A Seed Saver's Garden

[Pulsegleaner]

No real news from my garden, but I do have some tidbits from the greater green world around me.

First bit : My errands today took me to the parking lot where the "Kisco Spitter: wild apple tree is, so I did my usual check to see if it was still alive. To my shock, not only has it recovered, but it is LOADED with developing apples. So, in a few months, I should be able to collect all the fruit I want for playing around with.

Second, while I was going to pick up my lunch, I saw this in the verge where we were parked.

Looks like I'll have to plan to come back in a month or so when it is ripe (assuming no one mows there in between).

 

[heirloomgal]

No real news from my garden, but I do have some tidbits from the greater green world around me.

First bit : My errands today took me to the parking lot where the "Kisco Spitter: wild apple tree is, so I did my usual check to see if it was still alive. To my shock, not only has it recovered, but it is LOADED with developing apples. So, in a few months, I should be able to collect all the fruit I want for playing around with.

Second, while I was going to pick up my lunch, I saw this in the verge where we were parked.

View attachment 66552Looks like I'll have to plan to come back in a month or so when it is ripe (assuming no one mows there in between).

I don't recognize this plant , what is it?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I don't recognize this plant , what is it?

Wheat (or barley, or rye.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Every year, tomato volunteers show up in my garden and compost. At times, I have been inclined to allow several of them grow through the season. They seldom have time to ripen fruit so it was a bit wasteful of garden space.

Nevertheless, there have been lucky times when there has been ripe, volunteer tomatoes. With a strong tendency to choose early tomato varieties, the odds are a little better. A variety that was especially good as a volunteer was Coyote. I talked about it in this 2016 TEG thread .

A determinate aversion keeps me from those varieties that so often produce early. If the plant's development guides it to ripen fruit just before frost, that's okay but that's not early . I'm uncomfortable watching determinate tomatoes ripen a crop and then sicken and die. Kimberley is supposed to be a semi-determinate and doesn't quite rush to produce and conk out. It sort of, moves on to a late-season retirement. Hah. I grew it quite a few years so as to have some nice red tomatoes, early.

Steve

I too have generally avoided determinate tomatoes. I have grown a few here and there, like Banana Legs, and some of my cooking/roma types have probably been determinates too without my knowing it. None of them have died out on me really, but it's the taste that they are known not to have much of. It's like they're commercial tomatoes, selected for that recessive trait. The high fruit to leaf ratio gives me pause.

That said, being so active on the seed exchange I always come up short when people in Saskatchewan, Alberta or Manitoba contact me looking for tomatoes they can grow. So, I thought I'd give some of these earlies a try. The grand solar minimum was also in the forefront of my mind when I was picking out tomatoes this year too.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

More feral fruity news.

As we were leaving the area we were in today, I suddenly noticed that a tree in front of an automotive repair area we passed is covered with small pears (pear pears, not Callery/Bradford type pears.) This one should be EASY to sample when it is ready; it's literally one road crossing and a half block walk from the place we sometimes order in Greek from on Sunday. Just have to check that I know when the right time is.

Also need to check on the season of plums, since there is a purple leafed ornamental in one of the mall parking lot that makes some fruit in it's season (I picked too early last time, so the seed was empty, so this time, I want to wait until they are ripe.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Free fruit & seeds! For eating and planting?

I'm quite thrilled this year that what remains of my former ghastly compost pile area is now absolutely engulfed in domesticated raspberry canes. I had spoiled those canes IN the garden for a few years and still they did not produce well enough to warrant the space they took up. Probably a bit too much shade, I plant peas there now and they do great. I dumped the canes in the compost (what was I thinking???) with the idea that they would just wither and perish on the top of the pile. I guess they just waited patiently and regrouped. Ah, freely growing, zero maintenance fruit. It's a great thing.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Free fruit & seeds! For eating and planting?

Edibility will have to be determined later when they are ripe. If not every wild apple is good for eating out of hand, I assume the same holds true for pears. Plus, I will point out the tree is in front of an auto place; who knows what heavy metals are in the soil, so eating a lot of the fruit is probably not a great idea. Trees grown from the seed on "clean" soil should be OK, though.

Same applies to the purple leafed plum. It makes fruit, but how that fruit tastes remains to be seen. I loved when I had my little purple leafed Hiawatha peach tree, and I loved it made peaches, but even I will admit they weren't exactly the best peaches I'd ever had to eat (they were about store quality, plus, of course, they were only about the size of golf balls.) It was bred for ornamental, rootstock purposes, not eating ones.

 

[heirloomgal]

The overwintered 'Chiltepin' pepper lives! I decided to sink it in ground this year, since I don't think it appreciated being in a pot last year. It also seemed to not like all day full sun, so this spot gets a bit of shade in late afternoon. We'll see if I get some peppers! I planted a little ring of cilantro seeds around it and gave it a handful of chicken manure. I think I might give it a little dose of greensand, since it never flowered last year and I think greensand can encourage flowering. It's tall! If it does well this year, I'll bring it in each fall and keep it permanently.

My Jostaberry plants are acclimatizing to their new location well. I'm glad I got them in during early summer, I plant way too many things in fall and some don't make it as a result. This is a row of fruit shrubs (red currants, gooseberries and Josta's) I'm hoping will be my living fence/wall against the bush. No more garden expansion possible! This is the fringes of my old compost pile, and I found the soil very nice when I dug these in. However, the voles preyed on the red currants when I first planted them here and I see a vole hole already at the feet of one of these plants. It might slow them down, but I doubt the voles can kill them. All the used guinea pig bedding from now on will be laid at their feet.

When we tilled up the front yard, I felt like all the perennials I wanted to keep were actively growing so easy to keep protected. Later though I found this while shoveling up some dirt to plant the mock orange. I feel like it might be something I would have wanted to keep, maybe a peony that wasn't as established as the others. It fell into a couple pieces so I planted some of the bits in pots. It may be a waste of time really, since I'd rather just buy a full sized peony than spent 3 years growing a little one. But my curiosity got the better of me. I'll see what sprouts!

 

[Alasgun]

Happy to see you still plodding along with the pepper! From what i remember they did grow in partial shade down in Alice.
And, if it makes fruit; i think its safe to assume you just set some sort of record for “success the farthest from it’s native range”.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Few odds and ends.

A trip to the bodega yesterday yielded a decent handful of "correct" fava beans, so I'm basically set for next spring.

Actually, I'm wondering if I should bring the current fava beans inside for the present if we are supposed to be getting this massive heat wave. Everything else out there is a warm weather crop of one sort or another, so they can stand it as long as we keep them adequately watered. But the Favas are cool weather, and I'm wondering if the heat itself will kill them no matter how much water they get. The pods are far from ripe, so I need to do SOMETHING to keep them going.

My Ghana seed package arrived a few days ago as well. The "mixed" color wing beans proved not to be all that mixed (they didn't even have tan, which I KNOW exists since I have some) but I did manage to pick out a few that are an odd color I haven't seem before (sort of a greenish-grey).

I also went through the African rice (Oryza glaberrina ) and found one unidentified small legume seed to play around with.

The purple eyed jack beans had no surprises, but then again, they are far too big for anything small to pass by in packing.