A Seed Saver's Garden

[Pulsegleaner]

I would order seeds NOW. I put in 2 small orders to Seeds'NSuch bc they have been offering good deals this Fall.
As you know most seeds have a good germination rate after 1-2 years, and packages for $1.00 each are a bargain, from a reputable source.
After my yearly October party, I intend to inventory and buy ALL the seeds I need for 2024.

Except that, as I said, these are the WRONG seeds, they didn't conform to what Russian Netted is supposed to look like (no net, and they were yellow, not brown, and had stripes.) They tasted fine, but so do a lot of other cukes I could grow. And next year the whole area will be devoted to the burr gherkins, so there wouldn't be the room for them anyway.

I HAVE already ordered the only thing I KNEW I needed for next year I didn't have (white currant tomato seed). Beyond that, everything I plan is either already here, the product of searches I can't predict, or things I don't know about yet. I'm sure this IS a good time to stock up on seeds, but stocking up before I've worked out what I'm actually going to plant is how I wound up with several pounds worth of tomato seeds in the first place!

The only other thing I'm contemplating putting in I'd have to order is a pair of Nanking cherry trees , and I'm holding off on ordering them until the spring because the spring is when I'm supposed to plant them, and I'll probably only get one shot at this (I wanted white fruited cherries, and those are a lot harder to find than red ones.)

 

[Branching Out]

I would like to save cucumber seeds from the crazy prolific 'Homemade Pickles' that I grew this year, however I note that SSE recommends 800ft isolation distance (which is not happening). Hmmm. I have never saved cucumber seeds before, but given that I am a home gardener and not selling seed I may just give it a try anyway. If they cross, they cross.

And I would love to make it through a year without ordering more seeds, but it appears that I have no self-control in that area. It may be time for me to install Parental Controls on all seed-related websites.

 

[heirloomgal]

I would like to save cucumber seeds from the crazy prolific 'Homemade Pickles' that I grew this year, however I note that SSE recommends 800ft isolation distance (which is not happening). Hmmm. I have never saved cucumber seeds before, but given that I am a home gardener and not selling seed I may just give it a try anyway. If they cross, they cross.

And I would love to make it through a year without ordering more seeds, but it appears that I have no self-control in that area. It may be time for me to install Parental Controls on all seed-related websites.

It’s worth a try @Branching Out . You can tell pretty quick when you have a hybrid cucumber on your hands, so you can always toss the starts if you don't want the crosses.

 

[Branching Out]

It’s worth a try @Branching Out . You can tell pretty quick when you have a hybrid cucumber on your hands, so you can always toss the starts if you don't want the crosses.

Interesting that the crosses will reveal themselves. What should I be looking for in crossed seedlings??

 

[heirloomgal]

Interesting that the crosses will reveal themselves. What should I be looking for in crossed seedlings??

The plants will grow like little monsters, super vigorous. I find cucumbers tend to express that hybrid vigor even more aggressively than some other species though nearly all crosses I've seen show over the top wild growth, even peppers and beans.

 

[heirloomgal]

This ‘Rootbeer‘ corn! I’m loving the color palette of this variety so much!

These are some of the rogues I’ll need to weed out to keep with the gingery theme.

Actually, this one sort of fits. I may not eliminate these genes.

Most of the genetic ‘duds’ amount to these, though I have an armload left of ears drying down. Percentage of *not rootbeer*was a fairly small number considering the total number of cobs.

This one stood out to me. Not easy to catch the colour in a photo but it’s a pearly beige/pink. Some of the kernels on the cobs are cracked, not sure why because they were watered pretty evenly. I like the odd ones nearly as much as the others!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

This ‘Rootbeer‘ corn! I’m loving the color palette of this variety so much!
View attachment 60730View attachment 60725View attachment 60724View attachment 60731View attachment 60733

These are some of the rogues I’ll need to weed out to keep with the gingery theme.
View attachment 60726

Actually, this one sort of fits. I may not eliminate these genes.
View attachment 60727View attachment 60729

Most of the genetic ‘duds’ amount to these, though I have an armload left of ears drying down. Percentage of *not rootbeer*was a fairly small number considering the total number of cobs.
View attachment 60732

This one stood out to me. Not easy to catch the colour in a photo but it’s a pearly beige/pink. Some of the kernels on the cobs are cracked, not sure why because they were watered pretty evenly. I like the odd ones nearly as much as the others!View attachment 60728

If I ever find it again, there are some corns where the pericarp color is a bright magenta. Mixed in with this, that could look really nice. (I guess then it goes from root beer to Shirley Temple!)

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Harvested the pod off of what I thought was the urd, and it's actually ANOTHER mung bean, one of the gold ones! (looks like the African material must mature later than the Indian stuff., and as a much larger plant).

Also have gotten two more lablab pods, and started harvest of the partridge peas. Guess I'll have to check those every day (since, as a purely wild plant they presumably DO shatter as soon as they dry down, so I'll have to get them as soon as they turn if I don't want the seed spraying everywhere and messing up future plantings.)

Hopefully, the horse gram will be ready by the time the frost comes (a few pods feel sort of fattening out, but they all still seem very green and not getting all that much longer.)

 

[heirloomgal]

(looks like the African material must mature later than the Indian stuff., and as a much larger plant).

You mean India has different kinds of mung beans than Africa?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

You mean India has different kinds of mung beans than Africa?

Well, all I can say definitively is that the variety I got from the person in Ghana is different that that I picked out of the bags from India. Whether there are two distinct gene pools, I have no idea.

I know there are a fair number of mung beans grown in the Middle East, that could be the group the Ghana ones came from.

Based purely on seed shape and size, the gold ones would fit into what I think of as the "greater" mung bean phenotype, while the speckled ones are in the "lesser" so they'd ALREADY be pretty far apart.

But, as I pointed out, the plants are also pretty different (or why I though these were urds initially). The current plants aren't just bigger, they're much hairier, and they are actually making something along the lines of runners (while the smaller ones appeared to possibly be bush*.)

There were a few urd beans mixed into the Ghana mungs, so there may be two groups of those as well.

*Since most of my lesser beans, if they flower and fruit, do so when they are extremely short and small, it's sort of hard for me to tell if they are bush or runner or pole, since even climbers often don't start climbing until they get to a certain size, and bushes often don't branch until a certain size as well.