A Seed Saver's Garden

[ducks4you]

@jbrobin09 , just remember to plant your squash apart from each other. If not you will get two years of beige pumpkins, which I DON'T recommend!!
Squashes cross pollinate, and you can get bigger fruit if you cut back their vines.
There is a big pumpkin farm about an hour south of me, where they grow many international varieties and I don't know how they pollinate, but they manage to keep the strains pure.

 

[heirloomgal]

@jbrobin09 , just remember to plant your squash apart from each other. If not you will get two years of beige pumpkins, which I DON'T recommend!!
Squashes cross pollinate, and you can get bigger fruit if you cut back their vines.
There is a big pumpkin farm about an hour south of me, where they grow many international varieties and I don't know how they pollinate, but they manage to keep the strains pure.

You bring up a really good point that I often forget when I grow vining crops ducks - you can trim the vines to drive the energy into the existing fruit! In fact, now that I think about it I've read that you SHOULD trim the vines close to the end of the season because it helps the fruit/squash/watermelon mature, so an important thing for us shorter season growers. Please remind me of this the next time I'm growing a vining crop like watermelons or pumpkin!! I always seem to forget!

 

[heirloomgal]

Ok, the storage tomato adventure continues.

So, we had some burgers last week and I finally cut one of each variety into slices to do a taste test. I should preface this all by saying when the breeders named these tomatoes 'longkeepers' I don't actually know what they had in mind, timewise. It's been over 4 months, so that may be longer than what was intended? I wanted to really see what the truth was about them so I have let them be. If I were to redo this I'd keep a little notepad and try each one once a month and rate it 1-10. But, I'm not that organized and I didn't think of it.

Well, the best taste is the little oval Madagascar, pic #1. Best texture too by a long shot, it's actually shocking how good that texture is for how old they are AND the fact that I picked them at the green hard ball stage. It's an impressive little longkeeper and one of the lesser known ones for some odd reason. If I had to pick only one to regrow, it would be this one with long term storage in mind. But Ramillette de Mallorca would be a close second, it just doesn't hold as long with these qualities.

#3 pic is the Zhiraf tomato, and the bottoms are getting pink because I flipped them upside down in the box. The light is terrible in these but needless to say they are all much pinker than the photos show. The lights made them look a bit green for some reason. It's still quite hard - the longest to ripen for sure. Barely ready to eat even now. Pic #4 is the Ramillette de Mallorca, probably the best beefsteak long keeper of the bunch, but at 4 months they aren't as tasty as they were 2 months ago. BUT they still taste like a garden tomato for sure, they don't taste like grocery store crud. Texture is decent, but not awesome. On the burger though, they seemed totally normal and better than store bought.

Last pic is Golden Treasure, a yellow long keeper. To be fair to the fruit, it was picked waaaay immature ( I started them as seeds 4 weeks before plant out too, so started too late too) and they seem to have the least ideal taste and texture. Terrible texture really. They cut like a foam apple. Would they be like that if I timed them right? I dunno. One lady says they're the best long keeper there is, so I may have just not done a good job with these. I'll probably try again. That said though, Madagascar was picked immature too and it's wonderful?

All in all, they all still taste darn good on a burger, and have a *from the garden* taste left in them - shockingly. It's been watered down in storage for sure, but it's still there. I think they'd do great in any meal where tomatoes aren't the main centerpiece. These are good for sandwiches, burgers, salads, scrambled eggs etc. Not good enough to eat raw with salt and some cheese, except maybe for Madagascar.

So far, no regrets. Main conclusions are: they're worthy, they fill a gap, and 4 months is probably pushing it a little! But I'm still going to leave them and see what they do.

 

[Moon888]

I don't have a fence, and for the most part my gardens have not been raided. Sometimes a rabbit or groundhog hangs around for a little while and eats the newer parts of plants, or birds/chipmunks steal dried peas, but thankfully that hasn't happened often. Sounds like you need a fence though!

Yes, we are working on a platform and drainage, where we can erect some "tunnel" poles and cover this with bird wire, to keep as much out as possible. Bought some "commercial grade" black bird wire from ebay months ago, and it is like a woman's net stocking (very flimsy). I'm hoping to find a better grade, but on ebay, there does not seem to be any (we are in Australia); I've looked everywhere : ( Then I would like to fence around this "tunnel" (which will have mostly small trees and some veges), and around the outside, some troughs with veges. Need to keep the chooks and peafowl out : )

 

[heirloomgal]

Happy days are here, some of my fave seed companies have updated their online seed listings for 2025. Annapolis Seeds, Salt Spring, Richter's. Bunch of 'em. I've gotten to the point where I actually feel relief if there isn't too much in their new offerings that I want. I'm beginning to suspect that I've developed some corn related pathology though. Ever since I started growing fresh corn I've gotten to really love it, and I now reliably order too many corn seed packets every year - different varieties. I mean, I can grow exactly one variety a year and at the rate I'm acquiring these the math isn't mathing for an average human lifespan. I saw 2 new ones tonight - Honey Badger and Rainbow Inca, both fresh corn types. Very very very hard to resist getting them. So I decided not too. Now I really do need to find some land to rent.

 

[heirloomgal]

Thought this was pretty on point

 

[heirloomgal]

Well, well, well. I finally figured out the one mystery perennial that I have in the garden. I've had it since 2019, given to me as a gift by the local hort society, but I had forgotten what they told me it was and it didn't have a tag as it came from one of the lady's gardens. On instagram today I saw a post someone made about it. Astrantia, that's what it is. I don't know why, but it feels soooo good to finally know that. It's like having a guest over at your house for several years and never knowing what their name is!

 

[heirloomgal]

I let the basil I grew this summer for seed dry out really, really well - I find those little seeds so hard to thresh from the pods if they aren't ultra brittle. I only broke the seed pods open today. Wow. SO hard to separate the seeds from the chaff. I'm sure I lost 75% of my seeds for the Siam Queen basil to the sink. So little in the bowl when I was done. The West African basil for some reason was a bit better, there was less chaff mixed in for some reason. I usually love winnowing seed, but this one was a let down! Ugh, all those beautiful, almost hydrangea like blossoms on the Siam Queen plants and yet so little seeds that I harvested. I wonder if those blossoms inhibit good seed development? For all that bulk of dried flowers I crumbled there seemed so little seed, and some of them were not black like they should be but brownish.

 

[ducks4you]

I had to look up Astrantia to see what it was. Good to know. Don't think I'll buy it online, but I might find it in a nursery sometime or even a box store.
I lost my citronella plant. I couldn't do everything and I let it dry out in my basement.

Citronella Mosquito Plant Pelargonium

(Mosquito Plant – Scented Geranium) Help take the ‘bite’ out of summer nights with Scented Geraniums aka Mosquito Plants around your patio or landscape. A member of the geranium family, citronella has a pleasant citrus scent that comes from its foliage. Although the plant itself may not repel...

www.gardencrossings.com

I saw starts at a local nursery, but that nursery went out of business.
It was hot for awhile, but I didn't see any last year.
I will be on the hunt. I will try some other local nurseries this Spring to see if they have any. I am told that the cuttings root pretty easily.

 

[heirloomgal]

I had to look up Astrantia to see what it was. Good to know. Don't think I'll buy it online, but I might find it in a nursery sometime or even a box store.
I lost my citronella plant. I couldn't do everything and I let it dry out in my basement.

Citronella Mosquito Plant Pelargonium

(Mosquito Plant – Scented Geranium) Help take the ‘bite’ out of summer nights with Scented Geraniums aka Mosquito Plants around your patio or landscape. A member of the geranium family, citronella has a pleasant citrus scent that comes from its foliage. Although the plant itself may not repel...

www.gardencrossings.com

I saw starts at a local nursery, but that nursery went out of business.
It was hot for awhile, but I didn't see any last year.
I will be on the hunt. I will try some other local nurseries this Spring to see if they have any. I am told that the cuttings root pretty easily.

Yes, my stepmum grew these plants for years and years. At one point she had far more than what she needed, because they multiply so easily and overwinter very well. You never know, sometimes the top totally dies off but underneath the roots are still alive. Depends how dry it got I guess in your basement? The herbs I overwintered this year - lemon savoury, Balkan mint, and a kind of thyme, they all looked totally dead after one month inside. I kept them dry as I was afraid of root rot, since these herbs do best in arid conditions. I ALMOST threw them in the garbage, but got busy with some other stuff, and then when I went to deal with them....there was all kinds of baby growth around the crowns of the 'dead' plants!

Probably a good idea to steer clear of astrantia seeds, I read that they are a giant pain in the *utt to start cause they need stratification.