Long time no update. I was taking pictures but didn’t sit down to upload and organize. I will try and do some of it now.
We had a dry spell. Luckily it we got some rain in the last few days.
Let’s start with the fava beans.
4th of May, weather was rather cool:
13th of May:
The crimson flowers were very pretty. Surprisingly they had a sweet scent.
Awesome gardening! I love how you concentrate on growing a few crops and make effort to get a lot of diversity.
I’ve planted a popcorn grex (of 4) a km from my flour corn grex and a grex of beautiful but useless ones 7 km further on. I think to get more pollen donated from farmers growing it for cows than that they’ll interfere with each other.
I have taken some pollen stalks if they’re called that and by hand dusted the stamen of others nearby. I have hung those stalks kind of in them, waiting for another batch of pollen to arrive. Do you aid cross pollination?
Thank you for the warm words Hugo. I didn’t do anything to aid pollination for the corn apart from planting more of it this year. I was considering removing the male flowers on the plants coming from my last year’s seed as as there probably is some flour corn crossed into them but I am now away from the garden for two weeks and it might be too late.
I planted a small bed of flour corn in my other garden in the hills. There is a big field of corn in the village, but my flour corn was planted so late (on the 1st of June), that I hope the pollen from the field corn will be gone by the time my flour corn silks out.
Now back to finishing the story of the fava beans.
20th of May, it was getting dry:
By mid June the peas were stealing the show from the fava beans. It was dry and the stress started showing.
21st of June:
Your Fava are amazing 
I sowed mine in February in Croatia and they were attacked by all kinds of animals (after they survived slugs last season), so I got a little harvest of favas this season, but I will add more genetics and put them in the ground end of the year as Cathy suggested for her friend.
Let me know if you will have something to exchange
Hi Marcela, this is what I have harvested in the end:
I’m happy to share.
This is how the beds looked like on the 12th of July when I picked all the seeds:
I was gifted some seeds of a variety with supposedly sweet shells and planted them for a second round on the 5th of August:
This is most of the crop, only a few small cobs and the latest ones missing. Now I need to figure out what to select. What kind seedlots to make out of it.
One of the solid dark purple early ones was an outlier in having the biggest cob and having a red stalk.
I did test the poping on the 4 or 5 largest cobs. The brownish doesn’t pop but parches to a nice result non the less. It will not be included in the popcorn mix.
I decided to let them dry a little more before continuing with the pop tests.
I’m thinking to do two seed lots. #1 Best Plants = large and multiple cobs + good popping ability. #2 mix of pink kernels. And a mix of all for backup diversity. What do you think?
A few shots of the popcorn patch:
Sowing on the 19th of April.
Seedlings emerging on the 4th of May.
May was dry. 13th of May.
20th of May.
Gorgeous pocorn @Jacek . I also divide seed from many of my crops in a similar way that you do. One group with the top selection (for whatever criteria or goal you have). Second group for off-types or particular traits that you want to keep in the population. Third group for 2nd selection kept as backup diversity or for giving away to others that are looking for new input that might better adapt to their situation.
First day of garden work for the year 2026 done yesterday on the 14th of March. We had a completely sunny and warm end of February and start of March, but I was away from home on weekends. Then the temperature dropped to 5 °C and we got a few solid days of rain.
I planted two beds of broad beans and two beds of peas.
Here are the peas. All seed is from last years garden. This allows me to make the blocks larger to better separate the varieties. I hope thay all will be sugar peas.
Today I prepared a mixed pea and broad bean bed in the back of the garden. While doing so I harvested the potatoes and oca that grew there last year. That was some heavy labor. I need longer handles on my hoes.
