Hi all,

It's so exciting to see all of you again this year! Even more exciting are the new names joining this year's seed swap!! It should be a great time as it always is!

Here's a place for us to come together and chat about our seeds, wishes, wants, haves... or, if you have questions about this swap, you can ask right here.

Chat away!

here in Michigan 5b, getting ready to plant out my veggies. I am so excited to try some of the tomatoes I received last year in the swap. I also started some 12 year old black cherry tomatoes that I received many years ago in a swap- I had a 100% germination! They are starting to flower already! I am realizing just how far my two foot surgeries in the fall put me behind in the garden I have SO much weeding to do and still can't be on my feet as long as I would like, so trying to be patient with myself. Where are all of you at in your garden journey this year?

My husband is on his 6th hospitalization for sequelae of cancer surgery he had in December. The weeds are monsters. I got my little bulbs and 3 peach seeds from the swap planted last Fall. They all look great. The 3 peach seedlings are 2-3 inches tall now.
That's it for now.

Diana, it's good to hear from you. Thank you for the update on your hubby, so glad he's hanging in there.

The garlic bulbs I planted as soon as I received them from the swap (from SameOldBrandNew and fb), are getting close to harvest time. So much more growing, mostly edibles but some flowers too. It's been a cool spring for us (not complaining!!) so my pepper plants aren't doing as well as usual! But everything else looks great. Exciting!

Hi y'all

Glad to see you back & looking forward to this years swap

I was waiting for the ground to warm up enough to plant tomatoes & peppers but now that it finally is they are predicting rain for the next 7 days in a row

Just can't win in this area

I'm thinking I might be better off just poking the seeds in the ground at this point!

Hello Folks!
I am totally delighted with the results of those seeds that I sowed from my dibs from d&d #9. I am in resting mode after a day of planting out onion seedlings and sowing pole beans (doing a maypole of Rattlesnake and Kentucky Wonder this year). Deer have temporarily shied away, perhaps due to the parking lot expansion of the church next door. I continue to sow additional annual seeds that you all have generously offered (and I, in 2022, greedily dibbed upon) to fill out my garden beds to the point of, "green mulch only" (as usual). It is my hope that those of you who received my seeds from #9 swap have given them a try. I can say for certain that the bulbils of 'Music' Garlic yielded excellent results in my zone 5 garden, and I appreciate the conversation we previously had regarding garlic bulbils that lead to a new way of propagation for me. I wish you all a wonderful Springtime, come what May!
Maggie

Hey all... Mixed bag for me... lol

Found the grow lights, got them going and just finished planting my garden (peppers and tomatoes in on Tuesday, herbs and onions in yesterday with the rest in earlier), so I'm kinda late to the game this year...

bad news, it has been so dry here and all my winter sowing jungs that looked awesome and couldn't plant at the time have since dried out and died because I forgot to water them... ugh....

But here's to a great growing season for all and great seed saving season. This year, I'm focusing on fewer varities which had better production.

Sorry to hear about your WS jugs!!! I too have lost some because I haven't been watching them close enough and they dried up. I overdid this year and have way more than I have room for, plus I wasn't expecting so many to be successful! We had an extra snowy winter so I'm sure that made the difference! Am trying to dig up more lawn as time & energy allow. Been focusing on tomatoes, peppers and beans so the WS transplanting has taken a back seat. Just not enough energy to put in the amount of work needed each day to get everything done... But doing what I can and enjoying what progress I do make.

The varieties of garlic bulbils that I got from last years swap are all growing very well! I'm happy about that. (big thankyou to all who put them in for the swap). I've lots to learn about garlic!

I'm on a bean, tomato & pepper kick this year and purchased some supposedly "rare-ish" varieties so I'm hoping the hail and bugs will stay away and that I'll have those varieties to offer.

What FUN it is! Happy gardening everyone!

It never did rain that week & haven't seen a drop of rain yet!

I'm having to hand water everything in my veggie gardens on a daily basis & trying to get everything in the ground. I barely have time to even look at my flower gardens but have been incorporating some flowers into my veggie gardens.

It feels like I've moved to the desert

Somewhere I had seen a chart or some type of list on seed saving . Like it listed the names and a bunch of information on seed saving .
Would anyone have a link to that or know what I'm talking about and could direct me towards it? Was thinking it was somewhere in garden.org but it's been so long since I seen it that I'm not positive on that anymore.

Maybe this, found in the seed forum...

The thread "The Ultimate Resource for Seed Collectors" in Seeds forum

Yes that's it! Thank you so much 😊

You're welcome. I hadn't seen that list in years. It's a good one for sure and may be helpful for others.

Been a weird season for me. I had to go home out of state in March for a funeral and left my partner with the 2 inch seedlings of peppers and tomatoes, and let's just say there were almost no survivors (zero tomatoes, a half dozen peppers, no eggplants and fun new solanaceous plants) out of the hundreds I'd started. That was pretty devastating, no lie, but I was heartened in that I lucked out and happened to pick up some leggy extras at a plant swap of a few types I was actually looking forward to growing.

Still getting used to being in a warmer zone, this only my second season. This year we were slightly more prepared for the deer but what we kept them off of had to fare against waves of pests. This season's grand epiphany was that I finally understood how people could have come to the New World having been farmers all their lives and still starve to death having no clue the way things worked in this new place. I had a garlic crop failure for the first time in my life - an easy peasy crop in IA has a leaf miner fly that is overwhelming here because it hosts on wild introduced onions in the lawns. C. pepo and cukes seem to be favorites of everything that eats. I got one cuke and one zuke from about 50 plants. Just found another new pest yesterday called blister beetles that defoliates tomatoes and lots of other things and packs a punch to earn its name. It's a wild ride. I'm looking at it as an experiment in ecology that is giving me lots to learn about. I do appreciate the abundance so many kinds of new insects and new birds that are fruit and bug specialists. One success, I did manage to get my green wall of sunflowers growing up the south side of the house so I can watch goldfinches all day. It was a joy to watch them bring their fledging chicks to the seed heads and practice extracting and hulling the seeds.

Did anyone else get totally wacky weather this year? We ended up with no snow accumulation which I'm told is very unusual in central MD. Then, it just didn't rain for a month from late may through June. Things were actually dying, native stuff, like violets in the sunny side of the lawn. I left weeds I'd normally pull that I knew the deer like because I saw nursing does with their skinny ribs showing. Discovered I can kinda hide certain crops with others they don't like or let tasty weeds get just a little bigger than certain crops to protect them. An interesting concept I will play with in future years. I thought I noticed the bees seemed to disappear on heavy smoke days. Has anyone else observed this?

Yes on all counts only I'm in a zone 2 zones colder than I'm used to.

Never had a problem with growing anything down south. The only pests I had were tomato hornworms & fire ants.

Here I'm having problems growing just about everything except pole beans

I got maybe 6 cukes this year before some disease totaled my plants. Nothing from my Armenian cukes which actually disappeared as did all melons.

Cabbage worms are horrendous here. Japanese Beatles were attacking my beans before they decided they liked my cherry tree better

Septoria leaf spot on my tomato plants

So far pumpkins & acorn squash are the only things the squash bugs haven't killed, well, the zucchini I have in a pot hasn't been attacked by anything yet but it's not producing either.

No rain to speak of from May through August but we're getting pummeled with rain the few times it has rained in August. Temps have been all over the place. Some nights of 54 degrees & days at 84, just a week before it was in the upper 90's.

I do have tons of tomatoes on my plants but have been having to remove leaves daily. If it weren't for the pole beans the tomatoes wouldn't have much protection from the sun.

So yes. It has been difficult here this year but I'm dealing with it & learning how to deal with it. Like row covers which I've never had to use before & planting cole crops in fall & not in spring.

Sunflowers are doing well

I lost a month of gardening during a dry spell due to my emergency appendectomy which finally got me to see a doctor for the first time since the jab was pushed... Weeds were 4-6' tall and trying to relcaim my garden has been challenging... crops I normally do very well on I am struggling with mightily this year including cucurbits (winter squash and cukes) as well as brasicas (kale, cabbage, & brussel sprouts) are completely overtaken by weeds. My zucchino rampicante actually never even germinated. Sunflowers are just falling over. Tomato production will be down this year compared to last year, but should still be respectible. Same for peppers... My rhubarb was overtaken by weeds... my wine grapes died.

My bees are doing ok, but I have had to deal with 6 swarms this year from my hives. I started the year with 3 hives. I am up to 5 and gave a 6th away to a coworker. (For those doing math, my neighbor also caught 2 of the swarms and one got away.) I'll be pulling honey in a couple weeks, but I know I'll have at least 15 gallons of honey that I'll need to figure out what to do with. lol So, my bees are doing ok. I wish the smoke happened on full moons so they wouldn't swarm, but hey...

Just a weird year, but I have not have a super successful garden this year, but I have my health and my family... I am well off

Definitely been a weird year! Started off cold then jumped right to hot weather and no rain which was tough on my plots at the community garden as there is only a couple of community hoses. I buried some terracotta pots to help with water, but lost a couple things and had to reseed a few items. Zucchini and corn germinated spotty due to the drought. It wasn't until after the 4th that we had some rain. I have quite a decent amount of large tomatoes- but they are just starting to turn red. We had our first BLT of the season last night with tomatoes and lettuce from the garden on homemade sourdough- YUM! Peppers are short- but LOADED. Beans going crazy! Snow peas didn't start until the end of June and produced almost through July and just started again. Delicata doing great! I've made several batches of pickles and giving some cucumbers away. Powdery mildew starting to show on my cucumbers and just took out my luxury pie plant. Overall- while slow to start- I've been fairly happy. My husband is a little salty that we haven't had a single zucchini this year.

Even the Amish have a rough time here.
I've never seen an okra or garlic failure here, but that's an awfully limited subsistence diet in a bad year. My tomatoes did okay, but just pooped out - too hot to set fruit last month. Squirrels discovered the joys of eating cucumber and squash blossoms...
Onions barely replaced themselves, and the sweet potatoes won't be ready until October. I didn't get the beans going at all this year - life got in the way.