A Seed Saver's Garden

[Pulsegleaner]

@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.

Yes I am, and am very knowledgeable about them as well (well, some kinds, I have impressive collection of antique Venetian millefiori "trade beads" (not on the level of the Picard collection of course, but NO ONE'S is, not even the archives of Moretti itself) , a HUGE collection of the two part powdered glass beads of the Krobo people of Ghana (while I have never confirmed so, I suspect that, going by number of designs, I very well may have the largest collection in the world, as I am probably up to nearly a thousand,) I'm basically now the go-to guy for anyone looking for vintage (circa turn of the millennium) Fimo beads, and so on. Plus, of course a bit of Indian, Chinese and such stuff I just took a shine to.

"I think I finally understand your use of the moniker 'pulse gleaner'.

Yes, I wondered when someone would finally get it.

Incidentally, todays harvest netted yet another nice surprise, one of the bean plants on the black side seems to have come out white with a black/purple soldier pattern.

As has been said before "beans are the poor man's jewels".

 

[flowerbug]

if you are cutting any green off a bulb plant before it dies back and dries you are losing energy for the bulb and yes, that will have some effect on the size of the bulb and future plantings.

 

[flowerbug]

... I think I finally understand your use of the moniker 'pulse gleaner'.

the word gleaning was a biblical and agricultural term to me at a relatively early age so i never had a doubt about what it meant.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Which is precisely the problem I have, the green never goes away with the garlic (with the mountain garlic, It was a bunch in a supermarket, so it had already been picked green)

 

[Pulsegleaner]

the word gleaning was a biblical and agricultural term to me at a relatively early age so i never had a doubt about what it meant.

Another old biblical word I find myself using a lot in my work is "tare", as in something that is sort on the fringes of edibility (you may let a little grow on the side in case of emergencies, but it isn't something you are actually actively planting as a crop.) As opposed to the more common meaning of the word (to re-set a scale so it reads zero for accurate weighing.)

 

[ducks4you]

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

I stand by my prediction. We need to have ALL of our seeds, harvested, fermented/saved, or purchased before everybody else is going to buy them.
2024 will be a lean year for many.
Let's make sure that it is a bounty year for us!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I stand by my prediction. We need to have ALL of our seeds, harvested, fermented/saved, or purchased before everybody else is going to buy them.
2024 will be a lean year for many.
Let's make sure that it is a bounty year for us!

Beyond other preparations, I'm seriously wondering if it may be time to start thinking about some of us adding a LOT of temperature controlled greenhouses. With the weather seeming to get more and more unpredictable each year (with regards to when things stabilize enough in the spring you can plant your cool crops and when it gets too hot for them, and the reverse in the fall.) I'm seriously wondering if we are getting into a situation where some areas of the country may no longer be able to grow ANY crop reliably outdoors. Some scientist already think we may be heading into a two season year as opposed to a four season one (cold and hot, with no real middle ground between them) I'm beginning to wonder if we may be heading for a ONE season year call "Who the Hell Knows?" I seriously think we could soon be looking at blizzards in July and August, and 100 heat waves in February (and I mean here in the Northern Hemisphere, not the south where that would be NORMAL.) I'm not sure we are on the cusp of nothing growing, but we seem to be getting closer to the cusp of nothing growing without our direct involvement (what I called the "plantation world".)

 

[SPedigrees]

I'm seriously wondering if we are getting into a situation where some areas of the country may no longer be able to grow ANY crop reliably outdoors. Some scientist already think we may be heading into a two season year as opposed to a four season one (cold and hot, with no real middle ground between them) I'm beginning to wonder if we may be heading for a ONE season year call "Who the Hell Knows?" I seriously think we could soon be looking at blizzards in July and August, and 100 heat waves in February (and I mean here in the Northern Hemisphere, not the south where that would be NORMAL.) I'm not sure we are on the cusp of nothing growing, but we seem to be getting closer to the cusp of nothing growing without our direct involvement (what I called the "plantation world".)

At this point nothing the weather could do would surprise me. "Who the Hell Knows" is how I would describe this year.

A number of "climate change refugees" who moved to my state in recent years to escape droughts, fires, earthquakes, and mudslides of the western states are now questioning their decision following a summer here of catastrophic flooding that qualified us as a national disaster, blue/green algae and milfoil taking over our lakes, and air quality compromised by wildfires in eastern Canada.

Your greenhouse idea sounds like a practical solution, especially if you are trying to sell what you grow. I'm not so sure that we are not on the cusp of nothing growing with or without human intervention, but might as well take whatever mitigating steps might work.

 

[flowerbug]

Which is precisely the problem I have, the green never goes away with the garlic (with the mountain garlic, It was a bunch in a supermarket, so it had already been picked green)

that's a whole different kind of garlic. in looking it up i see it is noted to be a smaller garlic. so you may just be up against the natural limits of that variety. i'd never heard of that one in particular before.

 

[heirloomgal]

Beyond other preparations, I'm seriously wondering if it may be time to start thinking about some of us adding a LOT of temperature controlled greenhouses. With the weather seeming to get more and more unpredictable each year (with regards to when things stabilize enough in the spring you can plant your cool crops and when it gets too hot for them, and the reverse in the fall.) I'm seriously wondering if we are getting into a situation where some areas of the country may no longer be able to grow ANY crop reliably outdoors. Some scientist already think we may be heading into a two season year as opposed to a four season one (cold and hot, with no real middle ground between them) I'm beginning to wonder if we may be heading for a ONE season year call "Who the Hell Knows?" I seriously think we could soon be looking at blizzards in July and August, and 100 heat waves in February (and I mean here in the Northern Hemisphere, not the south where that would be NORMAL.) I'm not sure we are on the cusp of nothing growing, but we seem to be getting closer to the cusp of nothing growing without our direct involvement (what I called the "plantation world".)

A properly temp controlled greenhouse is not an easy feat! You really would need a large greenhouse to accomplish that; with my little greenhouse now I can control it when the temperatures are in the 70's, but much above that and it's pretty hard even with multiple fans and vents.

Is the weather getting more unpredictable? I looked at some of the hottest day records in Canada and they go as far back as 1936. I have a feeling that things seem like they are unpredictable or extreme sometimes, but it's mostly due to the fact that the average human life span is not that long, 80 to 85 years. Even our coldest day, which could be considered an 'extreme' weather event, was in 1947. I think if our life span was 300 years we'd not be so quick to interpret the weather as being so out of the ordinary because we would have lived long enough to have seen it before.