A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

maybe a pup from a parent that was hunted or killed by accidents or disease?

I don't know, but I'm inclined to think so too. My theory is he was separated from the mother early and young animals are so much less afraid of humans. (DH petted baby bears in our backyard who weren't thrilled with that, but they didn't get real upset either. He wouldn't have tried petting their mother who was also there though. lol) And the spot where he was not many kilometers from a Provincial Park, 15 km maybe, alot of people are travelling with coolers full of food on this road. It's a good spot to find people with ready meals in their car, and maybe it began at the campsites. At some point I imagine he made the association of food with people, and it grew.

I've seen this happen even with fully grown canids too though, so my theory might be wrong. We used to have an old fox here all the time, and he would climb right up on the guinea pig outdoor run, hunting. He got bold enough that seeing me didn't scare him off, or even shouting. So I threw a stick in his direction, thinking he would get frightened. He did bolt off, but went toward the stick, not away from it. I knew right then he thought I was throwing food to him. I guess enough of the neighbors were like - 'wow a fox, throw him a hotdog'.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

My latest seed growing is either a demonstration of deep faith or complete stupidity.

A few days ago, for the first time ever, my mom decided to cook a recipe that used some of the several jar of pickled lemons I had picked up over the years. In an of itself, that would not have meant much (those were perfectly normal lemons otherwise).

But that let to me heading to the panty and collecting all of the OTHER jars of pickled lemons we had, so as to do a count. During this, I discovered two jars that 1. were on the verge of expiring (actually, they HAD expired, but only by a day or two, and all expiration dates are fairly generous). and 2. contained lemons that were unusually small (about the size of a key lime). Since I recall reading that the lemons used in pickled lemons aren't necessarily the same kinds we use here, I found that interesting (even though these lemons were jarred in France, not Morocco or Tunisia or one of the places where the pickled lemon is a cooking staple. But France has a large North African population now, and I suppose they could have brought their lemons with them.)

So when we opened those jars the next day and used those lemon, I saved the seeds from them and stuck them in peat pots in the "hotbox" (the self sealing Chinese takeout containers I use as mini greenhouses).

Whether this will actually develop into something is unclear. On the plus side, when I squashed a couple of extra seeds, the insides certainly LOOKED as if they were still fresh and viable (i.e. the normal light green citrus seed cotyledons are).

On the minus side, they HAVE been sitting in salt water for a VERY long time (for a product like this, if the jars expired a few days ago, they would have had to be packed several years before that.) And I am assuming they were cold preserved; if they BOILED the brine when they added the lemons, they'd be totally cooked.

But I guess it's just sit and wait for a while. That's the one thing I DON'T like about growing citrus, compared to legumes, cucurbits or grasses, you have to wait a LONG time before knowing if the seed is actually going to germinate (In our house, the joke (based on experience) is that citrus seeds germinate about four weeks after you reach the conclusion they aren't going to, and just haven't had time to get around to tossing out the pot to make room for something else.)

 

[heirloomgal]

I'm curious about these pickled lemons @Pulsegleaner ! What do you use them for?

I've only ever had 'Lemon Pickle' the condiment from India, there was a lime one too, but it was a red color, oily and full of spices - very hot. You could only eat little touches of it with the rice and dahl. What you have there sounds very different..

I was surprised to read, in a Martha Stewart cookbook I have, a recipe for a lemon tart that was composed of very thinly sliced lemons, with the skin still on. It's so seldom you see citrus used whole like that.

 

[meadow]

From its tall pointed ears and long narrow snout, that is a coyote, which imho is even more dangerous than a wolf since coyotes are absolutely adapted to live among people, taking whatever they want, whenever they want (small pets, free-range livestock, ...) I would seriously reconsider feeding it if you ever cross paths again. I dred this time of year as soon our resident coyotes will start in with their nightly bouts of truly maniacal laughter as breeding season gets underway.

That was my first thought too but it isn't quite right for a coyote. Interesting that the trapper in that linked article thinks it is a wolf-coyote cross.

I wouldn't be surprised if it is a wolf-hybrid dog that was dumped because the owners couldn't handle it. At least that is what his behavior seems to me, like a lost dog that wants to get in the car and go home. We know someone that owns a wolf hybrid; it is a real handful and has bitten several people.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I'm curious about these pickled lemons @Pulsegleaner ! What do you use them for?

They tend to be used in sauces for meat, especially poultry and fish. They also show up in a lot of tagine recipes, so there are probably couscous concoctions that use them as well

I've only ever had 'Lemon Pickle' the condiment from India, there was a lime one too, but it was a red color, oily and full of spices - very hot. You could only eat little touches of it with the rice and dahl. What you have there sounds very different..

Yes, it is VERY different. Though part of the reason I STARTED hoarding jars of them is that it is somewhat hard to find brands that do NOT add a few chili peppers to the brine to spice things up (much as several cucumber pickle makers now do).

I was surprised to read, in a Martha Stewart cookbook I have, a recipe for a lemon tart that was composed of very thinly sliced lemons, with the skin still on. It's so seldom you see citrus used whole like that.

There is a pretty good reason for that. Lemon juice tastes great, and so does lemon zest (the very outer layer of the peel where the oils are). But lemon (and most other citrus) pith (the white part of the rind) tastes TERRIBLE, incredibly bitter. And that bitterness only get's STRONGER if you heat them, and pervades the whole dish (this is why I always open the container and check to see if they have added a lemon wedge to my takeout food BEFORE I try to re-heat it (my mom didn't, and ruined many an order of fried calamari and Franchese/Piccata/Scampi/Luciano).

So you either have to take that white part out, or find some way to drown it. I imagine the Martha Stewart recipe used a ton of sugar to cover the bitterness (unless the lemon slices were just for garnish on the top of the tart.

Pickling can also work....SOMETIMES. That was the real problem we had when we USED those little lemons later that night to whip up some Chicken Franchese. The chicken itself was not too bad, but the lemon halves we had added were so bitter we ended up picking them all out of the leftovers before we put them away. Also, compared to the normal ones, the little ones were extremely tough and leathery (I also got really extreme bowel discomfort that night, but whether that was due to the chicken or to something I ate earlier in the day, I can't tell.

The other half of those lemons are sitting in a container in the fridge while we work out if there is some other way to use them (so is what it left of the first jar, but those mom pureed into a relish that actually WORKS as a condiment, if you cut it a little for excess saltiness. THOSE aren't bitter).

 

[heirloomgal]

@Pulsegleaner I've ordered a legume variety, not consumable I don't think (but pretty) called 'Tinga'. I think the Latin may be Lathyrus tingatanus but I'm not really sure. It looks to me a lot like a pink/fuchsia cicerchia a.k.a. grass pea. Do you think 'Tinga' may just be a pink flowering version of cicerchia? They sell two other types of 'grass peas' (they don't call the tinga a grass pea) and on the website they don't seem related outside of both falling under the Lathyrus genus. They don't mention it's edible either, as they do with the grass peas. Not finding much info on this plant, and I suspect it may go by other names.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

@Pulsegleaner I've ordered a legume variety, not consumable I don't think (but pretty) called 'Tinga'. I think the Latin may be Lathyrus tingatanus but I'm not really sure. It looks to me a lot like a pink/fuchsia cicerchia a.k.a. grass pea. Do you think 'Tinga' may just be a pink flowering version of cicerchia? They sell two other types of 'grass peas' (they don't call the tinga a grass pea) and on the website they don't seem related outside of both falling under the Lathyrus genus. They don't mention it's edible either, as they do with the grass peas. Not finding much info on this plant, and I suspect it may go by other names.

Well, considering that the only reference I can find to Lathyrus tingatanus on Google is a single one on in a Dave's Garden thread, yes, I am inclined to think it is an alternate name.

And yes, Grass pea can come in other flower colors than blue. In fact, back when I did a paper on the species in college, I read in one source that in places where it is actually a significant crop (like parts of India and Bangladesh), flower color is one of the ways they differentiate one variety from another.

Some of the blue strains sold in the flower trade throw the odd pink flower. That's usually considered a defect (since most people are planting it for the blue color) But I imagine that, if you were to save the seed of pink flowered plants separately, it wouldn't take long to get an all pink line.

A lot of the larger Italian ones have white flowers, at least the paler seeded ones do. That's part of that flower/seed color relationship I mentioned, white to pale tan seeded ones make pure white flowers, ones with a little bit of color (usually around the edges) are white with touches of blue and pink near the center of the flower, and totally colored seed have the normal all blue flower with a bit of pink near the center. Beyond that, the blue gets darker the darker the see color gets (at this point, the darkest grass pea seed I have seen was sort of an ash grey with black streaks, which showed up in the tiny variety I started with. I have yet to see totally black seeds, but it would not surprise me if they existed, and that their flowers were a VERY dark blue, perhaps like some of the royal blue or navy sweet peas.)

I WISH I could find some other colors, because I would sort of like a grass pea like flower in red, but so far, no luck (at least I have that Lathyrus aphaca I got out of the lentils for yellow. I understand that's semi-edible as well.)

 

[flowerbug]

I'm curious about these pickled lemons @Pulsegleaner ! What do you use them for?

I've only ever had 'Lemon Pickle' the condiment from India, there was a lime one too, but it was a red color, oily and full of spices - very hot. You could only eat little touches of it with the rice and dahl. What you have there sounds very different..

if you like garlic there's a garlic pickle in the same genre which is really good. the heat in it comes from toasted mustard seeds, garlic and onions. the main ingredient is the garlic though so you must really like garlic for this to go well. we spread it on all sorts of things and use it in recipes or sometimes i'd be sitting there eating it right out of the jar.

 

[flowerbug]

if you like garlic there's a garlic pickle in the same genre which is really good. the heat in it comes from toasted mustard seeds, garlic and onions. the main ingredient is the garlic though so you must really like garlic for this to go well. we spread it on all sorts of things and use it in recipes or sometimes i'd be sitting there eating it right out of the jar.

oh, i see i've replied before on this topic and included the recipe there so i'll just reference back to that post and call it good enough. i also have to note that this originally was tasted by me from a commercial version of Pataks Garlic Pickle so that was the only version i had to compare against when trying to replicate the recipe. i think it comes out pretty close.


Garlic Pickle:

Ducks4you 2021 Ragtag Thread

I'm very curious to know what does Dandelion Jelly taste like? I got the recipe from @baymule What do you think Bay, honey? I've never heard of Mimosa Mimosa is a drink you make with orange juice and champagne. My wife and I were volunteering at a charity thrift shop, sorting and pricing...

www.theeasygarden.com

 

[heirloomgal]

Well, considering that the only reference I can find to Lathyrus tingatanus on Google is a single one on in a Dave's Garden thread, yes, I am inclined to think it is an alternate name.

And yes, Grass pea can come in other flower colors than blue. In fact, back when I did a paper on the species in college, I read in one source that in places where it is actually a significant crop (like parts of India and Bangladesh), flower color is one of the ways they differentiate one variety from another.

Some of the blue strains sold in the flower trade throw the odd pink flower. That's usually considered a defect (since most people are planting it for the blue color) But I imagine that, if you were to save the seed of pink flowered plants separately, it wouldn't take long to get an all pink line.

A lot of the larger Italian ones have white flowers, at least the paler seeded ones do. That's part of that flower/seed color relationship I mentioned, white to pale tan seeded ones make pure white flowers, ones with a little bit of color (usually around the edges) are white with touches of blue and pink near the center of the flower, and totally colored seed have the normal all blue flower with a bit of pink near the center. Beyond that, the blue gets darker the darker the see color gets (at this point, the darkest grass pea seed I have seen was sort of an ash grey with black streaks, which showed up in the tiny variety I started with. I have yet to see totally black seeds, but it would not surprise me if they existed, and that their flowers were a VERY dark blue, perhaps like some of the royal blue or navy sweet peas.)

I WISH I could find some other colors, because I would sort of like a grass pea like flower in red, but so far, no luck (at least I have that Lathyrus aphaca I got out of the lentils for yellow. I understand that's semi-edible as well.)

I found a possible alternate name - 'Tangier Pea'. I forgot to mention the company described it as growing to 4 feet. Here's a pic. Still looks like a grass pea to me, but I don't think my other grass peas grew to four feet? And they group it separately. I guess when I grow it out I'll get a better idea of what it is.