This year given the cost of Cucumber seeds we left one growing in order to collect its seeds.
They were an English Cucumber and if we could have found the seed packet we would have given you the variety. We do know that the seeds were about £2.50 for 6/8 seeds. Hopefully once dried out these will be planted next spring.
What the results will be is anybody's guess given that our Radish seed harvest produced some strange radish!
For those of a certain age... Esther Rantzen would be proud of that one!
5 comments:
Here's to rude vegetables !!
One day I hope to have the time and inclination to collect my own seeds.....one day.....
What is a man but a forked radish? As it were.
Pauline didn't mention that your seeds may well have been an F1 cross...
being so few seeds to the pound sterlin'
in which case the offspring, your saved seed will NOT be what you had this year.
That said, you may well be in for a surprise...
sow plenty, but be prepared to rip out the ones that don't thrive...
they may well be the parent that provided the "extra" ingredient to the F1 cross... the ones that thrive will be the other... and will be perfectly edible cosscumbers that were meddled with...
and you probably won't be able to tell the difference between those and the ones you grew this year.
A tip for those expensive tomato varieties... plant very early and treat those first plants as expendable.
Take cuttings [the side shoots do very well] and grow these on, first in water until you have roots... then in soil.
If the growing conditions aren't right when they look too leggy, repeat the process...
plant out when conditions allow!!
That way your favourite F1 or Heritage variety produces zillions of offspring... and the packet lasts for three years.. not one!!
Tip from Joe Maiden... the Gardening Which "Golden Acre, Leeds" head research gardener... and true "white rose" Yorkshireman!!
Yes they were F1 and I don't expect these to be... It's just an experiment really.
Good tip about planting the side shoots, never thought about that they usually go in the bin.
I kept doing it this year...
and until the blight hit, we had sizeable fruit [that would have ripened in a pollyparrot or greenmaison given our current run of weather] from side shoots given that treatment at the end of August!!!
The cherry varieties gave real, ripe fruit from the last batch of side shoots planted out in the first week of September!
Then the bleedin'blight got the lot!!
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