A Seed Saver's Garden

Pulsegleaner

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@Pulsegleaner , have you considered planting more flowers with your vegetables? They Will attract more pollinators, and that could help with pollination rates.
Maybe, but since a lot of flower plants are ALSO attractive to the animals to eat, it also means making the food supply thicker, and lowering the chance of them not going to an area much because it isn't worth their effort. When the critters come in, it isn't a matter of an occasional raid now and then, they will come again and again and again day in and day out, until they have stripped the area bare.

I recently read something that one of the problems with non-native plants is that they often tend to get a head start on the native ones when spring starts, so by the time the natives get going, the non-natives have already grown so big they have a massive advantage. I think the vegetables have a similar problem; by starting them indoors and then letting them go into the cold frame, I let then start growing FAR earlier than they would if I direct seeded them. So when they go out as plantlets (especially the very first ones), it's at a time when little if any of the background vegetation has really taken off, and with their fresh leaves and still attached cotyledons, they are attractive food sources. But what can I do? If I waited until the rest of the natural vegetation was established, it is not only generally too late for anything I start from seed to finish up by years end (especially tomatoes), but I am sowing seed in areas where annual weeds have already created massive root systems to help them come back again and again as soon as they are plucked (as is, the left hand patio pot needs a full deep weeding every other week or so to keep the carpet of smartweed under control.
The "Lantern Chain" sounds interesting!
Well, many-small versus few-big seems to always favor me, since, the less energy it takes the plant to make a fruit, the more likely it is to make fruit to begin with. It's probably why cherry tomatoes do so much better for me than non cherry, it simply takes the plants less energy to make a single cherry tomato than a larger one, so they can find the energy more often. The year I grew Ramito tomatoes (the ultra tiny, possibly currant types) was the ONLY year I actually produced more tomatoes than me and my family could EAT (we didn't plant them again, but that was because we didn't like the flavor, not lack of productivity.) And when I tried my hand at wild, diploid potatoes, the one plant that made it through to maturity put all its energy into making one tiny fruit, and never set tubers at all.

Plants generally just don't DO well here, or, at least, not consistently. We were drowning in cucumbers last year, this year, we've only gotten two small ones off the vine so far (with a few more on the way, but nothing like the torrent we had last year). Even Garlic, which is nearly idiot proof (in that nothing will eat it, so if you plant it, it isn't going anywhere) and the other alliums don't really work here, since our winters aren't QUITE enough to get the tops to die back totally, but ARE enough to put them under heavy stress, so they wind up using up all the stored energy they accumulated during the spring, summer and fall making it through the winter, leaving cloves that are actually SMALLER than the ones you put in every year (until they are so small they don't have enough energy, and then actually do die, leaving nothing.) For a while I pinned my hopes on the one I had that broke really massively really early (so that you got olive sized heads with 20-30 cloves in them) on the grounds that those gave more chances for some to make it through. But those tiny ones couldn't hold enough stored food, and died en masse every winter. Me getting a ROUND the size of a PEA at the end of two or three years is a miracle.
 

flowerbug

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to me it sounds like you just don't get enough light for the garlic or you are planting very picky varieties.

the garlic i have growing here, even if i leave it alone and don't lift it each season it will persist as a clump until i can get in there to dig it up and divide it (or harvest it and eat what i can). the cloves of some of the bulbs may not be that big and there will be some singles in there, but it won't die off.

we do have full sun (or close to it) where i normally grow the garlic whereas any garlic that ends up along the sides of places that get more shade may eventually fade out. my original garlic patch i've not even looked at this year at all - it may be gone (Mom's been doing some things in that area the past few weeks) or may be some small garlic plants still along there it's been there maybe 20yrs without me doing anything other than pulling off some scapes once in a while for giving away.
 

heirloomgal

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Joy of joys, the Job's Tears plants may actually make seed for me. They were puny seedlings, it was cold & wet early summer weather, voles went tunnelling through the plant roots and then I had to pull out 90% of the whole plot to excavate vole tunnels. They seemed doomed, and they were the last seeds I had.

And now they are out there making beautiful, arching seedheads. Such a beautiful plant Job''s Tears is.
 

heirloomgal

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JT's
20220921_152702.jpg
20220921_152844.jpg
 

heirloomgal

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Well @Zeedman you are onto something there. On a lark I searched up beverages made with Job's Tears (Coix lacryma). Wouldn't you know it, coix lacryma has been fermented as a beverage for over 5,000 years. There is a modern drink/ cocktail today made with it too, Coix Solero. Apparently from Southeast Asia, where there were no hops long ago.
 

Pulsegleaner

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Joy of joys, the Job's Tears plants may actually make seed for me. They were puny seedlings, it was cold & wet early summer weather, voles went tunnelling through the plant roots and then I had to pull out 90% of the whole plot to excavate vole tunnels. They seemed doomed, and they were the last seeds I had.

And now they are out there making beautiful, arching seedheads. Such a beautiful plant Job''s Tears is.
Is that actually the eating type of Job's tears? I THINK I can see the ridges, and they DO seem to be a bit thinner than the bead type ones, but it is hard to tell.

Next year, I really should dig out the bag of Job's tears I got from the guy in France (the one that has about a dozen different types) and toss it in the ground to see if anything comes up (so far, all of his seed (which was sold for crafts) has proven WAY too old to be viable, but who knows?)
 

heirloomgal

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@Pulsegleaner I wish I knew. My guess is that it''s the beading variety, but I'm not sure. I imagine the original plant is the beading, hard seeded variety and there was selection toward bigger, softer grain heads. I have made strings with these and while many were quite hard shelled, there was a soft centre inside I could push the needle through.
 

Pulsegleaner

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@Pulsegleaner I wish I knew. My guess is that it''s the beading variety, but I'm not sure. I imagine the original plant is the beading, hard seeded variety and there was selection toward bigger, softer grain heads. I have made strings with these and while many were quite hard shelled, though there was a soft centre inside I could push the needle through.
That hole is common to ALL jobs tears, hard or soft. You're just running a needle basically through the hole on the base of the seed, along the sheath over the actual kernel and out the hole where the flowers came out (the hops like stuff) The one good thing about this natural hole is that a Job's tear remains growable even AFTER you have stung it, the process doesn't damage the kernel.

To tell if it is the eating kind, simply try and crush a seed between your fingers. If you can, you have the eating kind. If not, it's the bead kind.

The odds on the bead are overwhelming since the US (and probably Canada, prohibit the import of unhulled, unpolished eating Job's Tears. And the polishing destroys the germ making them non viable (what few I have grown came from the odd seed that slipped by with its shell or germ intact.
 

heirloomgal

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Oh! Definitely the bead type then. Cannot crush these in my fingers for sure.

Why are the polished eating variety prohibited?
 

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