A Seed Saver's Garden

[Zeedman]

What do you use the Korean Dark Greens in?

They are a thin-walled hot pepper, best dried & ground for chili powder. They dry easily, and are not unbearably hot. The peppers are rather small, as are the leaves... but the plants are stout, bushy, and very heavily branched. A single plant can produce 100 peppers or more. It is one of the varieties given to me by the late Remy Orlowski of Sample Seeds. These peppers look nearly identical to the Hmong peppers sold by a local Oriental grocery.

 

[heirloomgal]

Awesome pepper haul!

 

[heirloomgal]

I think the real snow season is upon us. The garden is finally being buried, along with everything else.

Corny, but fond memories today of my exuberant, if weedy, lamb's ears.

Winds are 31km/hr or 19miles/hr right now, with a travel advisory to stay off the roads due to heavy snowfall. That's not much wind but it is -18C/0.4F
Turns out this was both pea and prophecy.

 

[heirloomgal]

I've spent days now listing seeds in a seed exchange, and that has taken more work at a computer than I expected! However, it has been quite the walk down memory lane as some of the listings I haven't grown in a while. Probably because I grow many different varieties of things, I tend to forget them by the next year. Writing descriptions for all the things I've ever saved seeds from has shown me a little about my gardening 'thinking'. I tend to pick a species tendency or a characteristic and grow a bunch of that. Mostly this involves tomatoes because of all the seed varieties I have, these are in the greatest volume by far.

I'm listing them here for the heck of it, but also in the case that someone is poking around for seeds ('tis the season) and trying to come up with some new ideas for things to try.

-strange foliage tomatoes - i.e. variegated and angoras
-peach tomatoes with furze
-any tomato or pepper that has the word 'chocolate' in it's name
-tomatoes that look like eggs
-all the 'vernissage' tomatoes
-all the 'bumblebee' tomatoes
-all the 'Tiger' series tomatoes
-every kind of white beefsteak & cherry
-every kind of green beefsteak & green cherry
-any kind of blue tomato
-tomatoes with metallic iridescence
-currant tomatoes (solanum pimpineliffolium) of any colour
-any kind/colour/shape of paste tomato, including white pastes
-tomatoes that express more than 3 colours
-dwarf and mini-dwarves
-Mortgage Lifters
-Brandywines
-scabbed tomatoes i.e. scabitha and feurerwerk
-early reds with potato leaves
-super jumbo tomatoes, 2lb +
-any yellow and red bi-coloured beefsteaks
-famous/classic reds, i.e Red Penna
-ruffled tomatoes
-grape tomato varieties
-basket/hanging tomatoes
-creamsicle coloured tomatoes
-stuffing, hollow tomatoes
-tomatoes that are shaped like pears, large and small
-any tomato with the word 'zebra' in the title
-any kind of multi-flora type of tomato, i.e. kozula megagron


-historic annual fruits

-unusual grains, i.s devil's claw millet

-sunflowers varieties that grow only burgundy flowers

-flowers/pods meant for drying: statice, lunaria, nigella, love in a puff

-every basil known to man

-every parsley variety known to man, including Zworsh Krul

-every morning glory known to man

-every dwarf pea in circulation

It was kind of nice to remember all those things I grew over the last years. I had forgotten about some of them, and had to look up descriptions to remember the details. Then the memory banks began to flow. I can't think of a hobby that has been so fun and rewarding as growing heirlooms, and saving seeds from them.

Saving seeds

 

[Zeedman]

That is an ambitious list, @heirloomgal ... think you'll have room left in the future for beans?

 

[heirloomgal]

That is an ambitious list, @heirloomgal ... think you'll have room left in the future for beans?

That's my 'been there, done that list' @Zeedman My future is all BEANZZZ....!

 

[ducks4you]

-every basil known to man

 

[heirloomgal]

-every basil known to man

I know, it was ridiculous that year! And I couldn't even save seeds from the plants that I grew, they had probably cross pollinated! Dang it!

 

[flowerbug]

some basil better than none at all.

 

[ducks4you]

I know, it was ridiculous that year! And I couldn't even save seeds from the plants that I grew, they had probably cross pollinated! Dang it!

Truly, are some better tasting than others? What are your favorites?