A Seed Saver's Garden

[flowerbug]

i'm not sure what is so racy about Meerbarbe but the translator for german puts it as mullet. which doesn't seem so odd or strange or ...

what would keep you from a future seed swap? the crud was just starting up for the last one i attended which was where i met @Bluejay77 and @Zeedman. it is scheduled for this coming late winter so i will probably go as by then i hope this crud is mostly circulated and people are vaccinated and such. i guess we'll see what happens there.

 

[heirloomgal]

i'm not sure what is so racy about Meerbarbe but the translator for german puts it as mullet. which doesn't seem so odd or strange or ...

what would keep you from a future seed swap? the crud was just starting up for the last one i attended which was where i met @Bluejay77 and @Zeedman. it is scheduled for this coming late winter so i will probably go as by then i hope this crud is mostly circulated and people are vaccinated and such. i guess we'll see what happens there.

I wasn't referring to Meerbarbe flowerbug , I meant Sacre Bleu the French name. In French the profanities all tend to involve church references, not like in english with the physiology process references. The expression Sacre bleu is up there with tabernacle and sacrifice, which are 'no-no' words. At least, they were when I was a kid.

Yeah, my days of seed swaps are probably over as a result of the venues in which they have been held. Vaccine passports are coming into effect this month, and while they won't affect my day to day life, they will likely prevent me from attending events such as Seedy Saturday.

 

[heirloomgal]

It's a lovely time of year.

The last things to finish out there now are pole beans, soybeans, sesame and the radish pods. There are some peppers yet to mature but I'm not sure they'll get to turn red. Time will tell with those. At least they can still be used green, and I have neighbours who like them green. Have finally got all the drying flats full of pods (which have taken over the house!) shelled, put into paper bags and alphabeticalized. Not sure just how many of anything I grew since I had some extra garden space in the end, and put a bunch more stuff in unexpectedly. It'll be fun to tally all that up.

Have been stripping various pole beans every day of their leaves. Nice to see the pod set underneath which is remarkably well hidden by the leaf canopy. It does seem to hurry the beans along. Going out and looking at all those not yet mature pods feels a bit like staring at a wrapped gift you're not supposed to open yet. Patience, I guess.

Took a couple photos of my latest stripped poles. Some I've harvested a great deal from already, and some I've only just begun or not begun yet.

Landfrauen

Graines de Cafe

1,500 Year Old Cave

Fawcett's Pole

Rio Zape

Meerbarbe - the bean that just won't stop!

Grandma Gina's
I've never seen a pod like this in my life. It's wide AND long, just enormous. Piekny Jas pod is not even this large. I really hope it matures in time! This looks like an excellent fresh eating bean. Like eating two asparagus spears in one bean.

Giele Waldbeantsje
I grew this one alongside Fruhe Goldbohne & Shirolustruca Kovina to see if in the end they were all the same, to the eye anyway. While FG and SK seem identical, GW is totally different. The colour is beyond fluorescent greenish yellow, it's like an industrial highlighter. Doesn't look real, DD says they look painted. The other two are a bright yellow for sure, but this one is so bright it verges on lime green. Another special & rare bean for the ark. What a blessing of wonderful bean types for this year.

Soybean Hokkaido Black. Took forever to make pods, but we're closing in now.

 

[flowerbug]

i've never heard of stripping leaves before. i have heard of windrowing or @Bluejay77 's mentions of upending and hanging on the poles version, but not actually going through the effort of removing leaves from the plants. i have such a hard enough time getting pods to properly fill on some varieties that i'd be worried i'd be taking energy from the last bit of pod filling if i were to be doing that, plus, well, just too many plants and not enough time or energy myself for that. i hope it works well!

 

[Blue-Jay]

I have stripped the leaves from plants after all the pods are well filled out also. I think I told @heirloomgal about this. She might have gotten this from me. Usually I have already harvested some dry pods from those plants as well. There usually are no more pods on the plants filling out or still maturing seed. I also go to the soil level and sever the plants from their root system. Shuts the water uptake right off. Speeds up the drying of the pods. Mostly I do this on pole beans if I'm getting concerned about the amount of pod drying that has occured and how close I think it might be to our first frost date.

Think about the farmers soybean fields you may have seen growing. About this time of the year the leaves yellow and drop to the ground. What does that do? Exposes the pods to the sun and allows air to circulate through the vines. Enhances drying of those soybean pods. Our Phaseolus beans are a bit slow in doing this so when the seed has matured I speed up the process by stripping off the leaves and exposing all the pods to the sun and air circulation.

 

[Ridgerunner]

If the pods are filled out and are mature, does a frost or freeze harm the seeds as far as germination and future growing? Or does it just kill the plants so the seeds dry out? Is there any reason to not eat the seeds? I'm talking about beans here.

 

[digitS']

lovely

I doubt it Ridge'. Rattlesnake pole beans have dropped seeds and volunteered in my garden.

I have a little story about Chinese Lanterns .

I put some in the distant garden. I think that they are lovely ...

After growing nicely one season, they escaped into a path. Maybe I shoulda dug them up but didn't - tilling over them, repeatedly. The next year, they were back. And, the year after! By this time, I was skeered of their invasive nature here. This year, they seem to be gone ... probably out-competed by the purslane ... Wikipedia notes "In various places around the world, it has escaped from cultivation" and references China. It was never able to sneak into the lawngrass but I have never thought of this as China, climate, etc. Maybe Mongolia

Steve

 

[Blue-Jay]

Here where I live if the bean seed has too high of a moisure content and the frost is hard enough it will destroy the seed from ever being able to germinate. The water content of cells in the seed expand when water freezes and kills the little embroyo plant in the seed. So I try to get my bean seed dry and harvested before our first frost which can come as early as the 1st to the 5th of October. Were you live @Ridgerunner and @digitS you have a long enough frost free season where you don't have to consider the measures I take to dry and harvest seed.

 

[flowerbug]

If the pods are filled out and are mature, does a frost or freeze harm the seeds as far as germination and future growing? Or does it just kill the plants so the seeds dry out? Is there any reason to not eat the seeds? I'm talking about beans here.

in my experience when the pods are still green a hard frost can cause them some damage and make them prone to ferment if they are kept damp enough. as for the seeds i think the drier they are the better before they freeze. however that all said since i've had beans in pods sprouting before they're fully dried down if they get wet enough long enough.

as for eating as a fresh bean or a shelly, if you pick them after a frost and cook them right away you might not notice the difference.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

in my experience when the pods are still green a hard frost can cause them some damage and make them prone to ferment if they are kept damp enough. as for the seeds i think the drier they are the better before they freeze. however that all said since i've had beans in pods sprouting before they're fully dried down if they get wet enough long enough.

as for eating as a fresh bean or a shelly, if you pick them after a frost and cook them right away you might not notice the difference.

Unfortunately, you most definitely will. Freezing outside is not like the snap freezing commercial growers do to vegetables. The process is slow enough to allow very big ice crystals to form. So when they thaw again, they are basically mush.