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Seed Saving Circle 2024

Started by JanG, May 07, 2024, 06:35:24

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galina

I guess the peat based fen soil has more water holding abilities perhaps?  And celery is a water loving crop, especially if we want it to be fat and juicy.  Celeriac too can never be watered too much, to produce big heads.

I guess a thickish grass mulch to keep the soil damp might help too.  But I have never tried that, just really thinking aloud how to make my celery thicker, juicier and my celeriacs bigger. 

galina


Vetivert

Quote from: JanG on January 23, 2025, 07:40:38
Quote from: Vetivert on January 22, 2025, 20:41:20Hi JanG, is the lettuce Brune d'Hiver a cos or butterhead?

It's a butterhead. I'm hoping it's true. Having grown from my saved seed myself, I just have a little doubt. It should be a butterhead with a slightly red-brown tinge to the outer leaves.
Quote from: galina on January 23, 2025, 12:27:33I have seen it described as a Batavia lettuce.  It is a butterhead, but with crunchier leaves than a 'soft' butterhead. I have seen it listed as a cos too, but this really is not justified when you think of a typical cos, like Lobjoits. 

Sounds wonderful! Can't wait to taste, thank you.

JanG

I wonder whether anyone else has begun to sow seeds yet? I get a lot of pleasure from the first sowings.

I had an interesting experience with @juliev's Czech Early aubergine seeds from 2023.They disappointingly failed to germinate last year. So this year I gave them another try on damp kitchen paper and had 100% germination! Perhaps some seed is more viable after a resting period. Some of course is much better fresh. Seeds never cease to amaze with their varied germination habits. But thank you for several good strong young plants @juliev.

I sowed @vetivert's sweet pea, Valentine, in early January (appropriate to mention today!) and the plants are now about four inches tall and at that stage where it's recommended to pinch out the tips, a job for today perhaps.

I've sown @vetivert's Chinese Pink celery which is just beginning to show on the compost surface. I guess it needs to be under glass or plastic at this stage but the seedlings are pretty hardy it seems. Tiny and slow to develop. 

Otherwise it's time in my schedule to start thinking about sowing some peas. I sowed @juliev's My Bound's bean pea yesterday. I've classified it in the database as a shelling pea rather than a soup pea. HSL describe it as having a nutty flavour reminiscent of broad beans so I'm interested to try it fresh as well as dried. The peas themselves are certainly huge. More pea sowing today, hopefully.

Happy sowing this season, everyone!

galina

#243
A fruit day according to the moon sowing calendar, so absolutely perfect for those early peas.  Yes, Mr Bound's Pea Bean, to give it its full name, is one of the stars of the non sweat peas, great in stews as an alternative to dried, reconstituted beans, as mushy peas or hummus. Pea Bean, because its seeds are as large as a field bean, well nearly so.  A nice tall variety. 

Soup peas are really no different from shelling peas as they also have inedible pods, but there are subtle differences.  The classic shelling pea is white flowered and has sweet tasting, juicy peas inside.  What is also knows as 'garden peas', the pea type found in the frozen foods section of supermarkets with the Captain's logo.  Kelvedon Wonder, Onward and Telephone spring to mind as varieties. 

Soup peas are generally less sweet and more starchy.  Still perfect to eat shelled as green peas, but not with that same sweetness that tempts the gardener to shell and nosh them raw, right there and then in the garden. 

Hope all our seeds will spring into life readily and will grow into beautiful and productive plants before long.  I wonder what it is about aubergines that makes them so difficult to germinate.  I had failures too earlier this year and will be using the paper towel method for my next attempt.  Did they get too wet? I wonder. 

Thank you Jan, happy sowing and good germination for you also. 

JanG

Thanks, Galina, for this interesting clarifying of the role of soup peas as not just for soup. It led to a train of thought in my mind about the relative sweetness of shelling peas. I suppose it would theoretically be possible to use the brix scale on shelled peas. As I'm rather keen on databases, probably to try to sort my otherwise often vague mind, I'm thinking I could subdivide my shelling pea description into sweet shelling pea and non-sweet shelling pea. But I suppose there are degrees in between.
And anyway, I'm getting rather over-geeky here! And of course the term soup pea is useful already for indicating non-sweet shelling pea.

galina

#245
For your 'inner geek', there is even a mangetout pea that is non sweet, called Biskopens gråärt with its interesting red seeds and edible pods.

Yes there are probably degrees of sweetness.  However to what degree this also depends on sunshine hours during pod ripening, like the sweetness of fruit which is less in a lasting cloudy spell and higher in a really sunny spell, would also be interesting.  Maybe even the stage at which the little peas inside are being harvested, ie shelled as petit pois equals sweeter than harvested as garden peas.

Most people use Biskopens as a dry pea, but it is really nice as a mangetout with already developed seeds inside.  A bit like the pea equivalent of Appalachian beans.  As our A4A seed circle donor, Ian Pearson, describes "Attractive picked as small pods and sliced diagonally in salads, showing off the baby red/pink peas within."  https://seedsaverscircle.org/seed-circle/seed-parcel-2013-2/

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