A Seed Saver's Garden

[flowerbug]

I do give away a lot of seeds to people. I'm also a sucker for people who come to my table at Seedy Saturday staring into a handful of coins, and then hold them out to me and ask, 'How many beans can I buy with this?' (This question, because I sometimes bring a 3 tiered tray with mixed beans on each level, and allow people to pluck out what they'd like in a packet.) And I do guerilla seed drops. When I see people converting front yards to raised beds for growing food, or building those raised garden tables for food, I sneek seeds into their mailbox when no one is around. Lol

i have been to two large seed swaps and the first i had the plan to give away everything i took with me. i wasn't selling them. i didn't manage to get rid of much more than perhaps one third of what i took with me, but at least it wasn't zero.

the second time i was selling them, but also if someone was buying some i'd try to give away as many others as i could. i would have been happy to have come home without much of what i took with me. i think i managed to adopt out about two thirds of what i took with me - so that was better. there were about twice the number of people at the second event too. it was pretty busy.

i give seeds to people who want them, but this is not very efficient or fast. i really did like the seed swaps because you get to see a lot of people all at once. i'm not normally an out and about type of person so i don't have too many chances for sharing things around that ways.

i think some kind of seed tray that is open to people to see more directly would be a big improvement and i hope to do something like that for the next seed swap so that people can see them and touch them without having to open the containers or try to see in through the lids - i just wish i had a more reliable supply of seeds to begin with and doing new grow outs each season of just a few plants rarely gives me a large amount of seed back to work with for distribution.

 

[heirloomgal]

This year may set somewhat of a record for me with the beans. With all the unusual challenges there's been, it's nice to sort of finish the season off on a high note; I think this may be one of the first years ever where every bean variety will mature and I will get to harvesting virtually all the pods. I am drying some pods inside, but not to protect from killing frost, just from the rains we've had. There are almost always some varieties whose pods at least partly don't mature in time. So I'm pretty happy with that. I guess the heat sped things along, or something.

Started cutting plants at ground level, will go out and cut more tomorrow. Rains won't stop until Sunday last time I checked, so it's time. The high humidity has - amazingly - sort of re-softened all the pods on the few hanging bean bunches I have in my protected sunroom. I don't think the beans will be damaged, but its surprising how the air did that. They were all dry as a bone. I'll be shelling them asap when they get dry again. There has just been so many beans to shell, was hard to get them all done before humidity spiked.

Can't complain with the seed harvest so far, it's been pretty decent given everything. Always nice to see the varieties that did super well, and to do tallies on seed types I thought did very poorly, only to realize that they actually did alright. There have only been a few beans that gave a dismal harvest, mostly due to sclerotina. I do hope the soybeans make it. I keep checking pods for dryness level, and they still seem at a shelly stage. @Zeedman can I pull them and hang then to dry like P. Vulgaris?

Waiting for dry pods on the yellow radishes -

Black Cobra peppers, turning red finally

Mayan beans sure had purdy pods, stayed vibrant right til the end. I would put these in with the flowers too.

'Ukrainian Soup' beans. Not sure what to make of these, they look exactly like 'White Horticultural' in every way, including pod. Are later, but was planted in a less ideal spot.

The life cycle is coming full circle

 

[flowerbug]

congrats! it's nice when the harvest comes in and you can enjoy the fruits of your labor.

on the whole the beans here did pretty well with a few notable exceptions. i'll be working to improve the soil in one large garden by moving some dirt between it and another garden. having a lot of space inside the fence not be very productive while i have a large garden outside the fence with the kind of soil that is exactly what the other garden needs (and vice versa). will give each garden a welcome boost. even a few buckets of dirt per row planted should make a lot of difference and since i have to reshape both gardens anyways it's not like it will disrupt them more than they'll be anyways.

the biggest downside will be moving weed seeds between the two gardens. both are similar enough, but the garden inside the fence has a lot more weed control than the other so it will mean more work weeding for a few years. it's ok, just a factor to consider...

as usual i'm always interested in how things will go next season... more beans will get planted, more experiments will get done and progress will also be made.

 

[heirloomgal]

congrats! it's nice when the harvest comes in and you can enjoy the fruits of your labor.

on the whole the beans here did pretty well with a few notable exceptions. i'll be working to improve the soil in one large garden by moving some dirt between it and another garden. having a lot of space inside the fence not be very productive while i have a large garden outside the fence with the kind of soil that is exactly what the other garden needs (and vice versa). will give each garden a welcome boost. even a few buckets of dirt per row planted should make a lot of difference and since i have to reshape both gardens anyways it's not like it will disrupt them more than they'll be anyways.

the biggest downside will be moving weed seeds between the two gardens. both are similar enough, but the garden inside the fence has a lot more weed control than the other so it will mean more work weeding for a few years. it's ok, just a factor to consider...

as usual i'm always interested in how things will go next season... more beans will get planted, more experiments will get done and progress will also be made.

It might be worth considering the effect of micro nutrients & minerals present in your soil, or the lack thereof. The government bean consultants I spoke to this summer very much take into consideration the presence of various minerals etc. when assessing field performance, and made a point to really emphasise that to me. I have both sandy and loamy gardens, and generally, the beans perform the same -Blue Shaxamaxon the exception this year, but not sure what to attribute that to. I think here, being such a large mining area, the soil tends toward abundance with minerals. But I have seen packets being sold of 'volcanic' minerals as a soil amendment. I have a friend that just loves Azomite; I haven't tried it but she feels it has super enhanced her gardens' productivity and quality. I don't use commercial fertilizers, or any fertilizer at all really with in ground plants, but part of why these commercial growers use them is the mineral balancing as well as NPK ratio. This is what they shared with me, because apparently successful bean seed development depends on a multitude of factors including necessary minerals. I think Azomite may be the alternative to a commercial fertilizer in this respect. Just a thought.

 

[heirloomgal]

'Alubias di Tolusa' pole bean. This is one of the latest DTM beans I grew this year, next to Ohio Pole. But it is finally starting to mature. The plant makes very unique looking pods, they dry into pristine blond shells that have very defined bean 'bumps'. Even after pulling them open, the empty shells bear those clear bean indentations or pockets. The bean itself is unique in its sheen, I've only seen one other like it - Mont D'or. It's very, very shiny - almost reflective on the surface. A porcelain glaze like finish comes to mind. Unfortunately this quality is near impossible to capture with my device, but I gave it a shot. It also seems to be wonderfully productive, a quality I really like in my bean collections.

 

[Alasgun]

Im glad you explained the sheen; i was thinking “gee, this gal’s way to much time on her hands to polish each one of those beans”!

 

[Zeedman]

Can't complain with the seed harvest so far, it's been pretty decent given everything. Always nice to see the varieties that did super well, and to do tallies on seed types I thought did very poorly, only to realize that they actually did alright. There have only been a few beans that gave a dismal harvest, mostly due to sclerotina. I do hope the soybeans make it. I keep checking pods for dryness level, and they still seem at a shelly stage. @Zeedman can I pull them and hang then to dry like P. Vulgaris?

My preferred method for harvesting soybeans is to cut & hang the plants when all leaves have fallen, and the stem has started to yellow. Usually about 90% of the pods are dry or near-dry at that point. But if rain threatens, I might harvest dry or near-dry pods. I've noticed an odd side-effect of that, which is that pulling off individual pods seems to put a halt on leaf drop. That surprises me, because you wouldn't expect the plant to sense or react to the removal of dry pods. It's as though the plant says "oh, so you want to harvest that way...".

Any pods which have yellowed could be harvested & dried for seed. Some soybeans are fairly moisture resistant, some are not; unfortunately, edamame varieties are often in the latter category. Whether you dry soybeans in situ or cut & hang the plants to dry, watch for shattering. Some soybeans will pop open & expel their seeds when the pods dry... which could cause confusion if more than one variety of the same color was hung. Worse yet, soybeans on the ground/floor could attract rodents (ask me how I know).

I've already harvested 10 of this year's soybeans, with 5 more to go. After the rain tonight, the forecast is dry for the next week... so 4/5 should finish drying & be harvested. The 5th is a variety which is a stretch for my season, and sometimes needs protection from the first frost to ripen.

 

[flowerbug]

It might be worth considering the effect of micro nutrients & minerals present in your soil, or the lack thereof. The government bean consultants I spoke to this summer very much take into consideration the presence of various minerals etc. when assessing field performance, and made a point to really emphasise that to me. I have both sandy and loamy gardens, and generally, the beans perform the same -Blue Shaxamaxon the exception this year, but not sure what to attribute that to. I think here, being such a large mining area, the soil tends toward abundance with minerals. But I have seen packets being sold of 'volcanic' minerals as a soil amendment. I have a friend that just loves Azomite; I haven't tried it but she feels it has super enhanced her gardens' productivity and quality. I don't use commercial fertilizers, or any fertilizer at all really with in ground plants, but part of why these commercial growers use them is the mineral balancing as well as NPK ratio. This is what they shared with me, because apparently successful bean seed development depends on a multitude of factors including necessary minerals. I think Azomite may be the alternative to a commercial fertilizer in this respect. Just a thought.

the soil in the sandy garden was intentionally made poor to start with because i wanted to test out some things with tulips and that was accomplished and then i moved on to growing more things in that garden than tulips and so since then i've gradually been improving the garden soil in there but it isn't going fast enough and now that i have the north garden needing to change around it all works out ok in the end. trace nutrients i'm not so worried about because i figure that the worm compost has plenty of added nutrients because of all the food/vegetable scraps that goes into that plus burying extra organic materials as they become available. more than anything the questions in all of my gardens are do they seem to be following the trend i'd like with productivity or not and the answer to that is yes they're doing ok. if it isn't as fast as i'd like that is due to a few over-ruling management issues that i don't have the power to change so i just have to roll with them as they come along.

i also do pretty much all natural kinds of things, but the simple point of many nutrients in gardens can be handled if you aren't being too extractive, do some fallowing here or there to let the subsoil recharge some things into the topsoil (via worms and composting deeper rooted weeds, etc), but primarily it is via rotating some things around so that they're not feeding so heavily in one spot all the time. different plant families feed differently. if my tomato crops were coming in worse and worse each season i'd think i was off in my methods, but that hasn't been happening...

 

[heirloomgal]

Im glad you explained the sheen; i was thinking “gee, this gal’s way to much time on her hands to polish each one of those beans”!

Being a pescatarian for so long now, I do LOVE my beans. But even I don't love them that much.

 

[heirloomgal]

My preferred method for harvesting soybeans is to cut & hang the plants when all leaves have fallen, and the stem has started to yellow. Usually about 90% of the pods are dry or near-dry at that point. But if rain threatens, I might harvest dry or near-dry pods. I've noticed an odd side-effect of that, which is that pulling off individual pods seems to put a halt on leaf drop. That surprises me, because you wouldn't expect the plant to sense or react to the removal of dry pods. It's as though the plant says "oh, so you want to harvest that way...".

Any pods which have yellowed could be harvested & dried for seed. Some soybeans are fairly moisture resistant, some are not; unfortunately, edamame varieties are often in the latter category. Whether you dry soybeans in situ or cut & hang the plants to dry, watch for shattering. Some soybeans will pop open & expel their seeds when the pods dry... which could cause confusion if more than one variety of the same color was hung. Worse yet, soybeans on the ground/floor could attract rodents (ask me how I know).

I've already harvested 10 of this year's soybeans, with 5 more to go. After the rain tonight, the forecast is dry for the next week... so 4/5 should finish drying & be harvested. The 5th is a variety which is a stretch for my season, and sometimes needs protection from the first frost to ripen.

Thank you! They are nearly all ready to be cut & hung then. So much rain, its nuts.

Rodents. Ugh. Went to harvest the near ready crop of sesame pods in my greenhouse, and the stems were totally stripped. NO pods. Like there was never pods on those stems, ever. Not even a trace of chewed pod matter. Mice.