A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

well, you could always go after some of the eggplant like other solanums, Some of those are tiny, like the Thai pea, the Ugandan pea (currently on the EFN site under its African name Kitiley.)

I would LOVE to try those little pea eggplants @Pulsegleaner, and I've actually 'tried' the seeds having planted an entire packet of 35 seeds once and nothing happened. I had the heat mats, I waited almost 2 months thinking maybe the wild genes have driven them into deep dormancy. I just could not get a single seed to sprout. I lump this one in with culanto - Very Difficult. I'm tempted to try them again this year, but I wonder if it would just be a waste of $$.

Have you eaten those pea eggplants? I'm very curious what they taste like.

 

[heirloomgal]

CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — From milk and coffee to cookies, increases in the prices of food products are set to increase in 2022.

Food retailers and distributors say they will start increasing food prices as early as January; some say it could be up as much as 20%.

Good year to have a hobby garden.

There is a great deal of worry here right now about food shortages because of the situation with the truckers, since our nations' leader - Lunaticus Maximegus - declared them domestic terrorists, both those from the US as well as locals. There are some serious shortages already in certain retail sectors. I haven't been able to buy masa harina corn flour in over a year. I went out and bought another hundred pounds or so of dried goods just in case SHTF sooner than later. I've almost got the beginnings of a little bunker! Between the problems shipping over water, and now the shipping across land issues, this could really spell trouble.

 

[flowerbug]

I am utterly exhausted, but content. It's taken 3 days but I have finally created a numbered system for all my seeds. Joining a seed exchange, which has caused me to go looking for various things, made me realise that with all the varieties of things I've collected I need to have a more comprehensive form of organisation. It is a challenge that all my peas, beans, peppers, corn, okra, sorghum, radishes are in jars. This has meant I need to lift each one up to read the label - time consuming..... I numbered the tops of each species in series and gathered several sturdy box flats to keep them in, in case I need to move them for some reason. I like to keep everything on the floor in the basement (coolest and darkest). I typed up all the varietal names with their assigned number, so I only need to look at my list, and then go find the numbered jar. So much easier! Golly, organisation is so freeing.

The tomatoes are a different story since I keep those as 'files', which are so much easier to manage and store. However, in doing all this seed tidying I realised that much of my last Seedy Saturday seed packets never made it back into the main file system. I literally spent Saturday filing tomato seed packets. And I'm not done. I don't know how people who work in occupations that require a lot of filing do it. SO tedious and it's not enjoyable. I will be happy when I get this last tomato section done, hopefully tomorrow.

i hate filing too. i've just been getting some flats from 2017 dusted and more organized and some things discarded. whatever i can get rid of that i don't need saves me valuable space and time.

i would not rely upon any single list for the decoding information for a container of seeds. i include in each container the year grown and if there is any ambiguity about the variety possible i'll put that name in there too. the source and year acquired (or segregated) are important for me to know too so those are gradually being added to all samples as i work through the entire collection.

as i go through parts of the bean collection recently since i've refreshed some seed stocks i can get rid of older samples or backup samples i kept "Just in case" of a crop failure. this has given me a few more pounds of future worm food in recent weeks. some of the samples were very remote chances of being used anyways because the seed quality was so poor they're not really even suitable for me to eat them (or i would ) - worms have no problem with that at all... it is still very hard for me to get rid of a variety completely. i always like to have a sample for identification purposes and once i have that then there is the temptation to grow it again to refresh the seed or to do comparison growouts with other varieties or ... well ... perhaps someone else will want it someday. it's as bad as any other collector's whims to have one of everything or any tinkerer to keep something around just in case it might be useful again sometime.

 

[heirloomgal]

i hate filing too. i've just been getting some flats from 2017 dusted and more organized and some things discarded. whatever i can get rid of that i don't need saves me valuable space and time.

i would not rely upon any single list for the decoding information for a container of seeds. i include in each container the year grown and if there is any ambiguity about the variety possible i'll put that name in there too. the source and year acquired (or segregated) are important for me to know too so those are gradually being added to all samples as i work through the entire collection.

as i go through parts of the bean collection recently since i've refreshed some seed stocks i can get rid of older samples or backup samples i kept "Just in case" of a crop failure. this has given me a few more pounds of future worm food in recent weeks. some of the samples were very remote chances of being used anyways because the seed quality was so poor they're not really even suitable for me to eat them (or i would ) - worms have no problem with that at all... it is still very hard for me to get rid of a variety completely. i always like to have a sample for identification purposes and once i have that then there is the temptation to grow it again to refresh the seed or to do comparison growouts with other varieties or ... well ... perhaps someone else will want it someday. it's as bad as any other collector's whims to have one of everything or any tinkerer to keep something around just in case it might be useful again sometime.

In these last few days I've become conscious of a unique quality peculiar to beans (mostly) as seeds - they are one of the only vegetables whose seeds are not identical and you can distinguish at least some of the varieties by seeds alone.

 

[flowerbug]

In these last few days I've become conscious of a unique quality peculiar to beans (mostly) as seeds - they are one of the only vegetables whose seeds are not identical and you can distinguish at least some of the varieties by seeds alone.

true and i really like those that are like this and prefer to grow unique varieties in each garden which makes sorting things out later much easier. the combinatorics get rather crazy though when you get variations popping up.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I would LOVE to try those little pea eggplants @Pulsegleaner, and I've actually 'tried' the seeds having planted an entire packet of 35 seeds once and nothing happened. I had the heat mats, I waited almost 2 months thinking maybe the wild genes have driven them into deep dormancy. I just could not get a single seed to sprout. I lump this one in with culanto - Very Difficult. I'm tempted to try them again this year, but I wonder if it would just be a waste of $$.

Have you eaten those pea eggplants? I'm very curious what they taste like.

No. We are not generally an eggplant eating family. Plus I have heard a lot of the aubergines africanes (a sort of catchall term for these alternate species, since most of them are African) tend to be more bitter than true eggplants.

I do however, think I still have a packet of the Ugandan pea eggplants SOMEWHERE in my room. And that could be important, if anyone here does decide to try the EFN's (assuming the two are the same species, it sounds like there are two.). If you read the EFN's description, you find that their stock all comes from ONE survivor plant. So it is probably REALLY genetically bottlenecked. What's in the packet I have is from Joe Simcox's collecting, so it may be more diverse.

Speaking of hard to germinate things. I FINALLY go my crowberry seeds today! Only catch is that, according to the growing instructions, ever with appropriate treatment (including vernalization), it could take up to a FULL YEAR, of the seeds to germinate! I guess since I have them now, I might as well try, but I suspect this may be a species that I would have been better trying to find grown plants for rather than seed.

 

[heirloomgal]

No. We are not generally an eggplant eating family. Plus I have heard a lot of the aubergines africanes (a sort of catchall term for these alternate species, since most of them are African) tend to be more bitter than true eggplants.

I do however, think I still have a packet of the Ugandan pea eggplants SOMEWHERE in my room. And that could be important, if anyone here does decide to try the EFN's (assuming the two are the same species, it sounds like there are two.). If you read the EFN's description, you find that their stock all comes from ONE survivor plant. So it is probably REALLY genetically bottlenecked. What's in the packet I have is from Joe Simcox's collecting, so it may be more diverse.

Speaking of hard to germinate things. I FINALLY go my crowberry seeds today! Only catch is that, according to the growing instructions, ever with appropriate treatment (including vernalization), it could take up to a FULL YEAR, of the seeds to germinate! I guess since I have them now, I might as well try, but I suspect this may be a species that I would have been better trying to find grown plants for rather than seed.

The bitterness was exactly what I was worried about.

I so appreciate the education that your posts are for me @Pulsegleaner , I thought I knew quite a bit about weird plants, but man, I've learned so much about diverse species through your adventures.

What's EFN?

 

[AMKuska]

There is a great deal of worry here right now about food shortages because of the situation with the truckers, since our nations' leader - Lunaticus Maximegus - declared them domestic terrorists, both those from the US as well as locals. There are some serious shortages already in certain retail sectors. I haven't been able to buy masa harina corn flour in over a year. I went out and bought another hundred pounds or so of dried goods just in case SHTF sooner than later. I've almost got the beginnings of a little bunker! Between the problems shipping over water, and now the shipping across land issues, this could really spell trouble.

Yeah, I'm not going to lie I dread shopping now. On top of the supply issues, companies are not even being discreet about stealing from you here. They take my money for deposits for glass bottles quick enough, but than tell me they can't give me my money back without a receipt--when it has never been that way before.

Apparently there's a glass bottle crime ring and they're going to stop it by becoming the thieves themselves. Burger king advertises a $5 meal, but it's actually $6. They know it is false advertising, they don't care. It's just $1, but false advertising is a very real crime, and I doubt it's going to stop there.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

The bitterness was exactly what I was worried about.

I so appreciate the education that your posts are for me @Pulsegleaner , I thought I knew quite a bit about weird plants, but man, I've learned so much about diverse species through your adventures.

What's EFN?

The Experimental Farm Network. It's the retail branch of the OSSI (open source seed initiative).

 

[ducks4you]

I am utterly exhausted, but content. It's taken 3 days but I have finally created a numbered system for all my seeds. ...

I've tried a lot of stuff that I've almost forgotten about. Apparently in 2020 I grew 'Petch Siam' eggplant and collected about 1/3 cup of seeds. Gosh, I don't even recall that and I have so much seed. But I did a bit of research on it, and it's got my curiosity piqued again about eggplant. Looks like eggplants don't really cross, or not much at least. I like crops that I don't really have to worry much about in that regard. @Zeedman I think you have a lot of experience with eggplant, are there any that you really like? I have seeds for Morden Midget, Little Bambino, Rosa Bianca, White Egg, Striped Toga, Cookstown Orange, couple others. I like the smaller eggplant types because they mature quick and you can get a lot of seed from them too.

I was also reminded of a favourite tomato I haven't grown in 2 years now - 'Uluru Ochre'. My goodness that was a superlative tomato. The colour was singular, a green-orange-dirt colour, or an orangey green kind of mud. Some describe as an orange-black. Whatever the colour profile, dang that was a fine tomater!

THAT IS A L O T of work, @heirloomgal !!!
Congratulations for your efforts!!!