A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

Not the best format for tomato info, or a great review per se, but Perfect Rogue is on the list of this study-

https://horticulture.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/2._tomato_variety_trial_report_jan_31_2021.pdf

 

[digitS']

A Good Job finding that, HerloomGal !

I'm not much concerned about BER – because I'm showing up to run the irrigation ... and, the soil is rich in calcium. The 47% split after rain concerned me until I saw that it was a pretty good rating by comparison, some were terrible. Irrigation is overhead sprinklers and so somewhat equal to rain. Susceptible to catfacing isn't good but not many were not. Still, it can be quite a problem out there. It wouldn't be good for those marketing fruit, however.

Thank You – Very Helpful and I will be looking at the others. A few, I have already grown. (They shoulda done some taste testing with those tomatoes!)

Steve

 

[jbrobin09]

Wow! That's pretty darn dry!

It really is. Last spring we went 2 months (April/May/into June) with no rain and we had had minimal snow last winter. This is part of why we had such an intense fire season.

 

[jbrobin09]

Those things really are little monsters, and they're hard to treat because they hide in the bottoms of the pots. When I was trying to squish them by hand I'd rattle each pot around and they'd come crawling out. Ick! I wonder if bottom watering with a dilution of @Alasgun 's suggested amendment would end them. They do die instantly when hit with the neem spray, but the cycle doesn't break.

I use those yellow sticky strips in each pot, it takes a bit of time but it works.

 

[heirloomgal]

A Good Job finding that, HerloomGal !

I'm not much concerned about BER – because I'm showing up to run the irrigation ... and, the soil is rich in calcium. The 47% split after rain concerned me until I saw that it was a pretty good rating by comparison, some were terrible. Irrigation is overhead sprinklers and so somewhat equal to rain. Susceptible to catfacing isn't good but not many were not. Still, it can be quite a problem out there. It wouldn't be good for those marketing fruit, however.

Thank You – Very Helpful and I will be looking at the others. A few, I have already grown. (They shoulda done some taste testing with those tomatoes!)

Steve

Glad it was useful I would have appreciated a flavor rating too!

Do you know what the T/A referred to? Couldn't make that reference out. Can't be tons per acre could it?

 

[digitS']

For the fungus gnats, we have those same yellow sticky traps that @jbrobin09 uses.

"T/A" : I would be just guessing about meaning but yield typically is measured in bushels, tons, or pounds per acre in the U.S. So ... I guess so. Sheesh, and it even says "Highest Unblemished Yield." Of course, yield would be just an estimate based on so few plants.

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Got another harvest off of the mung bean plants I brought in for the winter. Probably the last one I will get, though it is tough to tell (it looks like, as @Zeedman said, mungs make flush after flush; and the plants are still producing lots of flowers, so, theoretically, with no winter cold to kill them, the plants could keep growing and producing all winter.)

The seed of these appears to be standard green, assuming they are all ripe (when the default color of your seed is green, that can be a little hard to work out since, as they ripen the seed turns from green to.......the exact same shade of green*.)

Either way, I doubt I'd re-plant any seeds from this batch. Not only is there nothing special about the color, but any mung bean that takes this long to produce ripe seeds is not feasible as a crop for me here, especially when I have others that are.

I suppose that, now that I will be adding the "wild" mung beans to next year's planting, I also better start doing some deeper research on some things about them, such as if the pods shatter at maturity (which would effect the time between maturity and harvest I have) and whether there are any compounds that would prohibit me from eating any extras. Ditto the "wild" rice beans that have also occasionally shown up in the senna searches.

 

[jbosmith]

@Zeedman Good fortune smiled upon me and the Rimpaus Green Viktoria peas. In the end only about 6 peas in total sprouted, so I babied them & pinched them a few times in the hopes that the branching would multiply the pod numbers. It worked. I think I harvested just over half a cup of peas at the end of the season. I'm looking forward to growing it again in 2024.

RGV
View attachment 62417

Ampillisom Viktoria Ukrainskaya is another pea that did really well in 2023. It doesn't grow as tall as other dried peas I've grown, but it still produced well and it dried down in plenty of time before frost hit.
View attachment 62418

@jbosmith I'm not sure if you still peek around here, but the Goroh peas did great! Interestingly, when I shelled them they had funny little blonde tadpole tails! These were fully dried and are not sprouted, it's just a quirk of this variety I guess. Another dried pea which had very nice production. It's also another pea that I didn't give a tall enough trellis for, but I was able to get them to finish flopped over.
View attachment 62419

Alaska pea, an oldie but a goodie. I think in truth this more of a soup pea than a shelling pea. Sort of nice that it's a low growing variety. I like to have a mix of all the growing types. I did buy a commercial packet, and the germination was not great; none of the commercial peas I grew in 2023 had great germ rates - probably sitting around for too many years. At least now I have a fresh supply of all the varieties to try again. Little Purple and Sugar Daddy had poor germ rates too.

View attachment 62420


One thing that I find about peas, by the second year you're planting them (from seed stock of year 1) they really go BOOM. They seem to have some kind of rebound. It could be that the seeds were old to begin with, but I've just seen it so many times that I'm more inclined to think they acclimatize to local conditions really quickly. I planted Gravedigger peas this year, from a fair year one grow out in 2022, and collected more than 10X the seed I got in the first round. And this was a very hot summer too.

These are beautiful! I didn't take a picture before putting them away for winter, but your Sutton peas did well for me!

Yes, I love Heritage Harvest! They are in Manitoba, and very similar temps to me but they get more rain. I am in a dry spot, with just a bit more annual rainfall than Arizona, in the US. Ya know, I am still building my collection of heirloom beans (a paltry 85 varieties at this point) so maybe we could swap... I have a lot of Heritage's seeds in my collection. Is it hard to bring in seeds to the UK?

I haven't looked at their site much since they stopped shipping to the US but a lot of their beans came from Leigh Hurley, a local seed saver who first got me into beans.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Made a rare trip to one of the few local farmers markets still open at this season on Saturday. Not that much to buy produce wise (it's more prepared and baked goods at this time of year). But someone did have a small number of cherry tomatoes left, and I was able to get a handful or so, in varying states of ripeness. Not sure what I have (basically took whatever looked greenish, whitish or purplish) , or when it will be ready (that ripeness thing). But there does seem to be one Green Zebra Cherry in there, so at least I'll get some seed out of the deal hopefully. I'm approaching seed saving pragmatically now, so everything else will have to be tasted before I make decisions on the seed (I'm good at getting just the gel into the container and fermenting that, so it is possible for me to taste a tomato AND save seed from it.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Made a rare trip to one of the few local farmers markets still open at this season on Saturday. Not that much to buy produce wise (it's more prepared and baked goods at this time of year). But someone did have a small number of cherry tomatoes left, and I was able to get a handful or so, in varying states of ripeness. Not sure what I have (basically took whatever looked greenish, whitish or purplish) , or when it will be ready (that ripeness thing). But there does seem to be one Green Zebra Cherry in there, so at least I'll get some seed out of the deal hopefully. I'm approaching seed saving pragmatically now, so everything else will have to be tasted before I make decisions on the seed (I'm good at getting just the gel into the container and fermenting that, so it is possible for me to taste a tomato AND save seed from it.)

It's remarkable the unique produce that you're able to procure in your location @Pulsegleaner. I'm yet to see any heirloom type tomatoes enter the stores, or even farmers markets here yet. But I think the popularity of hybrids eclipsed the OP's decades ago, and people are only now beginning to reacquaint themselves. with the idea of them.