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Post by diane on Jan 31, 2013 12:59:58 GMT -5
Every year I test one or two vegetables. This year it will be long keeping tomatoes.
My stand-by is the cherry tomato Sweet Orange II, developed by Peters in Oregon. He wrote that it's the one the deer always headed for. It has a rather thick skin, and doesn't crack when the rains start. I pick all the fruit remaining at the end of October and put the tomatoes on trays in the house. We never have enough to last much longer than sometime in January.
Besides the ones already mentioned above by others, I found the following listed as long-keeping in the Garden Seed Inventory.
Ones available from Prairie Garden Seeds: Prairie Pride, Purple Calabash
Available from Seeds of Diversity members: Dad's Sunset, Washington Cherry, Garden Peach (though it's described as tasteless, so I won't bother growing it), Graham's Good Keeper, Porter Improved (syn Porter's Pride), Pusa Ruby, Snowstorm
Others I haven't found a source for yet: Baxter's Early Bush Cherry, De Barrao II, Red October
There are some others, like Moon Glow, but it requires 85 days and with my cool maritime climate, that's not suitable.
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Post by diane on Jan 16, 2013 12:00:17 GMT -5
There seems little point in growing giant onions unless you are wanting to win a blue ribbon at the fall fair, or want raw slices big enough to cover a hamburger bun.
For normal kitchen use, a variety of sizes is preferable so you can use a whole onion instead of needing to keep a half-used one in the fridge.
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Post by diane on Jan 9, 2013 2:11:21 GMT -5
I don't grow any other Ribes so I don't have any chance of inter-species hybrids. I bought a white flowering sanguineum which has crossed with my wild red ones to produce pinks (must have been the hummingbirds' doing).
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Post by diane on Jan 6, 2013 16:31:08 GMT -5
I have lots of wild berries in my yard that I use, but I've never noticed berries on my flowering currants. So that means I've never tried eating one.
They were not highly regarded by the various first nations around here. They ate them fresh but didn't bother picking them to dry.
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Post by diane on Jan 6, 2013 13:44:57 GMT -5
I'm not sure how useful this will be for those of you who sell.
My tomatillos last for a very long time - well into June. I keep them spread one layer deep in a cool room in the house, the same place I keep squash (which stay good for more than a year).
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Post by diane on Dec 12, 2012 23:52:23 GMT -5
An important thing to be aware of is that earwigs are beneficial, except when you are growing seedlings.
I first found this out during the awful years when winter moth was introduced here in nursery stock. (It is native to Europe, I think.) Those were years of no fruit at all as the flowers would be eaten out before they opened. Leaves sprouted and were all eaten. It sounded as though it was raining all the time from the frass that was dropping. Then when a tree was totally denuded (and I mean really big trees, not just fruit trees), the caterpillars would let out lines of silk and float off hoping to find more food. It was like winter in early summer, because of all the totally bare trees.
Birds did not seem to be eating the caterpillars, but earwigs were. I watched them climbing down the trunks, holding caterpillars.
Earwigs also eat other insects, like aphids.
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Post by diane on Dec 12, 2012 17:26:11 GMT -5
Yes, I like A cernuum. I just use the flowers, though, so the plants live a very long time in my garden.
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Post by diane on Dec 12, 2012 15:29:35 GMT -5
Are you asking about fruit? sweet vegetables? all vegetables?
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Post by diane on Dec 12, 2012 14:39:23 GMT -5
I can't offer anything useful for a field, except I think the fowl are a good idea.
I have problems on my allotment garden, which is way smaller than what you are dealing with. Seedlings anywhere near a compost pile get eaten, yet once they get big, that compost pile will maintain moisture for them in our rainless summers, so I don't want to get rid of it.
Trying to remember - I think it has been tiny squash transplants that have been eaten. I replace them, and those ones get eaten. They succeed if I grow them in pots till they are a hefty size before transplanting.
Last year in the same area, I had a carpet of self-seeded tomatoes, and they didn't seem to be targeted. I wonder if earwigs are picky eaters.
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Post by diane on Dec 12, 2012 13:36:07 GMT -5
Off with the mulch! That's where they hide out.
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Post by diane on Dec 12, 2012 13:30:49 GMT -5
Here are the prickly ones. I didn't cut one open so I don't know what the inside looks like. Attachments:
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Post by diane on Dec 12, 2012 13:29:37 GMT -5
Australia is also home to South African plants, including these delicious-looking but never eaten melons. I saw them in Narembeen, in the wheatbelt of Western Australia. I'm not sure about the prickly ones. They were near Pink Lake, also in Western Australia. I guess I'll have to post a new message for the prickly ones. I can't see how to post two photos in one message. Attachments:
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Post by diane on Nov 10, 2012 18:49:33 GMT -5
My brother has a set of metal letters that he hammers into a label.
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Post by diane on Nov 10, 2012 13:00:26 GMT -5
For seedlings I cut up yogurt containers and use a grease pencil, also known as a china marker - it has paper wrapped around the waxy core. In 1979 I put MacPenny labels from England on my fruit trees. Plastic, white on one side for writing with pencil, and black on the other to scratch the name. The black has faded, but the names are still legible. I've just gone out and photographed one. Attachments:
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Post by diane on Nov 6, 2012 15:37:44 GMT -5
I grow about a half dozen types of filberts. I used to give buckets of them to family, friends, neighbours. Then some idiot released some Eastern gray squirrels on Vancouver Island. They proliferated. I no longer get any filberts, but I have young trees coming up all over where the squirrels buried the nuts.
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