2021 Seed Saving and Grow Out Challenges

[macmex]

Looks like an excellent resource! Jeff McCormick knows his stuff.

[macmex]

That's good to know. I had never heard of adding dish detergent to homemade potting soil.

It has gotten down to 7 degrees here, so far. Just a dusting of snow so far.

[macmex]

What is Super Sun?

[macmex]

Okay, I thought it was some kind of gardening product!

[denweave]

Glad you saved seeds as well. I shaved my heavy hitter seeds from last year so glad I have them.

[macmex]

Bon,

    There's still time to start peppers. I'm starting mine this weekend. 


    I've had experiences with that kind of seed starter. It caught me off guard too.


    I have a scythe with an Austrian style blade. It's good. Here's the link to what I have, though they've sweetened the deal since I got mine, about 12 years ago. Now they throw in a stone and holster for it. I do have to say I'd get the same one from the same company. After ten years of service one of my wooden handles broke. I called Lee Valley Tools and for about $5 they sent me a replacement. It arrived within a week.

Austrian Scythe/ Lee Valley Tools

After I'd had it for at least five or six years I learned that I was using the wrong edge of the hone when I sharpened it. Here's a video which shows great technique for sharpening, though I don't know why the fellow uses two different stones. Anyway, I'm sure with such an ancient tool as the scythe, there is a lot of both science and art to both using and maintaining it.



Congratulations on getting a scythe! 

[macmex]

I don't think leather gloves are washable, at least, if they get washed, I think it harms them when they get washed.

The kind of gloves a person uses is really kind of personal. What one likes another doesn't. I personally like the heavy canvass gloves, but that's for heavy work. I don't wear gloves in the garden very much.

[macmex]

I'm guessing frost, wind or sunburn.

[chrysanthemum]

How are those potatoes doing, Bon?

I’ll concur that I think it looks like some sort of weather damage.  My first guess would have been sunburn just from the picture, but that’s because we’ve been having sweltering days, and so frost just doesn’t come to mind right now.

I went out this evening and took a picture of one of my tomato transplants that has been getting a bit of sunburn the past couple of days.  It has been in the nineties (yuck!).  I’m glad it’s going to be more seasonable after today.  





It is a tomato, though it has potato-leaf foliage.  (I’m using some old seeds that I brought with us when we moved, though they might not be the best choice for a Texas garden.  Last year, though, when I used some old Glacier seeds, I was really surprised at how well they did.). You can see the sunburn on the leaves at the nine o’clock and twelve o’clock positions.  Thankfully this one had nice roots and a good stem that I was able to bury in a trench beside the olla, so I hope it will do well despite its bit of scorching these past couple of days.  

[chrysanthemum]

My next door neighbors have all kinds of poppies coming up now where they had seeded wildflowers a few years ago.  I think they did like the cold and snow.

Thankfully our temperatures are no longer in the nineties.  It was a three-day anomaly (though not than uncommon of one), but we’ll have a cooler spell this week, and I’m glad.

I did manage to get mulch (wood chips with a healthy dose of fresh cedar needles) around the tomatoes this week.  I couldn’t manage before the heat, but it’s there now, and there will be much more heat to come. 

[macmex]

My experience is that when something like that happens and I contact the company, they usually just tell me to keep it.

[chrysanthemum]

Congratulations on success with Golden Bantam. Mine lacked nitrogen last year, and when I got that sorted, I thought I was okay. Little did I know that fire ants actually eat corn. I’m no fan of fire ants as their stings hurt and can make me ill, but I’ve never viewed ants as destructive in the garden. Imported red fire ants are really an entirely different matter, however. They eat corn and okra, apparently, and they went after my young eggplant plants early on in the fall garden. I just learned this spring that they eat potatoes as well. I lost a bunch of corn to them last year (they ate the kernels in the husks, and I didn’t realize). This year I’m being active in baiting mounds that I see on the property. I have some garden-safe outdoor stakes that aren’t specifically for fire ants, but I can use them in the garden if I start to see them about.

Sounds like you’re doing well on the gardening front. What variety(ies) of potatoes do you have?

[chrysanthemum]

Thank you for the comfrey offer, Bon.  I think I’m not ready to undertake a perennial planting at this point, but I really appreciate the suggestion.  I dream of things to do in the future, and I’ve read great things about comfrey.  My mom used to grow a big patch of it when I was little.  It wasn’t for mulch or compost, though.  It was for food, though I don’t actually remember eating it.

My current attempt to get more nitrogen involves rotting down invasive thistles.  We try to return organic matter to the land usually, but thistles have historically gone into our garbage, because they have the ability to germinate seeds even after being uprooted if they’re left on the ground.  I compost, but I don’t trust myself to get hot enough to annihilate thistle seeds.  We have an old rain barrel that we put our latest thistle harvest in, and I put rain water into it.  I stir it periodically, and things are breaking down nicely.  In a couple more weeks, I’ll try to drain off the liquid and dilute it for a nice thistle tea, and I’ll put the residue in one of our compost tumblers.  They have a lot of carbon in them now, and we have tons of leaves that need to be cleaned up.

[macmex]

Bon, I may be trying Golden Giant sweet corn, an open pollinated corn, this year. Sandhill Preservation Center sent me a packet as a free gift. Looks intriguing.

Sandhill Corn

[chrysanthemum]

Just how large of a back yard do you have, Bon? It sounds wonderful.