the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

[xdrix]

Very nice beans!

They look sweets.

[flowerbug]

they are coming along, i've found some other out-crosses this year that will be interesting to see what happens next. the above pictured gray and pink beans ended up looking like watermelon seeds when dried down. will have to get pictures of them all eventually. busy season now with bean picking and shelling, putting up gardens for the winter along with other projects trying to get done before it gets too cold out.

[flowerbug]

maybe three more days of staining work on the house and i can be done enough for this season. it depends upon how much nice weather we have in the forecast and how it works out.

for bad weather days i still have beans to shell so that can keep me thinking of being out in the gardens.

[flowerbug]

i keep finding more repairs and prep work to do on the house staining project so i'm still trying to get that all done - which means not much gardening is happening. good weather forecast this week so perhaps i can finally get back to gardening later on.

today will be the tougher day of the week, but after this it gets easier.

[flowerbug]

so many little fixes needed to be done plus weather got rainy for a bit so i wasn't able to get the staining done until last week. now the weather has turned too cold so i am done with this for the year and will have a few small fixup projects for next summer to do too, but on the whole the house is stained and looking much nicer. a lot more work than i ever thought i'd be doing and many things found that should have been fixed when they built the place. last time we stained i must have just told myself to ignore these things because it should have been done. many now are done. just a few more to do.

gardening i was able to put up some more gardens for the winter and get ashes spread and turned in, but still have half a garden outside the fences that needs to be done and several gardens inside the fences... the weather is cold and snowing this week and perhaps i may not get warm enough weather again to do anything until spring. that's ok.

squash i have to get some moved from the garage to inside the house so they don't freeze in storage. eventually over the next few weeks to a month i'll start getting them processed or eaten or given away.

beans i only have a few more to shell out. a fair amount of beans never finished for me this season or were destroyed by deer - so i don't have nearly the amount of bulk beans i'd normally have gotten for this many square feet of gardens, but that's just how it goes sometimes. it did not help to have the house staining project pop up and i still have another project we didn't finish that needs to be done too but again those are going to have to wait until next year.

at the moment just watching it snow a little.

[flowerbug]

the darker half are the ones pictured above after they've dried down further. yes, they do look like watermelon seeds to me.




pictures of some of the green seeded squash processing and comments are at the end of the page at:

www.anthive.com/project/squash/

[xdrix]

Beans for the next year
I any found the time to crossed beans this year but i have get a lot of seeds.

[flowerbug]

it has been a long extended fall season but weeks ago were frosts and the gardens were mostly finished. i just had to get them put up for winter in time. looks like i may just be able to squeak it in tomorrow.

[flowerbug]

i had to bring in the squash from the garage before they could freeze. some of these will be fun to process in the next few months - they're a lot bigger than those i'm used to dealing with.




five Purple Dove potential out-crosses. will have to see what happens with them when i grow them the next few years.

[xdrix]

Beautiful beans and squashs!

I like the two-color blue and pink!

[flowerbug]

Dec 14, 2022 15:55:07 GMT -5 xdrix said:

Beautiful beans and squashs!

I like the two-color blue and pink!

that is very likely the first one i will open up and keep the seeds from. 

[xdrix]

Hi hope you're fine.I will do my first bean cross this year.

Do you have an idea of a bean that i can crossed with my borlotti bean?

[flowerbug]

as it turned out most of the squash were not of the type i'd hoped. of the large squash only one of them all was edible. i kept the seeds from that one and one other squash which was a buttercup.

sadly i had to take the rest outside and put it on the weed pile. all of the large squash were either rotting, rancid smelling and pale yellow, or were not what i wanted for texture. i think perhaps they were frozen at some point. the smaller squash were also mostly not fully developed and so only the buttercup squash was edible. the two color blue and pink squash was not close to what i was hoping it would be so i did not save seeds from that one either.

i didn't get much put up for freezing but at least i did have enough to put some by. luckily we had a good harvest the season before and we still have some in the freezer so we won't be too badly off.

[flowerbug]

Jan 2, 2023 16:24:11 GMT -5 xdrix said:

Hi hope you're fine.I will do my first bean cross this year.

Do you have an idea of a bean that i can crossed with my borlotti bean?

are you going to cross by hand?  i tried to do that this past season and i couldn't see well enough and my hands were not steady enough so i had to stop and let the beans self-fertilize and be happy with the results (and i was ).

i'm not sure what bean i would cross with that one.  when i plant beans i'm generally trying to get them to cross with each other but i don't directly do it as i have to let the bees do it for me and then i have to look at the results and hope that when i replant i can get some new beans to show up and then i select from those and hope the traits are what i'm after.

what are you after with your cross?  what do you want to accomplish?  smaller bean?  pole bean habit?  earlier?  later?  etc...