Hi All, Lane County Extension Service Master Gardener John Fischer here with KLCC's Good Gardening.
I always learn new things from my back and front yard vegetable plots. I think this is garden #65. Two lessons from this year may be valuable to remember for next spring.
First, you can't always get what you plant. The zucchini seeds in the packet I used produced one zucchini plant and five squashzillas. Look at the picture here with this article and tell me if you want to eat that warty weirdo. The takeaway - weird seed while rare does happen. Overplant, just in case.
On the positive side, I planted some large - well, giant German Giant tomatoes, from my farmer son-in-law. And despite my expectation that they would not mature until October, they were ready in early August. I had assumed large tomatoes would need a longer season. Salsa making in midsummer got that fall chore out of the way early. And those big tasty tomatoes filled up the pot fast compared to little Early Girl, and Oregon Spring varieties.
The takeaway - just because you've known something for a long time, that doesn't mean it's true or it may not apply anymore in our new California climate.
The warm spell we'll have at the end of this week will provide a good opportunity for a rarely practiced, but once important part of gardening - seed saving. Beans, lettuce, greens, beets and carrots can be left to go to seed, or saved and used to plant future gardens. Beets and carrots take two years, but many crops will self-seed next year if you let them finish their life cycle this fall. I have arugula and beets coming up on their own right now. Corn, some squash, and hybrid tomatoes will produce something different than you got the seed from.
So check the true breeding of any plants before you want to save seed from before counting on them for next year.
I'm John Fischer with Good Gardening.
