A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

I'm having the most....*interesting* gardening dilemma right now. The creek right beside my pea bed is being claimed by a big beaver. He has tried damming it 3 times in the last week, right next to my garden, so my neighbour and I have kept on top of it by dismantling his efforts each morning. His choice of materials has been interesting - my daughters huge plastic playhorse, our recycle bins, my gardening stool, my neighbours freshly cut firewood, and he's curiously selecting pieces of wood from our wood shed. All the boards and 2x4 's are stacked inside a diy shed covered with a tarp and he's going in there and sliding the boards out and pulling them to the creek. Why do all the work of chewing if you don't have to I guess.

So yesterday my neighbour trucked all his firewood to his summer camp hoping to discourage him. This morning, no sign, but he seems to only work every second night so we'll see tomorrow morning. Doesn't help its been raining SO much, which drives them. I knew he was further back on the property, cause the walking paths back there are a bit flooded cause he damming over some of those, but I thought he'd stay back there. Apparently not. I guess they're all about maximizing real estate.

I wouldn't like to see him get hurt, so I'm really hoping he can take a hint. I know at the first sign of teeth marks in the big trees by the creek, or our yards, my neighbour will take action. I know he's holding off for my sake...for now. 90% of Canadian land is wilderness owned by the Crown, and he's got to pick my backyard!

 

[heirloomgal]

So, it seems the beaver decided to build elsewhere. Very happy about that.

Finally got a beautiful day to do some work outside - probably the first real day this year of hospitable weather. We may have had a mild winter but we paid for it with a loooong, very cold spring. Just last week I was still wearing my winter jacket and huge wooly scarf.

I was reminded today why I should remove Morelle de Balbis plants from the garden in fall and NOT in the spring. Such a tasty, if deadly, Machiavellian species. The corn stumps came out too easily - and leads me to believe that it's the single bed in the whole yard that may have had voles working it thru winter. It was the only bed with no e-pole. The typical ravaging of the lawns connected to garden beds otherwise did not happen this year, which is great.

Anxious to get tilling and preparing beds for planting.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Okay. The good news is I managed to dig out some replacement corn to plant. |

The bad news is that it is just as old, if not older, so I have to assume it also will have pretty terrible germination.

So, rather than trying to put it directly into the peat plugs (which I wouldn't have nearly enough of to cover the 5-600 kernels I pulled out to compensate for the likely lousy germination,) or trying to sow them directly (which , even if I COULD keep the critters from eating all of the seeds as soon as I sowed them, would almost assuredly result in the plants being spaced irregularly and too far apart for decent pollination,) I've lain them out in a single layer in a sealed container between two wet paper towels, which I will put somewhere warm. Any kernels that DO germinate will THEN get stuck in their plugs or pots (by now, I'm actually pretty good with being able to take just germinated corn kernels and move them from plug to plug or pot to pot without breaking them.)

I also re-filled the empty plugs with more corn (that sort of Andean Mountain/Maiz Morado stuff I found at the bodega all that time ago), to see if I can coax anything out of that (I know that, as Andean, it is unlikely to be able to go full term this far north, but maybe I can get some breeding pollen out of it.)

Update.

The Andean was a total washout, zero germination (considering it probably the oldest corn I have, not a total surprise). Ditto the Andean sweet kernels with the chinmarking (same age, so again, not surprising). But I DID get some germination from the speckled/stippled stuff. It's rather skewed (it looks like nearly all of the ones that germinated are the thin, skinny kernels,) but it does give me a decent amount. Possibly more than decent, there's now about 120 of those seedlings, and I'm wondering where I'll be able to scrape up enough pots for the middle phase in the cold frame (I'd love to just stick the plugs directly in the ground, but putting them in while they still have kernel attached is pretty much certain to induce the squirrels and chipmunks eat them.)

Most other things are as they were, except I think the wild peppers may be beginning to sprout (I can't tell if what is coming up are the peppers or weeds in the soil at this point.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Update.

The Andean was a total washout, zero germination (considering it probably the oldest corn I have, not a total surprise). Ditto the Andean sweet kernels with the chinmarking (same age, so again, not surprising). But I DID get some germination from the speckled/stippled stuff. It's rather skewed (it looks like nearly all of the ones that germinated are the thin, skinny kernels,) but it does give me a decent amount. Possibly more than decent, there's now about 120 of those seedlings, and I'm wondering where I'll be able to scrape up enough pots for the middle phase in the cold frame (I'd love to just stick the plugs directly in the ground, but putting them in while they still have kernel attached is pretty much certain to induce the squirrels and chipmunks eat them.)

Most other things are as they were, except I think the wild peppers may be beginning to sprout (I can't tell if what is coming up are the peppers or weeds in the soil at this point.)

Sorry to hear about your Andean corn. That's disappointing. But 120 corn seedlings is a great number of plants to work with for your next choice, and gives some wiggle room if you bump into difficulties or losses.

Chinmarking? I need to look this up!

What species of wild peppers are you growing?

I actually have had some shocking results recently with my wild pepper species; turns out it really is a cross pollinating species so 1 won't do. But I didn't want to buy another $$ pack and risk zero germination - highly likely. But I found a website that sells perennial vegetables and they had a trading page for website items! So I got some more seeds in a trade, only cost me the postage. And 3/10 sprouted! I'm still actually in shock, who knows maybe there is more yet to come!?

 

[heirloomgal]

Some new crops for this year are on the grow out list. Earth chestnuts Conopodium majus & Jerusalem Artichokes (var. Corlis Bolton Haynes) . Both doing very well right now in pots. The Palmarosa grass is finally really starting to grow vigorously and it smells fascinating - an otherworldly combination of rose water and lemon verbena. I can see why they use it in soaps and cosmetics. I really hope I can get it to got to seed. I think I'll put one in the greenhouse just in case, to rush it. I like it so much that even if it doesn't go to seed I'll overwinter it inside.

My new ground cherry plants 'Schoenbrunn Gold' are also growing very well. Apparently this variety has been selected so the fruits do not fall from the plants, they have to be picked. The dwarf tomatoes are really putting on a show of growth this year for some reason, so huge and green and big.

I have a wonderful gardening friend who is very into perennial vegetables right now and next year she will have a whole bunch of seeds/tubers for them - Chinese Artichokes, Prairie Turnip, wild leeks & various alliums, hog peanuts, oca. She also has a huge number of Jerusalem Artichoke varieties.

Hoping this week the weather dry the gardens enough to till. So much work to do at this time of year, but it is all so enjoyable.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Sorry to hear about your Andean corn. That's disappointing. But 120 corn seedlings is a great number of plants to work with for your next choice, and gives some wiggle room if you bump into difficulties or losses.

It's actually quite a lot more now; I left the bag I threw the "failures" in on the floor by accident and about another 200 of them have sprouted. I've tossed all of those in a big pot of soil, since trying to separate them would be impossible.

Chinmarking? I need to look this up!

All chinmarking means is having (usually) red stripes on the pericarp (outer skin). So, your basic red sunburst pattern

What species of wild peppers are you growing?

Capsicum rhomboflexum, I think.

I actually have had some shocking results recently with my wild pepper species; turns out it really is a cross pollinating species so 1 won't do. But I didn't want to buy another $$ pack and risk zero germination - highly likely. But I found a website that sells perennial vegetables and they had a trading page for website items! So I got some more seeds in a trade, only cost me the postage. And 3/10 sprouted! I'm still actually in shock, who knows maybe there is more yet to come!?

 

[digitS']

The Palmarosa grass is finally really starting to grow vigorously

If this is like lemongrass ...

Pasta is an important part of our diet. We use lemongrass with noodles in our version of pho. It mostly amounts to meat and vegetables in broth with vermicelli bean thread or rice noodles. The lemongrass is tied in a bundle, added for flavor at the very start and removed by the time the noodles are added.

Lemongrass is usually just from the store and some started in a jar of water. In 2022, some was saved from the garden by being moved into pots and brought into the house. It migrated back to the greenhouse sometime ago and just went into a bed under the hoop house, yesterday . It cannot take much cold and frost outdoors is still possible – it will be a little awkward to cover those plants if necessary but it might need to be done.

Steve

 

[heirloomgal]

If this is like lemongrass ...

Pasta is an important part of our diet. We use lemongrass with noodles in our version of pho. It mostly amounts to meat and vegetables in broth with vermicelli bean thread or rice noodles. The lemongrass is tied in a bundle, added for flavor at the very start and removed by the time the noodles are added.

Lemongrass is usually just from the store and some started in a jar of water. In 2022, some was saved from the garden by being moved into pots and brought into the house. It migrated back to the greenhouse sometime ago and just went into a bed under the hoop house, yesterday . It cannot take much cold and frost outdoors is still possible – it will be a little awkward to cover those plants if necessary but it might need to be done.

Steve

So you were able to overwinter the lemongrass indoors? I'm quite curious about your process as I may need to replicate it. Kept in dark conditions, like root vegetables and left to die back completely or a sunny window?

 

[digitS']

Cut back when the plants come out of the garden bed.
Potted up in good soil.
Set in a sunny window through the Winter.

In 2023, it went back in the hoop house too early. It was nearly freezing in there a couple of mornings and the plants turned a little yellow but they came out of it okay.

 

[Zeedman]

So you were able to overwinter the lemongrass indoors? I'm quite curious about your process as I may need to replicate it. Kept in dark conditions, like root vegetables and left to die back completely or a sunny window?

To keep some of the house plants healthy, I leave the LED lights in the dining & living rooms on during the day, for supplemental light. I dug up a clump of lemongrass before frost (including all the soil in the root ball) and placed it in a 5 gallon bucket with about 3" of water. Other than maintaining the water level & a couple doses of house plant fertilizer, the plants have over-wintered with almost no attention on my part. They will be the planting stock for this year.