A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

I meant to can garlic in vinegar, especially bc Youngest DD ahs become a gig garlic fan.
I guess it will be a better crop in 2025. My friend (Vet) says she can't get rid of Her garlic in her yard. It is hard to kill once planted.

Pickled Garlic Canning Recipe

Pickling garlic is a great way to preserve garlic cloves for long-term food storage. Learn how to make pickled garlic and can it using a water bath canner.

growagoodlife.com

My dad 'pickles' all his garlic in honey, in thin slices. He goes through several jars in a year, taking it by tablespoonful as a health tonic & immune booster. Me and dad, the apple didn't fall far from the tree! It's amazing as I get older how much I see that him and I are soooo alike. He says there is a BIG difference when you use freshly grown garlic cloves and store bought, the fermentation is much, much more vigorous in fresh. The honey gets the garlic's immune boosting properties right into the blood supply.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Beginning to wonder if the "normal" wild mung beans are making flowers, or I just have some other odd ones in there. I can't seem to see where the tendrils with the flowers attach to the upright bits, so they could be two different sets of plants (it's a bit too dense in there to see, and I don't want to start pushing things since that is how damage starts).

One other note (not that it will probably be of any use to anyone else but me). I bought some more seeds from Trade Winds Fruit, and one of them was something they were calling Melothira sphareocapa, which they were listing as Egusi. I had other egusi seeds, but since that name seems a catch-all for any melon of African descent grown for it's edible seeds (including many watermelons) I though this might be another species I had yet to obtain. Turns out it isn't what they sent was the same stuff as the Cucurbinopsis manii (Tsamma melon) I had gotten earlier (that odd little extra bit of seed coat on the tip opposite the hilum is unmistakable). So if you have one, you don't need the other.

Interestingly, I seem to recall there was another cucurbit in South America that was determined to be conspecific with C. manni, which means that, like the bottle gourd (Lagenaria) it ALSO presumably floated across the Atlantic at some point in prehistoric times.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Tried the Open Minded Tomato tonight. It's OK, but in terms of green when ripe ones, I like the cherry I'm growing a lot better (still no idea what kind it is, but i DO like it better).

Also, it turns out that it is not a perfect "deceptor", or, at least, not always. On two of the three I have picked (the two oldest, which were getting some soft spots). there is/was a slight pink blush near the end. I don't see one on the third YET, but it's a bit younger, so it may show up later.

 

[heirloomgal]

Tried the Open Minded Tomato tonight. It's OK, but in terms of green when ripe ones, I like the cherry I'm growing a lot better (still no idea what kind it is, but i DO like it better).

I usually love green tomatoes, but I'm in the same boat this year - so far. I haven't been thrilled with the Sweet Baby Jade cherries, watery taste. Of course I've tried exactly one fruit, so it might be a bit premature to say. But it's going down to 5C/41F degrees tonight, so that won't do much to improve the flavor either.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I usually love green tomatoes, but I'm in the same boat this year - so far. I haven't been thrilled with the Sweet Baby Jade cherries, watery taste. Of course I've tried exactly one fruit, so it might be a bit premature to say. But it's going down to 5C/41F degrees tonight, so that won't do much to improve the flavor either.

I could be. I seem to recall the green tomatoes I got these seeds from tasting pretty bad last year, so maybe they vary based on conditions.
And to repeat, I just don't like THIS one, the cherries are fine.

Though some sort of bug apparently DOES like them; most of them have at least one healed over worm hole somewhere in them.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Nothing new in harvest, but a bit of a surprise. Looks like we had a visitor recently. When I went to check on the cucumbers, I noticed there is a shed snakeskin trapped in the mesh! I guess the snake (most likely a Common Garter Snake, that's the commonest type here I think, and the skin was smooth scaled*). Climbed up the mesh (or the wall, the brickwork is so eroded there would be plenty to grip onto, spent some time sunning itself on the flagstone, shed, and then climber down.

*The only other two snakes I've seen around here was a nearly dying scarlet king snake (which I strongly suspect was an escaped pet) and something the pet store person said was an Oak Snake (a.k.a grey rat snake) which scared the crap out of me when the neighbor's kids showed it to me (due to the skin pattern, I thought they'd caught a baby copperhead or timber rattler.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Snakes, ick. This summer has been the snakiest I've ever seen. Possibly, because the winter was quite mild the rodent population didn't suffer typical losses and so.....more to eat. I had a lime green one slither right up to me, head up, flicking its tongue while I was talking on the phone in the carport yesterday, and I've seen that one several times in the last month. Lives in the front yard garden I think. And on nearly every walk in the last 2 weeks we see at least one garter. One day, we saw 3 in less than 5 minutes - we were in the bush on an abandoned railway track and I guess they liked it on there. They were fat and big, it was disturbing, and equally so that they clearly had homes under those tracks because we scared one or two under there. It's commonly thought that garters are not venomous, but they are. Neurotoxin? No thanks!

 

[heirloomgal]

The first time I'm growing 'Queen of Siam' basil to collect seeds. The flowers are so huge! And then they sort of do a fireworks formation with the blossom shape.

The Tinga pods should bring a good harvest!! I hope! After last years colossal fail (I can't believe the seed company did not indicate they grow to nearly 10 feet tall!) it feels great to finally do it right.

The coriander seed harvest looks promising too....

A few super yummy tomatoes, super early, super productive tomato varieties I tried this year. And I never thought those 3 adjectives could go all be used for any kind of tomato. Most of my tomatoes this year have been so early, that many of the plants have already ripened most of their fruits. Some are totally done, like Beta! I collected the last fruits today; spent 2 hours processing tomatoes for seeds.

This is one of my favorites this year.

This variety was a bit more beefsteak-ish, flavor was fantastic.

Pretty runner bean flower Hope they have time to make at least a few pods.

The Aji Mochero's are YELLOW! I tend to get crosses from the seed company I got these from - but I'm not sure if this is a cross, I'll need to check. Maybe it was supposed to be yellow.

 

[heirloomgal]

Some good news, the 'Aji Mochero's' are indeed yellow and I didn't get a cross from the company. Happy about that. Collected more tomatoes tonight, and I'm quite pleased with how abundant all those plants are considering they did not get the best treatment this year. One semi-shaded garden had 2 dozen plants and I ashamedly admit those ones were basically dry farmed. I think I watered them 3 times in June and then just let them be. The plants got so big it seemed like they were sort of mulching themselves. I'm afraid they were seldom weeded as well, but they grew through it.

Grappoli d'Inverno ('winter grape') tomatoes did quite well, and the fruits are quite firm and unblemished. I stripped almost the whole plant, and also picked off a few that were barely red to see if they will change color in time. I kept 24 capacity egg cartons this winter to store them. It will be fun to see how long they will truly last in storage. The winter storage tomato Ruby Treasure is one of the few plants that truly did terrible with 'dry farming' methods and there are a dozen fruits on the plants, that's it. Most of them are green, but I have a few I can save seeds from to try again. Such a contrast to long keeper tomato 'Zhiraf' which is just loaded with fruits. A huge lineup of fruits to squeeze tomorrow, or if I'm tired, whiz through the food processer and I'll just ferment the whole lot.

Started to collect dried pea pods, and to do rounds in the evening looking for dry bean pods. It's a weird time for watering because on the one hand, not good to water plants that are drying pods, but at the same time 3/4 of the plant is full of green pods that need it. In the next week I'm sure all the pea pods will be dry. I finished shelling all the 'Misty' pea pods tonight and am delighted that such a low growing pea type produced so much seed. As a seed saver, it really does not get any easier than peas!

A few pics from today. The 'Wagner Blue Green' tomatoes are not...green! I got these from Prairie Garden Seeds and I guess they had some crosses. I'm going to email them a picture and see what they think it might be. Seed mix ups happen too. Looks a lot like 'Blue Gold' to me. It is a nice looking tomato regardless, creamy yellow and dark purple.

Today's 'Bosu' harvest. I already collected about a dozen or so tomatoes from the plants, and there are a couple dozen green tomatoes left on the plants (which I don't plan to pick, the tom season is nearly over anyway) so I do think this has been a good haul from a tragically unsupported, single plant. Definitely a top tier producer this year. 'Saraev Spring Frost' was similar.

'Canada Northstar' - in my quest for good earlies this one has not cut the mustard so far. Canadian bred prairie tomatoes seem all around inferior to me, at least the ones I've tried. Russia seems to have really figured out the secret sauce for delicious early tomatoes. I find these too firm, but I'm letting them sit for awhile to see if they soften. The 'Alaskan Fancy' tomatoes sure did, and I initially judged them as too firm as well. Never know I guess.

What a disappointment! The 'Deutscher Fleisch' tomatoes were hollow. So, there are 3 possibilities with this I figure. Either I was sold a cross, this variety did NOT like being dry farmed or this is just the way the variety grows. I see not much purpose for a tomato like this outside of cooking. You can't even slice it!

The 'Habanada' pepper I overwintered because it didn't get enough time to produce ripe peppers is actually going to produce ripe fruit this year. There are several already ripening in the canopy. These are bigger than the green ones from last year. It might be a plant worth keeping indoors in winter.

'Sweet Datil', when they say the fruits taste just like a hab but with zero heat it's really true. Almost weirdly so.

'Zuckerstraube', big red cherries. It has pretty darn good crack resistance, not perfect, but better than many. Cherries are a bit bigger than I prefer, I like them small, and smaller even better. Taste is good though, production excellent.

My favourite cherry tomato this year, all of them are pretty good, but this one is in the next galaxy, 'Sweet Apperitif'. Stellar flavor. With mozzarella, it is amazing. Best summer lunch. I'm tempted to grow it every year after this.

'Broody Hen' aka 'Klusha' early tomato. I've been wanting to grow this variety for many years, and I'm glad I got lucky to find some seed for it. I had no idea why it had such a funny name, but once I saw the plant at maturity I got it. The plant is very compact, almost like a 2-3 foot ball of foliage and the tomatoes are tucked tightly underneath the canopy. It does sort of seem like a tomato plant sitting on it's eggs. Over half the tomatoes are mature, but they seem a bit firm at this point. One of the qualities I'm learning to look out for with these early tomatoes is being too hard. A few have fallen under that category, but luckily not most.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

The seed from the green grape looking tomatoes is now drying for storage. I was right, there isn't a lot of it. The smaller one had no viable seeds AT ALL (of course, it DID fall off the plant when it was only about half size) and the only only had about ten or so that were fully formed. I'll have to hope that I can get more from further fruit (there's one on another plant that looks like it MIGHT be the right kind) and, either way, treat what I have with care (I guess this will be an indoor set rather than outdoor broadcast one).

One other thing I have noticed concerning the Southwestern Oregano (Poliomintha longiflora). I should have guessed this, due to the long and tubular flowers, but it's a hummingbird magnet. I suppose at some point I should check to see if IT has made any seeds as well, though I'm not sure when (unlike with the basil, the calyces of the flowers don't actually brown up while the plant is alive, so picking them is a much bigger risk with regards to making open wounds that can attract diseases.