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Post by diane on May 4, 2012 22:15:15 GMT -5
or made into marrow and ginger jam
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Post by diane on Apr 28, 2012 14:41:25 GMT -5
At last some of the snaps and snows I planted in mid February have started to bloom.
The varieties: Amish, Brazilian, Calvert, Cascadia, Chinese Giant Snow, Golden Sweet, Green Beauty Snow, Hoh Lohn Dow Snow, June's Delight, King Tut, Magnolia Blossom, Opal Creek, Oregon Sugar Pod II, Rae, Rheinische Zucker Erbse, Sugar Magnolia, Sugar Snap, Super Sugar Snap, Sweet Jade.
I will not be able to make as many crosses as I expected, though.
I had never really paid much attention to peas - just sowed and ate. Now I find that they are not nearly as sturdy as beans which grab onto a string or pole and wind their way up. Peas grow any which way and eventually a tendril catches onto something. Then the pea grows another 20 cm or so, waving out in blank space before managing to get a tendril onto something else. If it doesn't manage that soon enough, the stem bends over with a kink in it. The result is a mishmash of vines. They did not grow up the strings that are attached to their own pots.
Another two problems: I positioned the large pots below the horizontal branch of a big fig tree, with the strings tied to the branch. The peas have taken so long to flower that the fig has leafed out, diminishing the light available to the peas.
The peas have grown tall. Some have gone up beyond their strings and are climbing some of the fig's vertical branches. They are taller than me, and I have to use a ladder to try to pollinate the flowers, which I find tiring.
So, if I decide to do this another year, if I keep lopping off the tops of the plants, will they flower lower down so I can stand on the ground and look them in the eye?
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Post by diane on Apr 21, 2012 12:02:31 GMT -5
I've just sowed four kinds of beets - four seeds each - in little pots, to see if the yellow ones grow less well. Here are the results of my mini-experiment. On April 11, I sowed a seed in each corner of four small pots and put them on the windowsill of a heated room. (I don't heat the whole house.) On April 16, there were seedlings up in each pot. Today, April 21, three of the four seeds have germinated in each pot. Two pots have two seedlings from one of the seeds - this is to be expected, as beet seeds are actually seed clusters. This is why two of the varieties have four seedlings, even though one corner of each pot is empty. Cylindra - 4 Noel - 3 Winter Keeper 4 Burpee's Golden - 3 So, the golden one is holding its own. Maybe it is a myth that the yellow ones germinate poorly. Or maybe they prefer a heated window sill. I'll count the seeds I plant outside and see how they do.
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Post by diane on Apr 15, 2012 0:11:27 GMT -5
I'd be inclined to have the three kinds in different areas of your garden, plus a patch of all three.
I started with Italian parsley (the uncurled type) about 40 years ago. I have let some go to seed every year. About 5 years ago a very narrow-leaved sport appeared, so now one area of the yard has that kind.
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Post by diane on Apr 11, 2012 17:29:41 GMT -5
A few years ago an onion like your first mutant was being sold by the Dutch bulb industry. They called it "Hair".
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Post by diane on Apr 11, 2012 16:39:48 GMT -5
All the books and catalogues state that yellow beets don't germinate as well as red ones. Are they all just copying each other? Have any of you found this to be true?
I've just sowed four kinds of beets - four seeds each - in little pots, to see if the yellow ones grow less well.
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Post by diane on Apr 5, 2012 17:37:09 GMT -5
Do you all know about the incandescent bulb that has never been turned off? The last I heard, it had been burning about 28 years.
I've just googled and found several that have been burning for over 100 years. Two are in fire stations.
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Post by diane on Apr 5, 2012 11:16:47 GMT -5
I like fluorescent tubes for grow lights, but not the curly ones that are meant for household use. They are not bright enough for reading, threading needles, etc by those of us with old eyes, and they burn out quickly.
We can't buy incandescent bulbs anymore in Canada, so I buy them when I go to the U.S.
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Post by diane on Apr 4, 2012 18:29:55 GMT -5
I've got a dozen or so snap peas and a few snows growing in pots so I can cross them. They're about a metre high. No flowers yet, and whenever I peek inside some new growth, there's just tendrils and baby leaves waiting to emerge.
What triggers flowering?
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Post by diane on Mar 31, 2012 19:59:08 GMT -5
Information is sketchy. The article by William Woys Weaver (link in castanea's post above) mentions eating the tubers during summer, and instructions about storing tubers after frost seem to be only for the purpose of growing them again next year.
There is a quick bread recipe (with grated tubers, cinnamon, chocolate chips and nuts) in Buried Treasures, Tasty Tubers of the World by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It states: "...choose tubers that are firm and not too large and woody. They can be boiled, roasted, or baked. ....Add the flowers to salads; the flavor seems to differ from color to color".
However, there is no mention in this source either about whether one can continue to eat stored tubers through the winter. They advise dusting stored tubers with an environmentally sound fungicide.
Does anyone know of a source of more detailed information?
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Post by diane on Mar 30, 2012 22:34:06 GMT -5
I grow dahlias from seed. They flower for such a long time - until frost. The tubers usually last a few years in the ground here, though eventually they succumb to a bad winter.
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Post by diane on Mar 30, 2012 22:27:19 GMT -5
My current Purple Cape plants were sown in August 2008. They produce heads in late February or March.
This year the heads are very strong-tasting and I don't know why.
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Post by diane on Jan 31, 2012 20:14:53 GMT -5
Slow-growing plants.
Think of a cooking onion. From seed to softball-sized in a few months.
Then consider our wild bulbs:
Erythronium. The Eastern ones creep and make new bulbs so may be possible, but the Western ones don't. One seed, one bulb. Five years or more on and the bulb is finally ready to flower but is smaller than your baby finger. I have several hundred in my garden but if I dug them all up I wouldn't have enough to serve for Thanksgiving dinner.
Fritillarias - our local ones are called rice root because they produce rice-sized little bulblets. A couple of botanist friends had been flown to a remote area where they collected some frits when their plane forgot to come back for them. (They did get rescued.)
etc.
Native berries would be a better choice.
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Post by diane on Jan 30, 2012 22:05:36 GMT -5
More on edible lilies - from an article by Mitsuhiro Furuya in Lilies and Related Plants 2003 - 2004, the yearbook of the Lily Group of the Royal Horticultural Society.
- Lilium lancifolium was cultivated solely as a vegetable in early times but is slightly bitter.
- Now L. davidii is grown in China and L. maximowiczii in Japan. [davidii is the species sold in Chinese groceries here in British Columbia]
- coloured lily bulbs are bitter but white ones are usually not.
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Post by diane on Jan 28, 2012 23:45:29 GMT -5
If you've already tried some of your list of squash, you would not have tasted them at their best. They get sweeter as they age.
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