A Seed Saver's Garden

[ducks4you]

@jbrobin09 , just remember to plant your squash apart from each other. If not you will get two years of beige pumpkins, which I DON'T recommend!!
Squashes cross pollinate, and you can get bigger fruit if you cut back their vines.
There is a big pumpkin farm about an hour south of me, where they grow many international varieties and I don't know how they pollinate, but they manage to keep the strains pure.

 

[heirloomgal]

@jbrobin09 , just remember to plant your squash apart from each other. If not you will get two years of beige pumpkins, which I DON'T recommend!!
Squashes cross pollinate, and you can get bigger fruit if you cut back their vines.
There is a big pumpkin farm about an hour south of me, where they grow many international varieties and I don't know how they pollinate, but they manage to keep the strains pure.

You bring up a really good point that I often forget when I grow vining crops ducks - you can trim the vines to drive the energy into the existing fruit! In fact, now that I think about it I've read that you SHOULD trim the vines close to the end of the season because it helps the fruit/squash/watermelon mature, so an important thing for us shorter season growers. Please remind me of this the next time I'm growing a vining crop like watermelons or pumpkin!! I always seem to forget!

 

[heirloomgal]

Ok, the storage tomato adventure continues.

So, we had some burgers last week and I finally cut one of each variety into slices to do a taste test. I should preface this all by saying when the breeders named these tomatoes 'longkeepers' I don't actually know what they had in mind, timewise. It's been over 4 months, so that may be longer than what was intended? I wanted to really see what the truth was about them so I have let them be. If I were to redo this I'd keep a little notepad and try each one once a month and rate it 1-10. But, I'm not that organized and I didn't think of it.

Well, the best taste is the little oval Madagascar, pic #1. Best texture too by a long shot, it's actually shocking how good that texture is for how old they are AND the fact that I picked them at the green hard ball stage. It's an impressive little longkeeper and one of the lesser known ones for some odd reason. If I had to pick only one to regrow, it would be this one with long term storage in mind. But Ramillette de Mallorca would be a close second, it just doesn't hold as long with these qualities.

#3 pic is the Zhiraf tomato, and the bottoms are getting pink because I flipped them upside down in the box. The light is terrible in these but needless to say they are all much pinker than the photos show. The lights made them look a bit green for some reason. It's still quite hard - the longest to ripen for sure. Barely ready to eat even now. Pic #4 is the Ramillette de Mallorca, probably the best beefsteak long keeper of the bunch, but at 4 months they aren't as tasty as they were 2 months ago. BUT they still taste like a garden tomato for sure, they don't taste like grocery store crud. Texture is decent, but not awesome. On the burger though, they seemed totally normal and better than store bought.

Last pic is Golden Treasure, a yellow long keeper. To be fair to the fruit, it was picked waaaay immature ( I started them as seeds 4 weeks before plant out too, so started too late too) and they seem to have the least ideal taste and texture. Terrible texture really. They cut like a foam apple. Would they be like that if I timed them right? I dunno. One lady says they're the best long keeper there is, so I may have just not done a good job with these. I'll probably try again. That said though, Madagascar was picked immature too and it's wonderful?

All in all, they all still taste darn good on a burger, and have a *from the garden* taste left in them - shockingly. It's been watered down in storage for sure, but it's still there. I think they'd do great in any meal where tomatoes aren't the main centerpiece. These are good for sandwiches, burgers, salads, scrambled eggs etc. Not good enough to eat raw with salt and some cheese, except maybe for Madagascar.

So far, no regrets. Main conclusions are: they're worthy, they fill a gap, and 4 months is probably pushing it a little! But I'm still going to leave them and see what they do.

 

[Moon888]

I don't have a fence, and for the most part my gardens have not been raided. Sometimes a rabbit or groundhog hangs around for a little while and eats the newer parts of plants, or birds/chipmunks steal dried peas, but thankfully that hasn't happened often. Sounds like you need a fence though!

Yes, we are working on a platform and drainage, where we can erect some "tunnel" poles and cover this with bird wire, to keep as much out as possible. Bought some "commercial grade" black bird wire from ebay months ago, and it is like a woman's net stocking (very flimsy). I'm hoping to find a better grade, but on ebay, there does not seem to be any (we are in Australia); I've looked everywhere : ( Then I would like to fence around this "tunnel" (which will have mostly small trees and some veges), and around the outside, some troughs with veges. Need to keep the chooks and peafowl out : )