A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

My amendment list has settled down the last couple years and what you see here goes on everything i grow. Every 3x12 bed gets a 2 gallon bucket and Onions and Potatoes get 2- 2gallon buckets! This year im adding the ground Comfrey and each bed will get a measured 2lbs along with the other stuff. That amount will fluctuate depending on how much the Patch produces each year.
No peppers of any kind anymore.

Sorry to clutter up your stuff, thought you may be interested in some of it. Glad to see the previous info found a good home!

Mike

You have never cluttered up my stuff @Alasgun
I appreciate the amazing depth of knowledge you have about organic amendments. I hope I can level up to that some day!

 

[Alasgun]

Well, here’s the thing. About 10 years ago while Alaska was considering legalizing pot and relaxing restrictions on small growers; our State Fair invited in some guest speakers. I assume these folks task was to sway public sentiment in their direction before the vote. I found myself at a booth where the lady who put all that on was seated and we had some good conversation. She told me “whether you grow pot or not you should study up on some of their methods as a lot of these kids are regular scientist!”
Well; i headed her advice and took what i learned and applied it to my own gardening.
A lot of those growers will go to the outer limit of sanity with various soil mixes and several talk about their “super soil” and variants of these grow mediums. The microbiology aspect was another big learning event for me.
It doesn’t take much adapting to find ways to incorporate these things into “regular gardening”, which is what ive done.

1. Using the elements from the super soil recipes gave me a basis for my amendment schedule that i’ve adapted for my use.
2. Learning the important part the microbes play AND having the ability to modify or enhance they’re populations in all my soils was huge also. As a result of that knowledge; now days i completely ignore anything to do with P.H.
I don't care what it is, never bother to check it and never see any indication something is amiss in my plants, knowing that my little bug buddies “got my back”!

Anyway, another long winded didy but it’s all food for thought!
Mike

 

[heirloomgal]

Dog training class last night had a particularly interesting tidbit.

My experience with the whole orbit is that, generally, the #1 cause of pet dog problems is the owners being too soft. I could write an epistle on the layers of it, but the collision of species tends to impact along that fault line. The dogs misbehave because they've never known a consequence for the bad behavior, or at least not a meaningful one. And the trainer last night had a masterful lesson on that.

One of the exercises in class is for the dogs to be walked in a heel around the facility; the trainers sprinkle on the floor tiny bits of a prized rolled meat treat. The dogs have an opportunity to learn it isn't acceptable to snarf up food (or anything else) from floors. If the dogs make a go for the food, they get a leash correction. After a few rotations the trainers placed freshly baked 'pupcups' on the floor as well, and told the class that these were fundraiser cupcakes for the injured woman (which I posted about above) and if your dog eats one you'd have to pay for it, 2 for $5.00. The dogs were quite interested in those peanut buttery morsels!

After the exercise the trainers revealed that 70% of the meat roll pieces had been eaten during the first part of the exercise. One way or another dogs managed to sneak a face to the floor and take them and/or ignore the correction. But not a single pupcup was taken. Clearly she said, when there was no real consequence to the owner when the dogs got the meat roll bits, they didn't work hard enough to prevent the dogs from getting them. But when they had to walk past the mini cupcakes they made darn sure the dog did not succeed in getting one, because it would cost them money.

And the dog thinks exactly the same way we do about consequences. Such an absolutely perfect lesson in understanding canine motivation from a human perspective. I thought that was so brilliant.

 

[ducks4you]

While I lived in my bedroom for 86 days I fell down the internet rabbit hole of German Shephard Dog owners. It is aMAZING how, "what do I do when my GSD is biting my child?" CONSTANTLY, find a toy and REDIRECT.
Poppycock!!!
I do what I have always done with a puppy, grab their mouth shut and say, NO! Sooner or later the puppy will bite his tongue and stop biting.
When one person asked what to do with their GSD that just killed a kitten bc of food aggression, I suggested that they should feed the dog in his crate from now on.
I was banned from the thread.
I SHOULD have started with, HOW DARE YOU THINK THAT THE KITTEN'S LIFE DOESN'T MATTER!!!
Tegan (7 1/2mo GSD) is dog#7 and the 5th dog broken in to a house with cats. She has the same chasing problem that Eva had, but My favorite cat, Lynx has her cow towed. Tegan gives Lynx a wide berth even though Tegan outweighs Lynx 4 to 1 now.
GSD's are Not wild animals, they.are.dogs.
The only unusual problem that I have is that my puppy only barks when she wants to be out of her crate to potty in the morning, or...in the middle of the night.
She hardly barks at all, and not even today, when a serviceman came to fix my DISH satellite.
I kinda like it...

 

[flowerbug]

...GSD's are Not wild animals, they.are.dogs.

while i love both cats and dogs i still want to always inject a moment of caution because what can happen with any well trained pet is what also happens with humans - sometimes they go nuts.

so to me they (animals as pets and also people in general) should pretty much never be left alone with someone or something precious for just these sorts of insane moments.

the other hand, some of us really do ok being alone and that also means if we're a bit crazy at least we're not going to hurt anyone else of we go off the rails a bit for a tad...

 

[heirloomgal]

While I lived in my bedroom for 86 days I fell down the internet rabbit hole of German Shephard Dog owners. It is aMAZING how, "what do I do when my GSD is biting my child?" CONSTANTLY, find a toy and REDIRECT.
Poppycock!!!
I do what I have always done with a puppy, grab their mouth shut and say, NO! Sooner or later the puppy will bite his tongue and stop biting.
When one person asked what to do with their GSD that just killed a kitten bc of food aggression, I suggested that they should feed the dog in his crate from now on.
I was banned from the thread.
I SHOULD have started with, HOW DARE YOU THINK THAT THE KITTEN'S LIFE DOESN'T MATTER!!!
Tegan (7 1/2mo GSD) is dog#7 and the 5th dog broken in to a house with cats. She has the same chasing problem that Eva had, but My favorite cat, Lynx has her cow towed. Tegan gives Lynx a wide berth even though Tegan outweighs Lynx 4 to 1 now.
GSD's are Not wild animals, they.are.dogs.
The only unusual problem that I have is that my puppy only barks when she wants to be out of her crate to potty in the morning, or...in the middle of the night.
She hardly barks at all, and not even today, when a serviceman came to fix my DISH satellite.
I kinda like it...

I'm not surprised they booted you from the thread, the dog training world has a lot of that sort of nonsense right now, what they call FF or PP training. Classes run by those trainers often won't even allow the word 'no' to be spoken. I could say a lot more about that but won't. lol

Poor kitty. It's sad, feeding a dog in their crate is pretty common practice in balanced training. In the end, its the dog who will suffer for not being corrected for bad behavior. Their worlds get incredibly tiny, and micro managed (or worse). How wonderful that your puppy has such good manners! A great sign that she is not easily spooked by strangers.

 

[heirloomgal]

while i love both cats and dogs i still want to always inject a moment of caution because what can happen with any well trained pet is what also happens with humans - sometimes they go nuts.

so to me they (animals as pets and also people in general) should pretty much never be left alone with someone or something precious for just these sorts of insane moments.

the other hand, some of us really do ok being alone and that also means if we're a bit crazy at least we're not going to hurt anyone else of we go off the rails a bit for a tad...

Dogs are more or less hard wired to guard things that they feel are valuable; I learned from the Voyageurs Wolf Project in Minnesota (which is awesome and I highly recommend checking out) that after a kill there are an average of 50 birds flying overhead within the hour seeking to scavenge, along with the assorted land critters. Most predator class animals have food protection instincts from those factors. So it isn't really a going nuts things, its more a primitive throwback thing.

That said, domestication has certainly taken the edge off of that tendency. And dogs are plenty capable to learn that they don't need to advocate for their own food supply, that it's the job of the pack leader. This is why it is fair and sound to punish a dog for resource guarding of any kind, to teach them it isn't necessary for them to take on that role.

I do know of a situation though where an owner had 2 dogs, one a poodle, one a pit bull. They lived together as best buddies for years, and then one day the owner came home to find the poodle had been killed. And it isn't rare that such a thing happens with pitts and a few of the other terrier groups. I guess in those cases there is a 'going nuts' factor. Pitts were bred to have low pain thresholds and that can have devastating consequences for other dogs in a play game. But pitts are a whole thing in and of themselves.

 

[heirloomgal]

The adventures in long keeper tomatoes of 2025 has finally come to an end. Well, almost. I squeezed the 'Giallo a Grappoli' today and have half a pickle jar full of seeds with gel sitting on the counter fermenting. I tried the spoon technique this afternoon with them, instead of the typical cut & squeeze method - there was a lot of tomatoes. Not worth the bother, so squeezing it was. The fruit was without blemish and still firm, and it was seriously impressive. Clearly the longest keeping varieties are the ones that don't ripen before frost.

A week ago, I processed the last of the 'Pink Champagne' cherry tomatoes. This was a real surprise, and I didn't even realize when I planted it that it could keep. I assumed it was just a cherry tomato, until a friend told me she thought it might be a keeper as well. A few of them actually turned into perfectly sundried tomatoes in the box. That they were harvested in September and held up until mid February is kinda wild.

I do think that the longer these kinds of tomatoes are kept in storage, the more the flavor weakens. When I processed the Champagne's I didn't smell any aroma from them, and I was able to simply rinse the seeds clean right away. No fermenting required, the gel seemed to have basically dissolved. Not so with Giallo's, seed gel is still fully intact and - to my wonderment - there was still an aroma of the garden from the cut halves. I was not expecting that.

Of course, the Giallo's are not a soft tomato at any point, and are better suited for soups and such at this stage. 2 months ago we were still using them in sandwiches. I don't know if there will be more long keepers in 2026, maybe a few. There are a few new ones around and I can't resist them, plus, I think I'm really starting to cozy up to this idea of having my own garden tomatoes in January!

 

[heirloomgal]

I made a very intriguing discovery with the 2025 grown carrots this weekend. I decided long ago that I'd never have the conditions to save carrot seeds; but looking back at that decision I realize that I arrived at that conclusion without meaningful consideration.

The main assumptions why I couldn't were that there is indeed Queen's Anne's Lace around (so they'd cross and pollute my seed), I'd need too big a population of them (and therefore would require too much space) and I'd not be able to overwinter the roots without them dehydrating/perishing.

But cleaning the fridge the other day I saw that some of my carrots were actually sprouting in the ziploc bags in the fridge. Some are still alive - shockingly - because just last week I threw out a full ziploc of carrots that had turned to rotten mush. (I'm guessing variety really matters when it comes to storage.)

On seeing those little green shoots on the survivors I started to poke around at what might be possible with trying to start a seed crop in 2026, and to my surprise, I don't need nearly as big a sample as I thought I'd need (I'd read it was 100 years ago). Actually, 5-20 is recommended. That is totally doable. And the Queen Anne's Lace it turns out might not make things as impossible as I assumed. While we definitely have it growing here, I haven't seen it near my house. And 800 meters is sufficient distance from Queen Anne's Lace to save seed, and that's probably a bigger distance than is needed.

So, maybe carrot seed is finally on the table. And there is one carrot that I almost need to save my own seed for - Kyoto Red, one of the best carrots I've ever grown, because nobody is reliably selling seeds for it in Canada. My source from last year isn't offering it this year, though thanks to @Triffid 's suggestion of Kintoki (a similar if not identical carrot to Kyoto) at Agro Haitai I managed to still get red carrot seed again this year.

Of course, the real question is whether Kintoki will turn to mush on me or stay alive through winter - as my stored carrots this year went both ways. Would it survive in my fridge? I don't know, and I do think the fridge is a bit cooler than they'd prefer but I don't have any other option; my basement is probably not cool enough even right on the floor. I guess I'll see.

 

[Decoy1]

I don’t know how cold your basement is but I keep carrots quite successfully in an outhouse in slightly damp sand. I guess an outhouse for you might be colder than your fridge, but I wonder whether a box of sand in your basement could be OK?