Well, that wasn’t the English Telegraph!

While the times in which we live are full of all manner of technological advances, with advancements come unintended consequences. A newer discount seed company has purchased several reputable seed companies. While I used to buy the English Telegraph from a local reputable seed company, I mistakenly decided to try purchasing the same seed from the company after it had been acquired. Unfortunately, instead of being an extremely long variety with a tapered top and slightly wrinkled skin, it looked more like a very common American variety crossed with a middle eastern cucumber.

 

 

The unintended consequence of seed company consolidation is that, though the specific variety continues to be sold under the new owners, it is only sold under the auspices of the existing seed variety name. In reality, the new company replaces the seed of the newly acquired variety with cheap bulk seed, then sells it to the existing and new customers – hoping that it is close enough to the previous variety to go unnoticed. In all aspects, the new seed company is committing fraud and lying to the consumer. This is the ongoing “quiet death” of many heirloom seed varieties.

 

 

 

In contrast, seed companies that really care do the work to select the most desirable traits in order to bring heirloom vegetable varieties back to their former glory. They go through years of work prior to releasing something that is both highly desirable and helpful for the grower.

The Not So “Bushy” Cucumber

When one thinks of the word ‘bushy’ they may think of a plant that is shorter or more compact. At least that is what I think of if someone says the word ‘bushy’ to me. However, that was not my experience with the Bushy Cucumber.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While not a cucumber variety that wants to take over the world, like the Yamato or the Gagon, Bushy is not exactly the most compact either. Perhaps the best way to describe the Bushy cucumber variety I grew was ‘semi-compact’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is the length of the vines of my Bushy cucumber because the original Bushy has always been this sprawling? Is it because growers just didn’t maintain the plant and cull the longer-vined plants out of the population? Or is this just one of the many casualties of the seed cultivar consolidation?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s seed cultivar consolidation? It is when seed companies run out of some of their seed varieties and substitute them with others. Then, if no other company or supplier keeps the seed variety going, the out-of-stock variety is no longer commercially available. Then within several years, the cultivar no longer exists. While this was a big problem decades ago, supply and demand issues as well as inflation and a desire for greater profit margin make it much more common.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In any case, Bushy was a good pickling variety with mildly short internodes. Very productive, but perhaps not as ‘bushy’ as one would expect.

Dealing with Disappointing Vegetable Seed

One of the really difficult things to deal with when gardening is anticipating that a seed will grow and produce a specific way and having the seed produce something completely different. Especially if what the seed produced is less desirable than what the grower was anticipating. If a gardener planted seed anticipated growing a nice large red sandwich tomato, and ended up growing some yellow cherry tomatoes, they may be quite miffed. How can a seed supplier advertise one type of tomato, provide something completely different? Should gardeners and growers just take this in stride, or should they complain? What is the “right” thing to do? Should I just ignore the problem? Should I contact the seed company about the problem, or should I do something else?

 

 

This seed was no longer germinated at over 80%, from 2021.

 

 Although things like this can be frustrating, they are not uncommon when dealing with heirloom vegetable varieties. Not only do vegetable varieties change over time, but the incentive to maintain cultivars often wanes over the years. Unfortunately, while I would prefer to work with the very best genetic traits that are typical of a specific cultivar, I am sometimes provided with what seems to be the very worst seed. If no other source for the variety can be found, I have to consider the time and energy I have to clean it up and compare that with the opportunity I have to work with other varieties that may have much more promise. While everything in life cannot be quantified, because life is short – and despite disappointments – if I continue to work on varieties with the most potential, things will eventually work out.

 

 

Yet again in 2022, Newer seed germinating poorly.

 

 

So – what would most gardeners do? Beginning gardeners may do nothing, but most would likely experienced gardeners would just lose trust in the company they purchased from. Next season, they would purchase their seeds from another supplier.

Cucurbit Seed Orientation

Reader Beware – I am about to breach a very controversial topic, of which there has been some research already done, but none that has been done with field trial of weak seed, so I thought I would just put this out there. The topic is “seed orientation”.

 

While I don’t believe that which way a seed is oriented matters when one is dealing with fresh healthy vigorous seed, I do believe that it is a very important factor when planting weaker cucurbit seeds. I have found that the problem with the majority of weak/older seed is that they have trouble shedding their hard outer seed coat. Planting the seed with the radicle facing downward only exacerbates the problem. The seedlings emerge from the soil, unable to push their seed coats off and eventually die from being starved from the inability to photosynthesize because the seed coats are now dry and the struggling seedling has to push it off without having anything secure the outer covering to pull out from it. I prefer orienting seeds with the radicle facing up at a 45 degree angle, with soil compacted on top of the opposite side of the radicle, so that when the root emerges from the seed and the seedling attempts to remove its leaves from its outer covering, the seed coat is lodged firmly in place so the seed can pull out from it. Orienting my seeds this way has provided me with a much higher survival rate and much earlier root emergence-to-photosynthesis-time than other methods.

 

 

I have included a picture to illustrate my thoughts with the left side with illustrations of what I have observed when orienting seeds with the radicle facing downward and the right side with illustrations based on what I have observed when having the radicle facing up at an angle and with soil compacted onto the opposite side to lodge the harder seed coat in the soil.

 

If anyone else has strong feelings on the matter, please let me know. I would love to run an experiment with a batch of very consistent fresh seed to see if I can provide hard evidence to an advantage in the time required to have the seedling shed its seed coat. (Edit: I wanted to also let you know that I often pre-sprout my seeds enough for the roots to have already emerged before placing them in the soil like this)

Repurposing Old Seed

So what do I do with old seed? Do I throw it in the garbage? That would be quite a waste! I don’t do that. Instead, I throw it in buckets of water for a couple weeks and let either sprout or rot. Then I incorporate it into my compost pile.

Growing Pains

With increasing seed sales, comes increasing work and responsibility. One of the first things that my family suggested, to help me, was to create a return address stamp for my envelopes. The idea was that, if I had a return address stamp, I would be able to save a whole lot of time in writing out the return address information on each envelope. I was really excited to use the stamp, but the first one turned out wrong. Sometimes I feel like nothing comes easy in life. Eventually I received a return address stamp that, while occasionally finicky, has been a huge time-saver for me.

The second issue with the growth of my hobby business came when talking with a farmer about selling seed. He asked me, are you registered as a seed seller in California? The thought that I would need to register to sell seed in California was completely foreign to me. You mean that I have to complete some kind of permit and be licensed to sell seed? Apparently this is a thing. Though I have never heard of it, this was definitely something that is required here in California, so I emailed the Department of Food and Agriculture, explained to them my situation and sent a check. Because I had been selling seed for some time, I included all of the previous years of fees along with a late fee for each year for which I had not paid the fees on time. At least I can have some solace in knowing that I did the right thing, as soon as I knew what I was supposed to do.

The third issue I encountered in my business journey was the need to promote my brand. In the past when people asked me for a business card, I just told them how easy it was to find me website (cucumbershop, cucumberseed or cucumberseeds.com). But after someone told me that I should really have a business card, I decided it was time to take the matter seriously. I found a site that made stickers and ordered a set of sticker business cards. Just thinking about having a business card had always seemed pretty boring, so instead I choose to design a business card sticker that someone could stick to the outside of their water bottle or some other item seems a lot more interesting and fun. If nothing else, the logo is pretty cool.

The final issue I had to figure out with my business was how to work with the state of California, to enable me to legally purchase a bacterial fungicide. While bacillus subtilis strain QST 713 would most likely not hurt a fly or a bee, I was required to obtain a permit from the Solano Department of Agriculture in order to spray this organic fungicide on my plants – at least if I purchased it as CEASE from BioWorks. So I had a department of Agriculture agent for Solano County come to my residential backyard to verify that I was indeed growing the cucumber and tomato plants that I said I was growing, in order to grant me a permit to spray them with a primarily benign bacteria. Welcome to the bureaucracy! Though this was just one hoop in many to get my seed business to where I wanted it, one positive thing I learned from the experience was that I could have the a small portion of my seeds from my plot to receive a phytosanitary certificate (documentation that is sometimes required in exporting seeds abroad).

The Long Wait for Italian Seeds

On October 25th, 2019 – having noticed a slight decrease in the germination and vigor of my seed supply, I reached out to a reliable Italian seed company to restock some carosello cucumber varieties that I did not have the time or energy to grow. If I had the time and energy to describe all I did to purchase these seeds, you would wonder why it mattered so much. For anyone not familiar with the process of getting everything in order and working with bureaucracies, the process can be daunting. But after over 114 emails and many days of work and effort utilizing a friend to translate for me – along with a good deal of divine intervention, I finally received the seed package in June of 2020. It was, at least partially, worth the wait.

Acquiring high-quality foreign seed requires so much time and patience. But for me, it is the price I pay to ensure that I can continue to provide high-quality carosello varieties to others.

Long Shot Carosello Barese Growout

In a long-shot attempt to find a spotted carosello specimen similiar to my friend Giuseppe, I grew out the Carosello Barese in my hydrophonic basket to see if anything different occured Apparently not. This grow-out turned out to produce the same carosello cucumber variety as always.

Note: growing in poor soils or conditions in which the plants feel stressed will not produce bitter fruit. However, fruit size and shape will suffer as a result. Of all the factors that result from plant stress, I have not found that fruit color changes from plants grown in ideal conditions to those grown in less desirable conditions.

SeedSelect Scopattizo or Spuredda Trial

Of all the carosello that I grew out this summer, I had some of the most hopes for this one. For one, look at the label. The cucumbers are all of similar size and length. Each fruit exhibits an outer skin that is light colored with dark green broken stripes.

Based on the package, who would guess that the seed inside would grow anything other than what the picture on the package advertises? However, from the outset I was under the assumption that the variety name is often more characteristic of the variety than the picture. Perhaps one of the plants would produce something like this and others would produce something else or perchance it was a mix of seeds that would produce different carosello. The only way to find out is to grow them.

Plants sprouting, March 21, 2019

March 26th

April 1st

April 3rd

April 10th

Apirl 11th

The plants of this variety grew quickly and did quite well. There were no major problems other than the “user error” of overwatering parts of the plants and not providing more of the microbial life nutrients in the soil mix that the plants needed. I’ll be working on fixing some of that this winter.

April 29th, developing female flower

April 30th, flower turning yellow

April 30th

May 1st

May 4th

May 21st - This is a poor picture at night - medium light/dark color

Overall, the plants ended up producing “Scopattizo” carosello fruit. These are carosello that are between light and dark in color. Tasty, but not exactly what the advertisers were trying to convey by the picture on the seed packet. It would not have been the first time that I have purchased packets of seed in the hopes that what grows would look somewhat like the advertised product. A case of false advertising? At least in my book, that would be a definite “Yes!”

May 26th: My second planting ended up producing much of the same results.