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Here’s an inspiring video about a little girl helping her mom set up a Square Foot Garden, and harvesting quite impressive radishes. One word: Awwww :

Now that I’m selling the house and not being able to take my trees with me I got the idea that I wanted to grow a new peach tree from seed. I did save a peach stone last year just for fun and wasn’t planning on using it for anything, but now the situation is different:

The ripe peach fruits on the mother tree were very delicious, so I expect a stone or seed from this particular tree would grow up to produce similar fruits:

I decided to give the seed an easy start by using a water pump plier on the hard stone surrounding the soft seed inside:

And this is were the disappointment kicked in:

The seed inside the hard shell was completely dried out. I tried two different stones, but both were dry and lifeless. I won’t even bother planting these as I don’t believe they’ll germinate at all.  They look a lot like the squash seeds I tried to save earlier, which I gave up on too because they dried out too.
Now what is going here? Is it really too late to use a seed saved only 6 months ago? I don’t think so. What I think is that the company who developed this particular type of peach tree focused on building its resistance to peach leaf curl and forgot all about its ability to reproduce. The funny thing is though, that this particular tree is NOT resistant to peach leaf curl after all.
And me? I just feel stupid for buying this unnatural crap. I’ll go look for a heirloom peach seed instead. If you know where to find one please leave a comment below.

Oh boy have I been wanting to use that headline! Free Heirloom Seeds™ is what everybody wants, right? Well, me too. And to some degree, the heirloom part is even true in this case. I’m offering 5 bags of spinach seeds from my garden, seeds I saved in 2009. Maybe one year is not entirely what you would define as heirloom, as 2009 was my first year collecting seeds, but anyway, if you want a bag to experiment with, please send me your address either via the contact page or email and I’ll send a bag to you. If you have a garden blog I can also post a link to your blog.

I have only tested two spinach seeds last summer to do a quick check of their ability to germinate, so please don’t be too disappointed, if the seeds won’t grow for some reason, but I think they will.

I’m curious to find out if any bags of seeds will be confiscated by the Empire. Being spinach seeds I believe they have a chance of passing through the system. If the bags were full of Marijuana seeds it would be a completely other story I mean, outlawing a plant?? Isn’t outlawing plants the same as outlawing roads, because roads can be used by bank robbers?

ANYWAYS – if you get a bag of seeds it would be fun hearing about your experiences with it. There are 5 bags up for grabs, and one bag per person, each with about 200 seeds. If enough people are interested I can make more bags, but at the moment my fingers are hurting from separating seeds, as spinach seeds have an amazingly rough outer layer and sit closely together.

I don’t know about you but I’m beginning to look forward to spring!

This is the process I went through saving seeds from a squash I picked from my garden this year. I wasn’t able to save any seeds from this particular squash, but I think the method is still good though. As with my cucumber project I think the lack of usable seeds is due to the varieties I’m growing. Apparently I have chosen varieties that are not suitable for seed saving, I believe it’s the F1 varieties, but I’ll have to investigate the problem further.

Anyway, here’s what I did:

Cut the squash into halves:

Dump the soft insides into a bowl of water:

(Hmm, that actually looks like something from the movie ‘Alien’ )

Use your fingers to rub out the seeds:

Use a sieve to collect the seeds:

Spread the mix on a filter bag to absorb the rest of the water:

Pick each seed with a pair of tweezers and move them to a new filter bag. This is were I began noticing a problem, as the seeds were divided into two different size groups:

The big ones looked like commercial seeds, but what’s the deal with the small ones??:

When I allowed all of the seeds to dry up for several days suddenly NONE of the seeds looked healthy:

I guess I have to use better seeds for the mother plant before this will work. Another possibillity is that the squash fruit wasn’t ripe enough. It didn’t change color as I was told is necessary with cucumbers, if you want to save seeds from cucumbers.

After successfully saving seeds from this years tomatoes I set out to save some cucumber seeds. It didn’t go as planned.

I saved one particularly healthy looking cucumber from the plant growing up the south facing garage wall:

It was dark green when I picked it but I stored it for several weeks inside the house to let it mature, turning yellow in the process. It actually started  to smell bad, as it had a couple of spots. Apparently my girlfriend is very tolerant since she’s able to put up with things like this laying around the house. It was probably a wise decision to tell her in advance what I was doing :

With much anticipation I cut the cucumber open, only to find that it contained no frekkin seeds!:

A little miracle in itself. A lot of hard work must have gone into creating cucumbers like this. I think I have to go talk to the nursery again. Or buy heirloom seeds and raise my own plants next year.

If you cut the tomato around the ‘equator’ it will be easier to get the seeds out:

Use a teaspoon to dig out the seeds. Be careful to leave as much goo in the tomato, or it will get in your way later on in the process:

Fill a glass with about 3 cm (1 inch) of water and put the seeds in the water:

The mix will now have to ferment, so a piece of cling film is needed on top of the glass to limit the oxygen. Prick a couple of holes to create a bit of ventilation though:

Leave the mix for 3 or 4 days and any unwanted goo will start to dissolve:

Healthy seeds will fall to the bottom of the glass making it easier to remove the goo with a tablespoon and add fresh water:

Remove the red stuff and add fresh water a couple of times during the fermenting process and you’ll end up with this:

The seeds will still be coated with gel. I believe it’s some kind germination inhibitor. Being in the water for some time makes the gel easy to scrub off by dragging each seed across the filter bag with a finger:

Move the seeds to a new filter bag and let them dry for a couple of days. Here is the end result, ready for storage in a seed bag until spring:

Note that I have not tested if these seeds will actually germinate and produce plants, but I must say that the result looks very professional.

I’m very excited to find out what the tomato plants from these seeds will look like next year, and if they themselves will be able to reproduce.

If you take a closer look at bolted spinach plants you’ll find the seeds grouped in small clusters:

The seeds can easily be rubbed off the stem although some will stay together and you’ll need to separate those. From a single spinach plant I saved enough seeds to fill at least two normal seeds bags, maybe even three:

I pay about $4 for a single bag of spinach seeds. I now got seeds worth 5 * 2.5 * 4 = $50! (I had 5 dried plants hanging beneath my roof). Amazing. If they will all grow, that is.

I planted two of my newly saved spinach seeds just for fun and they decided to germinate:

The seeds were collected from dried spinach plants about a week ago, so no need for seed dormancy with this kind of spinach:

By the way, this spinach variant is named Butterfly.

Some seeds need a period of rest or even freezing temperatures before they’ll germinate.

Spinach is one of the first crops that can be harvested in my garden. This year I let my spinach rows bolt after picking fresh spinach leaves for weeks before that. The plants grew flowers and began producing seeds on the stems. When they started turning yellow I removed the plants from the beds to avoid spoiling the seeds due to rain. I’ve hung up the plants beneath the roof in the garage in order to dry:

Spinach seeds are clustered in small spots on the stems. I’ve counted up to 10 seeds in each cluster but some only have 2. The seeds are beginning to look like “pro” seeds :

I look forward to finding out if they’ll actually germinate and what the next generation of spinach plants will look like and taste like.

Here’s an interesting video from YouTube about back yard sustainability. Janaia Donaldson is interviewing Scott McGuire from Oregon about the project he’s running in the backyard of his rented property. The picture is lagging but that’s worst in the first 10 minutes when they talk face to face. After that they take a tour in Scott’s garden and the lagging becomes tolerable.

In the video you’ll find:

• Experimenting with growing wheat and amaranth
• Growing a medicine border
• Growing sun flower seeds
• Greenhouse for starting plants from seeds
• Drying herbs in greenhouse
• Dog kennel as chicken house
• Growing food for your animals
• Crimson clover as nitrogen fixer

and some other small but interesting things: