A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

Thanks for the full explanation. Your cages look splendidly robust and there is great attraction in leaving the plants to do their own thing. As a rather height challenged creature I think I’d struggle with the picking.
My plants are much more crowded and take much more controlling to keep to their allotted spaces but I think getting a lot of plants into a limited polytunnel space is probably my over-riding driver.
It’s quite common practice in England to strip off lower leaves after a while to encourage fruit to ripen which is quite different from the prolific foliage which the cage method presumably leads to.

Do you prune the tomatoes to one stem only?

 

[heirloomgal]

in a few hours

Oh my gosh, okay I think that is the answer! I can't keep any perennials that take hours to weed!

 

[heirloomgal]

the tomato cages here are mainly to help keep the plants from putting all their tomatoes on the ground, we don't have the gardens mulched so if on the ground they are sitting in the dirt and it takes more time to wash them off after harvesting. it doesn't keep them all off the ground, but it helps.

Do you prune them? My typical approach is to never cut branches, and worst case scenario allow the plants to just sprawl on the ground if need be, since I am afterall wanting maximum seeds as oppose to tomatoes. I grow enough plants that I can pluck good specimens from any of them and still have enough fresh tomatoes to eat and let the others get blemished. However, many of the new early tomato varieties I grew last year to my surprise got sunscald. I've not seen that before. So clearly some tomato varieties really can't have direct hot sun on them all summer, so I can't even let them sprawl.

 

[heirloomgal]

in general though once an area is growing and established i spend much less time on the area weeding than i would mowing. i have entire areas that i hardly have to weed at all due to having a good edge under control. it's just keeping up with a few weeds from time to time as i walk by or work in the neighboring areas that do need more work (bare dirt or lawn).

This is my & DH's thinking - gardens are actually less demanding in multiple ways than grass. We have too much 'grassy' areas as it is. I wish there was an economical and organic way to get a thick sward of beautiful pure grass, it really is the best foil for a pretty garden area. It's almost a necessity if you want to really get your garden to be truly aesthetic, a weedy sprawl of green right beside just doesn't do it. But I've tried a couple organic things and nothing seems to work, never mind the cost of the water it needs. I see lots of yards in my area putting down plastic grass lawns; it's not my cup of tea, but I get the desperation for all that green without a hassle and tons of work.

 

[heirloomgal]

Saw the first bud on the 'Apricotta' cosmos today!
They're still small yet, but they seem inclined to flower soon!

The Elephant's Head amaranth was sooooo tiny when it went in. This species seems very resentful in a starter pot, Amarnath in general seems to refuse to put on size for me until it's in the ground. But it's finally bulking up, so there's hope doubtful as that was at first. Now I need to research the spacing.

Tzimbalo is lookin' bushy! If I didn't know better I'd think there is some adaptation going on already, these plants are way more vigorous and ahead than the parents were. Almost like what I see with peas. Who knows though.

I had some extra Sakaguchi Kang Wong runner beans and I really could not facing throwing them out. So, I decided to plunk a big 8 foot stripped birch sapling in the middle of the front yard perennial bed and grow some that way. A lone birch tree trunk standing in the front yard like an empty flagpole is not a great look right now, but I hope the runner beans will respond to it like the P. vulgaris pole beans do, twine and climb. Right now I may have passerby's wondering what on earth the point is, because you can't see any beans planted under it from the sidewalk, lol.

My crazy cilantro row. I don't know why I doubted the fertility of the seeds. And it's thin like that because I hoed both sides of it, I seeded the area by throwing seeds in the general direction from the
edge of the bed. I read somewhere on instagram that one way to repel cabbage moths is cilantro plants, I wish I would have tried that. Doubtful that anything can repel those tenacious pests, but it's worth a shot. Marigolds work with potato beetles, and radish flowers work for carrot flies, so...maybe some hope.

Norderas Busk, my how this tomato variety has troubled me. Last year the seedlings just died out on me - this seldom happens as tomato seedlings are so tough. But I had starter soil issues so I assumed that played a role, and it probably did. I had I think 3 seeds left, and got 2 to sprout this year. And again, they were sickly looking. It seemed maybe a sickly variety? But low and behold I took the weak surviving seedling and planted it out, and it perked up immediately. I'm amazed it looks this good considering my troubles with this variety. It's a truly old Norwegian variety and my donor considered it a very special one, so I tried real hard to make this work. I don't know much else about it, except that it's rare. Could be the seed was old and lost a lot of vigor, some of the seeds from that donor were over a decade old or more. So, feeling lucky now she's doing so well and even has a flower!
Last chance to make this work!

 

[flowerbug]

Oh my gosh, okay I think that is the answer! I can't keep any perennials that take hours to weed!

once every few months? that's not much at all considering the area covered and how much time it would take to mow it or do anything else with it.

i would rather weed than mow any time even if it takes me longer to weed, but the other good aspects why i have that preference is that it is quieter and it smells much better.

 

[flowerbug]

Oh my gosh, okay I think that is the answer! I can't keep any perennials that take hours to weed!

a few hours for a few hundred square feet once every few months is pretty low maintenance... if you don't have trees and want to do mulches on pathways you can get by with even less work but it still does end up needing work once in a while because organic mulches will decay and turn into humus and eventually support sprouting weeds so you will want to redo the pathway mulch or if you use gravel for the pathways that also will need to be cleaned sometimes as dirt and seeds get deposited in the pathways (birds, wind, rains, spills, people with muddy shoes who don't listen, dogs digging, moles, etc...).

the absolute least amount of garden effort is to live in a climax forest, but then you won't be able to grow full sun crops very well - there are always trade-offs.

 

[Marie2020]

once every few months? that's not much at all considering the area covered and how much time it would take to mow it or do anything else with it.

i would rather weed than mow any time even if it takes me longer to weed, but the other good aspects why i have that preference is that it is quieter and it smells much better.

Get over here pronto

It'd be like that song "Hotel California:. You can check in any time you like". But trust me you will never leave .
I would hook you up to my garden permanently.

 

[flowerbug]

Get over here pronto

It'd be like that song "Hotel California:. You can check in any time you like". But trust me you will never leave .
I would hook you up to my garden permanently.

current and future obligations prevent me from doing anything other than giggling. have a nice day!

sorry for the above repetitive posts. up late, my editor (common sense isn't always) shut down, glad i didn't bleep, bleep.

 

[Marie2020]

I never bleep bleep