A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

For a crash course, I suggest going on YouTube and watching some of the the backlogs of China Truths, China Observer and China Uncensored.

As for the sci-fi thing, you may not be all that off the mark. China already has a huge issue of random young people being kidnapped by the government and murdered for their organs in numerous ways (people actually being kidnapped, young people with extremely minor injuries suddenly dying in hospital and their organs disappearing during "autopsies", and, of course, the mass harvesting of organs from prisoners, both political and ethnic. ) And they have also basically banned burials for land saving and require bodies to be cremated in government crematoriums. Plus, there are a lot of reports of hospitals selling bodies to suppliers of medical skeletons without family consent. Converting the flesh into a food supply would be well in their modus operandi and, from their POV be a multiple positive (increase meat supply, make it harder for the tracks of "disappeared" people to be followed (proving a person was murdered becomes a lot harder when there's no body left. )

Thank you, I was actually going to ask if you had some direction I could take. Much appreciated.

 

[heirloomgal]

I've grown kale a number of times over the years and this is by far the best set I've ever had, by far. Which is odd because the soil they're planted in isn't as good as it could be. Just delicious in soup, especially soup with tomatoes. It was an experiment to plant these, last minute too, and 3 months in I'm glad I did. Will plant again in the front in future years.

These are some fun tomatoes - longkeepers. I was sent seeds by a seed saving friend who is a SSE member and she thought these might be a fabulous choice - 'Golden Treasure'.
I do like the yellowy-peachy color they have!

Another longkeeper 'Ramillete de Mallorca', this one I think matures to a peachy dark pink. From Spain. I'm happy to see the characteristic speckles on the skin denoting it's the real thing.

This one's for you @Pulsegleaner, I think you mentioned a while back growing Red Nightshade. I picked the first bowl today. The taste is passable, nothing mind blowing. Lightly sweet, a bit honey like I'd say. They never did get red-red.

Earth chestnuts are ALL flowering!!! I may get seeds after all!!

Seed saving season is in full swing!

RAREST bean I've ever grown.

A potato bean

 

[Pulsegleaner]

This one's for you @Pulsegleaner, I think you mentioned a while back growing Red Nightshade. I picked the first bowl today. The taste is passable, nothing mind blowing. Lightly sweet, a bit honey like I'd say. They never did get red-red.
View attachment 68543

GOING to grow next year, not have grown. Though if the taste is so unimpressive, I might not bother.

 

[heirloomgal]

GOING to grow next year, not have grown. Though if the taste is so unimpressive, I might not bother.

I've grown 3 of the edible small berry nightshades - sunberries/wonderberries, golden berries (hexentomates) and now these red nightshade berries. Honestly, I find they all taste basically the same. The sunberries I find can be VERY sweet in certain years, more so than the others in the height of summer heat. I don't find the taste of any of them bad, but mildly pleasing is about it - for me. They ain't raspberries, that's for sure!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I've grown 3 of the edible small berry nightshades - sunberries/wonderberries, golden berries (hexentomates) and now these red nightshade berries. Honestly, I find they all taste basically the same. The sunberries I find can be VERY sweet in certain years, more so than the others in the height of summer heat. I don't find the taste of any of them bad, but mildly pleasing is about it - for me. They ain't raspberries, that's for sure!

I actually LIKE the taste of greenberry nightshade (Solanum opacum) berries, which are intensely tomato-y.

The problem, as I have mentioned, is that greenberry plants look almost exactly like American Nightshade plants (S. americanum) which grow wild around here and the birds distribute everywhere naturally. So it's hard to tell a ripe greenberry fruit (which is edible) from an unripe American fruit (which would be toxic). And if I wait to see if the berries start turning black (indicating it is an American) I lose greenberry fruits to rotting (and I usually don't get that many to start with).

The only way I can think of to get around that would be to start the greenberries indoors in sterile potting medium I know has no American seeds hiding in it, let them grow to transplantable size, transplant them, and then try to MEMORIZE the EXACT position of each plant in the pot (American Nightshade grows fast enough it would be entirely possible for a seed dropped by a bird to grow into a fruit bearing plant in time to be the same size as the transplanted greenberries at fruiting time).

 

[heirloomgal]

More tomatoes! These were all rather firm when I picked them even though they were ripe, which I wasn't terribly thrilled about but after sitting a week they did develop a lovely, meaty texture.

The Deutsche Fleiss tomatoes started out a bit hollow, but they developed really nice interiors further into the season.

Shchelkovskiy Ranniy- FABULOUS early tomato. Big too for an early, a true beefsteak.

Delicious.

Decent tomato, but not mindblowing. Canada is not leading the way in early tomato breeding, lol.

Same as North Star.

For a fuzzy tomato, 'Scheherazade' is amazing. The taste is excellent and so is the production, even in a pot. Meaty and substantial, aroma is absolutely fantastic. Thank you @Artorius !

The latest tomato of them all for 2024, 'Yaryk'. Clearly not a true early despite its Russian origin, but really, really good.
Made a sandwich with one today. Perfect size for a tomato imho.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Picked a "smooth" pod from the wild mung pot today, and surprise, it isn't a mung at all! It's one of the super small rice beans I planted with them. So it looks like the smooth podded vines are rice beans, and the hairy podded ones are mungs. It also appears the rice beans are a LOT more productive here than the mungs are, as there were a lot fewer rice beans seeds, but there are a lot more smooth pods than hairy ones.

It also looks like the mystery plant, whatever it is, is probably something perennial. I took a look at the stems and base, and they are really woody, which usually indicates something that is going to grow more than one season. I suppose that also puts the Solanaceae identity in doubt, as there aren't that many woody members of that family (some, but not many).

 

[heirloomgal]

Some more garden updated re: peppers et. al. Well my chiltepin pepper plant, which I planted last spring and overwintered last year, has still not flowered. I think it may be too far from home. Little sad about that, it overwintered so well and seemed promising. The Wiri Wiri pepper I grew last year gave me a whole two peanut sized fruits. Pathetic! I overwintered that one too with great success (the best I've ever had since I've always failed with overwintering!) and it has blessed me more abundantly this year! Kinda thrilling.

The new to me 'Schoenbrunn' ground cherries have been.......interesting. So far. I don't really like how stingy the plants seem to be with the number of fruits they produce, Aunt Molly's ground cherry produces buckets of little fruits. However, these husks are at least 4x the size of Aunt Molly's, they're actually more like a tomatillo. I'm hoping that this will be a quality over quantity thing - the fruits will be sooo good that I won't mind there are so few. I ripped one husk open today and saw that the berry is still really green in there so I have to wait.

Well, well, well. For the first time in my life I actually got a parsley plant to go to seed. Being biennial I've tried overwintering them (nope, died) I've tried leaving them in the ground over winter and heavily covering with straw (nope, died) and henceforth gave up. This year I did NOTHING except buy a big plant at a greenhouse and here we are. Funny how that works! My own parsley seeds?! I can hardly believe it!

Tinga pea seeds from a 100% dry pod and a 99% dry pod. Crazy difference? BUT! They are FINALLY filling the pods and drying up!

I have tried orange, yellow, white and purple carrots. My conclusion from those grow outs was that I don't really enjoy the taste of carrots that are not orange; the yellow can be good if you get a good variety but most taste like livestock fodder. The purple carrots are too zippy for me and the flavor 'off' somehow. This year though I left all carrot planting to DD and she planted whatever packets she could find in my stash. I think this carrot was 'Purple Dragon'; it was excellent. The purple coloring is only on the skin, it doesn't go further than that and I think that's what made the difference. For all the challenges this year, and there were many, it's my best carrot year ever. These are the biggest carrots I've ever grown and they all are juicy, sweet and well flavoured AND no rust flies. The e-culture really, really worked to protect them. Quite an impressive feat after 15 years of being plagued. Feels great to have a nice big carrot crop, I told DD she's hired forevermore.

Found a pumpkin! Didn't think anything was there as the single little plant I put in got overrun with other plants in a semi-neglected garden. I saw the vine running through the corn plants and assumed it was fruitlessly flowering. The seeds likely won't be good as I didn't water enough, but I can at least make one good pie.

The Insuk's Kang Wong runners are, sadly, a fail this year. Never had runners fail me, but there is a first for everything I guess. The vines were very burned. I'm surprised they lived because they didn't budge for over a month. I was shocked to see that a plant actually made some pods. I'm not holding my breathe they'll mature the seed, it's so late now. Who knows, they might surprise me.

Syrian Fire bush beans. I took a risk with these - I way overseeded and also planted in semi-shade. I hoped for the best. I was putting my chips on the fact that you can really get away with a lot when it comes to beans and pulling them up green and drying under cover. It's like magic. I thought I would do that with these and see if I can make it work. So far I haven't pulled them, they're alive and actually maturing the pods in situ! I see the first few turning yellowish, a good sign. This is a really beautiful bean variety and I'm looking forward to shelling it.

A cross that appeared in some Nigel beans I got in a trade, growing as a semi. It must be one heck of a late bean that crossed with Nigel! These are only just flowering! It likely won't make it, but it's nice to have bean flowers around in September.

 

[Alasgun]

That’s too bad about the “Tepin”, it certainly wasn’t for lack of effort!! I’d guess a lack of the constant heat it enjoys in it’s homeland is to blame?
Thanks for trying!

 

[heirloomgal]

That’s too bad about the “Tepin”, it certainly wasn’t for lack of effort!! I’d guess a lack of the constant heat it enjoys in it’s homeland is to blame?
Thanks for trying!

Could be @Alasgun, we had pretty cold nights almost all summer. I'm also tempted to think day length sensitivity is in there too. It's not being triggered to flower, and that is usually tied to day length issues. I really did try! Thank you for the seeds!