Seed Hunt report: 2014

[blueadzuki]

FRIDAY JAN.31

I needed to go to Golden Village (Chinese) today, to pick up a few boxes of my weekday teabags. And While there I picked up two bags of rice beans (Golden Lion Brand) and three of lentils(Laxmi). The rice bean results were nothing special, Golden Lion isn't one of the good brands. I has adzukis a lot of them, but they are all red and really not in very good condition. Though based on the latter I may not have to be so worried about how the off colors will do. A bag of leftovers from this brand was mixed in with the leftovers of the first good bag so all the spoiled adzuki's I was complaining about probably came from there (based on the other three, it looks like the red in the actual bag are fairly sound, though no more numerous than any of the other colors. two bindweed seeds and one small mung. So on to the lentils.
By far the most numerous weed in the lentils were vetches, a LOT of them (I just weighed them and there were about one ounce of seed in the six pounds of lentils so they actually make up 1% and change of the total weight of the bag). And quite diverse, just going on seed size and shape there are probably a half dozen or so disticnt species seeds in there (or, at least a half dozen extremely distict varities. At least, I THINK most of them are vetches; the lentils themselves have so many odd quirks that there are a fair number of cases when I'm just not sure WHICH it is (I doesnt help that a lot of the VETCHES in this lot have the orange insides one would normally find in lentils (but I looked it up, and vetches can have those.)In fact, the vetch probably has the distinction shared only with the spurred butterfly pea in the rice beans, of being one of the only weed seeds whose quantity seems to have gone UP since I started searching.
Besides the vetches the rest were also pretty normal for these lentils. There were still a few (thoguh far less than before) of the odd white things I'm going to plant out in spring to figure out waht the hell they are (they have ribs on one side, a sort of crown on the other, and (based on some broken ones) a lot have green insides. There are the usual smattering of domestic grains; some wheat, some barely (probably fodder barley, as it is very clearly NOT naked) a few oats.
There are also four or five of the wide shiny seeds I am assuming are some sort of thistle until I can grow them out; sice that's the only aster I know that has seeds that big with that sail shape (which lets out sunflower or safflower)and, as far as I know, India does not grow a lot of artichokes.
And finally one or two of some other legumes as yet unidentified.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I saw Adzuki beans in the store this week. I didn't buy them because every bean in the bag looked uniform, and it has a huge bag with a huge price tag.

[blueadzuki]

Yeah that's how most look, dead identical, down to even average seed size in the bag though there are two or three differnt "strains" considered acceptable. I usually don't think of them as being overly expensive, but then I'm getting mine in Chiantown, where competion is stiff and no seller would have the guts to sell beans that are really expensive (well except that Korean Health food store with the $25 per half pound bag of organic black soybeans, but they classify that as medicine, not really food.

[blueadzuki]

WENDSDAY, Feb.5

I managed to brave the foul weather, and get into Flushing anyhow.

To my delight, when I went back to the market I found the good bags at last week, I was able to scare up seven more (plus four of the others). This however, is DEFINTILEY the last I'll get. I finally managed to "crack" the key secret of the bags, how to tell good ones from bad ones by looking at the plain red rice beans that make up the majority of the bag's bulk (the "good ones" are a somewhat paler shade of red, and usually duller in shine). So I KNOW all the bags I left behind this time are "wrong" ones.

Non bean yields were more or less as before. The "wrongs" had three bindweed seeds (two white spot one regular) one spurred butterfly pea seed, and one of that one I haven't been able to identify yet (that may be another species of Cajanus) Besides the adzukis the "good" bags yielded sevebn soybeans (six white, one green) four bindweeds seeds (assorted) and a few mungs (one "tiny" the rest normal)

Next week, on to the Malaysian market!

[Deleted]

Jan 13, 2014 10:05:24 GMT -5 blueadzuki said:

...but until science reaches the point where a Joe Shmoe like me has acess to tech that would allow a person to clone a tree from a scrap of fruit peel cheapy...


I've been toying with the idea of micro-propagation.

In short, minute scraps of tissue are treated with rooting, growing, and branching hormones, resulting in tiny plantlets.

Sterilization and nutrients reminded me of what it takes to grow mushrooms.

[blueadzuki]

WENDSDAY, FEB 12

Sort of a bleak day, seed wise. I did make it to the SE Asian supermarket, but every bag of both of the kinds of beans they sell there (mungs an a little red cowpea) were visually completely pure. Ditto the black pigeon peas at the next place. I did buy a few bags of out and out adzuki bean at the place after that, mostly because I saw some soybeans in a few bags (I bought six in total). But results were not all that encouraging, besides the soybeans (a lot of which were in such bad shape I had to toss them) the only other inclusions were some black common beans (they'll go in one of the storage boxes, but I already have lots of very similar looking fished-out beans) There were three adzuki's in the bags whose color was non red (two blackish, one buff). But given how wrinkled the blacks are, I think they may just be badly spoiled and discolored, and the buff one might not be an adzuki at all (it could just be a somewhat longish soybean).
I did manage to score one last bag of "good" rice beans, but that is the absolute LAST from there, they refilled the bin since last week, and the refills are all the "other" kind.
So, I guess next week it will be just going back up to where the Dim Sum hall was and seeing if those last three bags of black cowpeas are still in that store (and hoping that when opened, they have a few more Thai rice beans) and/or trying to negotiate with the old man at the herb store to let me see if there are any salt and pepper adzukis hiding in his mung beans. Beyond that, it may be time soon to move on to other pastures.

[gilbert]

Does anyone here have any experience with sweet peppers from the store? Do they have viable seeds? I tried to sprout some, and it didn't go well. Are they picked green and gassed, or something? Or did I just get a bad batch or do a bad job starting them? (I always find peppers hard to start. Tomatoes are easy, but not peppers.)

Why do you want bindweed seed? (Apart from the interest of the thing, obviously.)

[blueadzuki]

I'll leave the pepper question to another, as I don't grow them

When I use the term "bindweed" I'm using it as a collective common name for pretty much all Convulvulacae seed I find, not just actual Convulvulus or Inponomea. Most of them I indeed just put to the side to keep them out of the yard as they are of no good use. In fact the commonest one is terrible, it's the plant I call "grasp vine" (because the leaves look a bit like grasping hands) Hyper-invasive, covered with coarse scratchy hair and it's "flowers" are basically so reduced they functionally don't exist (instead of flowers, it makes these small (single) to large (multiple) hairy "nodules" that look like buds, but never open, and seem to make their seeds without pollination.

That being said, not all of them are nearly so useless. Morning glory is, after all, more or less a bindweed too. and provided they are safely rooted in a pot (where the roots can only go so far) I'm OK with a few of those. Basically, I save it and plant it in the hope a few make nice flowers. So far I've only found one that does that, the kind I call "keel seed" or "notch seed". It's a little smaller than standard bindweed seed and wider, with a ridge on the back of the seed and a deeply recessed hilum. That plant actually makes a very nice garden addition; it grows fairly slowly, doesn't climb all over the place (actually it doesn't climb at all, it has no tendrils or ability to wind it's stem, so it just runs along the ground (if level) or hangs over the sides of the pot (if the pot is raised). Odd leaves too, while techically saggitate (spear or arrowhead shaped) like a some bindweeds, the petiole is incredibly short so the leaves are almost sessile, the side lobes are incredibly short and almost form a calyx around the petiole, while the main lobe is incredibly long, like 10x+ the leaf's with. So in short the leaves are almost grasslike.

But the real selling point is the flowers. They're a lot smaller than bindweed ones maybe dime sized. The outer edges of the petals is cream yellow while the throat is chocolate brown (actually they look a lot like husk tomato flowers.) They actually make a nice addition to the wildflower garden.

So far, that's the only "good" one I've found, but a lot of the one's I've seen I yet to get a good plant from, so they are untested.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I've grown lots of peppers from grocery store fruits. They tend to do fine. I usually let the fruits sit on the counter and shrivel up before harvesting the seeds.

[blueadzuki]

WENDSDAY, FEB.19

Another pretty bleak trip, seed-wise. I went back to get some more bags of the black cowpeas (the one's that had the Thai rice beans in them) but there was only one bag left, and they owner said that would be it (that is, she might get in more black cowpeas, but not that brand, and that brand was the only one with the inclusions.)

The adzukis were similarly unprofitable I actually bought out the supply of the brand (except three I could see were a differnt size, and hence a different harvest, so I walked out with 21 bags ('bout 15 and 3/4 pounds) hoping that based on last week, that would at least net me 10 or so more non red adzukis. It got me 2 (one badly damaged) plus 5-6 more soybeans and 3-4 more commons.

Oh and on monday I got and went through a few more bags of those lentils I mentioned earlier in the list. Nothing really new, but I did find a second seed of that legume with the granualted seed coat (that might or might not be a vetch)

[blueadzuki]

WENDSDAY, FEB.26

Absolutely pathetic trip. I went back to the mung bean place from before (where they had chased me off) but they have swapped already, so no chance of finding OCA's there. I checked some small black soybeans in one place (since most of my good soy finds have been in the smaller kind) but they were uniform too. Checked some bags of senna, but nothing interesting visible there.
Only seeds I did buy was a scoop or two of "wrong" type rice beans from an herb shop. mostly usual there, few off color rice beans, one or two binweed seeds, a "dogbone" mung, a black cowpea. Only thing of any real interest was a very small soybean, of a type I have not seed before, glossy (pretty good indication it's mature, not aborted), slightly yellowish and only about as long as a rice grain. Should be fun to plant in the spring, secobd smallest non-wild soybean I've seen (the greenish one from the bag of Indian coriander is still a bit smaller)

[blueadzuki]

Got a few more lentil bags today, but nothing really new in them (more vetch,more wheat more barley, more of the grail like thing and the artichoke like thing, no surprises I can see.

[blueadzuki]

WED, Mar 05

This probably marked the last trip to Flushing for a while as I am out of places to go (I think I'll try my luck in Elmhurst for a while.)

However I had an okay coda to this seasons hunt. But digging around like a mole at a market, I secured two last bags of "good" rice beans adding one or two more off color adzukis to the planting pile. And another few scoops from the herb shop from last week yielded a few odds and ends, including a seed of the type A wild soybean (one of the few seeds from the regular stuff I am still quite short on.)

[blueadzuki]

Visited the Indian Grocery store across the bridge yesterday. Picked up a few more lentil bags (same brand as always) mostly usual stuff in them but I did find two more of the rough skinned vetch seeds. Well, one and a half. I'll just have to hope the half I have is the half with the radicle and is still growable) and there was one more grasspea seed.
That market also has a tendency to be a little less stringent about tossing out veggies it's feels are not at thier prime, so I was able to get a good hadful of lablab pods far enough down the maturity road to have seeds that have a chance of growing (most had even begin to pink up when I popped them open.) So maybe I'll get some to reach the other end (there has to be SOME lablab out there besides Ruby Moon that can reach mature seed up here.)

[oxbowfarm]

So Jeremy,

How do you go about searching through all these beans? What's your protocol? Small lots at a time or just spread the whole contents out and peck away?