Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Spontaneous Seed Purchase

I'm usually pretty focused in my seed and transplant planting. I research and choose the best varieties for my zone and menu. In the past i've stuffed as much as i possibly (shouldn't) could into my garden, and other years i've been more sparing.
This year, i started out sparing, and am becoming a little more crazed the nicer the weather gets!
We stopped into The Great Outdoors (local nursery on south Congress St.) yesterday to get some lemongrass for the back yard and ended up in the seed room. I picked up some Calendula (pot marigold) that apparently i should wait until fall to plant, but planted some seeds in a pot anyway, and some more cucumber seeds. Since reading a fellow blogger's post about miniature white cucumbers, i really wanted to try those. But alas have not seen them available anywhere. TGO had some neat Seed Savers Exchange seeds though, and I ended up picking these out:

Mexican Sour Gherkins

They're a strange heirloom variety: teeny tiny little cucumbers that taste almost pickled naturally. It was a debate between those, Crystal Apple (a sweet type cucumber) or Poona Kherra (a strange looking indian cucumber that had no flavor description). Since i'm already growing lemon cukes, i thought i'd skip the apple cukes and chose this strange Gherkins, that apparently aren't even cucumbers! Whoops. They're strange cucumber cousins, and won't cross pollinate: so the nice thing is i'll be able to save the seeds of the two different kinds of 'cucumbers' without worrying about hybridization wierdness. So if nothing else, these little guys should be fun in a salad: maybe a tossed salad with fresh corn, halved tiny sour cukes, black beans and oil and vinegar.


My lemon cukes have already germinated, and i have dreams of fermenting pickles and fresh cucumber sandwiches dancing in my head. I sure love watching plants spring to life. It brings me almost enough joy to get over the feeling of crappy that i feel after indulging in Easter chocolates.

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