Gardening: (2016– )

haresfur · January 28

It has not been a stellar season for gardening. Here is my entire onion harvest and my one lonely fennel.

FauxPas · February 9

OMG, the seed catalogs are making me crazy! I want everything and I don't even have a real garden. I just have a few small raised beds and an assortment of pots. The garden stores are tempting us in with all kinds of offers and I CAN'T RESIST! Help! 🙂

Edited February 9 by FauxPas (log)

Kerry Beal · February 9

26 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

OMG, the seed catalogs are making me crazy! I want everything and I don't even have a real garden. I just have a few small raised beds and an assortment of pots. The garden stores are tempting us in with all kinds of offers and I CAN'T RESIST! Help! 🙂

Resistance is futile!

chromedome · February 9

Just gonna leave this here...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/06/1228868005/purple-tomato-gmo-gardeners

dcarch · February 9

1 hour ago, chromedome said:

Just gonna leave this here...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/06/1228868005/purple-tomato-gmo-gardeners

Soon, there will be tomatoes with Bacon and lettuce DNA .

Just think how much time we can save making a BLT.

dcarch

AlaMoi · February 9

here's the bottom line to that:

"

Pumplin measures success by whether or not a large number of consumers will embrace the health benefits, color and taste of the new tomato.

"Then it chips away at this negative perception of GMOs and that will enable other products to get out to market that deliver really solid benefits," he says. Benefits that include climate change, sustainability, health and nutrition.

"

'color and taste of the new tomato' - in English, it doesn't taste like /as good as a tomato?

benefits climate change - uhmmm, er,,,, how? zactly"

sustainability - it's a GMO hybrid. it is not sustainable to the next generation. you want sustainable, go with open pollination.

'health and nutrition' . . . . eggs are bad. eggs are good. eggs are bad . . . mouth music of totally unfounded/unproven claims.

chromedome · February 10

2 hours ago, AlaMoi said:

here's the bottom line to that:

"

Pumplin measures success by whether or not a large number of consumers will embrace the health benefits, color and taste of the new tomato.

"Then it chips away at this negative perception of GMOs and that will enable other products to get out to market that deliver really solid benefits," he says. Benefits that include climate change, sustainability, health and nutrition.

"

'color and taste of the new tomato' - in English, it doesn't taste like /as good as a tomato?

benefits climate change - uhmmm, er,,,, how? zactly"

sustainability - it's a GMO hybrid. it is not sustainable to the next generation. you want sustainable, go with open pollination.

'health and nutrition' . . . . eggs are bad. eggs are good. eggs are bad . . . mouth music of totally unfounded/unproven claims.

My interpretations of those were, in that order:

Color and taste: "Once they get past the idea that it's purple, it actually tastes pretty good."
Benefits/climate change: He wasn't talking about the tomato here. But if the tomato opens the door to other transgenic products, they could work on things that require less irrigation or fertilizing, for example (there's been some research on giving other plants the kind of nitrogen-fixing capability that legumes have. Or crops that can be grown more intensively, so they require less deforestation for agricultural land. Lots of possibilities.

Sustainability: see above. If it requires fewer inputs but can still be produced intensively, that's a long step back toward balancing Big Ag's ledger.

Health and nutrition: Tweaking plants to be more nutritious, as opposed to being "Roundup Ready" or what have you. I've seen research charting a long, slow decline in the nutritive content of most produce over the past 70-odd years (don't have it bookmarked, but could probably Google it up if you're interested). It would be nice to reverse that.

I started off GMO-skeptical a couple of decades ago, but have come around to the view that it's like any other form of "processing." It's not innately good or bad, it's a question of how it's deployed and to what ends. If it winds up giving us more nutritious food at less environmental cost (and yes, I do recognize exactly how much heavy lifting "if" is doing in that sentence) then I'm all for it.

RWood · February 15

On 2/8/2024 at 9:00 PM, FauxPas said:

OMG, the seed catalogs are making me crazy! I want everything and I don't even have a real garden. I just have a few small raised beds and an assortment of pots. The garden stores are tempting us in with all kinds of offers and I CAN'T RESIST! Help! 🙂

Yep that is me. I've got so many seeds that I just had to have, and I really don't have that much space. We have an acre lot, but there are so many trees, we don't have that much sun.

So, we put in some raised beds and are going to give it a shot in our one sunny place.

Garlic is planted, my mom is going to plant potatoes. I will be trying my black tomatoes, brown jalapeños, purple cherokee tomato, arugula, basil, and some type of cherry tomato.

I bought watermelon radish, french carrots, other colors of tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, etc. I gotta stop these delusions of grandeur I've got 🤪.

chromedome · February 17

A cool idea researchers in Florida came up with (obviously, lots of work needed for this to scale, etc, but still interesting):

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/flowers-grown-floating-on-polluted-waterways-can-help-clean-up-nutrient-runoff/

Senior Sea Kayaker · February 17

On 2/8/2024 at 10:00 PM, FauxPas said:

OMG, the seed catalogs are making me crazy! I want everything and I don't even have a real garden. I just have a few small raised beds and an assortment of pots. The garden stores are tempting us in with all kinds of offers and I CAN'T RESIST! Help! 🙂

Reading seed catalogues without first having a garden plan is equivalent to going food shopping hungry and without a list 😇 (not that I haven't been guilty of doing so).

Edited February 17 by Senior Sea Kayaker (log)

FauxPas · February 17

16 minutes ago, Senior Sea Kayaker said:

Reading seed catalogues without first having a garden plan is equivalent to going food shopping hungry and without a list 😇 (not that I haven't

been guilty of doing so).

I have a garden plan in my mind. Unfortunately, it's far more generous than the space I actually have available, ha. 😄

I have offered to share seeds with a couple of friends. We did that last year and it worked out pretty well. Also shared some seedlings that we each started.

dcarch · February 17

3 hours ago, FauxPas said:

Reading seed catalogues without first having a garden plan is equivalent to going food shopping hungry and without a list 😇

3 hours ago, FauxPas said:

I have a garden plan in my mind. Unfortunately, it's far more generous than the space I actually have available, ha. 😄

What is the antonym of "PLAN"? 🤥

This is my 2024 tomatoes seedling start tags.

Working on tags for other vegetables.

dcarch

Senior Sea Kayaker · March 1

Window herb garden bottom left clockwise: Thai basil and green onions, chives, cilantro, little gem lettuce, sweet basil, newly germinated mix of leaf lettuce and in the central pots from the bottom Italian parsley, garlic chives and dill.

Growth is keeping up with usage.

Trimmed my basil plant and am letting it go to seed.

chromedome · March 11

Alex, I'll take "Things I didn't expect to see in the gardening section," for $800?

(It's actually only $29.99 CDN, but that doesn't really fit the catchphrase)

chromedome · March 21

Show of hands?

image.png.f2677e1efc80b4f5e976f4a670746dc1.png

TicTac · March 21

Got my seed order from Incredible Seed Co out in NS - lovely owners to work with.

They have such a great and unique selection, could not help to grab a 'strawberry spinach' cross - Yes - berries, growing on a spinach plant!

Less than 2 weeks away from when I start my Pepper seeds

2 weeks after, tomatoes - then 3 weeks before planting, cukes - rest I will direct sow. (spinaches, lettuces, bush beans, snap peas, clatonia, and a few others).

It's spring and this -10 nonsense can piss off already!

chromedome · March 21

4 hours ago, TicTac said:

Got my seed order from Incredible Seed Co out in NS - lovely owners to work with.

They have such a great and unique selection, could not help to grab a 'strawberry spinach' cross - Yes - berries, growing on a spinach plant!

My father grew that in his garden for a while. The fruit taste like spinach, rather than strawberries, but that's fine... they're still a pretty cool salad garnish.

One thing to be aware of, whether you consider it a positive or a negative, is that it will self-seed and come back year after year. It's only modestly invasive in our climate, but it's worth knowing.

TicTac · March 22

19 hours ago, chromedome said:

My father grew that in his garden for a while. The fruit taste like spinach, rather than strawberries, but that's fine... they're still a pretty cool salad garnish.

One thing to be aware of, whether you consider it a positive or a negative, is that it will self-seed and come back year after year. It's only modestly invasive in our climate, but it's worth knowing.

Well that's a bummer! The blurb on their website says they taste sweet and almost mullberry like. If it tastes like spinach, only thing it will be good for is a gag joke! LOL

I believe this is in the wild spinach family, so from what I gather, super healthy - if it spreads, so be it!

Thanks for the heads up though.

chromedome · March 22

59 minutes ago, TicTac said:

Well that's a bummer! The blurb on their website says they taste sweet and almost mullberry like. If it tastes like spinach, only thing it will be good for is a gag joke! LOL

I believe this is in the wild spinach family, so from what I gather, super healthy - if it spreads, so be it!

Thanks for the heads up though.

It may well be that they develop more sweetness in favorable climates (you're in BC, IIRC?).

TicTac · March 22

1 hour ago, chromedome said:

It may well be that they develop more sweetness in favorable climates (you're in BC, IIRC?).

Southern Ontario

Though I do love each of our coasts!

chromedome · March 22

Well, southern Ontario is probably a bit balmier, too. My parents' acreage was in a microclimate that give them a shorter season than they'd had elsewhere, with frosts coming a bit later and a bit earlier. They made out just fine, anyway - my father cut back on the size of their garden because he was growing more than they could eat or give away - but it did cost them a few years' headaches as their "old, reliable" favorites from other gardens around the province failed to thrive in that particular spot.

My father enjoyed trying oddball varieties. Aside from the strawberry spinach I can recall him growing walking-stick kale, "rat-tail" radishes (grown for the edible seed pods, rather than the root), and a German tomato that was bizarrely knobby, and could be pulled apart like monkey bread into pieces about the size of a grape/cherry tomato.

lemniscate · March 22

2 hours ago, chromedome said:

Well, southern Ontario is probably a bit balmier, too

This reminds me of some produce in the "Sun Parlour" area of Canada would ripen faster than the American (SE Michigan) side and the Canadian farmers would beat the locals to market (mainly Eastern Market, Detroit). My Dad said that that area of Ontario had a general slope south to the sun/soil temps was friendlier in early growing year.

I also have a vague memory of a CBC show called Sun Parlour Country.

BeeZee · April 4

I'll make this the absurdly silly gardening question. I don't have a garden, I don't have time to keep a garden...but I'd like to get some container cherry tomato plants and keep them on my deck (southern exposure, lots of sunlight). Do birds or garden rodents (we have rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, chipmunks) eat cherry tomatoes? I have some 2x4's in the basement and could buy screen/netting to make some kind of covers...

Kerry Beal · April 4

1 hour ago, BeeZee said:

I'll make this the absurdly silly gardening question. I don't have a garden, I don't have time to keep a garden...but I'd like to get some container cherry tomato plants and keep them on my deck (southern exposure, lots of sunlight). Do birds or garden rodents (we have rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, chipmunks) eat cherry tomatoes? I have some 2x4's in the basement and could buy screen/netting to make some kind of covers...

Yes they do.

rotuts · April 4

@BeeZee

squirrels love tomatoes.

back in my Tomato Days , I had three rows , each containing 8 plants.

when ripe , squirrels would climb up the tomato's individual enclose , grab nice one

ave a chomp or two discard the rest ( 99 % )

then if feeling peckish later , grab another one , rather than the initial one

but I had a zillion tomatoes from my efforts , so it didn't matter.

if squirrels frequent your deck , they will sample your cherries.

good lick !

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