Erin's land journal

Finished planting things April 8. I got in to cells (most of which are germinating, but there will be some misses). One cell is mostly one individual for plant-out space planning purposes.

Allium (6, but I pack them pretty tight into cells and separate at plant-out)
Artichokes (18)
Asparagus (42)
Basil (48)
Dahlia (24)
Goji berry (2)
Ground cherry (24)
Peppers (144)
Potato (144)
Peruvianum (12)
Rhubarb (12)
Tomato (442)
Tomatillo (40)

Hm, my math isn't adding up, need to recount. Anyhow, 12 flats of 72 cells each I think. All planted between April 3 and 8. I will maybe do some cucumbers later, still not sure.

My apples were also starting to sprout, or many of them are, which is super exciting. I need to get them out of plastic bags and into soil.

Also I'm going to grow F1s for two more hand cross tomatoes: one that's taiga as the parent (pollen parent lost) and one that's carbon as the pollen parent (small red as the mother). They kind of sat on the counter all winter, so I'm not sure how they'll work, but it's exciting.

I'm thinking pretty seriously about keeping a clone of each F1 in the aerogarden so I'm sure to get plenty of F2 seed. Not sure how that will work for full-sized tomatoes; I guess I could try kratky finally for them? F1s have no real need to be tested in soil or anything like that, they just exist to provide as much F2 seed, and thus as many variations in offspring, as possible.

Spring was so slow and cold and now it's so fast, snow is almost gone except for on my mushroom bed and the north side of my house as the sunset swings around and sunlight covers more ground every day. Last year was ultra dry - many wells ran out in January - and we got normal snowpack so it's looking to be a dry spring and likely a bad fire season. Fingers crossed.

Costing out re-covering my greenhouse with soft plastic (cheap, need to redo frequently) or hard plastic (expensive, only needs redoing every 20 years).

Whatever is going on with me is still going on; anytime I do things I'm super exhausted after for sometimes days. Luckily I don't need to do too much right now. Hopefully I'm recovered by plant-out time.

 All three Zestar! apples are in the ground now, along with the two Valiant, one La Crescent, and one Marquette grape. I haven't finished guilding the other two, but the first has its black velvet gooseberry and cinnamon rose and some asparagus to start. I need to flatten more cardboard to mulch a bunch of the guild plants when I put them in. The last apple is pretty cozy with some raspberries and a comfrey plant already. Maybe I'll give it a sentry rose?

I just noticed many of my guilding plants have thorns - gooseberry, rose, raspberry.

This morning I went up and collected pollen from the first atomic orange and sakskatoon white that were pollinating, and put it on some of the gaspe corn that was tasselling over in the Early Riser underplanted bed -- early riser is nowhere near tasselling or silking so the gaspe that were interspersed there needed some additional pollen. I also moved around the morden, saksatoon white, saskatchewan rainbow, and gaspe pollen in the main garden.

The gaspe looks fabulous.

Tomatoes are blooming very heavily, especially some of the minsk early and taiga and the peruvianum. Lots of little green tomatoes in the promiscuous bed and in the minsk early and zesty green plants especially, though the northern mixed bed also has many. The taiga on my deck is the one I want to save seed from, it's super floriferous to the point that it looks like a multiflora a little. I want to snip a cutting from it for hydroponic crosses for sure.

Lucinda is a much slower-to-bloom plant than silvery fir tree, and it seems to be less prolific.

Mikado black has beefsteakier blooms than I remember. Corrie in town has some of my minsk black seeds and she's saying one plant in particular has super beefsteaky flowers compared to the others, I'm interested to see how the fruit present. They are both potato leaf so I don't think it would likely be a cross?

Lots of bumblebees on the tomatoes in the morning.

Some of the first female fruits on the squash shrivelled up, they those plants better get moving if they want to produce before fall. They're sure vining a lot, though, and the melons are flowering like mad so I'm interested to see if either of them make it.

Of the corns, I'll definitely grow gaspe, Saskatchewan rainbow, Saskatoon white, atomic orange, magic manna, and painted mountain again. Probably also cascade ruby gold, though it's just starting to think about tasselling and may not make it. I think open oak party, oaxacan green, montana morado, and maybe early riser aren't going to be fast enough though early riser is going super fast right now.

Of the tomatoes, I'm really enjoing the mixed northern patch. The promiscuous patch is kind of uniform seeming right now, but I absolutely cannot guess at what's going on with the mixed northern one. Note to self: next year only do 6 max each of the standard minsk early, moravsky div, and silvery fir tree and 2 each of named varieties. I want at least 150 or so unknown plants to play with. The dwarves: saucy mary, bundaberg rumball, and uluru ochre are opening buds soon but not quite yet, I'm really hoping they ripen in time. Meanwhile a ton of very, very floriferous volunteer tomatoes are filling the saskatchewan rainbow and assiniboine flint holes left by the crows with a sea of yellow. I think there's also a patch in one of the bean beds that's very friendly looking.

Next year I am definitely planting out some gold nugget and sundream and red kuri squashes to do deliberate pollinations with. I am just not certain that anything that's out there now will actually ripen. If it does there are sure lots of fathers to choose from though.

The bouchard peas have set a nice crop of pods, turnips are sizing up nicely, I remain in love with brassica carinata though it's becoming more of a sauteeing green, and my scattered gai lan is growing nice thick juicy stalks.

I wish I could spend all my time out there. Maybe next year.  

I'm in some seed swap groups, and one of them had a "make-a-wish" thread yesterday where folks just asked for what they want and other folks send it, no swapping necessary. It feels really nice to fill up eight envelopes with my favourite seeds and send them out into the world ("colourful veggies" "surprising tomatoes" "your favourite tomato" "dwarf tomatoes" "things that grow in pots" and such) and to put some extra bits in there for further distribution.

Honestly after paying for postage and little seed envelopes and actual mailing envelopes I'm down some $, and in theory the seeds are actually worth a fair bit, say 5 packets per envelope for 8 envelopes is 40 packets, and I don't think I paid less than $4 per packet for any of them. But I can't think of seeds that way.

The plants just make seeds. The ones that make the most fruit, that are super generous, make the most seeds (except Taiga and Old Italian Pink, which are basically seedless tomatoes even though they're so so good). The tomatoes I want to share are the generous ones that shrugged off my alternating too-cold and too-hot weather and gave me beautiful food. The people I want to share seeds with are, well, everyone. I don't want to exclude someone who has a little guerilla side-of-apartment or fire-escape garden, I don't want to exclude someone who has an overgrown backyard and no time, I don't want to exclude someone with weird soil or just slight shade or maybe a broiling south-facing patio. I don't want to exclude someone who prioritizes eating today over some seeds that might grow them food in awhile.

And the reason I did my variety trial, the reason I grew SO MANY tomatoes, is that there will be some tomatoes that fit every situation (short cool summers in clay soil with intermittent heat dome and no more than once-per-week watering, for example) and I wanted to find the ones that fit mine. That's the same reason that folks who garden anywhere but especially in difficult situations should have access to, not just seeds, but to lots of different kinds of seeds. $4 a packet doesn't sound like a lot, but if you need a tomato that fights the weeds because you have no time, or one that grows in that 8" of soil between foundation and sidewalk, you might need to go through ten or twenty or thirty different packets to find the right one, depending on the advice you can find about your kind of spot.

So I want all these different seeds to be out there, and spread all around -- from the maritimes through Quebec to right here in BC -- so they continue to exist and multiply fill the niches that need filling. That way more people can find success in gardening over the long term, because they'll have this diversity to grow from.

So yeah, sending out these seeds feels really good. Eight more people growing my favourite tomato? It's that much more likely to live on. I'm that much more likely to share the experience of biting into that particular one with someone in a hundred or two hundred years.

It would be great if I could make money from this -- goodness knows growing this all costs me something, and the farm can always use money -- but it's even more great to share these seeds with so many people, I think.

Alright, here's what I saved seed from:

Green grocery store cherry - firm/doesn't get real soft, really good rich slightly acid flavour, relatively early

Karma miracle bicolour - green pointy saladette, tangy bright strong, one of my favourite flavours this year, ripened a little before frost but I might have missed it ripening earlier, I need to put the greens in their own row next year, some fused into doubles

Karma purple multi - slightly bigger than cherry tomatoes, really tasty sweet/rich, tended to fuse into doubles, variable size

Taiga multicolour heart - big, early ripening, about five per plant, greenish, gets very sweet but I like it a little earlier when still a bit tart, not many seeds per fruit

Ambrosia red - tasty easily splitting cherry

Bloody butcher red - one of the earliest, not a huge producer, ok flavour

Brad red - mid-ripening, I didn't sufficiently differentiate this from the other reds

Cabot red - one of the early ripening reds, ok flavour, fairly prolific, tidy plant

Cole red - one of the early ripening reds, fairly good flavour, fairly prolific, tidy plant

Glacier red - one of the early ripening reds, erratic size, fairly prolific, tidy plant

Katja red - late to fruit but all fruit sized up quickly and ripened at once right before frost, extremely prolific, taste ok, one of the bigger ones

Maya and Sion red - early, but not super prolific, very tasty

Minsk early red - winner of the reds, earliest and most prolific, not the tastiest though, tidy plant

Moravsky div red - one of the early ripening reds, fairly prolific, maybe a week later than minsk early, tidy plant

Silvery fir tree red - beautiful foliage, tidy plant, lots of fruit that ripened just before frost and right after I brought them in, acid flavour. No obvious difference between annapolis and heritage harvest one.

Sweet cherriette red - tiny red cherry tomato, nice small plants and pretty early, suitable for indoors, one of the earliest indoors, pretty ok flavour

Uralskiy ranniy red - dwarf tidy plant, fruited one fruit very early then all the rest were late, need to try removing fruit when I transplant this time

Matt's wild cherry red - tiny red cherry tomato, big sprawling plant, ripened a lot of tomatoes but needs lots of space, nice flavour

Ron's carbon copy black - really tasty mid-late cherry

Mikado black - early very tasty nicely shaped black, tidy plant, definitely a favourite

Rozovaya bella black - weirdly crazed/russetted this year, was very tasty last year, smallish plant

Kiss the sky purple - ripened very few in time, one of the best flavours though, may have mixed this up with some Karmas

Galina yellow - prolific tasty yellow cherry, a little later than some and a bit more of a sprawling plant

Northern sun yellow - it ripened later this year but I brought lots in to ripen, mild, relatively tidy plant

****

Exserted orange - tasty little orange tomato, I'm interested to see what pollen this has collected

"Late good beefsteak" - this is a couple red tomatoes that ripened indoors that were just really tasty so I saved the seeds

"Tasty firm bicolour orange/green berry" - this was from the promiscuous tomato row, it stayed relatively crunchy and had this great zingy flavour. Interested to see if it breeds true

"Late rainbow mix" - I brought in a ton of tomatoes green and have been collecting seeds from the tastiest and colourful ones. There is definitely galina, mikado black, ron's carbon copy, karma miracle, some of the better reds, some purples, just all sorts

"Fall mix" - I don't remember what was in this but I saved it because it was excellent, it's probably mostly reds

"Dark cherry mix" - this might be Karma purple multi or kiss the sky, it was another set that was so tasty I had to save some. Maybe Ron's carbon copy is also in here?

"Minsk and green cherry mix" - two of my favourites were knocked over by the cat so they are a mix now

"Promiscuous A" is some of the best tasting and size fruit from the promiscuous row. Hopefully they've picked up pollen from other tomatoes and done some cross-pollination. No idea what this will bring but I'm super excited to see.

"Promiscuous B" ripened but were for some reason not preferable - bland, or weird shaped. They'll still have crossed etc and honestly early ripening is still a nice trait to have.

(I might have small amounts of Old Italian Pink for myself but none ripened before frost)