Seed Saving - Quadrato asti Giallo

A couple of years ago, we grew out Napoleon Sweet bell peppers for Seed Savers, in Decorah.  It was a good experience, even if the season was a bit marred by the removal of my kidney early in the year.  The good news was, we did come up with some good seed production that year that had a high (95%) germination rate when we tested.  

We decided to give it another try in 2023 and grew out some Quadrato asti Giallo peppers and you can see some of the results above.

This time I was able to spend more time selecting plants and being more intentional with removing plants that weren't showing the best qualities for this particular heirloom bell pepper.  At the seedling stage we culled about 20% of the plants for various reasons and another 20% did not get transplanted because they were not showing the same vigor or they exhibited a growth pattern I did not like.

A few more were removed when the fruits weren't what we were looking for - and then I waited for the harvest.

When we grew the Napoleon Sweets, we took those red peppers to the Jorgensen Plaza kitchen and they cored them and returned the cap with attached seeds to us.  In return, they got inexpensive, Certified Organic, red bell peppers they could use fresh or freeze for later use.  This time, we cut them ourselves and sold the cut peppers to interested persons.  The rest we did not sell went to the chickens or the compost.  

Sometimes, you just have to do what you have time and energy to do.

I have to admit that I liked the taste of the Quadratos in this batch and I was pretty happy with the quality of the fruit in the harvest.  The next step is to do our germination test.  If it is acceptable, the seeds will go to Seed Savers to fulfill the contract.  If not?  We'll have to consider what might have happened with the pollination and go from there.

Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to grow more out for seed in 2024.  This is the sort of thing where a little success breeds confidence and a couple of repetitions means we've had a chance to improve some of the processes.

I suspect, even if we don't have a contract for 2024, we're going to be growing a few more things for seed - maybe for ourselves, maybe for others.  

We'll see.  But, we've got some success to stand on - and that's never a bad thing.

Compost is Gold

One of the adjustments we have made over the past few years at the Genuine Faux Farm has been the management of our high tunnels, Eden and Valhalla.  While I say "adjustments" I actually mean "adaptations to reality of now."  When you go three years running where one or both of the farmers is down during the time of year when planting and high tunnel moving is supposed to happen, you adapt to the reality of what is....  even if you do it kicking and screaming.

For those who do not realize it, our two high tunnels are built so that they can move back and forth between two growing locations.   And, if you're not entirely sure what I mean by a high tunnel, you're looking at a photo of the inside of one of these hoop buildings.  We grow in the soil that is covered by the building.  If you want to see what some of that looks like, here's a post from 2017.

In any event, we found ourselves planting in our high tunnels in the same location that they were in last year.  In Eden's case, it hasn't been moved during any of the three seasons I just mentioned.  We had some help moving Valhalla a couple of seasons ago.

And now for the good news and adaptation.  We had, at our disposal a nice finished pile of compost that we could use to help rejuvenate some of the soil inside the buildings.  In the picture above, you can see that Rosie (the tractor) has a nice full bucket from that pile.  The bright sun fooled the camera a bit and it didn't pick up the deep, rich and dark color of this compost.

Both Tammy and I liked the feel and the smell of the black gold we pulled out.  Anyone who has worked with composting can tell you that a person learns the texture and scent indicators of quality compost.  And, other than a few things, like some baling twine and bigger sticks, this was good stuff!

We took the time to dig a planting whole for each pepper plant in Eden and filled them with the compost.  Then we put in the plants and covered with the soil removed from the hole.  It's a much longer process of planting, but for what we are doing now this was the best answer.

Eden now has had 120 Quadrato asti Giallo peppers planted for over a week now and they are looking very good.  These peppers are being grown out to harvest the seed for Seed Savers Exchange and I think we're on track for some excellent production.  The next steps are to finish caging the plants and to trim off the early fruit set to encourage them to put on a bit more growth first.

Quadrato asti Giallo is a pepper we have grown since 2008 (maybe earlier) and it was even in our top veggie variety list for 2018.  The good thing about having a history with an heirloom variety is that we are able to select plants that will help maintain a strong and healthy strain.  When we transplanted these peppers from seed trays to pots, we removed twenty plants that had germinated but were weak or showed some other issue we wouldn't want to propagate.  Another two dozen didn't get put in the high tunnel for similar reasons.  

Now we've got a very good looking mini-forest of peppers in Eden - all of them feasting on quality compost.  Keep checking back with the blog and we'll keep you updated on their progress.