A Seed Saver's Garden

[ducks4you]

New Columbine I bought. Trying to spruce up my tired, dull, prosaic shade garden. Finally cut right back the Cranesbill Geraniums & huge amount of Lamb's Ears (hope there is no TP shortage...) and got rid of all the boring light pink Anemones. So I got a few columbines for something different. Not easy to find colourful additions to the shade garden that are not annuals, and flower for more than a week. Still looking.View attachment 49331

That is a Colorado Columbine, which is their state's flower. OUR native Columbine is reddish/yellowish.

MY property's Columbine is blue one, a native from Tennessee, seeds dropped no doubt by some bird.
I thought I had it pegged but can't seem to find any photos besides my own. I'll get to posting, BUT, I have learned some things about Columbines.
1) they are Prolific self seeders. I had 2 plants originally and now have about 30 of them and they love to grow in the cracks of my front walk steps, and I leave them there bc it looks a little bit wild.
2) they live about 3 years, but reproduce themselves so much you really don't care
3) I have kept one alive that volunteered in a broken clay pot at the bottom of the porch steps.
That means, roots above ground, and survived -20 degrees Farenheit
VERY HARDY!!
ONLY drought will kill them. I thought this one was a goner bc the pot dried out, but I stuck it in some water and it came back to life after a few weeks.
The only bad thing about them is, like so many other easy flowers, only a Spring bloomer.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Do the grass peas you refer to mean the one that goes by so many names? i.e. Italian cicerchia, Ethiopian lentil, Indian pea, chickling vetch etc.

Yes. I pick mine in a sort of topsy-turvy manner. I get my seeds from bags being sold for food, as opposed to seed company material, since I find a lot of the seed company material tends to be weaker than the food grade stuff (also as I understand that Grass Peas can come in as many flower colors as Sweet Peas, I keep hoping that I'll bump into some this way that are some color OTHER than blue or white (most commercial strains are blue only, with a few having the occasional pink flowered one.)

On the other hand, since i want the brightest flowers possible, and associate that with the darkest, most colored seeds possible, I actually select and plant out of those bags the LEAST edible seeds*.

Actually, the bags themselves are a little odd, since they clearly contain at least two readily identifiable and differentiable types in them in the bag (whereas most foodstuffs tend to want to look as uniform as possible, unless they are something like a bean soup mix.) There are larger (about pinto bean sized) seeds that are usually mostly white with often a bit of brown or black on the edge (or, for the few that make my cut, MASSIVE amounts of brown or red, often with black mottling thrown in) which are fairly typical of Middle Eastern strains, and a much smaller (maybe split pea half) fatter, solid brick red kind, which look a little like the kind they grow in Greece. There were also two VERY small tan ones in one bag I went through, but based on how those are growing, they may actually be something else.

There is a third kind that I grow when I can FIND it, that once in a while appears in Indian material (back in college around the turn of the millennium, there was a company whose lentils were FULL of the stuff (as in it made up 5-10% of the bag's weight). That has since gone, but a few years ago I managed to find a tiny amount in some different lentils. I don't have any currently. That kind is very small (about standard lentil sized) and mottled greyish brown (with the occasional nearly pure grey seed). Very small plants with very small flowers, but they grew fast and were the hardiest of all.

 

[heirloomgal]

When I added the 'compost garden' as an addition to the back of the main garden, DH says right away 'you can't do that, we need to make a trench through there for drainage off the mountain'. What a party pooper! I mean part of my motivation was to not have to move that compost dirt in first place, a trench would mean more digging and I was VERY tired of shovelling. So I said, let's wait until the fall and do it then (while silently hoping he'd forget all about such a paranoid-oriented idea). It'll be fine honey!

A....whoops! I've accidentally created a wildlife sanctuary. Thank goodness for raised beds.

 

[flowerbug]

...
A....whoops! I've accidentally created a wildlife sanctuary. Thank goodness for raised beds.

even inside the fenced gardens i'll still find raccoon, groundhog and other mysterious critter tracks in the puddles or among the gardens. i also have fur caught on the bottom of the gate where they squeeze between the hardware cloth/mesh on their way in or out - they might just be using it as a backscratch or comb...

 

[heirloomgal]

Cerinthe and asparagus pea; I had very little seed saved to plant for either this year. There were just a few seeds in the bottom of some white stationary envelopes. It is so hard for me to be patient with older seeds, but I managed it this year. I almost threw out the plug packs several times in defeat, but my goodness I finally got some sprouts. Not many, but enough to build up the stock. It's a small thing, but for me and my history of impatience it feels a little like a victory.

Cerinthe sprouts, which look a bit like sedum. This one is SO HARD to save seed for because they fall to the ground as soon as they mature. I'm going to place the small planter box on a white sheet this time to be able to see the seeds and collect them!

Iris bloom

Hanging pepper is starting to fruit, colours will start soon

Crimson flowered favas, the toughest fava bean I've tried. Blooms are more burgundy than crimson though.

I decided at the last minute that I can't go without at least one pumpkin plant for the fall. So I bought a 'Baby Bear' transplant and plunked down some bricks, and dumped in the extra bags of soil we had for topping the grass. There is no room anywhere else so hopefully this will do the job.

I've actually started to find this Armenian Giant Black pole bean comical. It is growing straight up alongside the pole but wont go near it. They must be 3 feet tall. I wonder how long it will go like this. Some of those beans are stubborn!

Both eggplant varieties with the term 'green' in their names are quite big. 'Green Punjab' and 'Early Green' are growing pretty fast compared to the others. I'm stoked to start an eggplant collection. Edible ones that is, I've got a few of the thorny or beasty type ones.

'Spring Blush' a new to me snap pea. Apparently pods will have a pink & green shade.

Foxglove baby

The semi-runner beds are starting to fill up with bean sprouts

 

[heirloomgal]

My little friend the black bear made a visit this evening; unfortunately my dog was tied outside when he made that arrival. This resulted in my dog breaking his collar off his neck in torpedo mode as he got to the end of the tie out. If I could rationally discuss this sort of decision with him, I would simply ask - 'You're 13 inches tall. He weighs at least 200 lbs. Really?' Honestly, sometimes I wonder about the survival instinct of animals. Needless to say, he did not catch the bear, nor hurt the bear, nor get hurt by the bear. He did scare him off and DH was able to intervene and carry him back since he has little reliable recall in such situations.

I will say he has done a pretty great job of snooping everywhere in my gardens without hurting anything. He walked through the bush beans with no damage to them.

Sesame is blooming, seems a bit early.

Peas are growing back already from the groundhog damage! Yay! The silver lining may be that I'll actually get more peas since this is basically a pruning.

Today, I got my first peony blooms!

My first try with a 'gloxinia' plant. It blooms really quick after sprouting.

Asparagus pea sprouts. They need heat to start moving it seems. They're finally actively growing.

Don't know how much more rhubarb I'll be able to harvest as the temps rise, so I took a photo of my (possibly) last rhubarb & whipped cream cake slice. I will say, most people don't consider there to be much to the idea of varieties of rhubarb, but my harvest today really showed me how vastly different they can be. Much of what I harvested was from 'Victoria' and a few from 'Canada Red'. I actually had to pick a few of the Canada red pieces out because they were too tough. The Victoria's were smooth as butter still. Much tinier stalks but there are many more and they don't get stringy nearly so fast.

'Count Dracula' pepper. Not a ton of peppers yet but the flower set is impressive.

My other little gardening friends. They follow me around and quack. They allow me to approach quite closely. Soon they'll show up with their babies.

 

[heirloomgal]

I can't believe it, but I've almost completed the full installation of the garden plants as well as the various supports. It has been close to 30 days of chipping away at it all. The last real chore to do is collect some more sticks for the semi-runner beans and make a couple more tripod trellis setups with birch saplings. I finally got all the (many!) pea twigs for the 3 & 4 foot peas, 'Novella' and 'Mega'.

I feel like I've finally figured out the best way to grow peas (types under 5 feet), at least from the point of view of productivity. Every method has pluses and minuses, but using bushy stripped twigs throughout the area (not in rows but full blocks) seems to allow the vines to produce the greatest number of pods. Tonight as I was finishing stripping the leaves from the branches and poking them around the seedlings I was thinking about why this might be. I came up with a few ideas.

Peas in their more original forms probably grew to a 3-5 foot height, and scrambled up & across in bunches whatever nearby vegetative matter it could wrap tendrils around. They climb MUCH better in a mass than on T-posts or even wire mesh trellis in single rows. I find the plantings are much more sturdy in the twig blocks, and don't fall away from the support at all. Most of my taller peas are on wire mesh and it is a struggle to keep them from falling backwards even now, especially at 0-1 foot and then at about 4 feet again. It's like one straight line up is an unnatural and even challenging growth habit for them. But it occurred to me that there may be another reason why they do so well in twig blocks. The major challenge people tend to experience with peas is their inability to tolerate long periods of high heat. By the time I was done twigging up the pea patch I realised that the multitude of sticks is casting slight bits of shade on the pea plants. Almost imperceptible, but to the peas this might actually mean a lot. It was a ton of work to go out and collect all those twigs, but I like the effect of a solid inner supported mass of peas growing among the branches. It's sort of rustic. It's also cost effective!

 

[meadow]

I feel like I've finally figured out the best way to grow peas (types under 5 feet), at least from the point of view of productivity. Every method has pluses and minuses, but using bushy stripped twigs throughout the area (not in rows but full blocks) seems to allow the vines to produce the greatest number of pods. Tonight as I was finishing stripping the leaves from the branches and poking them around the seedlings I was thinking about why this might be. I came up with a few ideas.

May I see a picture of this please? My pea trellising efforts were totally inadequate this year.

 

[Decoy1]

Interesting. How big a block do you go for? My concern would be that it might be more difficult to get to the pods in the centre of the block for picking?

 

[flowerbug]

i've done block plantings for peas of several rows fairly close to each other. last year they did ok. no other support than the peas themselves. they got to be about four feet tall. this year i've got them in a narrower double row and i don't think they're doing as well, but the groundhog has sort of trampled some of them.

other peas that i use for soup are a smaller plant with more tendrils than leaves, they're impressively self supporting when planted in a block. i've not trellised them either. whatever happens happens. plenty of peas.