This is the beautiful enchanting flower of the Passiflora edulis, or the passion flower. The plant is a vine and the fruits ripen from a green to a yellow colour. The fruit is pulpy, containing numerous edible seeds, with a distinct sweet aroma. This is one of few plants that survived the drought from February-June of this year.
The seeds of this plant are now available for Seed Save and Swap!
We visited the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist (OPA) and availed of these open-pollinated seeds free of charge. Seed dispersal is one of many on-going projects of the Bohol OPA. See more at their website.
These are the seeds we got – so colourful! The colours indicate the seeds have been treated with fungicide to prevent fungi from spoiling stored seeds.
In the meantime, our own Seed Save and Swap Season 1 (2015) is ongoing! Learn more at Backyard Seeds.
From Wikipedia: “Open pollinated” generally refers to seeds that will “breed true.” When the plants of an open-pollinated variety self-pollinate, or are pollinated by another representative of the same variety, the resulting seeds will produce plants roughly identical to their parents. This is in contrast to the seeds produced by plants that are the result of a recent cross (such as, but not confined to, an F1 hybrid), which are likely to show a wide variety of differing characteristics. Open-pollinated varieties are also often referred to as standard varieties or, when the seeds have been saved across generations or across several decades, heirloom varieties. While heirlooms are usually open-pollinated, open-pollinated seeds are not necessarily heirlooms; open-pollinated varieties are still being developed.
One of the challenges in maintaining an open-pollinated variety is avoiding introduction of pollen from other strains. Based on how broadly the pollen for the plant tends to disperse, it can be controlled to varying degrees by greenhouses, tall wall enclosures, field isolation, or other techniques.
Because they breed true, the seeds of open-pollinated plants are often saved by home gardeners and farmers. Popular examples of open-pollinated plants include heirloom tomatoes, beans, peas, and many other garden vegetables.
This fish floated dead* in the pond so we decided to give it to the pigs. They didn’t want it. To the chickens, they didn’t want it. To the ducks, and this was their response. Yet another behaviour that we can only speculate upon. A similar behaviour occurred earlier this year, when a female duck was killed by the alpha drake, see Do Ducks Know How To Grieve.
*We have a not so large tilapia pond. Quite a number of small tilapia have appeared. I wasn’t able to catch any of the large tilapia lately because they have become smarter (and less hungry since it is chesa season and some of the fruits have fallen into the pond). As the fish population grows, the older and bigger ones die.
Are you ready for El Niño until 2016? What are some of the things you’re doing to prepare, apart from the conservation of water? Do you have plants and animals that are/will be affected by El Niño?
We’ve had a dry spell of nearly 5 months this year, from February until June, and this resulted in the loss of many crops and in some villages, the death of goats and cattle due to the lack of water to drink and moisture in vegetation. So we’re thinking more seriously about water shortage beginning January 2016 and a simple way of water desalination / purification is one of the things we’re looking at, sea water being just a few meters away. Another item on our agenda is soil moisture retention to keep our plants alive and the condition of the soil good. The last one is water harvesting, generally a means to collect rainwater run-off (we’ve already started this by having a tilapia pond, duck pond and a reservoir).
How about you? Are you getting ready for El Niño? Here’s an interesting video on water desalination/purification.
We are interested in saving and swapping heirloom and/or open-pollinated seeds with anyone from the Philippines. As of this moment, the following seeds (below) are available for swap. Just bear in mind that in principle all our seeds should be heirloom and open-pollinated as they come from plants growing in our garden, but some might be natural hybrids where seeds have more than one source. We do our best, but we are not a professional seed company and cannot make promises.
If you’d like to join the swap, simply fill up the form at “Backyard Seeds”, just let us know what seeds you can swap and which seeds you’d like to receive. You can find the 2015 Inventory of Seeds at The Home Farm by Trevor.
Let’s do it! ?
