I took the small sized cold frame out of the garage so I could move the plugs into it. I also hauled out some rain barrel water from our stash in the cellar, and made sure nothing was “resting” in the watering can that was closest to the door. (One year, I had left water in a can over winter and a small rodent tried to get a drink and drowned in it. Not the most fun thing to find months later.) I’ve mentioned it before, but when we empty our rain barrel to take it in at the end of season, I always fill up old vinegar jugs we have so I can use them over winter on house plants, and in spring for inside started seedlings and later outside as well. Given how little rain we’ve had the last week, I am so glad I have some left over. As of writing this, there is no rain forecast any time soon. Continue reading “Seed Progress 20230527”→
I try to reuse whatever I can. Here I used washed plastic trays from store bought cookies. Inside are “plugs” I made from cut up pieces of TP rolls filled with potting soil.
kitchen windowsill
city water
9 beets, Merlin (Territorial Seeds, 2021)
9 pumpkin, unknown type (Saved from 2020 Halloween store bought pumpkin)
1 pumpkin, jack-o-lantern (Heirloom Seeds-last of free 2018 batch)
9 pumpkin, small sugar pie (Hart’s Seeds, 2020
9 pumpkin, small sugar pie (Territorial Seeds, 2021)
After the germination tests I’d done prior, I am using the city water. Sadly, the fact that the water seems to help break down the seeds faster isn’t the greatest thing…but it is what it is.
kitchen windowsill
city water
9 peas, alderman (Territorial Seeds)
9 peas, little marvel (Heirloom Seeds)
9 snow peas, little purple–plasma treated (Territorial Seeds)
9 snow peas, little purple–non treated (Territorial Seeds)
“For nearly as long as they’ve been popular, lawns have served as a totem of middle-class vulgarity, conformity, and excess. In her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson denounced the wanton use of lawn pesticides. Carson’s contemporary, activist Lorrie Otto, condemned yards as ‘sterile’ and ‘flagrantly wasteful.’ Polemics as cutting as a mower’s blade have proliferated in the decades since, but lawns abide. Spivak and her team come not to bury them, but to adapt them to the insects vital to the entire ecosystem—and our food supply.”
“In 1753, Linnaeus placed the tomato in the genus Solanum (alongside the potato) as Solanum lycopersicum. In 1768, Philip Miller moved it to its own genus, naming it Lycopersicon esculentum. This name came into wide use, but was technically in breach of the plant naming rules because Linnaeus’s species name lycopersicum still had priority. Although the name Lycopersicum lycopersicum was suggested by Karsten (1888), this is not used because it violates the International Code of Nomenclature barring the use of tautonyms in botanical nomenclature. The corrected name Lycopersicon lycopersicum (Nicolson 1974) was technically valid, since Miller’s genus name and Linnaeus’s species name differ in exact spelling, but since Lycopersicon esculentum has become so well known, it was officially listed as a nomen conservandum in 1983, and would be the correct name for the tomato in classifications which do not place the tomato in the genus Solanum.
Genetic evidence has now shown that Linnaeus was correct to put the tomato in the genus Solanum, making Solanum lycopersicum the correct name. Both names, however, will probably be found in the literature for some time. Two of the major reasons for considering the genera separate are the leaf structure (tomato leaves are markedly different from any other Solanum), and the biochemistry (many of the alkaloids common to other Solanum species are conspicuously absent in the tomato). On the other hand, hybrids of tomato and diploid potato can be created in the lab by somatic fusion, and are partially fertile, providing evidence of the close relationship between these species.”
