A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

D

Middle DD is experimenting with using tomatoes and the dried tomatoes I gave her to make pasta and pizza sauce--she makes a Mean pizza!
I await her results...

One of the most delicious uses for dried tomatoes I've tried yet. I always served it on hot noodles, with a bit of extra cheese on top. It is sooo good! I need to make this again actually, it's been too long, thank you for the memory refresher!

When Basil Season Is Over, We Eat Red Pesto

When basil isn't in season, try this punchy and sweet sun-dried tomato pesto. It can be used in any way you would serve regular basil pesto, but we love it with pasta, spread on sandwiches, as a dip with veggies, or stirred into soup.

www.simplyrecipes.com

 

[heirloomgal]

I've been shelling for days. Hours every evening; it's both satisfying & tiring at this stage. And it wasn't even a super great bean year, nothing like 2023 was. Feeling extremely grateful though because pests gave me a run for my money, it was a possibility my main garden got wiped out by first cutworms then voles. But I am so ready to be done with the shelling, tonight I started XL Costco leaf bag #4. And there is plenty of Halloween prep needing done so finishing up soon is needed. Then all the tomato seeds need to be scraped off their drying sheets and packed up.

All the jars on the tables filled with colorful beans is feeling pretty great though.

 

[heirloomgal]

Memories of the 'Shirley' poppies this summer....

I had no idea that a single poppy variety could have so much diversity in it and still be a single variety. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed them, and the long blooming time they had (probably because of crowding). In the end I saved some seeds from them, which was somewhat of a miracle considering poppies give you no wiggle room with timing so I missed a ton. I dislike how awful the dead brown stems look as you wait for the heads to dry, but in the end I decided it was worth it.

 

[heirloomgal]

Sky tonight was really gorgeous, impossible to catch on a camera. But this was the vague flavor.

My first cover crop of rye & oats has not turned out quite as I imagined it. It did grow well, and tall. Then we discovered that the guinea pig herd are wild for the fresh grass, as is Tucker. He almost acts like an ungulate when I let him in the bed. So they got to eat a lot of it. DS flipped the bed for me this week, at least what was left in it after the first major cutting for the pigs. I'll be curious to see how much the clods have broken down by next June.

He prefers I not watch while he eats. I guess we're all like that.

 

[heirloomgal]

Happy Halloween!

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

 

[heirloomgal]

Halloween was SO much fun! We got lucky and the forecast of flurries and/or rain didn't manifest. We go pretty big with spooky season here, and DD is getting more and more creative every year. We all have different contributions I guess, DH does a lot of the intricate pumpkin carvings (though DD & I beat him this year, lol) I did Vlad and she did the Enchantress. DS picks out great audio and video. DD's costume is usually home made, she worked on it for 7 months this year. Homemade armor, she cut out each scale in her plates and painted them, a huge project. Wood stained a giant tree staff she whittled, made a small egg shaped lantern glowing green for the top. She did all the decorations this year too, with me as her helper. Fair to say she has surpassed the teacher, lol.

After a little round of trick or treating (about a half hours worth since she doesn't eat any of it) she decided to remove the skeleton she had put in a rocking chair in the carport and sit under a white sheet herself, rocking slowly. I wasn't sure about that idea, but wow, it was effective to give people some serious trepidation. The kids all made a run for it to pass her and many asked at the door if that was 'animatronic'. A few of the littles wouldn't approach the door with her there, and I had to step out to give them their candy. One group of older boys (much too old to be trick or treating really) got brave as they left and gently tried to swing out their pillowcase of candy at her knee to see what would happen. They were sure she was a plug in because the fog machine was plugged in behind the chair on an extension cord and it looked like it was coming out from the rocking chair. She must have been able to see through the sheet somewhat because as he did that she jerked up an arm from the rocking chair and those boys jumped a foot off the ground and ran full speed down the driveway. DH & I were watching from the window, it was so funny. A Halloween to remember for sure.

Bit dark but we had corns talk bundles and grass bundles staked all around the yard anchored with hidden bamboo. Candles in jars. A medieval style fire pit. DD made some decorations similar to what is in the movie Willow, all made from old dead wood and plastic skulls. Never did get a pic in the daylight. I angled a flashlight on the ground up toward the skeleton which worked surprisingly well when it got really dark.

DD's fortune teller table became a bit of a photo booth for the parents to snap pics of the kids. DD made the book of spells from some old cookbook I had in the basement, lol. We lit everything up with battery operated candles once it got dark. It was a lot of fun for the kids, such a pleasure to see.

 

[flowerbug]

... She must have been able to see through the sheet somewhat because as he did that she jerked up an arm from the rocking chair and those boys jumped a foot off the ground and ran full speed down the driveway. DH & I were watching from the window, it was so funny. A Halloween to remember for sure.

hahaha! wow! that is sure some deadication!

 

[heirloomgal]

November 1st and I'm now able to start identifying the more truly long keeping storage tomatoes, with a smattering of other surprise tomatoes that just seem to keep super well after picking. There must be distinct genes for 'shelf life' in tomatoes because the differences among varieties is significant. I've found many of the really ruffled tomatoes to be quick to perish, so ability to hold both on & off the vine is likely a product of human selection. It doesn't seem a trait in the wilder tomatoes, which the ruffled ones are.

I have not put the care and attention into this year's long keepers as I did last year unfortunately, there has just been so much else going on. (For some reason lots of people are ordering seeds right now, never seen this in October before.) That said they still are hanging on despite the fact they are not in a good location right now. I need to get them out of the kitchen! But the dining room table is covered in other seeds!

The smaller longkeepers are mostly squeezed for seeds now, some of them likely needed to be picked green to be viable right now. 'Giallo Grapolli' though, despite being plum sized, is definitely going to be okay for awhile yet. It was a really high yielder, so if it's good tasting it's rating will go up even further in my books. The 'Yellow Out Red In' tomato has been the biggest standout in some ways- really big fruits and the yield was really high. 'Ruby Treasure' was a very nice long keeper but the plant didn't give me much comparatively.

'Marzano Fire'

'Pink Champagne'

'Winter Gold Keeper'

'Mystery Keeper'

'Yellow Out Red In'

'Ruby Treasure'

This is one from the Cross Hemisphere Dwarf Tomato Project, perhaps the latest maturing variety I've tried from that bunch. I was surprised it was so late really, but it's nice to have ones like this that start producing just as all the others have petered out. Just when you think you won't soon eat another toasted tomato and cheese sandwich!

Been a good year for leaf cover in the garden beds!

Dug up my first celeriac plants! I made a huge pot of kale, potato & tomato soup which included some of these. Aroma and flavor was very, very good though I did find by the time I cut the little roots off, washed and peeled them it didn't leave as large a bulbous tuber as I would have liked. But I like them well enough to plant again. Strange how the root parsley was so utterly mangled by being kept in a small cell, and yet these, which I bought as transplants in a cell pack from a greenhouse, are just fine. Very strange.

 

[digitS']

I thought to post a LINK to this thread about growing celeriac.

There is no secret to growing them that I know of except that they take a very full season. That means that the sprouting of seed indoors begins very early, like 8 weeks before last frost.

Yes, they can take some chilly weather but I doubt if they are doing much growing after the first frost of Autumn. The post also gives you some idea of the difference here between Fall of 2025 and a more normal 2023. They were harvested a full month later this year.

Steve

 

[heirloomgal]

I thought to post a LINK to this thread about growing celeriac.

There is no secret to growing them that I know of except that they take a very full season. That means that the sprouting of seed indoors begins very early, like 8 weeks before last frost.

Yes, they can take some chilly weather but I doubt if they are doing much growing after the first frost of Autumn. The post also gives you some idea of the difference here between Fall of 2025 and a more normal 2023. They were harvested a full month later this year.

Steve

Those are beautiful celeriac roots. Mine didn't get that wonderfully large & rounded. Do you start them from seed @digitS'? Or buy starts?