Planning and seed orders

Tonight I browsed the "Totally Tomatoes" website and placed orders for the seed varieties that are listed below.

Tomatoes
They didn't do so great in 07. Too cool and rainy. Maybe I didn't give them enough of an early boost with warmth and plant food (fish emulsion). Maybe I'll try the 'wall-o-water' again. It helped in 06, but at one point I thought they were getting steamed, and it was complicated making sure that I had them open on sunny days. Here is a photo, including the 'wall-o-water's, from 4/16/06. Spring really does happen, I just need to remind myself of that sometimes.

Better Boy Hybrid Tomato - 75 days- This has been one of the reliable ones.
Black Krim Tomato - 69 days - Tried Black from Tula and Cherokee Black in 2007, good tasting, not so productive.
Lemon Boy Hybrid Tomato - 72 days - My all time favorite, have to keep trying.
Ponderosa Red Tomato - 80 days - Childhood favorite. Who am I kidding? I doubt that this will perform in the Pacific Northwest. Still, all it takes is one tomato.
Super Sweet 100 Hybrid Tomato - 65 days - Ning's favorite and the best growing cherry in this yard.

Peppers
This year I'll try some peppers again. They don't usually produce until late summer or fall. Maybe try the 'wall-o-water' method.
Bulgarian Carrot Chile Pepper - 65-68 days - Never tried before.
Cayenne Long Red Slim Pepper - 75 days - This does 'ok' in my yard, 2 years running. But only a few peppers resulted.
Hot Portugal Pepper - Early ripening at 65 days. Worth a try.

Squash
Sunny Delight Hybrid Squash - Some variety to keep things 'fresh'

I did check out some other web sites, but none had the "Lemon Boy" tomato seeds. I suppose that I could have tried 1- or 2-year-old seeds, but didn't want to take the chance on these favorites.

I may also dig out old seeds and see if I can grow some varieties that I grew before. Viability-wise, they should be OK. I suspect that I can locate some old seeds from past years, and would like to try again.

Puttering.

Today was a chance to putter around the growing greener yard. Nice, chilly late winter morning.

- After debating for a day, I checked the weather-channel predictions, and planted this Hardy Chicago fig. It was grown from a cutting last Winter. Reading the tag, I started the cutting 1/10/06, from a 2-node cutting (similar to the ones that I started about one week ago). I did add some home made compost to the hole, along with eggshells and soil from a more improved part of the garden, mixing with the soil in the hole. It's mulched with some leaves, but later in the Spring I intend to add some more compost plus a top layer of bark mulch. The top bud is pruned off to encourage branching. I hope that the buds havent swelled to a vulnerable point yet. I'll have to watch the predictions and cover it if a hard freeze is anticipated.

- some of the perrenial tops are pruned and chopped for the composter. The yard looks a bit cleaner. There are more that need trimming.

- 3 more bags of Starbucks grounds are added to the tomato bed.

-Lettuce is "winter sown" in an outdoor container. The lettuce seeds are about 1 year old. They should still be viable (according to one site, lettuce seeds can survive 5 years if stored properly); not much lost if they are not. The container is left exposed on the back (southern exposure) deck. Onion seeds, apparently, last only one year. I threw in some bunching onion seeds which, if they grow, great, but since they are from 1995, they may not. Later, I also winter sowed some radishes and spinach, also 1-2 years old.

At last, a day with a little 'life' to balance 'work'. It's been a hard few months, and I worked without a complete day off for the past 2 weeks straight through, so I took the weekend off. No homework done this weekend either.

Old and ancient seeds.

Not much energy today. Looking around on the internet, found some articles about old seeds - such as,

The Judean Date Palm, sprouted from 2,000 year old seeds found at Herod's palace in Israel. The seeds must have been 'stored' at about the time of the trees' extinction, since they are said to have been extinct since about the year 1 CE. Since palms are either male or female, and only one seed sprouted, this once extinct variety might remain extinct (or might it hybridize with existing varieties to form a new variety, both ancient and new?). Apparently palms are usually not difficult to grow from seeds, although these ancient seeds required special methods and plant hormones to revive. I've been sticking date seeds in plants around the house. I don't know what I will do with them if they grow, since this is hardly the ideal climate.

The famous ancient Lotus seeds, Nelumbo nucifera, preserved in dried pond mud, about 1,228 years old (article here ). These apparently were cultivated in ancient times. The seeds were found near Xipaozi village, northeastern China. The dried pond mud helped preserve them, but also caused some genetic damage due to residual gamma radiation in the mud. However, the oldest viable lotus seeds, as verified by carbon dating, were "only" about 466 years old. Other lotus seeds, thought to be 2,000 years old, were germinated in the 1950's and are the parents for the Ohga lotus, still grown in Japan's Chiba Prefecture today.

An Argentinian canna, which was preserved due to its use in a toy. The seeds were somehow inserted into a green walnut, and the walnut hull grew around the canna seed, resulting in an impervious container. The purpose was to use as a rattle. This seed was about 530 years old (from about the year 1420).

Various South African seeds (legumes and Protea) were found in a Dutch merchant Jan Teerlink diaries from 1803, which had been stored in the British museum, and recently a few were germinated.

Botany professor Dr. William James Beal buried a number of seed varieties in jars, in 1879, in an experiment to see how long they would survive. A few Verbascum seeds made it 120 years, stored in moist, well aerated sand in East Lansing, Michigan. Presumable Dr. Beal is buried somewhere as well, but I doubt that he would germinate now.

Apparently, the ability of seeds to survive extended periods of time depends on a combination of traits of the plant, the ability to grow a hard shell (or, in the case of the canna, a hard shell and then be encased in a harder shell), storage conditions, especially dry, and the skills of the person trying to germinate them.

Of course, there are the ordinary garden vegetables. Tomato seeds can last 5-10 years. Onions, only 1 year.

(The photo above is from an antique postcard, found on webshots - they did not have photos of the Judean Palm, 2,000 years ago).