Gardening, Part 2

Last of the parsnips. Dollar for scale (out of bananas)

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Itā€™s just a parsnip, Michael, what could it cost, a dollar?

The middle one looks totally suspicious, though. Are you sure itā€™s not some sort of mandrake?

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It swears it isnā€™t :man_shrugging:

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Okay, thenā€¦

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The African Blue Basil is still producing new flowers and growing even bigger

And the bees, they love her :two_hearts:

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Save those seeds! I had a huge basil crop this year and most of the seeds were from last yearā€™s bolted plants. Kind of a PITA to peel the seeds out, but you get 3-5 per seed pocket.

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I will try, but Iā€™m pretty sure African Blue Basil is a sterile hybrid
In the spring Iā€™ll go to a plant sale in Austin. They had 15 varieties of basil for sale last year :flushed:
My boss clued me in and warned me to be there early and bring a partner to guard our cart because the nice old ladies are vicious

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heehee!
sounds like the orchid farm sales down here! they can get nasty at times for coveted varieties as they come out.
i am no orchid snob, but love to grow them. these days i am only into cloning the varietals i currently have.
may be a better suited post to the horticulture thread, but our orchids live outside and are a major part of our garden.

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Itā€™s true: for you, your orchids are as normal a part of your garden as pots of petunias or asters are around here in the Midwest.

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My neighbor works at Home Depot. They were clearing out all the old seeds to make room for the new stuff. She gathered all she could and gave me this huge box of hundreds of seed packages. Iā€™m set (heh) for years!

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In another thread we were talking about using heirloom corn for popcorn. I just ran across these pictures from a couple years ago of some of my Glass Gem harvest and the popcorn that it turned into


There are lots of seemingly unpopped kernelsā€¦but they just havenā€™t really exploded out. They have a nice, fried crunch IMO. Not a hard tooth-breaker in the bunch.

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Someone just liked my previous post, which reminded me that this pineapple has been very happy over the winter! Itā€™s about the size of the original crown now. Will repot in a couple of months

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I got my hands on some of these seeds

This will be an experiment, we shall see!

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Iā€™m guessing a lot of those antioxidants are better if not cooked, hope itā€™s got a good flavor profile.

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Thatā€™s notable: nobody serms to talk about the flavor of these things. But thatā€™s also really subjective, so i figured Iā€™d just find out! Also, with alot, but not all, of these things, that beautiful color goes away when cooked. I suspect this will be a fresh eating tomato, although deep purple pasta sauce would be fun! (With liquid smoke, of course!)

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I was thinking it would make a nice caprese, interspersed with red and other heirlooms.

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A couple of forgotten onions survived the snow and frost over the winter. Knowing this I may set some seedlings in late autumn this year.

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Purple tomatoes weā€™ve grown in the past have had mild acidity, kinda umami flavor, and didnā€™t really lose color in sauce. Quite good cooked or not.

Are those the purple tomatoes featured on Baker Creekā€™s catalog this year? I would like to grow them this year, but I havenā€™t ordered yet, so theyā€™re probably sold out.

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No, they are only being disrributed by the developer this year. I shall report back.

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I grew Indigo Rose tomatoes (hybrid, not GMO) in 2021 as an alternative to temperamental Cherokee Purples. The Indigos had really pretty dark blue-purple skin with a dark reddish purple inside, were resistant to the various tomato afflictions that seem to live in the air around here, and were very productive. And the ones I grew had almost no flavor, very disappointing.

Iā€™m looking forward to updates from your experiment with the Purple TomatoTM.
Are you planting any purple/blue-adjacent heritage or traditional hybrid tomatoes for comparison?

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