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"hey peg! the earth oven class is a little out of my price range right now, but thanks for offering.i am planning on going to the foor preserving class the 18th though, if you're interested in that?"
"i'm an amateur at seed collecting so i may not be the best person to answer that question, but my plan was to wait until the plants died and then collect the dried pods with the seeds in them. funny you mention it because i was planning on tearing…"
"thank you so much for the kind comments. i just have a little point and shoot sony camera, but with digital you can take a million so it's a lot easier to get good ones. i have a lot of fun doing it."
"thank you , and yes, it is arugula. i'm waiting to collect the seeds which seems to be taking forever. the bees and ladybugs are happy it's still there though =)"
"hi debbie,
the more aeration the better. lots of holes. i got mine from the city of phx too and am thinking of drilling a few more holes in it. (i also took the lid off and turned it upside down) the tumbler that your hubby made is very nice!"
the more aeration the better. lots of holes. i got mine from the city of phx too and am thinking of drilling a few more holes in it. (i also took the lid off and turned it upside down) the tumbler that your hubby made is very nice!"
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One of my favorite parts of the garden is watching all the bugs and what they do. I especially like the Mantis (would the plural be Manti, Mantes or Mantisses?). We get pretty friendly with each other by the end of the season, but I always feel like they're eying me, wishing they were just a little bigger so they could take a bite... :-D
Denise
Denise
First three simple points. 1. Seedheads must be mature, dry and ready to let go of seeds.2. Same size seeds and chaff may differ by weight or aerodynamic properties or 3. they may have different electrostatic properties. Now:
Re: Basil seeds. I take only seedheads and only start separating seeds out If they are dry and release seeds just by being jostled or, at most, "crunched". Under these conditions the seeds come out of the capsules fairly easily but there is always some plant material/chaff. I rub or shaked this mix through strainers, (which have the advantage of being cheap, if you have seed sorting trays, more power to you). Start with a strainer with mesh large enough to let the seeds and everything smaller through while holding back larger chaff. You can, at that point, use a strainer that lets tiny stuff though but holds back the seeds. Once you have stuff that's all the same or smaller size than seeds, some of the stuff will blow away and whatever's left may have slightly different elecrostatic properties from the seeds. For instance, on the various, plates, trays, bowls, whatever that I use in seed sorting, if I put the seed/chaff mix on the plate and gently shake the plate from side to side with the plate at a slight angle, the seeds move further down the plate than the chaff. Not just because the seeds are round but also because there seems to be a little static attraction between the plate and the chaff. When there is enough space, I cover the basil seed with my hand and blow away the chaff. The point of this whole dissertation is:
Strainers with different meshs are good...find and keep them
Often, though not always, once you're left with stuff the same size as the seed, most of the seed stuff will blow away.
If that doesn't work, put the seed/chaff mix on different materials, and see if there is something in those interactions that allows you too separate the seeds from the chaff. I have all sorts of seed containers from cardboard to glass for just that reason.
Oh, and one more thing...Don't worry too much about some chaff unless you have reason to believe that chaff in a particular case is a really bad thing like; seeds will die soon, or Chaff will force you to sell for cheap seeds for which you could get insane profits. Hope this helps.
your giant green mustard probably won't get so big due to space. One or two would cover that space fully if they had it to themselves. You should get good seed anyway.
Figs come in all shapes , sizes and flavors. In the rare Fruit society that I'm in we have a collection of 25 named varieties which the agriculture department was bulldozing (they even charged us to save the cuttings) and now we have the only collection left in Australia. We now have two ag departments asking us for material which we don't charge them for! Tony our fig fiend has added another 25 or so collected from all around Adelaide as we have a large migrant population from mediterranean areas(Greece, Italy, Lebanon etc). Many of these people smuggled plant material in with them in the earlier days (is a bit harder now with stricter quarantine). He has set up a web page called figtrack to try and get more information (I don't think it's up and running on our web site yet).
Figs flavors range from very sweet to sweet and tangy, so if you don't like one variety there is always another you will. We have fig tasting and rating days in mid to late summer (they are starting to ripen now). You have to be careful with fresh figs not to get the sap on your lips as a lot of it will burn them. They are very easy to grow and can be heavily pruned to keep them down to a manageable size.
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