WARNING Food Slide:
Ha. I had a packet of old seeds for Minnesota Midget-a softball size melon that has a short maturity date-and I wanted to grow some just to have new seed.
So I tried to start some indoors but none of the 8 seeds sprouted. So I pitched the packet at the edge of the compost heap. Must have had 15 or so sprouted-dug some up and planted in one of the other raised beds and left the others in the compost heap.
I have a Meyer lemon that I bought last year. I also have a lemon tree of some sort that I bought about 8 years ago. I don’t know what it is—it was one of those 2 in 1 dwarfs that had lemons and limes. The limes-had thorns, so I just kept cutting those limbs off because I have to bring it indoors and there’s not enough room to avoid brushing against it.
Those lemons are the Best! They are big and round, thin skinned, and way more juicy and just a tad sweeter than regular lemons-a difference largely due to ripening on the tree I think.
Melons and Strawberries, mulberries and blackberries when I was a kid. Granny made the best jelly using grapes and blackberries —both growing wild on the back 40.
PLANT SLIDING STILL:
I love it when I end up with those volunteers from a pile. One year, at my old place I had the best tomatoes come up volunteer from a pile of old plants I didn’t get around to tossing in the “official” compost. I saved some seed but the resulting fruit wasn’t on par with the volunteers. There were 3 volunteer tomato plants, can’t recall what I thought they were but I’d planted a lot of heirlooms the year before. Back then I put out 40-50 tomatoes/season, spring and fall. We all liked tomatoes and I was young enough to keep up. I miss that. Probably my most disliked thing about aging is not being able to go at my food growing like I did back then.