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Post by galina on May 31, 2010 7:05:07 GMT -5
Can't vote because I have never seen one. Apparently the Swallowtail butterfly (arising from parsley worms) is Britain's largest and also rarest butterfly. I'll be on the lookout.
Thanks for making me 'google' this.
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My peas
May 17, 2010 15:48:42 GMT -5
Post by galina on May 17, 2010 15:48:42 GMT -5
How many peas do you get in each pod? They look nice and strong. Do you always eat them dried? What are they like fresh?
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Post by galina on May 14, 2010 9:37:10 GMT -5
What is the url of the company offering this cucumber?
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Post by galina on May 9, 2010 3:46:01 GMT -5
The ability to produce fruit without fertilisation is not unknown among cucurbits............. I don't know if it's related to pollinator numbers or not. There always seem to be plenty of bees and other insects around. That's what I thought at first. Apparently, in nature, every flower is visited by 8 pollinating insects on average. So I tried multiple handpollination wherever possible. It made little difference (although it is still a good thing to do for diversity within a cultivar). But there is a clear difference when weather is taken into account. In particular temperatures. When we have daytime temperatures of below 16C/60F at flowering time, empty seeds galore. At 21C/70F pollen seems to be far more viable. At 25C/77F and on a sunny day, handpollinating squashes is easy. The recommendation to handpollinate early in the morning is not important for very cool weather gardeners either. Mid-day when it is warm, is a better time (unless we are in one of the very rare heat waves of course). As an aside, there are parthenocarpic tomatoes as well, which produce no or practically no seeds on the first truss, set when the weather is still cool, and a full seed count later. Prof J Baggett's tomatoes, but also Rosalie's Early Orange and one or two others.
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Post by galina on May 4, 2010 18:29:38 GMT -5
This is a lot of work and a lot of documentation. I had to look up the word 'grex' and understand now. Hope the weather will start to cooperate for a very successful season for market growing and for seed saving.
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Post by galina on Apr 30, 2010 17:09:48 GMT -5
Sowed indoors (windowsill) 10 Feb put into frostfree conservatory as soon as they had germinated, hardened off in the greenhouse for a week, planted out 20 March.
Today there are a handful of flowers, joined by Vroege Veense Capucijn and Langedijker Bleekbloei, whose purple flowers are the usual first early candidates.
What really surprised me was how low down on the Laxton's Exquisite plants the flowers started. After all this is a 4ft tall pea, but the lowest flowers appeared near the ground. Tried to pull the plants straight to see exactly how far off the ground, but their tendrils are firmly wrapped around the peasticks and won't allow that.
I haven't grown this variety for a few years and not made notes on its earliness last time. What are yours doing, Robert?
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Post by galina on Apr 26, 2010 11:31:17 GMT -5
Thank you for letting us know about cornishwoman. Glad her garden is thriving. We hope she'll be back very soon and that the stuff on her old harddrive can be rescued off and put on a new harddrive.
When you speak next, please pass on my best.
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Post by galina on Apr 26, 2010 9:45:36 GMT -5
First pea flower today! A white one. Strangely not on any of the really early varieties, but on pea Laxton's Exquisite.
Sorry I just had to share with you. :-)
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Post by galina on Apr 26, 2010 9:40:35 GMT -5
Mortality thanks for the information. It gets a bit tricky with so many peas being called purple podded. Thank you for clarifying. They call them PP Desiree and say they only get to 40 inches. Now I understand your comment Rebsie about Desiree :-). Different cultivar from the 'Purple podded' from HSL but as these are shortish peas it stands to reason that the differences were so pronounced even as little seedlings.
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Post by galina on Apr 26, 2010 9:21:19 GMT -5
Oh dear! The fact that nobody seems to have heard of this squash speaks volumes I fear ..... anybody?
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Post by galina on Apr 26, 2010 9:08:44 GMT -5
Talking as a short and very cool season seed saver, it depends how late in the season squash was harvested. If there is enough time for squash to ripen on the vine (not just get to size, but really mature on the vine), then the seeds will not need any more than nominal after-harvest ripening time. But if squash had to be taken off the vine that did not have maturing time, then a few weeks/months of post harvest storage will make up for this to a degree.
As others have said, empty seeds are a pollination problem. In Britain I get this regularly, although strangely fruit with flat seeds store just as well as fruit with properly full seeds. So many times I had lovely looking squash, handpollinated, and found out months later on cutting open that not a single seed was fat and viable. C maxima pollinate relatively easily in our cold summer conditions, but produce smaller seeds in a cold summer. C moschata are really difficult to get good seeds from and I grow them in a greenhouse for seedsaving. Although c pepo are fairly cold hardy to grow, they often also need the warmth of the greenhouse here for viable pollen and seed production. Seed count is very dependent on the right (in our case warm) weather.
As most of the correspondents here have warmer summers than in Britain, this will not be so interesting, but since you are Notts based and I am Northants based (and living on a ridge), I thought I commiserate and explain in a bit more detail. Summers like 2007 and 08 were dire for squash seed saving, 09 was only slightly better. We need a decent summer. In 2003 it was very easy to save squash seeds and get loads in every fruit. 03 was our last decent summer.
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Post by galina on Apr 17, 2010 5:25:13 GMT -5
Wishing you an excellent gardening year, health and happiness!
Many Happy Returns!
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Post by galina on Apr 17, 2010 5:18:56 GMT -5
Hi Galina, the F1s were mingled green and purple podded - I thought of them as 'Monet' peas - quite nice eaters - shellers. Lanscashire Lad was the pollen parent. I get about 4ft height from Oregon Sugar pod here. Yes, a sweet purple edible podded pea would be delightful. I don't expect I'll get a stunner like Rebsie's Red though - Goldensweet in the family made it special I think! No Rebsie's is a whole new colour - very exciting. That means OS is quite tall and needs support - thanks Kath. I am growing a few for the first time and they are usually referred to as short. I hope there will be a quantity of edible pods among your F2s, that would be nice. Hopefully in both colours too to select a nice candidate, or several, to proceed with. In my cross, all F1s were all green, and recessive yellow showed up again n the F2s. Most yellows were shellers too, but I got lucky with a parchment-free one. Unfortunately yellow shelling peas are not that attractive, but as they were much earlier than the normal shelling peas still interesting.
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Post by galina on Apr 17, 2010 4:51:37 GMT -5
Rebsie the multicoloured tendrils just blow me away. Very pretty indeed
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Post by galina on Apr 16, 2010 14:06:53 GMT -5
Purple Podded - Desiree and Golden Sweet, now planted outside. (Sown indoors to avoid making the mice menu) I can't believe the size difference, they were planted on the same day (you can tell i'm a novice gardener, the little things that excite me) The difference is amazing. Is that Purple Podded from the Heritage seed Library? If so, they will not get anywhere near as tall as Golden Sweet, although still a tall pea (5ft here).
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