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I made a blog notepad last year but failed to use quite a few of the ideas..one of them, however, has stayed in my mind, the “hungry gap” idea…even though I still consider myself to be an incompetent kitchen gardener (oh, now *there’s* the name I should have used for my blog!), in spite of the best efforts of my better half to make me organise myself and provide a garden that stuff can grow in, it’s still fun sometimes to think just how many ingredients each week we manage to provide for ourselves. Again though I fear this is mostly of interest to me, so I’ve started another page for it, to accompany the planting diary – Harvests 2009 – and can keep my boasting/reassuring/musing out of the way unless anyone else is interested!
Posting hiatus may be put down to sheer indecisiveness and lack of industry. Hoping to resume better than normal service, and will start with my first, hopefully successful pollination* of a squash flower.
I finally found foot-space on the bed which contains Marina di Chioggia and Olive squashes, and looked about for likely victims to pollinate. Really, I am anxious to produce seed from the Olive, as I can buy Marina di Chioggia quite easily. However as it is the nicest squash I’m personally acquainted with, I was happy to give it a go when I found that only this variety had with a matching pair of nearly-ready-to-open flowers, (with the distinctive yellow colour showing at the top and the flowers starting to change shape).
In the past I’ve been advised even by keen food gardeners not to bother saving squash seed – the cucurbits seem to be extremely tarty and will breed with anything they can share pollen with. However they are relatively conservative in that they don’t seem to like to breed with other species – eg, Real Seeds recommends its West Indian Gherkins for those growing hybrid cucumbers because as a different species you won’t get bitter fertilised cucumbers if you grow them in the same greenhouse – http://www.realseeds.co.uk/cucumbers.html).
Even more encouragingly, a lot of seed saving guidelines recommend squashes as a good starting point for hand pollination, because the flowers are large, the pollen plentiful, and male and female easily identifiable even from a very early stage. And with winter squash, you will allow the fruit to fully ripen for eating, so you won’t lose any of your crop as you might with courgettes.
So I’ve been looking for a chance to put in to practice the guidelines from http://www.realseeds.co.uk/wintersquash.html and from Sue Stickland’s Back Garden Seed Saving. I don’t have access to perforated plastic bread bags as we make all our own bread, but I do have a lot of unusable wool leftovers, some of it in a rather fetching shade of red. I gently but securely tied up each flower at the tip to prevent it opening the next day – the red wool makes it easier to spot the flowers. This morning I checked on them and untied the male flower, where I was fairly sure I could see pollen, but I tied it back up again until the sun had hit the bed and I thought both flowers might be more amenable to my matchmaking. As I only had one of each flower I cut the male flower off, stripped the petals and used the whole stamen to rub pollen on to the stigma – there’s a very good picture of this on the Real Seed’s squash page referred to above. Once finished I tied the female flower back up again to prevent any insects bringing other pollen to it and competing with my “work”!
Now, I’m not at all sure this is going to work. The flowers may have been too young? I was forced to use a male and female from the same plant for now which isn’t ideal, although Sue Stickland says it is acceptable at a push. Having to tie up the female flower strikes me as not such a good idea as wrapping it with a more airy perforated bag, for example (it’s just struck me that old tights might be a good alternative). And there are probably other things I’ve not thought of yet. But I’m feeling rather pleased with myself just for trying, it hasn’t done any harm to try, and if it does fail at least I will be able to learn from it for my next exploit when, I hope, I get a chance to try the technique out on the Olive squash (where even the unfertilised “embryo” fruit are whoppers!).
(*Why is pollination spelled with an i and not an e as in pollen?)
I haven’t been entirely lazy all the time I’ve not been posting and have a pile of photos to help with getting back up to date, so hope to add a bit more soon. In the meantime, the most relevant picture I could find – the first flower on our Nano Verde di Milano courgettes, from early June which we’ve been eating for about a month now.
Weekend of 19-20 April
Sowed cucurbits for the propagator
6x Black Forest F1 climbing courgette (T+M)
4x Squash early yellow straightneck (Real Seeds)
3x Gherkins Parisian Pickling (Real Seeds)
2x Cucumber Flamingo F1 (Wallis Seeds)
Once these are out, Loofa and winter squash will go in. Squash are something I’ve yet to succeed much with seed saving yet, although last year’s loofa seeds are germinating in test pots so that’s rather gratifying. This year I’ll be trying Olive from the HSL.
Potted up as many tomatoes as have pots for – 9 toms and 3 peppers lined up for a brother’s greenhouse, and sister and a couple of friends are hopefully going to rehome some others. OH divided another yacon and potted up two of the largest ones.
Peas seem to be doing OK, adding crushed baked eggshells as they become available.
Bad news is the discovery of vine weevil grubs in our precious rhubarb pots. I suspected we had them last year, and now regret not taking some action at the time, as one plant is nearly dead and another starting to look sick. I have ordered some nematodes from the Organic Gardening catalogue, along with some coir bricks, of which more later, but chemicals haven’t looked so attractive in years…
22/4/08
One of our Buff Sussex hens laid an egg today. Nothing momentous except it was the first one this year, and our ladies are 7 years old. We don’t expect much from them, and as long as they are fit and healthy, we’re happy for them to enjoy their retirement, clearing up the odd slug or eight, providing compost, and stealing broccoli leaves, blackcurrants, strawberries, tomatoes, peas…hmmm. I actually admire those who are able to dispatch their laying hens humanely and make use of the meat, but these were our first birds, and have taught us – me especially – so much, that they well deserve their time in the sun now.
13/04/08
Sea kale cuttings – two of our three seed-grown seakale Lily White failed to show this spring. Thinking we might as well stop watering the pots, I emptied them out, to find fat, firm yellow roots curled around the bottom under the rotted crown of the plant. They were too curly to make cuttings as long as my books recommend, and rather less than pencil thin in some cases, but all the same I thought it was worth trying some root cuttings (called “thongs”, what fun), and felt terribly professional making my diagonal and flat cuts to differentiate the direction of the roots when I put the cuttings in to their new pots. It’s also, I believe, not the right time to take root cuttings, but if I did everything at only the right time, there’d be a lot I didn’t do at all…
Also, potted out 10 Victorian Purple Podded peas in a huge tub, and 12 Parsley Peas (which don’t grow so high) in another. Ideally this means at a later stage I can move the two tubs a distance apart and be perfectly happy that I’m saving pure seed – peas are one of the things this matters least with of course, but as I want to protect my few seedlings from the ravages of slug, snail and chicken, I might as well take advantage of it and separate them too. The parsley peas tendril/leaves are showing more clearly now – I learn from Rebsie of Daughter of the Soil that these may be known as hypertendrils – see http://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.com/2008/04/things-we-dig-up-in-garden-part-two.html for more on the offspring of parsley peas.
14/04/08
Sowed about 40 stations of Parsnip Guernsey Half Long from the HSL and a tiny patch of Scorzonera from (ahem) Lidl. In another very, verylarge tub as there’s currently not a lot of space available in the ground. A few more parsnip seed will probably go in the ground though, as I have proven to myself that old parsnip seed doesn’t actually germinate (I believe a lot of things I read in books but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to try for yourself!)
And finally, ribes magellanicum – potted up 12 seedlings (one largish plant and 11 tiny ones) in to a multipurpose with John Innes. This plant, from Chiltern Seeds, has taken over a year to germinate, having been abandoned in disgust to the (cold) greenhouse over winter. I actually wanted ribes aureum, the golden currant, of which has many good things to say, but Chiltern ran out and offered these as a replacement – not so heavily lauded, but they sound promisingly tough: http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Ribes+magellanicum
Sowed sweet basil on the windowsill.
Experiment – Suma tomatoes, from a can. I’m sure that I have grown from a tin when I was even littler than I am now, but I can’t find anyone definitely saying they have done this , so I wanted to see if I was just imagining it…with a little space in the propagator there’s no harm in trying. About 40 seeds have gone in, to give a good chance of some germinating if they are going to at all. It’s just to see if you *can* (aha) do it, and I promise I will humanely dispatch any resulting seedlings. Honest.
Elsewhere there has been excellent germination on all the proper tomatoes, transplanted chillis are doing well in spite of the snow and frost, beetroot, calendula, and rainbow carrots germinating in the greenhouse. Parsley and cosmos standing up OK to being moved to the greenhouse. I think that’s it for now, everything else seems to be stalling until it stops being quite so arctic.
This is the latest we’ve sown tomatoes for quite a few years..we could still hang on a bit but most of them will remain in the greenhouse so it seems a reasonable time. Three (maybe four now) Ballerina seedlings are already on the bathroom windowsill but the bulk went in yesterday. We tried Black Cherry last year and I really liked it (quite a few people seem to take it or leave it) so wanted to try a couple more dark varieties this year. No room for Black Cherry as a result though!
Green Tiger
Saved from M&S fruit bought last year. Quite tasty, even given that they were probably under-ripe and over-chilled, with burgundy flesh behind green and burgundy striped flesh, cherry tomatoes. Have a picture somewhere I think. The only question is..cordon, or bush? I grew a few plants last year, three in each way, but they were started quite late and grown outdoors – all did equally badly so we couldn’t reach any conclusions. Haven’t been able to find a suggestion of how you tell a cordon from a bush variety without waiting for it to be too late!
Purple Ukraine
A cordon from Real Seeds, purple plum shaped tomatoes, sounds promising.
Black Master
Be careful if you try to Google this one…it turned up on Real Seeds’ site after I’d already got my main order but when the Yacon turned up too I thought I could treat myself to a packet. It seems to be a beefsteak, cordon type, the photo on their site shows some cracking in the fruit.
My Girl
This is my new tomato from the HSL this year and the one I shall grow most of. If I remember the catalogue right it’s a cordon, thin skinned, few seeds, a commercial variety from the 50s, pepper shaped, whatever that may mean. I’m hoping to eventually pick a regular tomato which is edible fresh but thick enough to make good sauce for freezing, and this sounded promising.
Saltspring Sunrise
Seed from 2006 from HSL seed. Along with the Ballerina, I’m growing a few of these this year to maintain my seed stock. I need to check it against the HSL catalogue, but remember it as being fairly tasty, normalish tomato, varying in size, and I think it’s a bush type.
Other sowings
Field beans from some friends as an experiment
Canadian Wonder dwarf beans which are probably far too old..it’s a bit early for these really but I suspect they won’t germinate anyway and if so I will be able to make a bit more room in my seed box for those beans who *do* want to do some work, so there.
Some more spinach as the first lot germinated badly
Bath cos lettuce from the Heritage Seed Library. I’ve been encouraged by Sue Stickland’s book that I might be able to successfully save seed from these (failed in the past with Bronze Arrow..but then, I wasn’t very taken with Bronze Arrow anyway so have lost little sleep over it). By all accounts this should be a tasty lump of lettuce, which will be a first…
Sowed…
Beetroot Red Ace F1 (T&M)
Dwarf beans Ferrari and Rocquencourt (both Seeds of Italy) in to root trainers with Golden Sweet mange tout peas (Real Seeds), soaked peas Victorian Purple Podded and Parsley Pea (both HSL)
Hungarian Blue Breadseed poppy (Chiltern Seeds)
Cosmos, cerinthe and calendula, which with nasturtiums, sweet peas, and poached egg plant are about all the flowers we will do this year. They’re all reasonable for insects and, along with lots of lavender, hope they will help with the HDRA (Garden Organic) bumble bee survey we hope to participate in this year
Potted up lots of chillis…
4 Czech Black
10 Dedo de Mocha
9 Kaibi Round
4 Jalapeno
2 Rocoto
Once soaked, the HSL peas went in to root trainers, in the unheated back bedroom. We’ve had Parsley Pea before but the chickens got to the seed pods before I did – it grows few if any tendrils and replaces them with copious amounts of leaves which you are supposed to nip off young and use as a vegetable/salad…pods as well, but I don’t recall the taste of those. We have come to the conclusion that mange tout/sugar snap peas are better for us at the moment for yield and ease of use and the Golden Sweet was lovely last year. The Victorian Purple Podded from HSL is supposed to be edible whole when young, so we shall see – the advantage being that purple pods are more visible among the leaves. Of course this year most of the pods will have to be left to mature for seed saving but I think we deserve a nibble or two…
Just to keep track of this year’s plantings so far:
PEPPERS
Dedo de Mocha
Jalapeno
Kaibi Round
Rocoto. Or Rotoco. Its leaves are fuzzy, like my memory.
Czech Black
All the above from Real Seeds with typically reliable germination, (except the Czech Black but the seed is from 2007 and a year on top of my wardrobe will do that to an organism).
An F1 Thai Dragon looks to have successfully overwintered and prognosis isn’t through yet for some Pretty in Purple and Trifetti plants. Therefore, sowed a few extra seeds of Trifetti, as they are home saved, from the HSL and it will be interesting to see if they come true.
Keeping the Trifetti company in the propagator now, some tomatoes (bush, Ballerina, home saved from the HSL) and echinacea Magnus. Also a couple more Rotoco/Rocoto, because they’re cute and furry.
Tonight, I’ve just put 16 Golden Sweet mangetout peas in to Rootrainers, having soaked them over the weekend they’ve already all put out roots. Waiting to sprout are dwarf beans Ferrari, Rocquencourt and some very old (2004 at least) Canadian Wonder. These are all a bit of an experiment but we have space for a pot or two of early beans in the greenhouse, and Ferrari did fairly well on this front last year.
Finally, some Oca pure white, saved from last year. I do buy stuff from people other than Real Seeds honest. We are trying out the claim that you can plant the tiny tubers and eat the tubbies by planting half and half to see whether there’s much difference in the harvest.
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