Yesterday, garden friend spots first cucumber for the year: “Yum! Salad time!”
Me: “WAIT! Nobody is eating that cucumber!!”
Garden friend: [Confused Pikachu face]
Lesson learned! I need to chat with volunteers more about not eating the first crops to ripen. Also, we all need a reminder because it’s hard not to pop those first tomatoes in our mouths!
So, what do you do to mark those earliest plants for seed to keep spouses/friends/garden helpers from harvesting and serving them to you in a [painful] lovingly prepared salad full of [crushed dreams and cherry tomatoes]?
Disclaimer: I want to credit your methods and voices in an upcoming newsletter reminder for everyone who ordered seeds, since one of our criteria on the pledge is saving the earliest seeds.
Wait is it because the earliest ripening fruits is a selection pressure on our part? Would the seeds from the earliest tomato (From the same plant) actually select for earlier tomatoes?
I assume & theorize it to work with picking slightly unripe squash & letting them ripen at home, could we do the same with tomatoes? I’ve picked green tomatoes & had them ripen Orange just by placeing them next to ripe tomatoes & Apples. It had fully formed seeds. Is this how we should be saving seeds? SUPER EARLY?
I’m confused, why pick the first ripe tomato when you can pick the first fully green tomato with a hint of color change to ripen as your first? Does it make all the difference? Garden friends wouldn’t know to pick unripe green tomatoes to ripen at home right?
Yes, selwcting the first can select for earlier ripening in future generations. It also means that even if the weather changes or you lose your crop to insects, you still have seeds.
I’m surprised people will obey that in your area. I’m concerned for my area, wouldn’t that make people curious & want to damage everything? Perhaps the secret Ninja Garden approach is smarter?
I can’t imagine how crapy it would be for a Karen to show up, complain & tear it all down, because she was on her power trip.
Awesome! But does it work with eggplants? Both are solanum species, so it should work right? I found many types of eggplants at the grocery store, they are sold unripe but can ripen at home for seeds right?
So far so good. One thing about being on a university campus is that people get “don’t destroy the research”. Unfortunately, our local ground squirrels don’t know how to read. They completely consumed our separate research plot last weekend.
Different cultures, yea squirrels are savage & don’t care. They are also incredibly smart & will outsmart all your little tricks, they watch you from the trees as you garden & plant your seeds and as soon as you leave they will dig EVERYTHING you planted. I learned that planting rotted seeds discourages them from digging them out, it was the only way I could germinate squash in squirrel territory, but then deer came over and ate everything.
I have no good easy solution for squirrels, Dogs can chase them away but squirrels can climb tree thus making muting the dogs efforts. You could get some hunters to hunt all the squirrels & let it double as target practice but that’s not practical on a university setting where bullets/arrows can easily miss & hit an innocent bystander. Maybe you could trap them but I’m sure some vegan from the university will protest, if so, It be a great opportunity to turn that vegan into a Landrace/permaculture gardener.
I’m sure you or others can come up with better ideas than this, so ask around. I’ve heard spicy powder squirrels don’t like but it washes away. Maybe you could put bone sauce on trees, it works to keep deer away but I don’t know if it works on squirrels.
We’re going to try fencing the plot and fasten to the concrete so they can’t just dig under. It’s got driveways/parking lots on three sides and a sidewalk on the fourth (with a native “meadow” and drainage channel beyond). As long as the grass in the meadow was tall, they stayed away. Landscaping gave the meadow its twice a year mowing and they ate everything in 3 days.
Nice, that’s using them observation permaculure principals skills in action! I know squirrels go digging especially when walnuts start dropping their fruits. But did they really stay away from tall grass? Can Corn serve the role as the tall grass?
Also landscaping mowed grass & they ate everything in 3 days? How?
Ground squirrels don’t like cover, because it prevents them from seeing hawks and the like. You’re right that planting corn in a larger patch would be an ideal strategy.
Our research plot is only about 200 sf (3 wide rows each 12-15 feet long) and it wasn’t fully planted since it’s brand new 6 weeks ago: one row with 20 peppers for my project and one with 20 young sunflowers for my colleague’s project. We took over a parking lot island because of full sun, building proximity for my colleague’s project, and it was already separate from the rest of the landscape irrigation and didn’t create any weird islands for landscaping to mow around.
Works for squashes, melons, tomatoes and peppers. I see no reason why it wouldn’t work for eggplant as well.
I don’t know how eggplants ripen, or when they are picked, so I couldn’t say. I suspect so, but if they’re picked too early they might not have viable seeds.
Most plants don’t turn yellow until they’re ripe or close to it, so you have a good chance. White may be an earlier stage of yellow or it could be another variety.
Wait what if the variety ripe color is green? Like there do exist fully ripe green tomatoes that are meant to be eaten raw because they are seed ripe. Can the same exist for Green Eggplants?
I’ve always understood that once you let a cucumber fully mature, the plant starts to die. Am I wrong?
I’ve always eaten the first cucumbers but marked the plants they came from. Then saved cucumbers for seed from those plants later in the season. Is that not the best method?
