Where have the wild things gone .

I've been a hobbyist for years gardening mostly bread a butter stuff tomatoes green beans etc. Was into fancy hot peppers for a minute .

But I have been noticing seeds are not the same germination taking longer and plants come up defected at a higher rate nowadays


My Question is where have all the wild veggies gone ? I don't think I've ever come across a wild tomato , carrot or wild zucchini where do we find these items growing wild whens the last time you came across a wild something or another ?

too my apeople

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

Tomatoes we have today are human creations. I doubt any of the veggies you talk about are native to where you live. I have melons and corn from last year's garden growing back again since we moved to raised beds and left the old garden alone. I do wish people planted more wild edible perennials everywhere. We need Johnny Appleseed persons for all kinds of edible plants. I live in the South and the most common edible I see are Blackberries. They are everywhere. Well unless you count Kudzoo as an edible.

Do you save seeds?

Heirloom seeds are what I usually use and then if they do well I collect the seed for next season. Other than my own mistakes and the early planting season could have been better, I don't think I've done too much worse than usual, although not very good really.

I Planted Jalapeno Peppers 4 Plants.
1 Died 2 had just a few peppers and one is a little short
about 6 inches tall bushy and not a bloom.
Weird they came from the same seeds from one pepper.
a reply to: Ravenwatcher

a reply to: bluesman462002

I've got a nice four foot tall orange tree growing from seed. My garden is doing great. Hot peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, okra, cucumbers(gonna try pickles for the first time), canalope, pumpkins, cilantro, green beans...

Everything is doing great. But I live in Hellinois, so all that is moot!

Have I mentioned that I hate this state?

Wild carrots grow like weeds around here

originally posted by: bluesman462002
I Planted Jalapeno Peppers 4 Plants.
1 Died 2 had just a few peppers and one is a little short
about 6 inches tall bushy and not a bloom.
Weird they came from the same seeds from one pepper.
a reply to: Ravenwatcher

Unless you buy heirloom seeds, you're getting hybrid seeds that have been cross-bred for hardiness, size, flavor, etc. If you save the seeds from a hybrid plant, they revert back to one dominant gene from the original hybridization.

a reply to: nugget1

How do you even trust "heirloom" now anyone can claim anything now without repercussions thanks to the internet.

All you can do is test everything. You won't get the perfect shape, color or size with HS's, but the seeds will reproduce the next year consistent with the first.
I've always felt the national seed vault was as much about ensuring seeds to fall back on in case Frakensteining GMO's turned terribly bad as it was about starting over in the event of a global disaster. Kind of a modern version of Noah's Ark.

i rarely see dandelions anymore.


when was the last time anyone saw a dandelion puller?

had an end like a nail puller

pull it up root and all.

originally posted by: Ravenwatcher
My Question is where have all the wild veggies gone ? I don't think I've ever come across a wild tomato , carrot or wild zucchini where do we find these items growing wild whens the last time you came across a wild something or another ?

You probably wouldn't know wild tomatoes were tomatoes if you saw them, the original wild tomatoes were tiny, maybe pea-sized, so they look more like berries than tomatoes. These pimpinellifolium tomatoes are said to be the ancestors of the larger tomatoes we are familiar with, where cultivators would take seeds from the largest tomatoes of each generation until tomatoes eventually became unnaturally large:


Wild Currant Tomato From Peru | Solanum pimpinellifolium var.


Wild Tomato Information

Pre-Columbian denizens of what is now southern Mexico planted and cultivated wild tomatoes. As they were growing wild tomatoes, farmers selected and saved seeds from the biggest, tastiest fruit and cross bred them with others having more desirable traits. Spanish explorers then took these seeds to Europe, further separating the wild tomato ancestor from its rapidly changing progeny.

What that means to us is that modern tomatoes may look good, even taste good, but lack the survival skills of their ancestors. They are more susceptible to diseases and insect damage than their predecessors.

We used to have wild onions on my walking route.

I didn't see or smell them this year.

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

A lot of our vegetables all came from the same plants.They look very different in nature vs on our farms. Because we genetically changed them through breeding and cultivation practices. Check this out.

www.businessinsider.com...

a reply to: sarahvital

Still got plenty dandelions round here. I was using that exact tool yesterday on somebody's lawn. Although this is the driest I recall seeing things for years.
With the ongoing drought a lot of the trees are showing huge signs of stress and i expect we'll loose a lot more over the next week or so. The leaves look that houseplant you forgot to water just drooping and starting to fall already.

Don't think we'll be getting much autumn colour this year

As for OP yes i find bought seeds of the non heirloom variety are a lot more hit and miss than they used to be and you generally get a LOT LESS seeds in a packet too.