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Post by Jim on Sept 27, 2009 21:21:46 GMT -5
I actually use meijer brand ajax type powder. Once again if you don't like the idea please don't use it. It works fine for me...and Trudi....and lots of others. Do what makes you happy,
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Post by silverseeds on Sept 27, 2009 22:19:31 GMT -5
I was just sharing my thoughts.
the important thing is your saving the seeds of course.
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Post by ottawagardener on Sept 28, 2009 8:40:48 GMT -5
MNJ: Tomato seeds that volunteer here are frozen  for the entire winter... I bet you or your family were eating a tomato on or near the porch and either some of that wonderful tomato juice plus seeds dribbled from their chins or a bit was tossed from the porch. I always giggle when I see mint colonies very near a picnic area as I imagine a mint spring falling from a tabouli salad or something and doing what it does best: growing. |
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Post by Jim on Sept 28, 2009 19:25:19 GMT -5
I thought about planting a few mint plugs around the weeds at work...no one sprays chemicals so they'd grow unbounded.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Sept 28, 2009 20:40:50 GMT -5
 It would have had to have been something Telsing! I just like to tease my poor brain trying to figure it out! Actually, decent tomatoes are hard to come by around here. We just don't live in the right part of "town" for them. HOWever, we are investigating a bit of land, 29 acres, more inland with white soil. Some naturally occurring mineral. I have to chat with the county extension agent about it. The price is practically a steal! We wouldn't be able to live there immediately, we would want to build a house of our own... but that's getting WAY ahead of the game. Jim, have you ever tried the soft scrub type of cleanser? We don't use the powder because all our fixtures are plastic  but we do use the soft scrub stuff in the kitchen. Think it would work as well? All the "wet" seeds are in for the season, but I'll have to give it a shot next year.
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Post by Alan on Sept 28, 2009 22:49:07 GMT -5
Howdy Telsing,
will be glad to once again elaborate on the "wild tomato" patches.
It started 4 years ago with "currant" tomatoes and a big bunch of cherry tomato cultivars planted in a "swampy" area of field that was otherwise useless to me.....until I ran out of room 3 years ago and that field went to Astronomy Domine...for the most part.
A couple weeks after the second planting and first cultivation I started noticing tomato plants of obvious currant and currant cross lineages coming up like mad, I had kind of figured on it considering there was no way to pick all the ripe fruit off of the over five hundred plants I put there the year before, but they kept coming on, more and more of them, stealing nutrients from the corn, I kept thining them until the corn outgrew the tomatoes but they yet once again set seed and the next year while the field was fallow started coming up in droves. At this point my though process switched over to the "if you can't beat them, join them" method and I "flew" (read tossed into the air over the field) a ton of other cherry type seeds that I had obtained in trade along with some other wild tomato relatives (that year and in subsequent years) including l. humboldti (via Ken Ettlinger) and L. Cheesmani (via Johno) as well as a number of currant crosses adn humboldti crosses from Ettlinger and Alan Kapuler. Over the past couple years I've gathered about a pound of seed for distribution from these crosses, there were also other occasional crosses between presumably Rutgers and Marglobe which had been planted in that field. These genetics are the source of the Rollercoaster Cherry Tomato Mix. Possibly the most genetically diverse cherry breeding stock in the world which I actually don't need anymore of....EVER....'cause they keep coming back even in years like this where I let the field lie fallow with a cover crop.
Those genetics will be available on this years seed list as well.
As far as diseases in those, remarkable I have hardly ever noticed any issues in that patch, now the cultivated tomatoes are another thing, but since I don't actively spray for disease and in the past several years haven't mulched or bothered to cage tomatoes it's to be expected, but in those previous years I was also doing a lot of tomato breeding and selection work and selecting for disease tolerance was some of that focus, therefore I did nothing to control the disease in the non commercial plots so that I could then only select seeds from those varieties showing some amount of resistance to anything that was effecting them. From these experiments came the Have You Got It Yet?! Mix, Absinthe, Jack White, and The Pink Floyd as well as a few others which seem to be real winners, but trust me there were many loosers too, I try not to worry about it too much, anything that is going to live on this farm has gotta be tough!
And though I didn't get pictures of it and since I've been obsessed with getting a genetically diverse orchard going I thought I'd share some methods for apples and blueberries.
I have been collecting apple pippins from local cider presses this year, if you immediately place the pippins (the crushed up stuff) in a bucket of water and stir the viable seeds will sink to the bottom, then you just pour off the water and the gunk (like you would after fermenting the tomatoes) and you end up with pure apple seed, if you wait a day or two though some of that gunk will sink to the bottom at which time a 1/4 inch piece of hardware cloth and sieving does wonders!
The next step is blueberries, I have been starting seed from the KY blueberry growers association (google them, good seed for cheap) for a couple of months now, the other day I found myself in need of just a bit more seed and was being to cheap to actually order and remembered that I had about 3 gallons of blueberries in the freezer bought from local farmstands this season, since they were already stratified I figured I might as well use those instead of buying more seed but the question quickly arose as to how exactly to harvest those seeds..........once again, viable seed sinks!
I mushed up the blueberries in a bit of water in a bowl using a fork, pored it all into a jar, mixed it all up good and the blueberry gunk and bad seeds floated, the good seed sank, and I poured off all the gunk and had some nice clean seed, it actually worked wonders!
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Post by ottawagardener on Sept 29, 2009 8:06:06 GMT -5
Gravity is the seed savers friend.
I am thinking about my future farm (ETA 2 years) and how to get a large number of plants with the least amount of money and work. I'm very interested in growing out some hedgerow orchard plants from seed to see what I get but I also want a large blueberry patch if there isn't a wild one on the property already. I was thinking about wood cuttings or root propogation but I haven't looked into these methods for blueberries at all. My understanding was that blueberries are slow growers but I suppose if you want diversity, seed's the way to go. I hope you photographically catalogue your blueberry and apple experiments as I'd love to see them.
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Post by Jim on Sept 29, 2009 10:31:20 GMT -5
roller coaster...of love....
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Post by juliekru on Sept 29, 2009 18:27:38 GMT -5
Ha! I knew it! The Rollercoaster plant that I'm getting 25 or more tomatoes a day is exactly the same. It is uncontrollable and spreading viciously but so productive and tasty! I have thousands of seeds collected from it. The little tomato plant of horrors as my husband (the Chef) calls it. By the way Alan, the Absinthe is still producing quite nicely in the chilly temperatures.
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for the entire winter... I bet you or your family were eating a tomato on or near the porch and either some of that wonderful tomato juice plus seeds dribbled from their chins or a bit was tossed from the porch. I always giggle when I see mint colonies very near a picnic area as I imagine a mint spring falling from a tabouli salad or something and doing what it does best: growing.
It would have had to have been something Telsing! I just like to tease my poor brain trying to figure it out! Actually, decent tomatoes are hard to come by around here. We just don't live in the right part of "town" for them. HOWever, we are investigating a bit of land, 29 acres, more inland with white soil. Some naturally occurring mineral. I have to chat with the county extension agent about it. The price is practically a steal! We wouldn't be able to live there immediately, we would want to build a house of our own... but that's getting WAY ahead of the game.
but we do use the soft scrub stuff in the kitchen. Think it would work as well? All the "wet" seeds are in for the season, but I'll have to give it a shot next year.
