To date (October 31st), I have finished extracting, drying, packaging, and inventorying seeds of just 66 varieties of tomato seeds. This partial list is published here:
Delectation of Tomatoes Partial List of Tomato Seeds from the 2023 Season
With an estimated 700 hours of work left to go with this seed-saving project, I’ll be doing good to get this list finalized and published before the clock turns to 2024. I expect that the final list will contain around 440 varieties of tomatoes, including at least 100 that are new to Delectation of Tomatoes.
This year, I’m saving a lot of seeds from melons, cucumbers, watermelons, peppers, and even a few beans and other types. Hard to say when I will be able to find (manufacture??) the time to get those seeds extracted, dried, packaged and listed. Following are just a few teasers.
October has involved several middle-of-the-night bouts of chasing deer out of the tomato patch. They’ve learned to jump between two strands of electric wires, even while the wires are hot, with no chance of getting shocked — because all four feet are in the air at once, so no grounding! Clever buggers – I’ve watched them take a running jump through the hot fence several times.
At other times, they just ripped up and broke the wires, even breaking or removing some of the insulators. Persistent buggers.
Once all tomatoes were harvested, I finally gave up, unplugged the control box, and opened the fence wide, on the south and north ends. Sure enough, within 24 hours, at least five deer set up house in the tomato patch.
A single deer in one night can cause as much damage to a tomato patch as 100 tomato hornworm caterpillars.
It turned out that the frost on October 12th was light (29°) and brief, causing minimal damaging. Thermometer in the garden recorded several daily high temperatures in the 82-88° range between 16-22 October. It felt like late summer again, and I was kind of regretting having harvested all tomatoes and melons before then. But the frost on October 26th, at 18° pretty much killed all vegetation.
Between the much colder weather and an indoor bug zapper, fruit fly population is much reduced. But it will still be a while before I will be able to clear off the stove, washing machine, floors, and shower of batches of tomatoes so that I can move around with some semblance of normalcy again. It’s been at least 6 weeks since I have been able to take a normal shower, as that space has been crammed with stacks of tomato batches waiting for me to manufacture time from something. Just sponge baths for now. And essentially, the only counter space available is a window sill. Piles of tomato batches on the stove get moved to the floor if I decide to cook. Plates of drying seeds get placed on top of containers of tomatoes, as not a single shelf of wire racks is available for drying plates of tomato seeds yet. Dare I risk the phrase, “Taku Whawhai”?
Perhaps an alternative to manufacturing time is to figure out how to clone myself. Or find several people who will work hard, efficiently, and safely, 40 hours per week, with a pay of less than $1 per hour. Clearly I’m in dreaming mode — which is only occasionally related to problem-solving mode…
On a much more positive note, over the past two months, more than 40 people in the community have come over to help harvest, consume excess garden produce, and in some cases (melons and peppers), save seeds. Even more significant is the positive feedback and expressions of gratitude!
👏 👍 😊
Delectation of Tomatoes, etc. 