A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

For almost 20 years, Tendergreen was my go-to bush snap bean. Good sized pods, good cooked flavor, and it froze well. The only drawback - and the reason I eventually stopped growing it - was its bush habit. If the leaves were weakened by mud splash, they would get spider mites. Mice also liked munching on the pods. With the high rodent population on my property, I could never go back to bush beans.

But now I have to deal with Japanese beetles clustering at the top of my pole beans!

Sorry to hear of your difficulties... but trust me, you have plenty of success to be proud of. Your achievements are all the more noteworthy given your challenging climate. A previous manager often said "don't look at that as a problem, think of it as an opportunity". There is usually a solution or two for every problem, though it may not be an easy one, and may never offer 100% resolution. Mother Nature deserves her fair share, and one way or another she's going to take it. But she also gives back bountifully with the other hand.

It is a rare & blessed thing if you have a year where EVERYTHING does well. Most years, it's a mix of winners & losers. Focus on the successes, and don't give up. The water spinach I am feasting on this year, was a total failure last year. Plenty of failures this year too (mostly beans )... but DW & I will still eat like royalty for a couple months, can & freeze enough to last the winter, and have plenty to share with family & friends.

"You know you're a gardener when"... you can roll with the punches, and persevere in the face of misfortune.

Thanks for the kind words @Zeedman ☺ So true what you say about the overall bounty and certain crops being favoured by certain seasons. I take setback and failure personally. I've had more setbacks in the last 2 years, than the 12 before that put together. And that spoiled me. Climate is the #1 almost singular challenge growing in my area, so when I bump into some non-northern related challenge to even 5% of what I want to harvest, I'm flabbergasted. Miffed. But I need a reality check on that I guess 😂.

@Zeedman do you not grow any bush beans, at all?

 

[heirloomgal]

Couple varietal observation so far this year.

Strike peas. I don't think they are 'heirlooms' in the traditional sense but dang these are EXCELLENT peas. For one, germination is great and resistant to rot, 2, they may be very short but produce a huge number of peas. They handle cold well and are super early. Grows in a small planter very well. They would probably produce continually if I didn't let them go to seed. Even having gone to seed totally, a large number of plants are still green! All the rest are d-e-a-d.

Another unusual thing I've found this year. Tough skins on a few different veggies. Could be a coincidence, but even the tomatoes I've eaten lately seem to have a tougher skin than normal. Heat?

Queen of Malinalco tomatillo. Honestly thought this would probably fail. Just seemed like a stretch to expect a crop, let alone a seed crop. But they are ripening already, even though by 5 p.m. or so, they're in shade. The taste is.....unusual. I think if I try cooking them the flavour would be less...strange. But there is something in their wierd taste I do like. Can't believe I have more seeds than I started with already! Nothing ventured, nothing gained! But hoping for a tomatillo seed saver to clue me in on how to get rid of all the pulp. It doesn't all pour off.

'Sugar Ann' peas. Mixed feeling about this one. Erratic germination. Hates the cold & rots VERY easily. Hard to grow. But, the taste is pretty good. Will probably give up on this variety in the end. 3 feet is an odd height and difficult to manage with my various pea set ups. I lump it in with 'Sugar Lace' peas. Good to great taste on troublesome plants.

My peach poppies have finally reached seed maturity. I always forget to check on these and never manage to get the seeds in time, before they shake out onto the ground. I am fascinated by all stages of poppy growth, they are just so wonderfully bizarre. Dried, I find they look like sewn gourds.

Egg shell bank. Saving up for next year ☺ At 7 bucks a dozen I need to extract all the value possible from them 😂

I never did get around to pulling the beans out of the corn patch. But they aren't taking over, or strangling anything so well see what they produce , if anything. Clearly they are not doing as well as the others.

'Northeaster'. It's a very long bean!

One of my most favourite peppers, 'Orange Bullhorn'. It is remarkable sweet, and very crunchy. I never cook it. I eat it like pepper candy. When I grow it crowded in a window box they produce long skinny peppers in abundance, and lose this bullhorn shape.

Bean casserole, in 3 layers. The front row (Nicaraguan Black Turtle )grew in partial shade all summer, and still is green and bearing a load of pods.

'Mayan Red' beans. Number one pet peeve in bean purchasing : selling me semi runner beans as bush beans!!!!! Just say semi -climber! Otherwise it's just a mess, which will be more prone to rot hitting the ground. Argh!

More bean trees. Praying for their safety.

 

[Zeedman]

@Zeedman do you not grow any bush beans, at all?

Only a few; those which have outstanding characteristics, are rare, and are in need of preservation. I usually grow one bush variety per year; it is Bert Goodwin (technically a weak climber) this year. Atlas, a short DTM snap that I grow mainly for its large shellies. Giant Red Tarka, a productive, very large-seeded bush shelly with an 80 DTM. Uzice, an heirloom that also has very large, colorful shellies. Woods Mountain Crazy Bean, a Southern heirloom with outstanding flavor as snaps, high tolerance for heat, and an incredible yield. I've had to drop a few others over the years, including Tiger Eye, which I hope to grow again one day.

 

[baymule]

Thanks for the kind words @Zeedman ☺ So true what you say about the overall bounty and certain crops being favoured by certain seasons. I take setback and failure personally. I've had more setbacks in the last 2 years, than the 12 before that put together. And that spoiled me. Climate is the #1 almost singular challenge growing in my area, so when I bump into some non-northern related challenge to even 5% of what I want to harvest, I'm flabbergasted. Miffed. But I need a reality check on that I guess 😂.

@Zeedman do you not grow any bush beans, at all?

I look at your pictures in awe of how beautiful and lush your garden is. I see nothing to be miffed about, your garden is awesome and so are you.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I look at your pictures in awe of how beautiful and lush your garden is. I see nothing to be miffed about, your garden is awesome and so are you.

I would definitely have to agree with @baymule. As far as weather being a challenge to growing anything. There are weather related challenges here too. From storms with high winds, insects (Japanese beetles being the worst) temperatures too hot or cold, to not enough or too much rain.

I would have liked my pole bean growout this year to have looked like yours @heirloomgal. Except this year I'm singing that Dixie Chicks song "Wide Open Spaces"

 

[Zeedman]

Queen of Malinalco tomatillo. Honestly thought this would probably fail. Just seemed like a stretch to expect a crop, let alone a seed crop. But they are ripening already, even though by 5 p.m. or so, they're in shade. The taste is.....unusual. I think if I try cooking them the flavour would be less...strange. But there is something in their wierd taste I do like. Can't believe I have more seeds than I started with already! Nothing ventured, nothing gained! But hoping for a tomatillo seed saver to clue me in on how to get rid of all the pulp. It doesn't all pour off.

For cleaning seed of eggplant, ground cherry, and tomatillo, I use a thrift-store blender devoted to that purpose. The blade was filed down slightly to remove the sharp edges. Pulsed several times at low speed, it does a good job of separating the seeds from the flesh. The seeds themselves are very hard, so provided that a high water-to-flesh ratio is used, few will be damaged. For some varieties (especially some eggplant) it is helpful to remove the skin before processing, as it may be too heavy to float off.

If a little flesh remains with the seed, I can usually remove most of it by speading the well-drained seeds on newsprint. I stir & separate the seeds until they are in a single layer. Once dry, the seeds can be scraped off, and the flesh will stick to the paper.

When saving seed for tomatillo & eggplant, I allow the fruit to ripen as much as possible - even to the point where the fruit begins to split, or to rot. At that point, the mature seeds will have filled out & hardened, and will be easier to separate from the softened flesh.

 

[Zeedman]

Another shocker today - some ripe tomatillos. They split because of the rain unfortunately, but they were ready to eat. @Zeedman I'd certainly be curious to get some insight into these as I know you grow tomatillos. The taste is hard to describe... ..ground cherries came to mind right away but also a strong flavour of tomatoes. The one I tried years ago was sour like a granny Smith apple. This was so different, and not so firm. It was actually sticky to the touch. Very unusual.

Ooops... just realized I never answered this. Sour, and sticky outside, is the norm. Tomatillos are best used fully grown, but immature (like eggplant) before the fruits ripen & the seeds harden. I haven't really experimented with tomatillos much, other than to make Salsa Verde. I haven't compared the flavor of different varieties either (there are only a hand full of varieties available). I'm looking forward to trying that one, hopefully in 2022.

My own are mostly doing well, in spite of a brief setback due to wet weather. I had to destroy one plant, which showed signs of viral infection. The rest are healthy, and trained up into a trellis; some have already reached 6' tall, and have set large numbers of fruit. I still call the long, sparsely foliated branches "runners", even though they would not climb on their own. They would sprawl across the ground like squash vines if I let them, but there are fewer problems with insects & disease if trained upward.

 

[flowerbug]

i'm surprised i still have pea pods coming on some of my pea plants, and yes the chipmunks are still raiding any pods which get peas in them bigger than the size, of, erm, a large bb (4mm or so). so i get a few pods every few days for fresh eating and once in a while i find a seed that might dry down and be viable, but i kinda doubt they'll amount to much.

 

[heirloomgal]

I would definitely have to agree with @baymule. As far as weather being a challenge to growing anything. There are weather related challenges here too. From storms with high winds, insects (Japanese beetles being the worst) temperatures too hot or cold, to not enough or too much rain.

I would have liked my pole bean growout this year to have looked like yours @heirloomgal. Except this year I'm singing that Dixie Chicks song "Wide Open Spaces"

Hahaha...Dixie Chicks song...😂

But that was really very, very sad about your pole beans. I'd have been wrecked for a week. I guess compared to that loss, a few voles isn't epic tragedy. I guess like @Zeedman said, "you might be a gardener if you get back up and try again". But thank you again, so much, for the vole tip @Bluejay77 ;if you hadn't mentioned that I'd be in a cloud of worry that some malignant pathogen was invading. I would never have guessed it. Now we see the blighters running from garden to garden in broad daylight. I bought ten traps tonight. Don't like to do it, but seems like no other option.

 

[heirloomgal]

For cleaning seed of eggplant, ground cherry, and tomatillo, I use a thrift-store blender devoted to that purpose. The blade was filed down slightly to remove the sharp edges. Pulsed several times at low speed, it does a good job of separating the seeds from the flesh. The seeds themselves are very hard, so provided that a high water-to-flesh ratio is used, few will be damaged. For some varieties (especially some eggplant) it is helpful to remove the skin before processing, as it may be too heavy to float off.

If a little flesh remains with the seed, I can usually remove most of it by speading the well-drained seeds on newsprint. I stir & separate the seeds until they are in a single layer. Once dry, the seeds can be scraped off, and the flesh will stick to the paper.

When saving seed for tomatillo & eggplant, I allow the fruit to ripen as much as possible - even to the point where the fruit begins to split, or to rot. At that point, the mature seeds will have filled out & hardened, and will be easier to separate from the softened flesh.

Thank you!! What a wealth of seed saving experience you have! So awesome!