A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

Same sort of thought with me an most of my collections. Unless someone else in my family develops the same interests or loves that I do (and since I KNOW I will never have kids, and I have some doubts my sister ever will either, it'd have to be a fairly distant relation,) at best, it'll all just be sold off, and while I can HOPE the buyer is someone who loves them as much as I do, it's just or more likely to be some sleazebag who'll misrepresent them to try and fleece someone out of more money and turn them off of their love. At worst, most of it will just be tossed out in the garbage or burned as waste. A bit like our house and property, I can HOPE some other family moves in someday and starts their own life here, but odds are the buyer will be a land developer who knocks the whole place down so he or she can put up a McMansion they can get a few mil for before it totally collapses in two or three years. In this day and age, not only does nothing last forever, in truth, nothing seems to last for even a brief time, even memories.



Yes, more or less. It's a byproduct of the collapse thing; as the plants die, they throw whatever energy they have left into ripening whatever seed that have made as of that point (even aborting less developed pods to divert energy to more developed ones.)
Whether they are all dried right now I'm not sure but I can be pretty sure all of the ones I harvested today will be dry by tomorrow morning.


That's sort of what I expected, white turning to yellow and then bronze (I'm not sure any have ever gone full brown here, I think we may not have enough sun for that.) I can just hope the second plant gives me some clues. As I currently have only one source for Russian Netted seed I can sort of rely on (in that the photo they show IS of Russian Netted, NOT Brown Russian [they are NOT the same!] I'd hate to discover their seed isn't pure (or, worse, that none of it is Russian Netted in the first place.)

This also leaves me with a mystery from last year. We got one cuke last year I thought might be a Russian netted, based on where it was in the cucumber row (I knew what order I had planted the seeds in, but not which specific seeds had ,made it to maturity, so telling where one section ended and the next begun was often blurry. That one wasn't round but I thought maybe they rounded up later (they don't they're supposed to be round right from the start) but the problem is it also wasn't white, it was dark green, and NEITHER of the ones in that line should have been that (the line was between Russia Netted and the last few Brown Russian seeds I had saved from the previous year, and that's starts white as well. The next one in the line was supposed to be Sambar but Sambar is 1. a cucumber melon (so the insides should have looked different). and 2, supposed to have stripes (I think).

I think I may be in for a murky year, much like I will next year if I plant the individual sized winter melon seeds I got (just looking at the package, I can see there are two seeds that CAN'T be the same variety as the rest.)

Oh okay, that makes sense. They're throwing their energy into progeny against the impending mortality. I thought for a minute you had some magical microclimate that allows you to mature beans in record time. That said, I have two beans which appear to be truly racing toward seed making, Botosani Splash and Harwig's Heirloom Belgium. The pods on both have clearly forming seeds. For me, up here in the north, that's crazy early.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

The other things that tells me is that trying to grow a bean designed to use as a snap or shelly bean is probably not worth it here, as the idea of the plant making more flowers and pods after you pick the immature pods doesn't really work with plants that start dying the moment pod set occurs. I'd get one or two green beans per plant, and that would be it.

 

[flowerbug]

Oh okay, that makes sense. They're throwing their energy into progeny against the impending mortality. I thought for a minute you had some magical microclimate that allows you to mature beans in record time. That said, I have two beans which appear to be truly racing toward seed making, Botosani Splash and Harwig's Heirloom Belgium. The pods on both have clearly forming seeds. For me, up here in the north, that's crazy early.

my earliest planted Purple Dove beans could have already had a dry bean crop several weeks ago if i'd not have picked them all for fresh eating. as i'd not selected those seeds i didn't have any plans of saving any seeds from them (i like to select for certain traits and almost all of what i planted weeks later were from the selected seeds so any beans i get from those will include plenty of pods for dry bean harvest and further selecting for replanting next year).

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Another day, and more surprises.

Took the time to do a much more thorough pick-over of the beans, and so came back in with a pocketful of pods from EACH pot.

The black one showed more or less the same thing as yesterday (with rather more purple/black seeds showing up. One more black with white tip pod, but only one, so I suspect there is only one plant in there producing those (they're too tangled to work out which pod goes to which plant (just as well these are soup beans, or my plan of "first pod for seed, later pods for snaps, would have proved to be impossible.)

The new information comes from the speckled seed pot, now that I have more than two pods to judge from. It's just as varied as the black one. There are white ones, tan ones, tan with streaks ones, one really large seeded ones where the streaks now cover about 50% of the surface (so it would not count as mottled, not streaked) one that seems to have gone purple/black (unless a bird grabbed a bean from the black pot and dropped it in the mottled, I really have no way of knowing.

As, as the really odd one out, it looks like two plants got back Falcon's soldier pattern, except it is now in a different color! The smaller seeded ones now has in in the streaked tan of the original beans. The single larger seed hasn't totally dried down yet, so I can't be sure, but it looks like the mark there may be lavender.

And size is really variable, it ranges from Falcon's flageolet tininess to some that would be a bit oversized for a standard common bean (though in many cases, it looks like the bigger the seeds, the fewer there are per pod, so it's the standard tradeoff.

Looks like, If I want there to stabilize I better devote a LOT of space to them next year to keep the different colors, sizes and shapes separate.

 

[ducks4you]

Harvested my garlic yesterday and I saved the bulbils. The garlic that @flowerbug sent me had Huge bulbils, whereas all of the other of the 3 types of garlic had tiny seeds. All were pinkish/purple.
Still, I have them drying in quart yogurt containers on top of the fridge, with 2 plastic ice buckets that I had kicking around full of harvested garlic.
The guy at a local nursery told me that they harvest their garlic, count one month, then replant.
I like that advice.
I didn't cut any garlic scapes off, so the bulbs were a little smaller than I expected.
Still, it was a fun harvest.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

As I have mentioned, the problem I have with garlic is that around here, at least for me, it never "dies back" or even gets into a stasis point where it would be OK to trip the tops to keep the bulb energy going. One the cold weather takes hold, the garlic tries to basically outgrow the damage that the frost is causing, which basically has the effect of draining whatever food it managed to store in the bulb over the rest of the year, so, when the spring arrives, it literally has NO stored food to put into spring growth. At best, this locks it in a cycle of never actually being able to gain any bulb size (since the food it stores each year gets totally used up). For most plants, there is a net negative and the plants run out of food and die over the winter.
I have sort of the same question soon with my Korean mountain garlic. I KNOW I have bulbs in there now (I've seen them) but those bulbs are maybe only peppercorn sized (they're pea sized when at maximum volume). I seriously don't know if I simply let them sit there over the winter so they can just pop up again in the spring, or if it's better to dig them up, hold them inside over the winter, and them re-plant them in the spring when risk of things like bulb rot from freezing wetness is gone. The last time I tried to overwinter bulbs, they all dried out, but that ones ones picked while they still had full green tops that I trimmed off. I don't know it the fact I have waited until the tops have died off naturally makes a storage difference or not.

The wild alliums are also going to have issues. It sounds like I DO wait until spring to sow the seeds in the cold frame, but they then say I'm supposed to keep them in a greenhouse for a full year until they become full sized bulbs and then plant the bulbs outside. Tying up the cold frame year round is not really feasible. At least, that's what I THINK they are saying (most of the references relate to specific selections of the species chosen for ornamental quality, rather than the wild type, and work on the assumption you already HAVE the bulbs via some plant nursery (while I certainly wouldn't recommend going around and eating random ornamental alliums, rather more of them are edible than one would think were casually (A. moly is edible, A. caeruleum is edible, A. roseaceum is edible and so on.)

 

[heirloomgal]

my earliest planted Purple Dove beans could have already had a dry bean crop several weeks ago if i'd not have picked them all for fresh eating. as i'd not selected those seeds i didn't have any plans of saving any seeds from them (i like to select for certain traits and almost all of what i planted weeks later were from the selected seeds so any beans i get from those will include plenty of pods for dry bean harvest and further selecting for replanting next year).

Is Purple Dove and exceptionally early bean variety? July seems so early?

 

[heirloomgal]

Another day, and more surprises.

Took the time to do a much more thorough pick-over of the beans, and so came back in with a pocketful of pods from EACH pot.

The black one showed more or less the same thing as yesterday (with rather more purple/black seeds showing up. One more black with white tip pod, but only one, so I suspect there is only one plant in there producing those (they're too tangled to work out which pod goes to which plant (just as well these are soup beans, or my plan of "first pod for seed, later pods for snaps, would have proved to be impossible.)

The new information comes from the speckled seed pot, now that I have more than two pods to judge from. It's just as varied as the black one. There are white ones, tan ones, tan with streaks ones, one really large seeded ones where the streaks now cover about 50% of the surface (so it would not count as mottled, not streaked) one that seems to have gone purple/black (unless a bird grabbed a bean from the black pot and dropped it in the mottled, I really have no way of knowing.

As, as the really odd one out, it looks like two plants got back Falcon's soldier pattern, except it is now in a different color! The smaller seeded ones now has in in the streaked tan of the original beans. The single larger seed hasn't totally dried down yet, so I can't be sure, but it looks like the mark there may be lavender.

And size is really variable, it ranges from Falcon's flageolet tininess to some that would be a bit oversized for a standard common bean (though in many cases, it looks like the bigger the seeds, the fewer there are per pod, so it's the standard tradeoff.

Looks like, If I want there to stabilize I better devote a LOT of space to them next year to keep the different colors, sizes and shapes separate.

@Pulsegleaner you have such a superlative eye for the finest details in dried beans, even seeds that you don't have many of. Are you a bead collector as well? The way you describe beans reminds me very much of how someone might describe individual beads. I think I finally understand your use of the moniker 'pulse gleaner'.

 

[heirloomgal]

Harvested my garlic yesterday and I saved the bulbils. The garlic that @flowerbug sent me had Huge bulbils, whereas all of the other of the 3 types of garlic had tiny seeds. All were pinkish/purple.
Still, I have them drying in quart yogurt containers on top of the fridge, with 2 plastic ice buckets that I had kicking around full of harvested garlic.
The guy at a local nursery told me that they harvest their garlic, count one month, then replant.
I like that advice.
I didn't cut any garlic scapes off, so the bulbs were a little smaller than I expected.
Still, it was a fun harvest.

Isn't it such a great feeling to gather up your own pantry & seed supplies? All the feels of

 

[flowerbug]

Is Purple Dove and exceptionally early bean variety? July seems so early?

planted May 4th and survived two frosts (one covered and the other not). it is actually later than some of my previous crops. they are a short enough season bean that i have no problem getting dry beans from them before the frosts come around in the fall. i don't think it is as early as Adams Family 6 weeks or some others but it's also a good fresh eating bean so that was my main use of this particular early planting.