A Seed Saver's Garden

[flowerbug]

not much into beets?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

All your transplanted plants still truckin' along @Pulsegleaner?

More or less. As I said, I lost the budded plant (though the stalks with the buds themselves are now in a vase and doing better than they were on the inside plant.) and I lost the tree like one, but everything else seems okay (if at stasis).

I just took harvest from the two mung bean plants with pods (the second half of them are literally sitting next to me drying down for storage,) so those are being removed, to make more room for the final plants which are just budding. Though I may swap them around again at this point, since, minus the podded ones that bend over, everything will be too tall for the cat to casually chew on the leaves, and it will get better light downstairs (since the bottom three quarters of window space won't be blocked by the air conditioner.)

The chives are also doing well, though we are trying to figure out what to do with chives whose flavor is that weak (and, or course, keep the cat away from them.)

I also have decided to add some guar to what I plant next year. That I'll HAVE to put in a pot, since I know from former experience it won't go full maturity within our season here (like the senna or the sesbania, it's at about mid green pod formation when the frost hits.)

 

[heirloomgal]

The chives are also doing well, though we are trying to figure out what to do with chives whose flavor is that weak (and, or course, keep the cat away from them.)

This is my main qualm about chives. You can't beat their hardiness and willingness to grow, but I find the flavor weak for most of the time. I wonder if soup, or soup stock, is a good use for them.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

This is my main qualm about chives. You can't beat their hardiness and willingness to grow, but I find the flavor weak for most of the time. I wonder if soup, or soup stock, is a good use for them.

Well, the problem is that these chives are far weaker than even THOSE chives, as in, until you get to the very end, it's hard to tell you aren't simply chewing on a blade of grass.

Mom suggested things like soup or scrambled eggs, but I have a nagging feeling that cooking will make the taste even weaker, to the point one can't taste it.

 

[heirloomgal]

Adventures in overwintering. ⛷ The good news, so far, is the chiltepin adjusted well to the environmental changes and has even put on a bunch of growth. The bad news is aphids have appeared on it. So, aside from the crushing I’ve done it’s time for need oil.

The green pepper basil is doing really good too after being dug up and plunked indoors under a light. I’ve gotten it this far, after a summer of not much, so I’ll see what it does this winter.

The Murupi White pepper didn’t make much fruit, so given that’s it’s going to really freeze tonight I brought it in from the drying room to preserve. Not sure if I should save the plant, take a cutting or just plant seeds. The Habanada, Wiri Wiri, Grenada Seasoning I also brought in. But that’ll be it. It’s been years since I tried overwintering, maybe I’ll get it right this time~especially now that I know I can soak neem dilution into the soil. That might change the tides, we’ll see.

 

[flowerbug]

our experience with chives is that we don't use them and so having many square feet of them growing wasn't a good use of the space. i took one large patch out to reclaim it and that experience was so bad that i won't grow them again in any open garden space. they are great bee food flowers (as are all onions i've ever grown), but i'm happier growing the bunching onions and other onions instead. chopped up green onions work for chives and even chopped up green garlic works well enough.

 

[Zeedman]

This is my main qualm about chives. You can't beat their hardiness and willingness to grow, but I find the flavor weak for most of the time. I wonder if soup, or soup stock, is a good use for them.

Garlic chives have stronger flavor. So do walking onions, and you can sprout the topsets in a window box all Winter.

For the first time in years, I didn't harvest my walking onion top sets; so I'm sure they will be spreading. I hope to dig up & relocate the entire row next year... both to clean up all of the grass (and mutant strawberries) which have crept in, and to free up that space in the main vegetable garden. There are both Russian chives and Chinese chives in that long row, so as @flowerbug mentioned, I know it will be a daunting task.

 

[digitS']

Our primary (only?) use for chives is in scrambled eggs. And, we eat quite a few eggs every month.

Load em up in those eggs -- chopped as small as is comfortable to you. They cook fairly quickly.

Our chives are in the shadiest part of our garden and yet, they are available as a fresh veggie before anything else. Mess around with them to keep the flowers off and growing fresh leaves and you may be able to have them at anytime during the growing season. We don't do that but it sure looks possible.

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Few bits of news.
Looks like the buds probably wont open up, as all of the leaves have fallen off of the stems and the buds have drooped over again. Plus, I now have a pretty good idea of what they are (I think they are the Crotalaria I got they SAID was Regal Birdflower, but wasn't,) and, if they are, none of the buds are anything close to big enough to be about to open.

I suppose it might also be rattlebox another Crotalaria.) except that, while I remember buying seed for that, I also seem to recall specifically NOT planting it last spring particularly BECAUSE I didn't want to have no idea which one I had if any grew.

It does appear, however, that, assuming we do not have a killing frost tonight the stems on the lablab flowers out there ARE long enough that, if I snip them at the base, I can put them in a vase. This is sort of bittersweet however, as I now suspect those flowers are NOT coming from the same plant that gave me the seeds (the flowers on that had a pink blush, these are pure white, so, were my season about a two months longer, I might have had two strains of lablab I could re-grow, not one (though, since two months here would mean a plant able to handle the kind of weather we get in January, that's almost the same as wishing for one that could grow in sub zero conditions. Or bitterest weather may not usually come until February, but the odds of getting there with no frosts at all this far north is still basically unreasonable.

Finally, a bit of good news. I finally got to the point in my room cleaning where it was finally possible, after I don't know how many years, to actually OPEN the drawers I have under my bed (which are usually too blocked with junk to do so.) And sure enough, in one of them, was my jar of velcro chickpeas, so I have those again.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Few bits of news.
Looks like the buds probably wont open up, as all of the leaves have fallen off of the stems and the buds have drooped over again. Plus, I now have a pretty good idea of what they are (I think they are the Crotalaria I got they SAID was Regal Birdflower, but wasn't,) and, if they are, none of the buds are anything close to big enough to be about to open.

I suppose it might also be rattlebox another Crotalaria.) except that, while I remember buying seed for that, I also seem to recall specifically NOT planting it last spring particularly BECAUSE I didn't want to have no idea which one I had if any grew.

It does appear, however, that, assuming we do not have a killing frost tonight the stems on the lablab flowers out there ARE long enough that, if I snip them at the base, I can put them in a vase. This is sort of bittersweet however, as I now suspect those flowers are NOT coming from the same plant that gave me the seeds (the flowers on that had a pink blush, these are pure white, so, were my season about a two months longer, I might have had two strains of lablab I could re-grow, not one (though, since two months here would mean a plant able to handle the kind of weather we get in January, that's almost the same as wishing for one that could grow in sub zero conditions. Or bitterest weather may not usually come until February, but the odds of getting there with no frosts at all this far north is still basically unreasonable.

Finally, a bit of good news. I finally got to the point in my room cleaning where it was finally possible, after I don't know how many years, to actually OPEN the drawers I have under my bed (which are usually too blocked with junk to do so.) And sure enough, in one of them, was my jar of velcro chickpeas, so I have those again.)

Which part is like velcro? I have not yet grown chickpeas so I don't know anything about the plants.