A Seed Saver's Garden

[Zeedman]

I've heard of Shiraz, but not grown it. That's a rare one around here, I only know of one person in Canada who has that one.

Sounds like "Shiraz" will be first on the list for our next trade.

 

[heirloomgal]

Sunberry seed saving time.

 

[heirloomgal]

The Hexentomates aka Goldenberries are beginning to mature en masse. Given the length of the branches I think they’ll continue to make fruit until frost. As for the taste, meh. Passable. They may have more merit when dried. Compared to the Sunberries, they aren’t as big, or as sweet. They also have less nutes, because they lack the antho pigment of the sunberries. We’ll see how they taste if I can dry them successfully.

The Ananas Vert toms are rolling in. Love their color.

Kabuli Black, sent to me by Bill Minkey. Very nice shade for a black/brown, a tomato color that can tend to look greyish. Not quite as tart as I like ‘em but nice in a toasted mayo, cheese and cucumber sandwich.

Grightmires Pride. Meaty and sweet. I like it for cooking since it takes less time to blunt the usual acidity of tomatoes. Had a lot of these clunkers on the vines.

Greek Asemina. Very productive variety, makes so many fruit. For a mid size, these are on the sweet side. Nice texture though, not goopy inside. Good ratio of juice to flesh.

The Selma Zebra bean plant. Pods really are kinda of zebra like, with contrasting purple & green. Texture is pretty good but they seem to go to seed pretty quick. Not much can hold a candle to the Fasolds which I’m trying to stay away from as I’ve eaten way too many already. I promised myself today is the last day I steal pods from those and eat these instead.

DD’s turmeric plant. It’s still alive 5 months from planting so we may get something from it. We’ll see.

Soybeans. Being fairly new to growing these it’s clear to me this year that there is a correlation between plant size and maturity. All the small growing varieties - ugara saja , cha kura, (spelling?) are full of well formed pods. The huge plants, like black panther and musan, are just blossoming. Something to remember for future grow outs.

The rare Zwolse Paarse looking advanced at seed making 😍. Today was truly chilly and wet - not good for the bean plants. But will be hot this week thankfully. The humidity has caused a wee bit of damage, but so far, pretty limited. Puzzled about watering this last week; there’s been enough rain to wet the soil, but the bean canopies prevent it from going to the roots. So I’m tempted to water, but it seems the last thing the vines need is more humidity.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

FINALLY one or two of the lablabs have flowers (two places, but can't tell if they are attached to the same plant.)

This is probably still plenty early to get mature seed back, so I guess I'll have a functional one after this.

Only bad news is that whatever the upright legume with the simple leaves is is broke in half, so I assume I won't get any flowers from that to identify it by.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

The Hexentomates aka Goldenberries are beginning to mature en masse. Given the length of the branches I think they’ll continue to make fruit until frost. As for the taste, meh. Passable. They may have more merit when dried. Compared to the Sunberries, they aren’t as big, or as sweet. They also have less nutes, because they lack the antho pigment of the sunberries. We’ll see how they taste if I can dry them successfully.
View attachment 59379

Am I right in remembering that, when fully ripe, the fruit of both Black Nightshade and American Nightshade are safe to consume?

I ask because, at some point, I'll presumably try to re-grow that mystery bronze berried nightshade that showed up in my pot when I tried to grow Tom Wagner's wild potato mix. And, when I do, I suppose I should try and find out if it has any culinary usefulness. I'd certainly feel better doing this if I knew that all the other members of that part of the genus were safe to put in your mouth, making the odds of me poisoning myself more minimal.

 

[heirloomgal]

FINALLY one or two of the lablabs have flowers (two places, but can't tell if they are attached to the same plant.)

View attachment 59496
View attachment 59497

This is probably still plenty early to get mature seed back, so I guess I'll have a functional one after this.

Only bad news is that whatever the upright legume with the simple leaves is is broke in half, so I assume I won't get any flowers from that to identify it by.

How interesting, the lablab species has leaves exactly like P.vulgaris. I hadn't expected that. Very nice looking foliage @Pulsegleaner. I'd be curious to see what your seeds look like!

 

[heirloomgal]

Am I right in remembering that, when fully ripe, the fruit of both Black Nightshade and American Nightshade are safe to consume?

I ask because, at some point, I'll presumably try to re-grow that mystery bronze berried nightshade that showed up in my pot when I tried to grow Tom Wagner's wild potato mix. And, when I do, I suppose I should try and find out if it has any culinary usefulness. I'd certainly feel better doing this if I knew that all the other members of that part of the genus were safe to put in your mouth, making the odds of me poisoning myself more minimal.

I have no idea! I worry about the nightshades in that sense, even as I lifted those first sunberries to eat them the thought crossed my mind - 'could they have made a mistake?' lol I'm still upright so I guess they didn't. People tell me the deadly form of nightshade berries are around, which look quite like the sunberries, though I haven't seen any myself. I'd be careful! A friend of mine during his hippie 'wild foraging' years living in a cottage in the woods was out gathering tea herbs and berries and picked one species and held it to his lips/nose to see if he could get a taste/smell indication of what he thought it was. Not long after his lip swelled right up. It was deadly nightshade! He checked it out in the foraging handbook and breathed a sigh of relief!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Actually Deadly Nightshade doesn't look ALL that much like sunberry. The flowers are totally different (they're bell shaped, and purple) the berries have a HUGE green calyx around them, as opposed to the tiny wispy kind black nightshade and the like have (black nightshade has a calyx that looks like the one on a tomato, deadly looks like a black berry sitting on a star shaped leaf.

Ditto a lot of the others, Enchanters is a vine, the flowers are purple, and the berries are both red and pointed ovals (sort of tamarillo shaped). Horse nettle has big thorns, of course. And the other one we have around here I can't remember (with the round, red berries) Isn't very common (I never even SAW it until I went to college.)

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Update: I think I have identified my mystery nightshade. It appears to be Solanum psyalifolium , the Argentinian or Hairy Nightshade (which probably explains how it got in there.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Actually Deadly Nightshade doesn't look ALL that much like sunberry. The flowers are totally different (they're bell shaped, and purple) the berries have a HUGE green calyx around them, as opposed to the tiny wispy kind black nightshade and the like have (black nightshade has a calyx that looks like the one on a tomato, deadly looks like a black berry sitting on a star shaped leaf.

Ditto a lot of the others, Enchanters is a vine, the flowers are purple, and the berries are both red and pointed ovals (sort of tamarillo shaped). Horse nettle has big thorns, of course. And the other one we have around here I can't remember (with the round, red berries) Isn't very common (I never even SAW it until I went to college.)

Well, I definitely learned something after reading your post. I had thought sunberries look like 'deadly nightshade' mostly because at the Seedy Saturday held by the horticultural society a few of the older ladies had a bit of a bird when they saw my sunberry seed packets; they told me that the two are nearly identical and were afraid that's what I had. For some reason I didn't question this (they are hort people!), but I just googled now what deadly nightshade in my area looks like and you're right, it looks nothing like my sunberries. And here I am telling people on the SoDC website not to grow them if those other nightshades are nearby! I'll have to edit that now that I know better.

The other interesting thing is I definitely have seen 'deadly nightshade' around then - Solanum dulcamara L. I saw it last week on my street in someone's yard, that exact purple flower with the yellow centre. And I've seen the plants with the ripe berries too. I've pulled those out of my perennial garden many times over the years. I always wondered what those were; they looked to me like small potato flowers on familiar looking plants, but I couldn't place it. BUT from what I read it really isn't as deadly as commonly believed. It isn't the true deadly nightshade Atropa belladonna.