Look what I found
It’s my nature to save seeds from vegetables each year. In 2002, I saved seeds from a ripe pickling cucumber and planted them the following spring about three months before our nation invaded Iraq. Just as bombs dropped and missiles began flying toward the gardeners, teachers and taxi drivers near the Tigris and Euphrates, my vines began to bear fruit.
To my surprise, I got a healthy crop of cucumbers the color of picklers but the shape of lemon cucumbers that the year before had grown on the same trellis as the picklers. It seemed the right thing to do to name the new variety Baghdad, and in late autumn I saved Baghdad seeds.
Crosses like Baghdad usually revert toward one of the parents, but the vines from the Baghdad seeds bore fruit the same shape and color the next year and continued to bear lemon-shaped pickling cucumbers year after year. I wondered if any other gardener in the world had cucumbers like Baghdad.
These seeds made the move to Arkansas in 2009 and continued to produce lemon-shaped picklers. I forget which summer it was, but 2017 or 2018 was a terrible summer for my cucumbers, and the world (mostly just me) lost Baghdads. C’est dommage. I suppose I could try the same combination again this year and see what happens. That would be cool if it happened again.
Last summer I had two volunteer cucumber plants sprout in different beds and both produced long healthy main crop cucumbers, and, of course, I saved seeds and planted some last week. Wonder what they will produce.
Lettuce do our best and romaine calm
In 2008 out of a crack in the side of a raised bed came a handsome healthy volunteer looseleaf lettuce. It was a blazing red color, and for some reason I did not harvest it but let it go to seed hanging onto the side of the bed. Midsummer I sprinkled some of the wispy seeds in another bed and dozens sprouted, so instead of one salad from the original, I got salads for two months, and, of course, I saved seeds and harvested many healthy looseleaf red lettuces in subsequent years.
Because of the Mesa Verde nature of its origin, I named it Cliff Dweller lettuce. Those seeds also made the move to Arkansas and continued to produce, but over time the Arkansas Cliff Dwellers lost some of the blazing red and now have just sprinkles and streaks of red. Does not matter. They are still tasty. For me, it is about continuing the line of vegetables year after year, and they can change if they want to.
One of the Arkansas Cliff Dwellers grew alongside an oak leaf lettuce plant in autumn a few years ago, and I protected them through a winter as they went through their whole life process. When weather settled the next spring, that bed was littered with lettuce seedlings. I allowed a couple of those plants to go to seed the following winter because they had just made it through the previous winter and that probably means something going forward about virility. We’ll see. At least I get salads.
Do you feel chili?
In 2017, a volunteer pepper plant sprouted in a cucumber row. For two or three years previous, I had grown Leutschauer peppers, a mild to medium hot pepper shaped like a tapered bell but very red. I did not plant them in 2017, but the surprise plant produced Leutschauers plus it was a volunteer (an obvious sign it wants to be here) so I saved seeds. The next spring those seeds produced moderately slender orange peppers which packed moderate heat. Like any Crayola® veteran, I quickly surmised the red Leutschauer had crossed with a golden cayenne to produce the orange moderately slender hot peppers. Just a guess, but seems likely.
So I saved its seeds and named it Orange Cross. The following year was last year, and I planted both the 2018 and the 2017 seeds, and both produced slender, not as slender as cayennes, orange pungent peppers. We’re in the greenhouse stage this year.
The point is it can be very entertaining to watch nature have its fun. Two years ago, an arugula plant was obviously plain-leafed and not lobed like every other arugula I had ever grown, so, yeah, I let it go through its life cycle, saved seeds, and the next spring they produced plants with non-lobed leaves. They tasted the same and behaved the same, but they were a little different. My guess is gardeners in northern Italy and western Slovenia have encountered non-lobed arugula in their gardens and were just as intrigued as I was. If not, I have some seeds if they want any.