A Seed Saver's Garden

[ducks4you]

SO STUPID!!
Nursey's HERE sold Callary Pear Trees, SUPER invasive, and, like @Zeedman said, water spinach will certainly die out where I live, which is one zone warmer than Zeedman and Certainly warmer than @heirloomgal .
On Mid American Gardener, the retired manager of a local nursery talked about selling them some 30 years ago, and showed an aerial photo of his neighbor's property, next to a regularly tilled farm field, the tilling which has kept this tree from progressing more than 5 acres worth.
He said:
they are messy
they have wicked thorns
they reproduce themselves bc there are no native predators that eat on them
Gee whiz!
I Guess constant tilling keeps them from reproducing successfully.
Do they think that somebody is going to dig up water spinach, transplant it in their southern zone yard and let them go to seed?!?!?
I don't think, since burning bushes are still sold regularly, that American gardeners are going to give up their love of non native species.
I guess we need a black market.

 

[heirloomgal]

SO STUPID!!
Nursey's HERE sold Callary Pear Trees, SUPER invasive, and, like @Zeedman said, water spinach will certainly die out where I live, which is one zone warmer than Zeedman and Certainly warmer than @heirloomgal .
On Mid American Gardener, the retired manager of a local nursery talked about selling them some 30 years ago, and showed an aerial photo of his neighbor's property, next to a regularly tilled farm field, the tilling which has kept this tree from progressing more than 5 acres worth.
He said:
they are messy
they have wicked thorns
they reproduce themselves bc there are no native predators that eat on them
Gee whiz!
I Guess constant tilling keeps them from reproducing successfully.
Do they think that somebody is going to dig up water spinach, transplant it in their southern zone yard and let them go to seed?!?!?
I don't think, since burning bushes are still sold regularly, that American gardeners are going to give up their love of non native species.
I guess we need a black market.

So true @ducks4you , invasiveness it's all relative to where we live. Some people really worry about the invasiveness of morning glories or chufa nuts, I have no issues with them. My Chinese Lantern plants, which I had for over a decade, never even got invasive and in some places they really will take over. When you dig deep into the invasive species awareness groups and their literature, you realize quickly that it isn't really invasive plants vs native plants it's about invasives we like/invasive we don't like.

I was once speaking with this young lady at a seed swap who had a table with invasive species handouts and such. I mentioned to her I was surprised to see dandelions were not on their invasive list? She looked at me with authentic puzzlement, and said.....'oh, we only really focus on ones that give us problems'. The poor dear.

 

[heirloomgal]

I am too. You can also get water spinach seed from Agrohaitai... I think? They have a link, but won't even open it for me because of my location.

I looked a little closer at the packet so see if there was any specificity like you mentioned, but L.P.1 is all I can see.

 

[heirloomgal]

Finally sat down tonight to knock out a tomato list for the year. Sooo many to choose from! I still have a couple rare-ish Russian & Eastern European varieties to grow out that I got from last year, so those were priority 1. Anything that I could find wasn't being offered online went into the grow pile, and then I started adding what else I might want to try that is out there. I might have to alter this list based on what space there is....but all the mini dwarfs will go in the greenhouse.

Cherry Tomatoes:
Ida Gold
Koralik
Malchik S Palchik
Gru Vee
Yellow Submarine
Evil Olive
Pink Champagne
Mexico Midget/Matt's Wild

Paste Tomatoes:
Royal Finger
Prairie Fire
Drova
Olesya (orange paste)
Marmelad Oranzhevyi

Early Reds & Pinks: (not all of these are likely to germinate)
Tatar of Mongolstan
Brookpact
Alpha
Volgogradskiy
Picket
Norderas Busk
Pozhar
Pitice
Edelrot
Kanner Hoell
Pusa Ruby (from India!)
Northern Delight
Patio King
Alpine Tomato
Aurora
Praleska
Plamya
Turboreactivnyi
Spiridonovskie
Lyana Rozowy
Katja
Geyser
Alenka
Supergonets
Minskiy Ranniy
Brunello
Lucky Leprechaun
Malinovka

Mini Dwarfs:
Fat Frog
Groovy Tunes
Window Box Red
Snegirjok
Pinocchio Red
Geranium Kiss
Andrina
Birdie Rouge
Bonsai
Lille Lise
Little Red Riding Hood
Micro Tina
Moment
Pigmy

Longkeepers:
Ruby Treasure
Winter Gold Keeper
Mystery Keeper
Giallo a Grappoli
Piennolo del Vesuvio

Might do some green beefsteaks as I've accumulated so many, but.....gotta find room!

Well, that was a lot of fun. I had to research a lot of those as I went through to see what they were. Half the fun of gardening is the ANTICIPATION!!

Here we go to-ma-to!!!!
Can you believe it, it's nearly planting time!

 

[flowerbug]

tropical soda apple...

 

[Zeedman]

He said:
they are messy
they have wicked thorns
they reproduce themselves bc there are no native predators that eat on them

Gee, that sounds like a good plant to replace all of the dead trees in my tree line... for even better privacy.

 

[Zeedman]

I looked a little closer at the packet so see if there was any specificity like you mentioned, but L.P.1 is all I can see.View attachment 72965

Non-GMO??? Really??? How comforting to know that it is plain harmless kang kong, not Kong-zilla.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

So true @ducks4you , invasiveness it's all relative to where we live. Some people really worry about the invasiveness of morning glories or chufa nuts, I have no issues with them. My Chinese Lantern plants, which I had for over a decade, never even got invasive and in some places they really will take over. When you dig deep into the invasive species awareness groups and their literature, you realize quickly that it isn't really invasive plants vs native plants it's about invasives we like/invasive we don't like.

I was once speaking with this young lady at a seed swap who had a table with invasive species handouts and such. I mentioned to her I was surprised to see dandelions were not on their invasive list? She looked at me with authentic puzzlement, and said.....'oh, we only really focus on ones that give us problems'. The poor dear.

I have a similar conflict with regards to wineberries. On one hand, I know they are super invasive and create dense thickets of thorny brambles. On the other, they ARE about the only fruit on my property can count on to produce anything.

As for "native", native to where? Your area of the country? Your state? Your county? I know plenty of things that can't handle being moved to another part of my LAWN. As far as I am concerned, the only truly "native" plants are whatever was there before anyone got there.

And speaking of "native", no, the fact that Native Americans grew it doesn't make it "native", or even "good". They did a better job of taking care of their environment than we do now, but they weren't magical earth children whose every action was in tune with nature. They altered and modified Their environment to suit their needs, and modified it MASSIVELY. To say otherwise is just "White Man's Guilt" bull****.

 

[flowerbug]

well if you want to be pedantic about it you can go back about 15-20 thousand years and say that no plants were native in our areas (MI and NY) any longer due to them being covered with the glaciers.

but i read the concerns with native vs. invasive as looking at the evolved and natural diversity of an area after the glaciers receeded and then how after Europeeins came along and brought a bunch of nasty weed species with them which crowd out the diversity and reduce an area to a monocultural wasteland.

given a few hundred years most places that have enough moisture would revert to woodlands which would smother out any of the lower growing invasives, but i don't see much that would smother out kudzu.

further west the time scales of ecological recovery and the regaining of diversity might be on the order of thousands of years and the grasses that were moved over that ways might pretty much never be changed because they somewhat adapt the ecology to their own preferences and those preferences are for hotter fires - younger plants have a harder time with hotter fires.

 

[heirloomgal]

tropical soda apple...

Slow day for me flowerbug....translation please?