A Seed Saver's Garden

Alasgun said:
Fermented plant extract - my version, the scientist tell it differently.
Walk over the property to become familiar with your local inputs. These include any clovers, any young non woody plants, yarrow etc.
The next day, In the early morning pre sun take a clipper and a 5 gallon bucket around to each of your inputs and cut a good handful of the upper growth shoots and toss them in the bucket. Your goal is to end up with 3/4 of a gallon of “Bruised” plant matter; think sour kraut With sugar rather than salt. Typically i’ll have 20 or more items in each batch.
Add 2 cups of sugar and a cup of black strap molasses to the bruised material; and bruise it some more! Like kraut, you’ll know when to pour the contents into a glass gallon jar. I will add a little water if the plant matter is not submerged. A small weight helps.
Saran wrap over the mouth with a rubber band around the mouth. One small needle prick in the cover, to vent.
after a couple days bubbles appear once fermentation is complete strain of the liquid. It keeps from season to season refrigerated.
ive used it as a foliar feed, and mostly for an insecticide. Dilute 10-1 and spray 2-3 times in a week IF necessary.

Net searches are good, however a lot of this is not original material once you read a few, hence; my version!
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Thank you very much @Alasgun, I have learned SO MUCH from your posts! Your expertise in organic methods has really upped my gardening game these last 2 years; a few days ago I noticed some weird, greyish, buggy things on a few plants in the greenhouse, for a split second I thought to squish them and then I remembered a photo you posted last year. It was a lady bug baby, and that's what it was! I would never have known that! I so appreciate all that you share. Such valuable information! :hugs
 
I'm totally shocked. I happened to notice today the 2 trays of okras I left to die in the rain and cold a few days ago. Only half were dead! The other half were still truckin, so I decided to reward that tenacity and bumped up their pot size, hosed off what aphids remained and put them in the greenhouse. It has been mighty cold these last few nights too, I can't believe they didn't all croak unprotected outdoors. I don't know the origin of each variety I had, but it looks like - possibly - the more southern originating ones struggled. 'Cowhorn' and 'Lady Finger' faired the worst, 'Cajun Jewel' in the middle and 'Burgundy' (those antho genes!!), Burmese, Penta Dragon & Dwarf Lee did the best. Man, plants can be amazing.
 
Okay, updates.

I jut got the corn transplants into the ground, along with the watermelons (already sprouted) and the rice beans (soaked, but not sprouted). I put up the cage over them, hopefully that's enough to keep the critters off.

Looks like the lima beans are a total wash, so I have re-planted all four of those long pots, two with common beans (Russ's Falcon crosses) and two with long beans (don't remember which one, but it was the one with the mottled seed coats with the pink fungicide on them, if @Zeedman remembers which one that is).

Soybeans are a wash as well, looks like years hiding under the couch was too much time for them.
Still nothing from the general small legumes pot, even after re-sowing it about four times with more seeds.

A few sprouts have shown up in the left side patio pot that do NOT look like the rest, so hopefully that means I'll get SOMETHING besides orange sweet peas (IF I get orange sweet peas, with the hot weather presumably coming fairly soon, it is possible they'll go into permanent vegetative state and never actually flower.)

Right pot looks like I has two lablabs/wing beans (seedlings look the same at this point), plus one I can't identify. I dug up a few other sprouted lablabs today when putting in some horse gram seedlings, but as all of those seemed to either be rotted or twisted into an ouroboros. I'd say they all count as non-viable, and two is what I'm stuck with.

To my astonishment, a few seeds I got from that French person actually seem to have germinated (two Canavalia rosea) In retrospect, if anything was, that seemed sort of likely; any seed designed to travel via floating on the ocean waves is going to have to have a very LONG viability period, since who knows how long it will be adrift.

Looks like the Russian netted may be the only cucumbers I get to eat this year; the burr gherkins don't seem to have taken (maybe the seed was too old) and the Borneo Jungle cucumber seedlings seem to have all (or mostly all) died (and since the only other Borneo seed I have is from the one I grew last year I didn't like the taste of, re-planting is pointless). @Zeedman, remind me the next time I have something you might want I am willing to part with to trade for some of that Calcutta Liso Burr Gherkin seed you like so much (I'm going to try the Ethiopian one OSSI has, but two is probably not a bad idea.)
 
Pulsegleaner said:
Okay, updates.

I jut got the corn transplants into the ground, along with the watermelons (already sprouted) and the rice beans (soaked, but not sprouted). I put up the cage over them, hopefully that's enough to keep the critters off.

Looks like the lima beans are a total wash, so I have re-planted all four of those long pots, two with common beans (Russ's Falcon crosses) and two with long beans (don't remember which one, but it was the one with the mottled seed coats with the pink fungicide on them, if @Zeedman remembers which one that is).

Soybeans are a wash as well, looks like years hiding under the couch was too much time for them.
Still nothing from the general small legumes pot, even after re-sowing it about four times with more seeds.

A few sprouts have shown up in the left side patio pot that do NOT look like the rest, so hopefully that means I'll get SOMETHING besides orange sweet peas (IF I get orange sweet peas, with the hot weather presumably coming fairly soon, it is possible they'll go into permanent vegetative state and never actually flower.)

Right pot looks like I has two lablabs/wing beans (seedlings look the same at this point), plus one I can't identify. I dug up a few other sprouted lablabs today when putting in some horse gram seedlings, but as all of those seemed to either be rotted or twisted into an ouroboros. I'd say they all count as non-viable, and two is what I'm stuck with.

To my astonishment, a few seeds I got from that French person actually seem to have germinated (two Canavalia rosea) In retrospect, if anything was, that seemed sort of likely; any seed designed to travel via floating on the ocean waves is going to have to have a very LONG viability period, since who knows how long it will be adrift.

Looks like the Russian netted may be the only cucumbers I get to eat this year; the burr gherkins don't seem to have taken (maybe the seed was too old) and the Borneo Jungle cucumber seedlings seem to have all (or mostly all) died (and since the only other Borneo seed I have is from the one I grew last year I didn't like the taste of, re-planting is pointless). @Zeedman, remind me the next time I have something you might want I am willing to part with to trade for some of that Calcutta Liso Burr Gherkin seed you like so much (I'm going to try the Ethiopian one OSSI has, but two is probably not a bad idea.)
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Orange sweet peas! Sounds beautiful. I once grew a variety, I think it was called 'Prince of Orange'. I don't recalll it being extraordinarily orange though. Does it get so hot where you are @Pulsegleaner that your sweet peas will not flower? Maybe you could try a partly shaded spot?

The Liso Calcutta gherkins - I really liked those too, which I also tried because of @Zeedman's description. I could send you some also. I'm tempted to try this year the original Jamaican Burr Gherkin that Liso (I think) was selected from, just to see how different they are. I'm also tempted to try achocha, I have the seeds, but it's probably a bit late to direct seed those. The seeds of that species are very weird. If you've grown these I'd be curious to hear what you thought of them.

I'm happy to report that I think the 'Tinga' seeds are beginning to sprout, the ones with the little pink flowers!
 
heirloomgal said:
Orange sweet peas! Sounds beautiful. I once grew a variety, I think it was called 'Prince of Orange'. I don't recalll it being extraordinarily orange though. Does it get so hot where you are @Pulsegleaner that your sweet peas will not flower? Maybe you could try a partly shaded spot?

The Liso Calcutta gherkins - I really liked those too, which I also tried because of @Zeedman's description. I could send you some also. I'm tempted to try this year the original Jamaican Burr Gherkin that Liso (I think) was selected from, just to see how different they are. I'm also tempted to try achocha, I have the seeds, but it's probably a bit late to direct seed those. The seeds of that species are very weird. If you've grown these I'd be curious to hear what you thought of them.

I'm happy to report that I think the 'Tinga' seeds are beginning to sprout, the ones with the little pink flowers!
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They ARE Prince of Orange. I got them sort of by mistake (the seller said they were Prince of Orange sweet peas, which didn't interest me much, but the picture they used was for the wild pea Pisum elatius, so I thought that was what I would get.)

It's hard to say. I'm not sure I have done straight sweet peas before. I know that my regualr peas seem to suffer once it gets hot, on a level beyond what watering seems to be able to correct. And if I plant them too late, they never seem to make any flowers, just leaves.

In any case, trying to shade them now would be impossible; they are where they are, and the pots they are in are far too big and heavy to move. Not to mention that shade is a problem here for the opposite reason there are few places that do not have TOTAL shade 24/7!

No, achocha is one of the few cucurbits I haven't tried yet. Since they seemed to be only useful if you wanted to stuff them, I never saw the point.
 
The 'Tinga' seeds sprouted and they are very odd. I'm really curious to know what species this plant is. There appears to be no traditional cotyledon leaves as many legumes have, a thin stem seems to just shoot straight up. The stems also seem to have very little green pigment, they look brown to me. I honestly thought at first that there was some kind of rot happening, but there wasn't. After a few hours in the sun today I see that there is finally some greenish feathery tips appearing on the stem end. I can't recall the cicerchia seeds doing this last year, probably a related species if not the same one I suspect, but I may have forgotten. Anyway, they sure are a different sort of plant and I like it! They remind me of those little skinny snakes that live at the bottom of the ocean and pop up from their little living holes like Jack in the Boxes. Will post a pic tomorrow.
 
Few quick updates

I actually god a little seed off the "eclipse" pansy. I actually almost didn't as I originally was planning to leave the pod there for a little while longer since it was so small. But it came off in my hand so I had to take it in and open it. Lucky I did, it wasn't small from being mature, it was small from only having three seeds in it! Had I waited, the pod would have popped and the seeds would have been lost (while not impossible, the odds of a pansy seed making it through the winter here and germinating on its own are pretty remote.)

I missed the first two pods on the yellow black blotch violas but caught the third, so I have a bit of that as well (I'll just have to make a note that, if I see any pansy like leaves popping up in that area next year, transplant them or leave them, don't pull them up and toss them away as weeds.)

Not sure if any of those plants are going to make any more pods, the eclipse seems not to be all that fertile, and the yellow blotches, even though there are three of them (the fourth disappeared, don't know why) don't seem to be pumping out many either. Same pattern as always, if I like the look of a pansy or viola and want to save its seed to grow more like it, it will prove to be a poor seeder, if setting seed at all.
 
FINALLY some things are coming up in the pots of ornamental legumes I planted. The one I sowed this year at last has three or four sprouts in it. And, while none of the Job's tears I planted in it this year germinated, it looks like some of the seeds from LAST year finally have.

Though this does present me with a dilemma for next year. That pot is heavily broken at the top, and I was planning to toss it out at season's end. But, if there are still viable seeds hiding in that soil, I'd hate to toss them out as well. I thought of simply filling the next pot with the soil from the previous one, but doing that the right way would be iffy. If I simply turn the pot over, or try to shovel it from one pot to the other, any seeds that are there will wind up on the bottom of the pot; far too deep to be able to grow (it's a very big, an therefore very deep, pot) About the only viable idea I've been able to come up with would be to take a container out with me, shovel off maybe the top two or three inches of the soil in the pot, put it to the side, shovel the rest of the soil into the new pot, and then shovel those inches back on on top.
 
I didn't know that Job's Tears would be able to survive your winters? Well, that comes as a surprise! That plant seems to be such a finicky germinator and not east to get all the way to fully mature seed. So it's understandable you want to hang on to any viable seed, no matter where it is!

Instead of throwing out your pot and possibly risking viable seeds in the process, why not let it go for one more year to see if you get more sprouts and hide the broken top (the top edges I'm guessing?) with some floofy, edging plant that hangs like Creeping Jenny or some of the lobelias? The shovel idea though also seems very workable too, if your seeds aren't buried any deeper than 2 or 3 inches.
 
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