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Post by galina on Mar 13, 2010 4:48:20 GMT -5
Alan
I have been drooling over the picture of Curtis Showell's 'Silverbell' c maxima squash for years! Thank you for growing these varieties out. Melons are a bit tricky here because of our very cool summer weather, but this is very exciting and I wish you good luck with keeping both squash and melon cultivars in circulation. Thank you for your efforts.
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Post by galina on Mar 12, 2010 20:27:04 GMT -5
Kath
Yes, Carol Deppe has a lot to answer for! I haven't dared look at the newer edition of her book which is apparently much expanded and updated. It's just too risky LOL
Looking forward to reading all about your garden and your plant breeding. A nice warm quilt is a precious thing in this weather.
Welcome and enjoy!
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Post by galina on Mar 12, 2010 6:34:39 GMT -5
I received a nice portion of black winter radish seeds and they are producing well under frost cloth cover. We are zone 8. The roots are useful both as raw salad vegetable (peel and grate) and also as cooked vegetable, similar to turnip. Their tops are also edible, but a bit tough.
I am going to save seeds to keep the variety going. Having just refreshed my memory on how to do this, I thought I might as well write down the salient points for everybody's benefit.
Early season radishes produce seeds in the same year, autumn/overwintering radishes the following year (biennial).
The absolute minimum for seedsaving is six plants, 16 is a suitable number and more is better to preserve a variety's characteristics and health. Radishes are outbreeders, self-incompatible and can cross with other radishes and wild radish. Provided there are no other radishes going to seed in the vicinity, one variety of radish can be left to go to seed on the plot without the need for caging and blowfly pollination.
It is necessary to lift roots to look at them properly and select the best, healthiest and most uniform roots for seed. Also we are advised to check that the foliage on all plants is similar to keep the variety pure.
They need to be replanted 18 inches or 45cm apart. I am going for a block formation. The space needed for 16 plants in a block is 4 square metres or 36 square feet. As radishes grow very tall before they flower and branch too, they need strong supports.
Then comes the good bit. After numerous pinkish white flowers the seed pods form. These can be shorter or longer depending on variety, but they are always fleshy and fat and juicy. It is like a whole other crop. The plants produce so many pods that eating them is not only possible, but it is a productive crop in its own right. We eat them raw in salads, where their mild radish flavour and crispy pods is a real surprise for anybody who has never tasted them. But I also freeze pods for a quick addition to stir-fry dishes, pasta salads etc.
After the green and fleshy stage, the pods turn light brown and woody. They don't spring open and shed seeds. I pull up the whole plants and leave them to dry, out of the rain, for a bit more if necessary, until all pods are fully dry. Then I cut off branches and place these in a sturdy large plastic bucket (muck bucket). And tread on them until the plant material is broken up and the seed pods have been crushed to release the seeds. Harvesting seed by breaking the pods with fingers is very hard on the hands and tedious for anything other than a small amount of seed.
The seeds are light to mid brown and surprisingly large compared with other brassica. Sieving through a colander lets the seed drop down and separate from the plant debris. Winnowing the seeds removes the last of the chaff. The seed yield is high and the seed should stay viable for 4 years in good storage.
I learned from the seedsaving guides from HDRA, Sue Stickland's book 'Back Garden Seed Saving' and many other sources.
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Post by galina on Mar 10, 2010 17:14:11 GMT -5
Alan
looking forward to reading your reports and, if possible, seeing a few pictures too.
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Post by galina on Mar 10, 2010 7:49:00 GMT -5
Here is a nice guide to planting by the moon, which gives several different systems on one page, synodic, biodynamic and sidereal. www.the-gardeners-calendar.co.uk/Moon_Planting.aspI follow the biodynamic system at least for sowing, trusting that people who are acknowledged, excellent, beyond-organic gardeners are bound to know something that I don't. However, I am only too aware that all three different systems clash at times. dirtsunrain, I know what you mean. The first frost generally co-incides with a full moon, here usually the October full moon. I also makes sense that the moon pulls water at full moon (we see this with the tides), so in theory plants have more available. But my 'other brain' tells me that provided the plants had a good watering, there should be plenty available for their needs anyway. After a while, especially around planting out time, there is just so much to do and so little time, that the calendar goes by the wayside out of necessity, I am afraid.
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Post by galina on Mar 10, 2010 6:43:19 GMT -5
robertb,
are you in need of unusual pea seeds or (another post) rattlesnake bean seeds? I could send you several varieties grown 09. PM me if you need any. If you tell me what varieties you have lost in the floods, I'll have a rummage in the seedbox here and hopefully replace some. I only live a couple of counties away from you.
Pigeon and mice are very bad round here as well. After planting out (I sow indoors to minimise losses to mice) every little bunch of peas gets a bottle cloche which does not get removed until the tops grow out of it. For very rare varieties I use one bottle per plant and that stays in place all season with the stems growing out of the top to protect the plants from mice. I also string up old CDs to deter the pigeons. At least we did not get the floods you had.
These are my peas for this year: Langedijker Bleekbloei, Eat All, Golden Sweet, Court Estate Gold, Harold Idle, Rheinische Zucker, Sugarbon, Magnum Bonum, Laxton's Exquisite, Schweizer Riesen and a small planting of new-to-me peas Ne Plus Ultra, Alderman, Douce Provence and Lancashire Lad, Wando, Lincoln and Capucijner. I am waiting on two more 'new to me' peas which may be held over until next year. All being well, I hope to have fresh seeds later this year.
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Post by galina on Mar 10, 2010 6:08:52 GMT -5
I have kept a commercial seed packet that was sold as French Mesclun Seed Blend and it contained the following: Lettuce: Blonde de Paris, Forellenschluss, Madrilene, Merveile de Quatre Saisons, Sucrine Greens: Chervil Commune, Corn Salad Verte de Chambrai, Endive Grosse Pancaliere and Scarole Ronde verte coeur plain, Spinach: Geant d'Hiver and Monstrueux de Viroflay. Nice enough but I sowed these too late and they did not last over winter (under protection). This is a summer seed mixture.
A similarly marketed Italian mix (lost the seed packet) contained rocket, lettuce green and red lollo, mustard and several different Italian chicories and endives. This did better as an autumn/winter salad mix (sown August then grown under cloches in zone 8). but the lettuces died.
None of them contained cress which I think is a must, both landcress and ordinary cress. Nor beetroot leaves which are very common in supermarket salad bags. Celery leaves are also great in a mixed salad.
A few ideas for you hopefully .
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Post by galina on Mar 8, 2010 19:04:24 GMT -5
Robertb
you wrote: What sort of climate do rattlesnake beans need? I'm wondering whether they would grow in the UK. ------------
No problem at all to grow them in the UK. Rattlesnake is one of those beans that do well practically everywhere, alongside Cherokee Trail of Tears and Kentucky Wonder. And they are also early. A great bean. Galina
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Post by galina on Mar 5, 2010 6:05:30 GMT -5
I have fresh seed of a Slovenian climbing bean (ph vulgaris) called 'Slovenian Yellow' for want of the original name. This is a yellow podded bean with olive green seeds. Later in the year an apricot hue overlays the yellow pods (with faint striping). We eat the pods as 'green' beans. They are very pretty and productive.
My donor is Dutch and he got them directly from Slovenia. They do well in The Netherlands, England and have been swapped with a friend in Colorado too. In Colorado they needed to adjust for a year and started to perform well the second time they were grown (first time from colorado produced seeds).
PM me if you are interested in seeds.
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Post by galina on Mar 1, 2010 17:50:04 GMT -5
Pugs sorry about this. Animals with young pups ....... sorry you ended up with a damaged finger. Hope it feels better soon and that harmony can be restored among your pets too. Just about everything involves the use of fingers; sounds painful. Hope it mends quickly.
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Post by galina on Feb 23, 2010 18:46:11 GMT -5
Glad all went well, they are tiny! Guess they are keeping you busy. Lovely.
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Hello
Feb 23, 2010 18:33:20 GMT -5
Post by galina on Feb 23, 2010 18:33:20 GMT -5
Welcome Logan. Who or what inspired you to start gardening? Isn't it wonderful to taste your own grown tomato? Especially when it is a flavourful heirloom variety.
Hope you will feel at home soon.
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Post by galina on Feb 22, 2010 7:29:33 GMT -5
Thank you all for the welcome. This group is certainly a bit different and some very experienced gardeners and plant breeders write here alongside regular gardeners. A great mix and so many stimulating posts. I am looking forward to getting to know you all in time.
Pugs, I will write up the experiments sometime. Everything is in note form in several volumes of garden note books and there are photos too but I haven't ever put it all together. Have to learn how to upload photos too. We'll get there.
Again thank you for the welcome.
Galina
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Post by galina on Feb 21, 2010 12:27:14 GMT -5
Greetings to all,
New member living in England, originally from Germany, then a few years in Switzerland.
I have been gardening for 30 years, mostly vegetables. Found wax bean seeds in a French shop which I could not get in England and started seed saving as a consequence nearly twenty years ago.
I love growing many different cultivars of each vegetable and have just started sowing 16 different peas indoors for planting out in the garden when the snow goes and it warms up a bit. I love diversity. Green, yellow and purple peas pretty as a picture - and what about Rebsie Fairholm's red ones, how nice are they! One day.
A few year's ago I read Carol Deppe's book about breeding your own vegetable varieties and crossed two peas for a large yellow podded, sweet mangetout pea. Not quite stable yet. I follow up accidental crosses in beans, one an interspecies cross coccineus x vulgaris. Have dabbled in squash crosses as well but not methodically, with a breeding aim in mind.
I started reading forum posts a few weeks ago and came across grunt and grungy many times. When I finally got to read the recent post about Val's brave fight with cancer, I felt very sad that this great lady and her husband have such a burden to bear. I hope that you will feel much better soon Val - healing wishes are going to you.
Galina
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