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Post by 12540dumont on Aug 10, 2012 11:46:43 GMT -5
Flax and millet Attachments:
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Post by 12540dumont on Aug 10, 2012 11:47:58 GMT -5
Lagenaria, Serpente de Sicily, Cuccuza Attachments:
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Post by 12540dumont on Aug 10, 2012 11:49:35 GMT -5
TPS So, what new crops did you try this year? What are your hopes for them? What did you learn? Attachments:
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Post by bvillebill on Aug 10, 2012 15:58:29 GMT -5
I think I'm growing the same millet you are, Hell's Canyon from Adaptive Seeds and mine looks just like your pictures at the moment. I have chickens and ducks so I'm thinking about growing a bunch next year for feed.
In terms of entirely new crops, the only new one is bulbing fennel. It's growing fast and looking great, haven't harvested any of it yet.
I did learn one big lesson this year to share. I always start my onions in September, then lift and split them early in the Spring for my summer harvest. It works great, I get huge onions. I tried that with leeks this last year and they all bolted first thing in early Summer, apparently they won't tolerate it the way onions do.
I did find two new varieties of lettuce that I really love, Pandero and Kalura from Adaptive Seeds. The Pandero is a small, very dense red / purple Romaine, Kalura is a large, more traditional Romaine. They've both grown well, taste great and haven't bolted. I've been growing butterheads for years and these are the first romaines I've really liked.
I have a patch of potatoes grown from Tom's seeds that are still growing strong after all the other potatoes have died back so I don't know what's lurking underground, I'm curious to find out.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 10, 2012 16:17:04 GMT -5
I planted the Curtis Showell Mixtas. They are currently blooming. If I actually get a harvest it will be my first Mixta harvest ever. (3 unsuccessful seasons so far.) I planted a commercial carrot seed mix for the first time in like 5 years. Ha! It was tremendously unsuitable for my garden. I started a pulse landrace... All sorts of unknown types of legumes are showing up. Don't know how I missed planting the soybeans, garbanzos, and peanuts. But I got scarlet runners!!! The instructions I gave to the people that help weed was "If it looks like a weed you are used to pulling then pull it, otherwise leave it alone." There's an 8 foot section of row missing. That's in an area that I was planting species-to-row, so I don't know if the seed failed to germinate, or if it got weeded out. I planted GRIN spinach from Spain. I definitely do not have a Mediterranean climate!!! For the sake of diversity, I allowed some of them to contribute offspring to my spinach landrace. Turmeric and ginger: Didn't sprout for me when kept in pots, but sprouted when left in a plastic bag on the kitchen counter. Look like sick corn plants when small. I grew hard-necked garlic. Removed bulbils, and allowed them to flower. (About 1% of my garlic patch might produce seeds. 6 distinct cultivars are flowering, including one cultivar from GRIN via Jo, and the rest are landrace so no telling where they came from.) About 2-3 weeks away from threshing. Purple flowered plants seem to produce seeds more-so than plants with white flowers. I planted two new popcorns: Glass gem and Cherokee. I'm intending to roll those into my popcorn landrace. The Cherokee is currently exchanging pollen with my popcorn landrace. I planted tropical corn on the east side of a building. Too early to tell if that will mess with it's sense of day-length enough to provide pollen while there is still enough warmth for maturation. Planted some odd species of cucurbits... They were immediately devoured. That never happens to me!!! I planted "Welsh onions". I thought that I'd be able to tell them apart from "Bulb Onions". So far they've got me stumped. Doesn't help that I planted grexes of each species. (Including Long Island Seed Bulb Onion, and Cortona's Bulb onion.) And to confuse things, even more, there were volunteer (weeds) of a Welsh X Bulb cross. We did near perfect weeding and thinning all spring and summer on the onion patch, so perhaps they'll distinguish themselves in the next month. Great looking teosinte and tripsacum are growing in the hybrid swarm corn patch. Germinating the seeds in pots helped tremendously. (Technically that's a lesson I may have learned last summer when they didn't germinate for me.)
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Post by ferdzy on Aug 10, 2012 19:08:57 GMT -5
I don't believe we grew anything that we had not grown before in some form, but we sure tried a lot of new-to-us varieties.
Actually, we are growing "King of the Garden" pole lima beans. We have tried bush limas before, but never gotten any decent production out of them. This is really not lima bean territory. If this fails, I guess we will have to give up on limas. We are hedging our bets by growing a pole bean called "Dolloff" which can be eaten as a green shelly bean as a lima bean substitute. Just tried one; delicious and very like. We will have to grow an awful lot to get any reasonable quantity to freeze though.
Melons expanded a lot this year. In addition to our selection of small, short-season melons we added Edible Skin and Uzbek Winter melons from Richter's seed zoo. We may or may not get melons from them before it gets too cool. But both are forming well, so it's possible! Also saw some Early Canada watermelons which someone on this site had recommended, and are growing them. So far, they look like they will be our largest melon. Earliest was Golden Midget by at least 2 weeks.
I'm growing some Mako onions that I got seed for in Hungary in the spring. A traditional local variety, a solid storage onion. Ate the first one of those today. So strong raw I can barely stand it, but cooks up sweet and mild. I also planted some Banana shallots that promptly went to seed. So not only will I have seed from them next spring, but another hybrid shallot I bought at the grocery store and planted 3 years ago is covered in seed this year as well - I assume the Banana shallots fertilized them as they have never produced seed before.
We tried to grow red noodle (yard long) beans last year and managed to get about 4 ripe pods. This year we should get a lot more. They look much better, partly from being in a better position, partly because it's been so hot this year, and partly, I hope, because the survivors have what it takes in this garden.
We tried a few new corn and squash varieties this year; mostly a bust, along with the old corn and squash varieties.
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edwin
gardener
Posts: 141
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Post by edwin on Aug 10, 2012 19:53:01 GMT -5
Planted a number of fruit trees that are new to us:
Peaches: Harrow Beauty x2 Harrow Dimond Cherries: 6 verities all sour + 1 sour grown from a pit (detect a theme here?) Heronia Apios Americana (ground nut) Sea Buckthorn (died) Kiwi (Arguta & Colomictia)
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Post by castanea on Aug 10, 2012 19:54:23 GMT -5
Planted a number of fruit trees that are new to us: Peaches: Harrow Beauty x2 Harrow Dimond Cherries: 6 verities all sour + 1 sour grown from a pit (detect a theme here?) Heronia Apios Americana (ground nut) Sea Buckthorn (died) Kiwi (Arguta & Colomictia) How are the sour cherries doing?
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edwin
gardener
Posts: 141
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Post by edwin on Aug 10, 2012 19:58:37 GMT -5
All doing quite well - the 5 were from t&t seeds and looked like little twigs with a few roots when purchased. Weren't expensive, and we got what we paid for. They have grown maybe 50% even with being heavily munched by deer.
1 verity (10 sticks) was also from t&t but is a sour cherry hedge tree that will grow from suckers - or so the theory goes.
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Post by littleminnie on Aug 10, 2012 22:07:28 GMT -5
Strawberries. I am getting a few ripe day neutral now and again. I ate one today. Honeydews and don't know how to tell when they are ripe.
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Post by castanea on Aug 10, 2012 23:23:36 GMT -5
I am growing cowpeas for the first time. Just 3 varieties but they are fun to grow in this heat.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 11, 2012 0:13:49 GMT -5
Fava beans are new to me. I've never even seen the plant before!!! Those black and white flowers sure are eye-catching.
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Post by Drahkk on Aug 11, 2012 3:08:57 GMT -5
Ferdzy, I hope you have better luck with King of the Garden than I did. The year I grew them I never had enough at once to be worth cooking, and barely got back as much seed as I planted. Still, it's been several years, and I've learned a lot since then. Maybe I should give limas another try.
Minnie, some honeydews exhibit a dramatic color change when ripe, but even the standard green ones show enough of a golden shift to make them recognizable. You can also shake them to test. The seeds and fibers loosen somewhat inside ripe melons, and you can hear them move when shaken.
Cowpeas are not new to my kitchen and table, but they were new to my garden and my direct attention this year. A good experiment, but I think I'll go back to letting my b-i-l grow them. He always has more than plenty anyway. I also have several new-to-me varieties of melons growing at the moment. I'm expecting melons and squash to increase a lot more next year.
MB
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edwin
gardener
Posts: 141
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Post by edwin on Aug 11, 2012 5:52:13 GMT -5
and I've learned a lot since then. Would love to hear suggestions for lima beans. What we have learned is that they are a bit like sweet potatoes - don't plant too early or they will not germinate - but will rot. They are also a magnet for things like slugs and snails - extra tasty. We planted decoy bush beans after loosing about 2/3 of our original planting. We are growing 16 linear feet of king of the garden + 8 shaded feet of king of the garden. They have climbed 7+ feet and are trying to make it to low earth orbit. Definitely slow to produce, but they look extremely healthy. Hopefully, this has not been a typical year.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Aug 11, 2012 6:41:57 GMT -5
My new crops this year.
True potato seed from NWST and SeƱor Lofthouse. So far so good. Potatoes are not new for us but TPS definitely is.
Schwartsbeeren (Solanum nigra) from traab. Really fun and neat to eat a traditional fruit crop from my ancestors that still grows in my hometown.
Cowpeas Fagiolina D'olicho from Seeds of Italy. So far so good very healthy and beautiful vines. Pods are just starting to form. Never realized how gorgeous cowpea flowers were, even if they only last for a couple hours.
Chickpeas Hannan Popbean from Carol Deppe/Fertile Valley Seeds. These were neat and awesomely productive. I also loved how cold hardy they are, a great super early spring planting crop. Much much hardier than peas.
Naked Barley Faust, meh.
Hulless Oat Terra Hulless, double meh.
Malting Barley Conlon, this did really well but its too damn short. The mice can pull it down and harvest it and the morning doves can walk it down and pick it likewise. Plus the weeds grew up above the heads just as it was getting ripe.
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