Does Soil Inoculant really work?

When I have problems with digestion I often benefit from eating yogurt that contains the Acidophilus bacteria. There are products that can help a plant’s roots, like yogurt can help a person’s stomach. These products are often made out of nitrogen-fixing bacteria (rhizomes) and are touted as helping legumes get good head-start. Products in this class are often loosely referred to as “soil inoculants”.

Yogurt contains beneficial bacteria.

At first I thought that rhizomic soil inoculant was some kind of propaganda marketed by gardening companies to lure gullible gardeners into spending more money on their products. However, a recent experience has taught me otherwise. A while ago I had been given a gift certificate from a family member to a large seed company. I could not find too many open-pollinated seeds in their catalogue so I chose to add soil inoculant to my purchase. I didn’t think the inoculant did too much the first time I tried it and I had nothing to compare it to. In hindsight though, my first crop of peas was better than any other crop I have had since.

Soil Inoculant contains beneficial bacteria.

I have been growing Chinese Long Beans the last few years and have noticed that they often take a while to sprout. Recently I tried soaking my Chinese Long Beans overnight, then draining the water and rolling the seeds in soil inoculant. Within a few days half of the seeds began sprouting. They continued to sprout again and again. I have never seen such high germination in this seed variety and can only attribute it to the soil inoculant. Since then the beans have continued to grow at an accelerated rate in comparison with growing them in years past. I don’t believe that using soil inoculant for legumes is the only thing legumes need, though I do believe the inoculant helps germination rates, increase plant vigor, and speed up the time between sowing bean seeds and reaping a crop.

Step 1: Soak Beans overnight

Step 2: Put soil inoculant in a container.

Step 3: Rinse out beans

Step 4: Mix inoculant with beans

Step 5: Plant beans with inoculant

Step 6: Watch your plants grow!

There are a variety of soil inoculants out there and I cannot speak to the effectiveness of any other variety than the one I used. Some have a few good bacteria varieties while others contain a host of beneficial organisms. One farmer even conducted an unbiased comparison of the affect of using inoculants (and some other things) in his soil. Given my recent success with soil inoculant I will definitely consider investing in these bacteria in the future.

Of Sparkler Radishes and Little Girls

Should you have the good fortune of meeting Reggie Smith, the owner of Westwind Seeds, she will gladly tell you about her experience as a child with Sparkler Radishes, which inspired her love of gardening and seeds. My daughter happened to be the fortunate recipient of some of Reggie’s Sparkler Radish seeds. From that time until I gave in, my daughter asked me again and again to plant her seeds. Though it took me some time to make a spot in my summer garden (the kids’ garden was being pasteurized) I eventually found a spot she could plant her radishes.



Daughter with Sparkler Radish Seeds.

To give you a background on Sparkler Radishes they are red, round, and are in the mid-spicy range for heat. Some of the radishes can be quite hot while others can be quite mild. In any case, they are your regular grocery-store type radish.



My daughter showing off her Sparkler Radishes



Within a few days of my daughter planting her Sparkler Radishes she came into the house shouting “My plants are growing, my plants are growing!” Each day she checks on the plants when she wakes up and when she comes back from school and each day she says the same thing.



A 2-week old Sparkler Radish - They grow quick!



So, what am I growing these days? Children. Well – more like raising them. And I find it much more rewarding then my garden will ever be. Gardening helps me to find correlations between my family and my garden like this: What is the similarity between Sparkler Radishes and little girls? They both grow up quick!



Little girls - they grow quick!

For the Love of Spinach

The pattern has endured throughout garden history…

The boys come along,

They meet up with the girls,

Love is in the air,



Male Spinach seeds releasing pollen

And seeds are formed.

Spinach Seeds being formed near the stalk.

For further questions, go ask your Mom and Dad.

It came as a surprise to me that spinach plants grow up to be either male or female, and do not have both the male and female flowers on the same plant. The term for this is dioecious, meaning two houses. One way you can imagine this is having all the boys in one house (plant), with all the girls in another house (plant). As long as they are in the same area, seed will be formed.

Seed to Seed recommends having a minimum of 4 female plants and 2 male plants to continue the vegetable variety without any detrimental inbreeding. I laughed at this, because you cannot determine which is male or female until the stalks grow. So the basic rule of thumb is the more the better. As spinach requires a large isolation distance to retain varietal purity, small-scale gardeners may find it easiest to save seed from one variety per season.

 

Seed to Seed

One of the things I enjoy about gardening is the vast amount of knowledge needed to grow just one vegetable. It is truly miraculous that, despite all of our blunders as gardeners, a plant will sprout, grow and - at times - flourish. The last book I read by Carol Deppe about Breeding Your Own Vegetable Varieties sited the book Seed to Seed as having information that I really wanted to know about growing melons. Seed to Seed turned out to have all of that information and so much more!

 The book Seed to Seed is written by Suzanne Ashworth in collaboration with the Seed Saver’s Exchange. The first part of the book is a wonderful read that overviews the importance of seed saving, explains how botanical classification works, elaborates on pollination and flower structure, gives ideas on maintaining varietal purity as well as proper techniques for cleaning and storing seeds.

The second (larger) section of the book goes over all the major vegetable families and gives information about many common and rare vegetable varieties. Each plant section contains an introduction to the plant, its botanical classification, a section on pollination crossing and isolation, a section on seed production harvest and processing, and seed statistics. The individual plant sections also contain recommendations from master gardeners in each region of the United States. These gardeners suggest appropriate planting dates and often elaborate on how to care for the plant in the specific area.

So, here is a little of what I learned from reading this book:

A perfect flower contains both the male and female parts of the plant in one place and is able to pollinate itself. An example of a perfect flower is a tomato flower.



Ozark Pink Tomato Blossoms mutate in Tucson's late-summer heat



A monoecious plant is one that has two separate flowers for male and female on the same plant. Two examples of monecious plants are melons and cucumbers.



Cucumbers and melons exhibit monecious flowers



A dioecious plant is one where each plant has either male or female flowers and both are needed to pollinate. An example of this is spinach.

 

Dioecious  female spinach requires a male spinach plant



 A self-incompatible flower is one in which requires bees or people to pollinate it, as the flower is perfect but will not form seeds if pollinated by itself. An example of a self-incompatible flower is broccoli or cauliflower.

 

Brocolli flowers are self-incompatible



Additional fun things I learned included the word “rouge”, which means to remove off-type plants and guidelines for using hot water to kill pathogen on seeds. Reading about the vegetable varieties made me eager to try out some new vegetable varieties such as the Jelly Melon.



Seed saving is a valuable skill worth developing!


Saving seeds from your garden can allow you to become more self-sufficient. Perhaps your local nursery won’t be as happy about you producing your own seed, but your finances will, and along the way you can develop skills that will enable you to be prepared for things to come. As I harvest my own seed my hope is that, if I had to, I could support my family from the food I grow.

The Carosello Bianco Leccese



Carosello Bianco Leccese Starting out.

After experiencing so much luck with Armenian cucumbers but wanting something tastier I asked around my gardening club (TOG) and found out that there was another kind of Armenian cucumber. From that point on I have been finding out as much as I can about melon cucumbers. Apparently the C. melo species that we think of as muskmelon and honeydew here in North America is often grown for cucumbers in other parts of the world including Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. These melons have some great attributes such as often being burpless, free of bitterness, thin edible skin, fruit very quickly and taking heat better than many regular cucumber varieties.  However, they often have problems of their own, such as powdery mildew and little tolerance for the cold. One variant of these cucumbers is called the Carosello. This cucumber-melon takes many forms in a region of Italy known as Puglia.


Growing Bigger!

All C. melo cucumbers, including the Carosello, can cross with other C. melo species so require being grown in isolation if you desire to save pure seed. The cucumbers can either be grown on the ground or staked. When staking the vines you will need to let the main stem grow out to about 71 inches before pruning (this stem often produces the female fruit). The side vines containing the male flowers can be pruned back the side after the second node of leaves.



Beginning to see Fruit!

There are many different varieties of these cucumbers and some of them go by multiple names based on what the locals know them as. These pictures sent to me are from a gardening friend in Italy. These are the Carosello Bianco Leccese. From what I understand Bianco means white (though the skin is light green) and Leccese means it comes from the district of Lecce in the Southeast of Puglia. Other varieties such as the Barese come from Bari while the Manduria and the Massafra come from the Taranto district of Puglia.

Harvesting the first Bianco Leccese

The inside looks good (=

Many of these cucumbers do have some form of fuzz at the beginning stage of growing and a few keep growing fuzz as they mature. I like to call this the “fuzz factor”. My friend who sent me these pictures said that the fuzz factor on the Bianco Leccese is minimal and can be easily removed before eating. I personally don’t mind fuzz on my cucumber and think it is a neat characteristic. The fur on even the more fuzzy varieties is simply brushed off by hand.

Growing...

...and growing even more.

The fruit of the Bianco Leccese is very delicious when they reach the weight of 150-170 grams or 5-6 ounces though they remain good until about 200 grams or 7 ounces. When picked in their prime, the seeds are small and edible.



Ahh... the beauty of the Carosello.



The Bianco Leccese.

You can learn more about these cucumbers at an Italian Wikipedia site: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carosello_(gastronomia) or translated into English. I hope you have enjoyed some of these pictures of the Carosello Bianco Leccese. I am very grateful for my friend Giuseppe who provided much of the information and pictures for this post.

Update: With the help of my Italian friends I have recently been able to purchase a large amount of Carosello Bianco Leccese seeds. You can purchase them in sample seed packets at Cucumbershop.com.




Il Carosello Bianco Leccese e magnifico!