A Seed Saver's Garden

[digitS']

Weelllll,

I was looking at a couple of dead leaves on my eggplant, this morning. About 2 weeks ago, I sprayed them with Spinosad. Some had holes but it wasn't just the holes. The plants have been growing but they looked to be struggling. The dead leaves didn't have any holes that showed up with a casual look. Checked nearby green leaves ... nothing that I noticed.

Later, I wondered about spider mites 🤔. Weaken the plant -- leaves die. Hope the Spinosad killed the bugs.

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Mungs and common beans both have pods now. At least, the common beans on the back of the house have pods (the few in the corn patch seem to be lagging a bit) and one type of the plants in the mung bean pot have flowers, the taller, lighter green plants don't, but whether those are a different sort of mung, urds, or mothe beans I have no way of knowing, until all the seeds for the year have been produced.

The Spoon plants are also making their first tomatoes. Though the plants are a bit confusing to me. I was well aware that spoon had super tiny fruits. But I also noticed that the racemes being produced are quite short and only have maybe five to seven flowers. Don't most pimpernellifolium tomatoes tend to have LONG flower filled racemes?

 

[heirloomgal]

Hmmmm.....I grew Spoon not too long ago - I can't quite remember how long the racemes were. I looked over at Tatiana's Tomatobase and the racemes in the photos there show about 10-11 toms on a raceme. That seems about right. My guess would be the first couple of racemes will be shorter because the tomato still has more growing to do, and they'll get longer as the plant size increases.

When you say common beans do you mean P.vulgaris?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Yes, on this site, saying "bean" with no modifier is bound to lead to confusion.

 

[heirloomgal]

Some pepper progress.

'Purple Serrano'. Definitely bigger than the red serranos.

'Caixo'. Just starting to make fruits.

'Pink Cayenne'.

'Shu'. These turned out so different than I expected, much more diminutive and much more variegated than I thought. But I really like them so far. The peppers start out creamy white.

This is a gardening phenomenon I've seen many times, but it never ceases to give me pause. Whenever I either have a plant not doing great, or have too many, or the value of a plant to me plummets I'll often replant it somewhere else - where it's not likely to survive, but I figure it's better than the compost heap. And many times that plant will flourish even better than before where I've sentenced it to a grim future. These Feher Ozon peppers were some of those. I had too many plants, and priority wise these were pretty low on the list, so I planted them in between pea trellis's in the shade, in not great soil. And it has more and bigger peppers now than just about any of the others. This is exactly what happened with my currant bushes too.

Shasta daisies are blooming. The white of the petals adds a nice brightness to the perennial garden.

 

[heirloomgal]

Given that I'm growing both Huckleberries and Tzimbalos for the first time now that I've got some fruit on the plants I'm stumped about when to pick them. Neither of them are coming off the vine by gentle pulling, so for now I'm gonna wait. Seems like most fruit slip from the plant when ripe?

I saw this for the first time today - I have no idea where it came from. I think it's Nicandra, which I had bought seeds for but nothing sprouted. All I can think is I may have reused that soil to plant something else and maybe it sprouted later and I never noticed. It's a miracle it came up because it popped up from a 3 foot depth of goldenberries. So I may get to grow this one afterall! And get some fresh seed!

Oowee! I saw my first Tinga pea flower today!

I bought this little plant, Volcanic Sorrel. It's not especially showy but the branches and flowers make a nice contrast. I think I'll plant it in ground to see if I can get it through the winter.

The Bill Jump peas are jumpin'!

Rootbeer popcorn is in action! Plants are about 5 feet.

Aji Exotica pepper, very odd shape!

Aji Fantasy White

Second most vigorous eggplant of the bunch so far, Shooting Stars.

 

[Branching Out]

Huckleberries are part of childhood growing up on the west coast, but they look nothing like the plants that you have pictured. Our huckleberries are smaller than cranberries and rosy pink, with the airy small-leafed shrubs almost always growing out of the base of rotten trees. As kids they were treasured treats, picked in the wild.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Huckleberries are part of childhood growing up on the west coast, but they look nothing like the plants that you have pictured. Our huckleberries are smaller than cranberries and rosy pink, with the airy small-leafed shrubs almost always growing out of the base of rotten trees. As kids they were treasured treats, picked in the wild.

That's because what @heirloomgal is growing is what is called Garden Huckleberry. It isn't actually a true huckleberry at all (which is a member of the blueberry family). It's a form of Solanum nigrum (or maybe the Hybrid Solanum x burbankii, I tend to get Garden Huckleberry, Sunberry, and Wonderberry confused.) They LOOK sort of like Huckleberries in a pie (well, Eastern ones, most of the species have blue berries, not pink, the West Coast one is unusual in that respect.) but I've heard they don't taste of much on their own, they need a lot of sugar to make pie filling.)

Anyway, my updates.

1. Finally, the bean plants in the corn patch have gotten their flowers, so they should catch up with the ones on the patio soon.

2. It looks like maybe one of the rice beans actually did make it through, though it's way behind. So I might get a little, hopefully

3. I did a little digging around in the pot of Korean Mountain Garlic (I was getting worried that it all seemed to be dying) and there are at least a FEW bulbs in there (which, since I started from bulbils means they must have grown there.) So I suppose it is simply a matter of it being an early spring vegetable rather than a mid summer one. Probably just leave them there for a few years to let them multiply (there won't be that much this year anyway, and I have had really bad luck trying to store the bulbs outside of the soil over the winter*.)

*Of course, up until now I was working with fresh green plants I had bought at the supermarket and then FORCED to try and go into storage mode by chopping off their tops and letting them dry. Maybe it works different if the tops die down naturally.

 

[heirloomgal]

It's a form of Solanum nigrum (or maybe the Hybrid Solanum x burbankii, I tend to get Garden Huckleberry, Sunberry, and Wonderberry confused.)

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that Sunberry and Wonderberry are the same plant. I thought the Garden Huckleberries would be very similar to the Sunberry (which I grew years ago and am again this year) only slightly bigger, but they're actually very different. I'm surprised just how distinct they are.

May I ask what bean varieties your growing @Pulsegleaner?

 

[heirloomgal]

Huckleberries are part of childhood growing up on the west coast, but they look nothing like the plants that you have pictured. Our huckleberries are smaller than cranberries and rosy pink, with the airy small-leafed shrubs almost always growing out of the base of rotten trees. As kids they were treasured treats, picked in the wild.

I had no idea that mine weren't true huckleberries!