Eating Things To Save Them

Marketers tend to only offer the varieties that they sell the most of. As time goes by, this results in certain varieties being dropped. This happens both with fruits and vegetables as well as animals. Sometimes people will keep passing on the disappearing species, such as heirloom tomatoes, but sometimes they just disappear forever.

Here is an interesting idea in the times people eat more of these endangered varieties as this will, in turn, drive up market demand and increase the incentives to breed these species.

New York Times Story

Sunflower

The Circle Of Life

A lot was written in the newspapers and gardening blogs about what tough year this was for growing things. In addition to this being a very rainy and very cold year, there was also a tomato fungus that impacted in a good part of the east coast. In spite of all the troubles that people had in getting plants to grow where they wanted to grow, here are several examples I've found recently of things just growing without any help:

I had been sprouting seeds in trays on the patio earlier in the year. Here shiso and basil sprout next to the patio from seeds which most likely dumped from the sprouting trays.



At the end of the year last year, there were some green tomatoes left on the vine which Sean was tossing around. On the right of the shiso patch is a grape tomato plant which grew from one of those discarded tomatoes.



I had transplanted some tomato plants which later died, but which had dropped a lot of tomatoes which rotted on the ground before doing so. Now there are dozens of small tomato sprouts in that spot.



I had hung some pea plants upside down to dry for saving the seeds. Here a few peas must have fallen off the drying vines and sprouted on their own.

Seed Saving - Tomatoes

Tomatoes are in full swing now and we have more than we can use ourselves. Next week I'll probably try to make some sauce, but this week I'm saving the seeds for next year.

1. Select the best fruit which will carry on those good genes to the next season. Free of cracks, good shape, good color, and plants that have a lot of fruit are all things to look for.

2. Slice open the tomato and put the seeds in a small bowl. Cover the seeds with 1/2 - 1 inch of water and place the bowl in a warm, dark place. Let the bowl sit there two to three days until it starts to ferment. That little sack around the tomato seed is there to keep it from sprouting inside the tomato and this process will remove the sack.

3. Skim off any junk which float to the top of the bowl.

4. Gently rinse the seeds under running water.

5. Spread the seeds on a dry paper towel to dry. Throw out any seeds which are brown, green or otherwise look odd. Let the seeds sit for a few days until completely dry. Store them for next year in a cool dry place.

3.

Mid Summer Planting

Last year I got a copy of Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long which is an excellent book, but I got it too late in the year to actually do anything with it.

This year, the very rainy June knocked out a few plants with root rot and the peas and the lettuce, both of which are early season varieties, are drying up and going to seed leaving me with a decent sized empty space.

Seeds of Change had some good suggestions on their web site for late season planting and I dug out my seed box looking for varieties that I had on hand that would be ready in 60 days or so. I planted pole beans, swiss chard, and some summer squash and all have sprouted very quickly. I also transplanted some Ramapo tomatoes which had not been doing too well in pots on the patio and they have almost doubled in size in just one week.

Seed Saving - Purple Peas

Peas are an early season crop that like the weather slightly cool. As the days are getting hotter and longer, the pea vines are now turning brown and it is time to start saving their seeds. This year I had planted Purple Peas from the Hudson Valley Seed Library.

1. Save from the best stock which will pass on their good genes to the next generation. The one that climbed to the top of the trellis first or the one that started to look like a small shrub rather than a bean bush are good choices. Make sure the plants you pick are free of disease or any other problems. Take from more than one plant to add some diversity.


2. Select the best fruit. Do you have fruit that you took a picture of to show off? Those are the ones for saving.


3. Let the fruit dry on the plant until the pod turns brown. This will usually be 4 – 6 weeks past the time you would have picked the fruit for eating. If you are doing this late in the season and the weather is turning cold or wet, pull the entire plant and hang it upside down where it is warm and dry until the pod is finished drying. Now should be early enough to let them dry in the field.


4. Shell the peas as if you were preparing them for dinner. Discard any seeds which are unusually small, wrinkly, mushy or otherwise odd. Place the seeds on a cookie sheet or paper towel and put them in a warm dry place allowing them to dry further. Do not put them in the oven, toaster or other artificial heat source as this cook them and render them useless for planting.


5. Put the seeds in a container and store them in a cool, dry place. An envelope like a seed company would use is more than sufficient or for larger quantities a jar or piece of Tupperware will work well.

Late Blight Fungus

A recent article in the New York Times explains about a tomato blight that “has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may determine whether the outbreak abates or whether tomato crops are ruined”.

It seems one of the culprits is a single nursery which supplies many of the big box stores where the staff are not trained to spot problems like this. The article also explains how to spot the symptoms of the disease and references advice on using a fungicide to treat it. Given, however, that the purpose of growing your own vegetables is to avoid additives this is not very encouraging.

I’ve written in a number of older posts about the saving seeds and starting plants from seeds and here is one more example where it pays off and while my plants are not currently infected, if they do become so it will not be because I carried it home with me.