So, how is it affecting this home gardener? Actually it is affecting me more mentally than affecting my ability to get in the garden. The day after day of rain is just simply sad after a certain amount of time. I want to be playing with my kids in the backyard. I want to be complaining about the heat. Instead, I get to complain about the mud stuck to my shoes.

This past week/weekend gave me a rare stretch of 3 dry days in a row which allowed me to transplant most of the garden. Tomatoes and peppers take up the most space and I fill the garden with the remaining vegetables. Some of the large vegetables are destined for our flower beds in front of our house. Whether my neighbors will see these as ornamentals remains to be seen. When getting ready for transplanting or direct seeding, I print out a little layout of the main garden beds and start making scratches to layout all of my desired plants. I then will refine this with a single page diagram for each bed. You will notice that I have labeled each bed with a simple letter. This corresponds to the final layout diagram on another page.

Being a member of the Seed Savers Exchange allows unparalleled access to rare seeds but the yearbook can be a bit intimidating. The yearbook is printed on newsprint and numbers this year in the 535 page range. If you are lucky, you are looking for specific varieties. If you like me, like the unusual, then it takes a bit of digging. Two years ago, I looked for varieties listed by Heritage Farms that lacked a description. Unfortunately, most all of my seed failed to germinate. This year I tried again, looking for orphan tomatoes and peppers with completely different results. All of my seed germinated. Even with warnings about long storage times and the suggestion to sow heavily made little difference. Almost all of the seed germinated and germinated quickly.

So I am left with quite a few varieties this year that have almost zero information regarding fruit size, leaf type, taste, etc. I hope that I can fill in some of the gaps in the yearbook by growing out these varieties. Even if I can’t grow them out to re-offer seed, it should give some other seed saver enough information to pick up the mantel. Of course, there is the chance that gardeners don’t grow these varieties because they have huge character flaws. Only time will tell and I find that exciting. I can say that I am likely the only gardener in the United States and possibly the World growing a particular type of pepper or tomato this year. That’s cool, isn’t it?

My only sad germination failure was a new herb/plant called Shiso. Hopefully I can contact the seller to see if they can provide more seed and possibly advice. I grew Geraniums (Pelargoniums) from seed for the first time and was honestly amazed. They germinated almost immediately and grew quite fast. I doubt that I will try to overwinter a Geranium again when they are so easy to grow from seed. Portulaca was harder to grow from seed, but Columbine and Lavendar also proved quite easy to grow.

Two different types of Pak Choi have been growing like gang busters as well as Brocolli , Brussell Sprouts and Cabbage. Apparently they have enjoyed the cooler rainy spring.

I am trying two different melons again, against my better judgement. This is usually the vegetable/fruit that makes me feel like I don’t belong in the garden. But, have no fear I intend to try once again.

I grew 25 varieties of tomatoes along with 13 varieties of peppers this year. Some I grew as germination tests along with grow outs for seed I offer in Seed Savers. The rest were new varieties for this season.

NOTE: I have way to many plants to plant in my garden. I grew at least 6 plants of each variety and in some cases far more. I only planted 30+ plants in my garden this year. This leaves about 200+ plants that will need a good home. If you aren’t picky, I might be able to provide you with some free plants. If you are in the Columbus area, leave a comment on the this post and I will contact you as my plant supply lasts.

Have a great season.

The first task of the season is to clean our old seed flats and cell packs. You did keep them from last year right? If you are careful and take the time to find durable packs and flats, there is no reason that they shouldn’t last many growing seasons. To clean our flats, we wash them and then we treat them to a little dip in a diluted bleach solution.

It is usually very cold this time of the year in the Columbus Ohio area so I needed a way to clean my flats without making a huge mess. My solution this year was down and dirty and involved a couple of shower curtains that I had lying around. I just used a couple of screw in hooks and looped the shower curtain over the hooks and let it hang into the utility sink. Our utility sink has a short hose that I have connected a spray wand that has a trigger grip. This is perfect for blasting off any old soil hanging on to the flats. With the shower curtain, I could even stand the flats on end without flooding the utility room.

After your flats and cell packs are thoroughly washed, we need to give them a short dip in a diluted bleach solution. A 10% solution of bleach to water is plenty strong enough to kill anything camping out on your cells. The most common problem with plants grown from seed is damping off. This refers to many ailments caused by fungal disease. Keeping your planting equipment clean can easily prevent these problems before they get started. What I do to sanitize my flats and cell packs is to dip them in the bleach solution which I have put in a concrete or mortar mixing tub. I have found that this tub is the perfect size for this purpose as well as watering my seedlings as they grow. After I dip the flats, I re-stack them on top of each other and leave them for an hour or so. I then lastly fill the mortar tub with water and give them a rinse whenever I get around to it.

Most documentation says that 10 minute contact time with a bleach solution is sufficient to kill most bad bugs. However, I believe this is overkill in this case. 15 or 20 seconds should be sufficient to sanitize your equipment if it is clean before sanitizing. The flats and cell packs aren’t porous making easy work for the bleach solution. By stacking my flats, the bleach solution is held between the flats until I can get around to rinsing them.

Gather up your flats and cell packs. Spring planting is right around the corner.

What interested us the most were seeds to vegetables that you almost never see in seed form. We have grown things like Lemon Grass in the past but had to buy it as a small plant. This might not be a big deal as it gives you a jump on the growing season. However, it is always coupled with higher costs. Many vegetables, herbs, and flowers are very hard to grow from seed. This is another reason why seed companies choose to only ship plants, saving themselves the frustration of supporting customers who failed to get their seeds to germinate.

If you are interested in unusual seeds, this is your catalog. This year we purchased seed for Rhubarb, Lemon Grass and Shiso among other things. Their catalog is simple and without color photographs. Colored illustrations accompany most listings along with helpful information such as the average seed life. Wonderful information for a rabid seed saver such as myself.

Take a look at their offerings, you wont be disappointed.

http://www.kitchengardenseeds.com

Shiso’s tastes is somewhat reminiscent of cilantro, cumin and cinnamon. Both the leaves and flowers are edible.

Shiso is easy to grow and will reseed itself in mild areas. It has similar needs to basil. The pungency of the leaves can vary considerably from plant to plant. Try to buy your seeds from a source that specializes in Asian vegetables.

Lastly, it very closely resembles stinging nettles. Plant it any place where it wont be mistaken for this common weed.

My biggest reason for not renewing was the cost of seeds. The organization is completely out of touch with its members. The SSE forums still has a very active thread complaining about the unannounced seed price increases from last year. For listed members to request a small seed, it costs $3.00. For non-listed members, the price is a dollar higher across the board.

In the past few years we have also seen multiple directors. Maybe the organization that Kent Whealy started would have been better off with him at the helm?

I also was concerned by the seed deposits in the Svalbard seed bank. Because of board member connections with this seed bank, it seemed to me, at least, that there could be motives not necessarily in the best interest of the exchange.

In the end, I participated because of the seeds and the knowledge on how to keep and maintain those old varieties. But the organization seems to be drifting farther and farther away from this core. They also don’t seem to want to participate with their members. While activities in Iowa at heritage farms is great, few of us can attend the workshops. They could easily share more of this information by extending regional meetings or gatherings or simply video taping their events.

I hope that they can right the direction of the exchange. In the mean time I am going to watch from the side lines.

So, here we are in late October and the turnips are still growing like mad. In looking back, I really should have harvested them and taken them to a food pantry. But, I really didn’t think about it.

So what happens to turnips that get left in the ground over winter? They continue to grow. The plants never really died. They were green almost all of the winter, even though we had a few nights that approached 20 below zero. The plants really started kicking out new growth in March and are currently about 5 feet tall. Since, I am an avid seed saver, I will have copious amounts of turnip seed in a few weeks. In the mean while, I get to enjoy beautiful yellow flowers. Who knew that turnips were attractive?

Click here for the project details.

• Bulb type seeders which create a vacuum by squeezing a bulb and then releasing pressure when the vacuum tip is in the seeds
• Single tip vacuum seeder powered by a vacuum pump
• Multiple tip wands powered by a vacuum pump
• Plate seeders that have many holes that match the cells in planting flats. These too are powered by a vacuum pump.

The type we are going to cover in this project is a single tip vacuum seeder.

Material list.

1. 
    A Vacuum, in this case a Tetra 30-60 air pump for an aquarium, $19.99
2. 
   An air brush, $9.99
3. 
   Glue tips $2.00
4. 
   A small section of vinyl tubing with an inside diameter of 1/4 inch $0.25
5. 
   An air line tee $2.00
6. 
   A section of air line. In this case, more flexible is better.$2.00

Total cost for materials should be around. $36.00

Construction Details

1. Modify the air brush
   1. Remove the paint needle. This is the gold portion at an angle with its tip in the tip of the air brush. It is a threaded fitting and will come out easily.
   2. 
      The glue tips need to be pushed into the end of our vinyl tubing. The easiest method for us was to push it into the tip point first. We then could use the back of the air brush to press the tip into place.
   3. 
      Once the tip is in place, you will need to press the tubing onto the air brush. This also requires a firm hand. In both cases, it is easiest if you leave the tubing longer than you need which gives you something to hold onto.
   4. 
      Trim the excess of the tubing if you haven’t cut it to a one inch length earlier.
2. Modify the pump
   1. 
      The aquarium pump is meant to blow air, not suck, so we need to make a few modifications. First, remove the four screws from the bottom of the pump.
   2. 
      Next we need to pull out the valves. These simply slide straight up. To get the white plastic part up where you can get a hold of it, you can pry in the very center with a sharp pointed tool. We used a normal kitchen knife. Just insert the tip of your tool at a steep angle between the bracket and valve. You will find a recess a small distance from the top that the tool can slip into to lever it up. You can grab the top edge of the valve with pliers once it moves a little to finish removing the valve from the housing.
   3. Repeat with second valve.
   4. 
      You will need to twist the actual valve itself so that the large hole is next to the magnet. This is the opposite of what is shown in the photo.
   5. Reinstall both valves in housing by simply sliding them back into place.
   6. Reassemble the housing making note that there is a front and a back. It should easily slide together if it is being assembled in the right direction. Reinsert four screws removed earlier.
3. Connect the air brush
   1. 
      Cut two small sections of hose and connect to the two outputs on the air pump.
   2. Connect ends of tubing to air tee
   3. Connect remaining line to end of tee and air brush

Using the seeder

I would love to hear from anyone who makes a version of the this vacuum seeder or would like to share ideas for other designs. If enough people are interested, I will make a multiple point seeder.

Seems simple right? Save a few pepper seeds from a pepper and plant them next year. Well, yes and no.

If you only grew one variety and no one else in your neighborhood grew peppers then you can save your seeds without much problem. If however, you are like me and like to plant many different varieties, you will need to plan a little earlier in the season.

Peppers are quite promiscuous. Peppers have “perfect” flowers, meaning that each flower has both male and female parts. If a pepper is left alone, it will simply fertilize itself. But, if you have other varieties near by, bees and other pollinators will make sure that your peppers will have two parents. If you are adventurous then this can be a great thing. Save some seed from peppers in a mixed planting bed and you will likely be surprised next season. You may even be able to tell which plants were responsible for your next generation of peppers. You will certainly know the mother as long as you make note of it when you collect your seed.

Peppers are in the genus Capsicum and there are five major species. If you don’t know what species your pepper is, I would bet my money on annuum. Almost all of the domesticated peppers grown are in the annuum species. Common exceptions are listed below their species.

Capsicum annuum
- most all domestic peppers
Capsicum baccatum
- any of the Aji peppers
Capsicum chinense
- Habaneros
Capsicum frutescens
- Tabasco
Capsicum pubescens
- Rocoto

Here is a general rule, the families will cross between each other albeit limited in many cases. The exception is pubescens, which will not cross with any other species. Sadly, most people in the United States will not have luck growing Rocotos because of the long growing season.

What to do, if you want to grow more than one variety and keep “pure” seed? Isolate your plants, specifically your flowers. You have two options, the first isolating by distance. Peppers are so promiscuous that the recommend distance between varieties is 500 feet. This isn’t possible in my case since my entire yard is only about 125 feet long. The second option is to physically isolate your flowers. For the purpose of illustration, I will give you my history of attempts so that you can see the positives and negatives of several methods.

1. The first year, I followed one of the most common methods of using tulle bags to cover individual or clusters of flowers.
   Positives: Tulle drawstring bags are fairly cheap and easy to find. Just go to your local crafts store and look in the wedding supplies. You will find several different sizes used for party favors.
   Negatives: It is very time consuming. I also had a hard time bagging individual blossoms and when I bagged more than one blossom the blossom branch quickly out grew my bags. I experienced high numbers of blossoms dropping.
   Recommendations: If you use this method, go with the larger bags. The bags will allow more room for the branch to grow while blossoms develop and hopefully self fertilize.
2. The second years, I made cages to cover the entire plant.
   Positives: The covers can be made of many materials and the fruit set is quite high.
   Negatives: My first attempt, used point bonded row cover material because it was cheap. It also literally dissolved part way through the season. One day, it is there and the next it has an 8 inch whole. It is more expensive than using option one.
3. The following years, I have used cages to cover the entire plant like year 2. But I used bridal tulle as my material for the covers.
   Positives: The nylon tulle seems pretty durable. After 3 seasons, this is the first year I have started to see rips.
   Negatives: Tulle varies widely in price. Good old Walmart usually has bolts of tulle for around $20.00. Tulle is a total pain to sew.

My conclusions over the past few years:

Using tomato cages for peppers is ideal. They are horrible at supporting tomatoes but prove almost perfect for peppers. I make bags from bridal tulle which in my case prevents any of my local pollinators from reaching the flowers.  The bags are simple pillow cases. Just fold the material back on itself and sew across the top and side leaving the bottom open. To put the bag in place, just slip the open end over the tomato cage and cover the loose bottom edge with soil. A point to note is that the first year I tried to dig a little trench around my peppers and then tried to stuff the loose edge into the trench while using the soil removed to fill the trench. Yeah, don’t do that. It is a pain and doesn’t work. Just take extra soil, or better yet, compost and use this to cover the loose edge. This is not only easier but has the added advantage of providing a berm to hold water when the plants are watered. This past year, I noticed that many of my peppers were just too big for a single tomato cage. My solution was to invert a second cage on top of the first one. I just used zip ties to hold the two cages together. This worked very well with one exception. The isolation bags support the plant a lot more then you might assume. When I took off my bags, I noticed that many of the outside branches were limp noodles because they hadn’t hardened which they normally would in relation to the wind moving the branches back and forth while growing. In my case, I simply tied the branches to the cages.

So what happens when you see peppers inside of your cage? What happens when you pepper out grows your cage? Take it off At this point, I will assume that it is still early in the season. What I do, is tie a piece of brightly colored yarn around each pepper that formed while under the isolation cage. This way, you can let your peppers fully mature, before harvesting to save seed.

A couple of notes on actually harvesting the seed. Pepper seed is extremely durable. I use a blender to clean my seed. Just fill your blender with enough water to cover the blades. The add your pepper seeds with any remaining flesh. Blending for a few seconds will separate the flesh or skins from the seeds. Then just fill your blender almost to the top and pour off the water, flesh, seeds etc. at the top of the water. If you repeat this rinsing process several times, you should be left with clean seeds at the bottom. Infertile seeds will float while fertile seeds will sink, so don’t worry about pouring off precious seeds that are floating on the surface. Small peppers can also be blended whole with only the stems removed. A word of warning here, the pepper soup that results is powerful. Keep your face away from the blender when you open it. Even then, expect to cough and sneeze as your rinse your seeds. When you are done cleaning the seeds, pour the water with the seeds into kitchen sieve (make sure the seeds can’t pass through the holes). I then pour the wet seeds onto plastic plates that are labeled to thoroughly dry before storing.

I hope that I have encouraged you to save seed from peppers. Saving seed from peppers has an extra side effect. You can still eat your peppers. Most other vegetables and fruits are destroyed while harvesting seeds.

In the past, I have used popsicle sticks from any craft store to mark the seed locations. Since I didn’t like adding 72 sticks, I would mark the upper right cell of a group of cells. This worked fine but was still a lot of work. The popsicle sticks also were tall enough that they would hit my lights. This year I am taking a different tact.

I have created three pdf documents for the three different plug flats that I have purchased for this season. 72 is the common size, but I also have 50 cell and 128 cell documents. Why the different sizes? Simply, different sizes of plants benefit from different sizes of cells. Small slow growing plants like onions and leeks do well in the 128 cell, and large extremely fast growing plants like melons, cucumbers do well in the 50 cell flats.

The documents have circles in a grid representing each cell in the flat. There is also a notes section at the bottom. In use, I mark the front of my flats with a number for identification and a reference for which edge of the flat corresponds to the top or bottom of the cell graph document. I then just enter the number in the notes section on my sheet. I also give all of the seeds for each season a unique number. I can enter this number in the cells, beside a row, or under a column if I am planting multiple seeds.

Hope these are helpful. Please comment if you want different cell counts or have ideas on how to improve the document layout.

72 cell
50 cell
128 cell