A Seed Saver's Garden

The Hamburg parsley FINALLY emerged!! I had given up!! Thinning that will be interesting. Didn't seem like I sowed that much. Well, this is a firs , never grew the species before.




The Devil's Claw are up too!!! The packet said to sow in April and so I aimed for mid. Got them from Annapolis Seed, and they seem to seed things later than I do usually. So.....we'll see if I messed this up or not. I once started okra way too early and wrecked all the plants basically doing that. Hope this isn't a repeat of the great okra disaster. Sprouts seem awful big for a mid April sowing...




This is notable. Germination for Schoenbrunn ground cherries from 2024 has been quite poor, to my surprise, but despite some sprouting long after the other two physalis species, the sprouts are the same size?

I have not ever started okra inside, just direct seeding outside, and then I get a forest, and I ask, "WHY did I plant so MANY OF THESE?!?!?

Got to tour around a bit more in the backyard garden today. Still very wet, and some slushy snow out there but I tiptoed around carefully in a few rows. I was ASTONISHED to see that my Earth Chestnut (Bunium bulbocastaneum) plants still look rather alive and even greening up at the base. Whoa!! Did not expect that, and I had exchanged messages with the seed company I got them from about their survival rates in winter; they live in BC on Salt Spring so they have much milder winters than me. And it was a brutally cold winter, so even more reason to assume they died. If they are truly alive (the next week will be the test) I will message the company with glee, because they were curious what I'd do and what my results might be here in Northern Ontario with them. They'll probably be as shocked as me!

So, good news. Was a little crestfallen tho to see some surface vole tunnels in certain areas now that the snow is gone...but none around my sunchokes - the only place where it really mattered they didn't go. So....holding out hope that they didn't get to them. I'm just so happy how surprisingly well everything overwintered!

heirloomgal said:

... I'm just so happy how surprisingly well everything overwintered!

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a good blanket of snow really helps a lot.

usually my years of worst losses are those where we don't have much snow cover then things get more dried out, frozen and also more frost heave.

3 new tomatoes sent to me from a preservation gardener in Germany, which I'm twirly bird thrilled are growing wonderfully and germinated at 100% (gardening world instagram is awesome!) And another one that is SUPER rare from Catalonia called Rose de L'Etern. I had a good laugh about this one, a lady had asked me on the platform if the name means 'Eternal Rose', so I used google translate to check. It said the translation is 'Rose of Eternity' - what a gorgeous name right!! So I agreed, that it's probably something like that and shared the google version. I was all spiritually waxing poetic about how marvelous it is to be growing a tomato with such a magicalname....and then the lady who sent me the tomato popped into the conversation and was like, yeah, that's a nice translation......but it actually, technically means pink tomato from a village called L'Etern..... Ha! Well, we tried!!! Just goes to show, never trust google translate, it'll lead you way off into the wilderness. Of your imagination.

Thinned all the physalis, crucifers, hamburg parsleys and tzimbalo pots tonight. Wowzers, it is SO easy to over sow. But you never know with seeds that aren't your own what the germ rates will be like, so you risk a late start if you don't overdo it sometimes. You almost have to anticipate low germ rates as a hedge!

It's a small thing, but once I was done with all that thinning, and disposing the green matter, I looked at all those teeny, lone plants in the cells. Each seedling seems almost naked after having all that company removed. But it is kind of a triumphant moment; for years I had dreadful troubles with thinning. I just loathed terminating all those perfectly good plants and many times couldn't bear to do it. But it really harmed the plants not to, all that competition is terrible for them and stunts their growth. I must have come a long way to be able to do it now, fairly easily. I guess once I started to have the courage, and saw how much better the plants did when thinned appropriately, it got easier. It's silly really. Thinning should just be a matter of course, but I think many dislike killing all those plants simply because they're extra.

I feel like I've finally arrived at the thinnish line.

I completely agree! It’s difficult at many stages. Further down the line, for example, yesterday I was potting on tomatoes and in some cases felt I had to reduce three plants to two. Throwing away a perfectly healthy plant is also difficult but, unless you have someone nearby who would like to adopt it, it just has to go for compost.

At least the compost benefits.

I rarely bring myself to thin carrots, partly I think because the results are quite acceptable. A few twist round each other but mostly they find space and develop acceptably well.

Decoy1 said:

I completely agree! It’s difficult at many stages. Further down the line, for example, yesterday I was potting on tomatoes and in some cases felt I had to reduce three plants to two. Throwing away a perfectly healthy plant is also difficult but, unless you have someone nearby who would like to adopt it, it just has to go for compost.

At least the compost benefits.

I rarely bring myself to thin carrots, partly I think because the results are quite acceptable. A few twist round each other but mostly they find space and develop acceptably well.

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Carrot thinning is one of the worst types of thinning! You have to squat so low and the seedling are so very tiny. It's not like you can lift them onto your table, grab a chair and get comfortable doing it. My daughter is so 'over' thinning the carrots, her fave veg, that when she plants now there is actually too much space between them, lol. DH tells me that when he was growing up the family planted the whole years need of carrots, for 8 people (he was on a self sufficient farm) and they got away with not thinning by always doing widely spaced single rows, if the carrots needed more room they could move in a sideways direction. They probably were careful with the seeding tool too, making sure it was dispensing on the sparse side.

Did the last thinning job, the tomatoes. Again, didn't seem like I planted that much, it was a lot of seedlings to cut. All adds up to a fair lot of seed waste, but it's done now. Spooky that thinning, on tomatoes that I know I have no more seeds for. Kept 2, and a few 3, where I really felt trepidation.

Now this is by far the strangest thing I have EVER seen in tomatoes. The company sent an insert with this tomato too, noting not to start it until 4 weeks before planting because it dislikes being in a pot. I found that very odd, and hard to imagine. It's standard for an 8 week start ahead date, so I didn't really pay attention and just did what I normally do. But now the quirk of the plant, probably resenting being in a pot, is showing. My guess is that this variety must be quite wild; I've grown tomatoes with fairly wild genes and haven't seen this though. It might be wild in the sense of having no selection put into it for pot culture. It grows to 1 foot tall and 2 feet wide. I guess at least this one will need a starter pot already. They had good reason for that insert warning me about this tomato, 'Oja de Venado'.


The devil's claw seedlings are so fleshy and furry. Even the kale under the lens has hairs! There must be some purpose the hairs serve, just not sure what it would be. It's like kale whiskers.

I have never really planted by the moon in any reliable way; last year I aimed to get the carrots in during the proper phase and they actually did do super well so maybe there was some boost from it. It's never been something I felt had much assigned weight though- I feel rather constrained by deadlines when if comes to planting so that's the primary guideline I defer to. But I feel this planting season it may be something I need to take more seriously. The seedling tray on the left was seeded April 1st with a generous pinch in each cell. That was a fair bit of seed. And as you can see the germ rate is quite poor. The tray on the right I seeded just over a week later, same seed batch, and I used a lot again in the one pot thinking maybe the seed wasn't good and needed a lot to get a few sprouts. I did find that strange since these seeds aren't even a year old, but seeds can be funny that way. And look at the difference; treated exactly the same way, same mix, same seeds, everything. Just a different planting day. I can only guess that the seeds are indeed affected by when they get planted. So, I'm taking this as a cue and plan to really drive down into this topic and mine it.