Do you save seeds?
Which ones?
I try and save seeds when I can. I read a few books on seed saving. I read a few articles, blogs, and pamphlets on seed saving. The verdict? Holy cow, are there a lot of “rules” for seed saving!
As much as I am a fan of rules sometimes (logic is fun!) other times, I’m perfectly content to find my bliss outside the lines.
Some seeds are super easy to save. Lettuce is one of them. I often lose track of my lettuce. I’ll eat it, and eat it, and it’ll grow back again and again. Until at some point I either need a break from lettuce wraps and salads, or the elements conspire for lettuce growth, and before I know it, my lettuce has bolted a few feet in the air. At that point, I know (from experience) that it won’t taste that good. Pull it up? Make room for something else? Sometimes.
This year, having lucked out with acquiring 400 square feet of allotment in a community area, I’m experimenting with a long time goal of mine – a volunteer garden. Last fall, a few lettuce varieties volunteered in my lawn. I transplanted them into the garden after taking down the tomato forest. They reached about five feet tall before the flowers began to appear. About two minutes, a paper bag, and a pair of clippers results in more romaine seeds than I will possibly need.
Wild flower seeds are also super easy to save!
The “bouquet” in the back is made of the seed heads left behind by spent Blanketflowers. The jar on the left has Cone Flower Heads drying slowly. The center jar has the interesting pods left behind by Love in A Mist. On the right? Cilantro seeds, aka coriander.
Sometimes, “seed saving” is more of a harvest for our bellies than it is for the purpose of growing more plants. For instance – beans!
This is the main harvest of soup beans for the spring beds. Half Tiger Beans, and half Yin Yang Beans. It’s so nice to sit inside on a hot afternoon, grabbing some lunch and shelling beans. The dried bean casings make for good “brown stuff” for the compost, too!
I do save beans for the next season’s plantings as well, and I don’t save any old beans either – I start to play with the genes in the most simple way possible.
If a single plant has a lot more beans than the others, I’ll save a pod or two off that plant to hopefully encourage per plant production. If a single pod has five beans inside instead of four or fewer, I’ll save those beans as well to try and encourage more beans per pod. Occasionally I’ll remember to also save some of the first beans of the year (encouraging early production) and some of the last beans of the year (encouraging heat survival.)
For instance, Yin Yang Beans most commonly have 3-4 beans per pod. This guy got to have his seeds saved for planting (instead of for eating.)
Not all seed saving attempts are successful. Most recently I tried to save seeds from a Farmer’s Market Patty Pan Squash. I scooped out the seeds, soaked them in water for a day or two, strained the goo from the seeds, and spread them on a paper towel to dry. When they had dried completely, it was clear that none of the seeds had had a chance to mature properly in the flesh, and wouldn’t be viable. I bought three more of the same patty pan squash this morning at the market to try my luck again. If I strike out a second time, I’ll simply break down and purchase the seeds I want. Then, when they’re growing in my garden, I’ll leave a squash on each plant to over-ripen so the seeds have a chance next year.
Other reasons not all seed saving ventures work out? Those “rules” the books and articles talk about. Beans are easy because they mostly self-pollinate. Other plants are friendlier with other varieties of the same type of plant. If you saved the seeds of cantaloupes planted next to cucumbers, you may not like what grows the next year! So the rules can be important, if you’re picky about the offspring being true to type, or if you want to make sure your snozzberries taste like snozzberries (which is important to do sometimes!)
Puzzles around the yard.
On a magical afternoon a few weeks ago, there were an untold number of butterflies fluttering by the front flower bed. How many butterflies can you spy?
And then there are these guys. There were at least five wandering around on our Mexican White Oak with their warrior paint marked boldly down their backs. Any ideas?
Harvests!
The first real harvests of the year have come in!
We got maybe four pounds of soleil beans this year so far. I thought about calling my grandmother to learn about freezing them. I didn’t end up needing to – we ate them all!
The squash have started suffering already…the heat, the fire ant infestation, the cucumber beetles spreading diseases, the powdery mildew from all of this (wonderful, unexpected, appreciated) rain. Still, they are managing to make squash. Say hello to my first ever, real-sized, on-purpose squash – the Summer Yellow Crookneck!
I’ve yet to pick these cute little guys, but they’re hanging in the heat better (they don’t have the fire ant issue either, which helps.)
This is my fourth or fifth year attempting squash, and the first time they’ve grown larger than my finger (we won’t talk about the years they didn’t set at all…)
Other first year successes after multi-year attempts?
Onions!
Every year previously I’ve either over-watered, or under-watered. Over-fertilized? Did that, too. Under-fertilized? Yep. Had a dog (not ours) dig through the bed, killing them all? Mhmm. Onions and I have not had an easy time, and considering I don’t even like eating them…I was kind of ok with this. However, DH eats them almost every day, so it made sense to keep trying. He was ever so excited to have this sweet one in his breakfast! What was the trick to my first success? Probably a few things all at once.
- Don’t plant deep. Really. If you think you planted too shallowly, you probably need to plant a little less deep still. (If you’re me, anyway.)
- Don’t fertilize the onions. Fertilize the soil about six inches down, four inches away from the onion row.
- Water. Don’t keep soaked. But do soak when you water.
- Let the caterpillar eat the tips of the greens, at least it’s not eating your chard again!
Another veggie that I’ve grown many times without success yet?
I could not believe how big this got! I sowed it just a few short months ago, as one of five carrot varieties. I tried carrots a few times over the last couple years as well. I lost an entire batch to a caterpillar invasion. Another time I lost them all to the shade of a ginormous squash canopy. Another time, as soon as I spread the seeds a thunderstorm hit and washed away all of the seeds.
Things I learned about growing carrots:
- Don’t cover them with 1/8″ soil like it says to. Just sprinkle them on top of the loosened soil.
- Keep track of where you planted the varieties, preferably by planting different veggies between varieties. I have no idea which type this one is, and would like to grow it again.
- Water! Those wee little carrot stalks that sprout don’t have much of a chance if a hot spell hits.
- Water some more.
- The one thing I learned lately about carrots, that I kind of agree with, kind of don’t, is “unimpeded growth.” This carrot was surrounded by squash, other carrots, and volunteer lettuce. What it didn’t have was compacted soil, sticks, or rocks, to compete with underground.
And, all of this new knowledge with carrots and onions, lead to my first attempt being a success with my newest favorite (to eat) veggie – beets!
I think aside from green beans, these were the easiest thing I’ve ever grown.
With all of this abundance, I surely had to make something tasty to celebrate.
Most mornings, I make some concoction in the form of a saute that starts with bacon, ends with egg yolks, and has any number of veggies added in between. I’ve yet to get chickens (DH doesn’t want to be “those neighbors” and with our small space, we would be), evaporate salt, or raise hogs, but the rest was grown by yours truly less than fifty feet from the pan that cooked it. There really isn’t much better than that for breakfast.
Tomatoes gone wild!
I meant to stake these tomatoes ages ago…I meant to plant them about two weeks before I had a chance to do so, and then to stake them I was about…oh, six weeks later.
Life getting in the way of gardening.
Better late than never! Stakes in the ground, thanks to DH and a post-driving-contraption of his father’s.
Things I learned are good to have for this process:
- Ear plugs! Driving metal T-posts in with a metal T-post contraption is loud.
- T-posts > U-posts. U posts are broader and have troublesome hooks on them that have to be hammered down before the post can fit in the contraption.
- T-post drivers are handy. Much easier (and safer) than giant hammers, and much faster than regular-sized hammers.
Stakes need string! I had intended to trellis these posts akin to a vineyard, and use stretchy green tomato tape to attach the tomatoes to the trellising…perhaps next year. So this year – more string it is.
These tomatoes are fairly well behaved, considering that they’re overgrown as they are.
These other tomatoes…well, they can’t all behave can they?
But, they’re all behaving well in the fruit-setting realm!
I expect these guys to come out yellow/orange in the end. I saved them from a farmer’s market “candy basket” last year that I’m hoping to recreate. It had mini purple tomatoes the size of fat peas or small grapes, pear-shaped yellow-orange tomatoes, cherry-sized green stripies, and red-orange little gum drops. When they ripen, I’ll share photos in case anyone knows their names!
And my now trusty standby: Cherry Chadwicks!
Local changes.
Most years, different agave varieties, and other succulent varieties, throw out their flower spikes. Usually these are neat little spikes 1/2″ to 1″ in diameter, and 3′-5′ tall. Occasionally, an agave goes bonkers.
Flower spikes in this family of plant, I learned last year, is their final hoorah before kicking the bucket. They’ll hang in there, growing bit by bit, year after year, until they sense that everything is just right. When that happens, the flower spike production begins, and occasionally – it gets breath-taking, awe-inspiring, and occasionally just downright funny.
I didn’t capture a shot of the largest one I’d seen to date (last summer? summer before last?) but it was HUGE. It was well over twenty feet tall. This year, this little cluster just brightened my day. Excuse the phone camera quality, shot at a stop light (from the passenger seat!) clutter in the frame.
I’m interested to see if they simply plant more agave (they usually do) or attempt to replace it with a quick-dying annual as other landscape crews in the city do.
Plodding along.
Things are plodding along in the garden beds here. We’re getting close to the “too hot to work outside” season. This is part of what motivates me to stay as busy as I can from Christmas through March around here, so that now, when the heat turns up, I mostly water, watch, and pull a weed or four.
Which takes beans on March 23rd…
To beans on April 4th
To beans that are now three feet tall.
It also takes us from orange-yet-shy squash blossoms…
To mystery squash!
And yellow crookneck
Unfortunately, my largest squash plants so far, the lemons (in the middle bed below)…
Are currently wilting due to a re-invasion (or perhaps never-left-asion) of fire ants. I sifted diatomaceous earth on them, as that had seemed to work on the ones by the walk-up at home, but apparently instead of causing them to relocate like the ones at home did – they simply burrowed deeper. I’m afraid boiling water might kill the squash along with the ants though. Before I try and scheme a plot to get boiling water two miles from my stove, I’ll dig the diatomaceous earth down where they live and see if that doesn’t agitate them enough to leave. Any other ideas on ousting fire ants? If only I had some phorid flies handy…
(A quick side note: Someone was asking about growth rates for melons. This is my second attempt at melons, but feel it safe to say they are slower growers. The picture above is of three squash varieties, all direct sown on the same day as three melon varieties.) The melon varieties?
A fair bit smaller than two of the squash types. Yet a mere three days later and we have a new surprise!
Melon blossoms!
Things I learned:
- Fire ants aren’t gone just because you think they are.
- Melons will take their time, but may surprise you in fits and bursts.
- It’s ok to not be super busy in the garden all the time. Keeping it watered will keep it patient for your return.
Structure.
I like to play with structure. Build forts. Rope ladders. Tree houses. Box caves. I think so many wondrous things fall by the wayside on the wander into adulthood that sometimes as adults we may be just as boring as our childselves would say we were.
I find that there a few tried-and-true cures for such mature doldrums:
- Sprinklers (even more so with four footed friends or the squeals of toddlers that belong to someone else.)
- The consequent mud from said sprinklers.
- Wrapping paper tubes (fort supports, light sabers, ski poles, I could go on…)
- The ever sought and ever rare refrigerator box.
- Sticks.
Perhaps by chance, or perhaps through purpose, my garden time tends to incorporate a lot of the same material. Sprinklers are a given. Mud – also a given. Wrapping paper tubes? I’ve heard that if you cut them (or toilet paper or paper towel tubes) into one inch rings and place them around seedlings, they help combat pests. (I have yet to confirm this, how about you?)
The fridge box: I’m not a cardboard composter or mulcher, but others are.
Sticks! Sticks are great for small tomato stakes, pea trellising, pole beans, and likely many other things.
I’ve known for a bit that I needed some kind of structure for my tiger beans. They’ll survive, and produce, decently without structure. With structure, I’ll get to more of the beans before the bugs do, and I haven’t tested the theory but would almost swear they make more beans while climbing. The issue? I planted them in a row in the middle of a long bed. Oops. I hadn’t planned it that way. I had it drawn up differently. When the day came to sow the seeds, my mind left me so much that I neglected to even reference the plan I’d carefully graphed, and simply sowed away. So it goes.
So what was I to do? Perhaps, I postulated, I could put a forked stick at either end of the bean patch, run a cross stick from end to end, and drop lines down from the beam. Except I was fresh out of forked sticks. Teepees? I’ve never had luck with teepees.
And then I realized that at some point I had also hoped to enclose the bed. A neighbor down at the garden plots warned of the possibility of large, wandering, hungry wild game (in the form of humans) who would help themselves to the literal fruits of your literal labors. I would like to think this wouldn’t really happen, but apparently it has in the past.
DH and I tossed some ideas around. The bed at home has a nice structure that is flexible to the needs of the plants within. We didn’t really want to invest that much lumber into a top structure that would be anchored to a weak (and in places rotting) base structure provided by the community garden maintenance crew. I knew I wanted a shade cloth option, and he convinced me that we could do double duty if we hatched a plan to replace shade cloth with plastic in the winter.
And then it struck. We were wandering Home Depot, as we are known to do, halfway through a list of soil sulfur, air filters, and rope for a cat scratching post, when we found ourselves on the plumbing aisle. We were caught in a stare. We both knew at once. And we both started talking at once: “What if we did this for the garden!”
Supplies for a 20′ x 10′ bed:
- Twelve pieces of 3/8″ thick, 12″ long (or longer), rebar ($9.00 – we would have liked to have longer rebar, but with $0.75 each for 12″ jumping to $3 each for 24″, we made do.)
- Seven lengths of 20′ x 3/4″ PVC ($30)
- Four pieces of twine about 18″ long (Free after using it to tie the PVC into the truck on the way home.)
- Hammer (we already had one, so free for us. A rock would also work.)
- Something to stand on. (We borrowed a neighboring gardener’s lawn chair.)
- Duct tape (we already had this as well. More twine (still free) would also work.)
How:
- Split the length of the bed into four foot sections, starting in a corner.
- Dig out a small hole (maybe four inches deep) and push a piece of rebar into the soil.
- Hammer the rebar into the soil so the end of it is just below the edge of the bed. (About 8″ underground, 4″ above ground.)
- Thread the PVC end over the rebar (this gets wiggly, as it it is twenty feet long and bendy. Feel free to laugh, we did.)
- Bend the PVC down to thread the other end over the rebar on the opposite edge of the bed. You just made your first “rib”
- Like this:
- Tie the PVC to the corner posts to help anchor.
- Continue on down the bed, threading PVC onto the rebar that you spaced every four feet.
- Your “ribs” are up!
- Like DH is doing on the left of this picture, press each side of each rib down into the earth to help anchor it. The bowing of the pipe should create pressure against the side boards of the bed, but pushing the tubing into the ground helps prevent lift-off.
- Set the chair up under the first rib, and with the seventh length of pipe running under the ribs, lash the “spine” to the “ribs” with duct tape (or twine) just enough to tack it up.
- Proceed down the length of the structure, tacking each rib to the spine.
- When you reach the other end, lash it securely, and then work your way back up the bed. This time, tighten the meeting of the two pipes and tape in a cross-cross pattern.
- Ta da!
Why “ribs” and “spine”? Well, aside from looking a bit like a giant rib cage, PVC and tape were what we used to construct a whale in third grade to put on a showing of The Old Man and the Sea. That, and you knew exactly what I meant, didn’t you?
I do plan to do similarly with the Right Bed now that I see our idea in real life (and love it!) But first, we need to trellis-up those tomatoes! (Another day.) And drop lines for the beans (maybe tomorrow…)
And a hush fell…
I apologize for the quiet as of late. I am currently out of town, travelling for seven days on business. I took pictures in preparation for the trip, thinking I would have time in the evenings to draft posts.
Silly me.
I forgot the camera at home, with the photos still on it. I have not had evening time like I expected, but for good enough reason. I was able to spend a precious three hours with a dear cousin catching up. I was able to catch up on sleep and beat off a bug of my own before it took hold. I was able to get lost in Houston traffic for an hour trying to find socks, only to find instead a travelling carnival, a helipad, a parking lot full of grass-filled cracks in the middle of pristine shiny glass and steel, and then finally – when I’d given up on the search and resigned myself to gladly wander: socks.
Tonight was a run. A glorious, much needed, too-long-put-off-for-no-good-enough-reason, run. Little did I realize I had picked just the park that housed the Houston Garden Center. Even littler did I realize I did such a thing until driving out of the park in need of a shower. Perhaps tomorrow when the work is finished but the Rockets game has yet to begin, I’ll have time to go for another glad wandering.
While I’m gone, DH is caring for the gardens for me. They’re almost to the Water and Wait Til Harvest Stage, but not quite yet. On Tuesday, he planted the last of the tomatoes and peppers. I lost two Cherry Chadwicks in the final transplanting process, and so picked up two transplants from Johnson’s Backyard at the Farmer’s Market last Saturday. A Green Zebra and a Cherokee Purple. I needed three peppers as well – having mis-planned my space for two, and lost just one in the transplanting process (it was a itty bitty wee one I would have been shocked to see survive.) Green and Growing set me up with two Purple Beauties and one Orange Bell (all bell peppers.)
And! He took pictures! Don’t those beans look promising?
I am blown away at how happy the squash look (and how big the leaves are already!)
I’ve been carefully checking the undersides of the leaves on each visit in an effort to find any Squash Bug eggs before they hatch. Last year I lost every squash plant to Squash Bugs (not knowing yet what they were.) This year I hope to lose less. I’ve also been warned by my neighboring gardener that the plots are susceptible to Squash Vine Borers, which are new to me. I’m keeping an eye out for any vine anomalies, but am not sure exactly what I’m looking for. I’ll have to read up a bit. I did find one squash leaf coated on the underside with aphids, and it was quickly pinched off and ushered to the trash bin.
Here are the peppers and tomatoes. The tomatoes are already needing more pruning than I’ve had time to keep up with. Next week when I’m home, I really need to get them staked before they completely go wild on me. There was a flower bud on one Sunday before I left, so perhaps when I make it home this Sunday I’ll have some flowers to tickle until the bees find their new buffet.
I planted some strawberries and sweet potatoes last weekend as well, but that will have to wait for me to be reunited with my camera.
Tree thirty.
DH has been the driving force behind the trees in our lives. He hopes to have an orchard someday that is a testament to his love of a good medley. Almonds and plums and avocados living in harmony? He’d like to try it anyway.
Being as we don’t plan to stay in this home forever, he limits his tree fixation to landscape trees. Except for when I give him keep-in-a-pot-as-long-as-necessary varieties for his Someday Orchard.
You met the Mexican White Oak and one of the pecan trees already. Let’s check in on Bill the Lime Tree. He’s been outside for about a month now, and after our serious storm last week, I had cause for concern that perhaps all of his little limes had been knocked off.
Never fear, they hung in there. He’s even taken the time to make some more buds and stick out some new leaf shoots.
You’ve also met June before. She did lose some plum blossoms in the storm, but hurried some new ones out in no time!
And what you can’t see here, is that so far one of these little flowers has already made a teeny tiny little plum! I had no idea a potted plum tree, roots to tip only 5 feet tall, would make a plum (or more)!
I also have a new introduction to make – the Mulberry tree. When we moved in, we had no idea what kind of tree it was. Then it started making fruit and my gut told me they were mulberries, but my brain said not to eat them until I had confirmation. So I waited. And waited. And then we had DH’s folks over for dinner – both of whom had known mulberry trees in their childhoods – and they both promptly popped a berry off of a branch and into their mouths. I quickly followed suit. Last year, the berries were a bit small and tart. Not knowing what it was, I hadn’t watered it. Since it didn’t rain more than a half an inch between mid-January and early June, the tree made do as best it could.
Now it’s actually raining, and I’m watering it between, we may have some mulberry jam in our future – fingers crossed!
It’s time for…Mystery Plant Theater!
Who has a guess as to what this guy is?
Not the onions it decided to grow among, or the squash leaf in the background, but the other thing.
