined with cool temperatures gave a few of them dampening off.

Exactly, one of my first saves, and held onto it until the great planting out about eighteen years later.

 

[flowerbug]

yes, bears have a very good nose. i never saw them in the woods during all of my fishing expeditions but they used to have an old dump where the bears would visit and tear through the trash and people would go to the dump to watch the bears. eventually it was determined to be too much of a hazard and was closed down. i learned early during my camping life to never store food in the tent and also not to keep it in the car because the bear might damage the car trying to get at the food.

 

[heirloomgal]

Do you know of a good paste tomato? I rarely eat them fresh. Mainly can my tomatoes as diced/stew/tomato soup/spaghetti sauce

So many great ones out there @AMKuska . My first thought always runs to Auria, a Ukrainian one. It is an odd shape, and some people find it impolite, but it is crazy productive, and has a relatively early maturity - which is not the case with many canners. I have about 45 varieties, and that one beats out nearly all of them. Unless, of course, you're looking for yellow ones or orange ones. Orange Banana is a fantastic one, and Power's Heirloom is a great yellow one.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Update on the "hotboxes" (my nickname for the mini greenhouses I make using peat plugs and re-sealable plastic takeout containers)

Sort of mixed results so far. It seems like everything is either a total success or a total failure, on a group by group basis, which is odd.

Box #1 (giant Vietnamese limes). As yet, nothing at all. I'm beginning to think that all of those negative reviews of the seed seller were the accurate ones. The only reason I'm keeping it going at all is that 1. I currently have no need to take up the space it is taking with anything else 2. Not ALL of the seeds have rotted, most are intact (they just aren't DOING anything and 3. I seem to remember that citrus seeds take a lot longer to germinate than legumes or cucurbits do, so I may be being impatient (casting my mind back, pretty much every citrus that I have grown from seed didn't actually poke its head out of the ground until it was so long after I planted it I was on the verge of assuming all of the seed was dead and getting ready to re-plant the pot)

Box #2 (Mixed Legumes)-As I said, a pretty clear line between groupings as to what has and has not germinated. ALL of the full size grass pea seeds have sprouted, and are ready to be transplanted into large pots to grow up in the cold frame to a size where they can be safely put in their permanent pot. The two "mini" grass pea seeds I found at the bottom of the bags are germinating as well (though they are doing so MUCH slower). The two minor seeds have sprouted, the mothe bean with the black markings on the seed and the unknown little black seed (which I now think is probably a Macropitilium pupureum seed that somehow managed to fall out of its bag onto the floor. But the vetch seeds both died. And all of the common beans I found in the seed mix from France proved too old to be viable, so it looks like I will only have to deal with the care of ONE common bean plant this year.

Box#3 (Lablab Beans) - Again a sort of odd outcome. Since there were going to be so few legumes for the left big pot this year, and since the pot is so large, I decided I might as well plant out the odder lablab beans I have accumulated. The results divided perfectly along origin lines. Unknown #2 (the mottled black and brown ones I found in the bin of white lablabs in Chinatown) have all germinated, but they are the ONLY ones that did. The blackish ones I found in the soybeans all proved rotten inside (as in totally brown when I slipped their skins off later to help them). The white "Case Knife"* ones I picked out of all of those bags of White lablabs simply didn't DO anything. So it looks like the #2's is all I'll have this year, unless I go back to the box and dig out some others. I just hope the #2's prove to be one of the rare ones that actually CAN flower and set seed with my season (I'm REALLY getting sick of just having Ruby Moon).


* "Case Knife" is my nickname for any lablab bean that has the less common seed shape. In most lablabs, the pod is pretty wide and the developing seed sort of hang down with respect to the length of the pod (that is the white line of the hilum scar is perpendicular to the long axis of the pod). In a few types however, the seed develops in the pod in a more sideways direction, so that the hilum scar is parallel to the long axis of the pod. Such seeds tend to be longer and thinner than the other kind, with a hilum that more or less reaches all the way down to the bottom of the seed (whereas on the regular kind, it usually goes only about halfway down). The net effect to me looks like a case knife (a folding knife), hence the name.

 

[flowerbug]

space between tulips may help to avoid disease problems, but you can't say anything about that to me because after they've been growing in the same spot for years they'll all clump together anyways. noway was i going to lift and sort and dry bulbs every year.

 

[heirloomgal]

Few pics from today. Happy time of year. Will be buying two scuffle hoes for my kids tomorrow. Time for some family weeding moments together.
When I think of all that is left to transplant in the greenhouse I ..... Every year, same thing, I tell myself I'm going to pull back on how many plants go in there. And I did scale back. Just not enough. It is only now I'm fully realising how much more maintenance the plants in there are compared to outdoors, especially since we put in fans. If I can find some inner fortitude I should put some plants at the road with a sign that says 'free'. Everything else I put there has gone pretty fast, I don't see why pepper plants wouldn't get takers.

The flower experiment is working out better than expected. I'm liking all the variations in foliage. Never having done a lot with annual flowers it's fun to see all the new seedlings grow. It's sort of a homeschooling project too. We all get to watch the plants grow into 'surprises' - different types of leaf structures. I'll make them guess why some leaves might look like they do.

Penny Black Nemophila

Some others in early stages of growth -

@meadow Your sort of namesake, 'meadowfoam' is turning out to be the prettiest foliage type of all

Linaria. I think the other name is 'Toadflax'.

I can taste the potato salad already....

'Brejo' is finally climbing! Was stubborn to grab on.

Grass Peas/Ethiopian Lentils/Cicerchia Bean (I know the boards look like he** but they are a must for walking in certain garden areas!) I've got T-posts ready but I don't see tendrils yet.

Was given some of this checkerboard matting in the case I may be able to use it. I finally found a place for it. My initial thought was weed blocker, but when I sat on it to weed the corn it was like sitting on a sofa! So cushy! Much appreciated now for it's use in comfortable seating.

Chufa nuts were looking a little rough after transplanting, but they finally seem to be greening up. I wonder if I'll need to mound more soil along the outside of the row? Never grown them before so it's a learning curve. Super excited for this crop.

First 'Sunset Runner'bean to grab on. It begins! I just love the exuberance of runner beans. I should try eating them. @Marie2020 you'd probably be the one to ask - are these as tasty as regular pole beans? Or are they better as just flowering plants? Runner beans are not commonly eaten here, so I'm not even sure if they need different cooking.