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Achocha Fat Baby

Achocha Fat Baby

Okay, it’s cucumber time.  Emma already posted about her achocha ‘mouse melons’, and even devoted an entire podcast episode to it on Alternative Kitchen Garden last year, as well as a squidoo lens.

[update:  I just realized Emma probably posted about something else, ‘Melothria’, a few days ago.  Achocha is something she grew and reported on last year]

A look in the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook shows my friend Frank in Belgium as the sole member offering seeds for it.  I suspect he’s been growing it for years, and probably one of the people who introduced it to Europe.

I feel behind when it comes to posting on this one.

The insides look like this:

Achocha Fat Baby

The black things are the seeds, which you take out before eating and save for replanting.

Raw they taste something like a cucumber, and after being fried a bit like green pepper.

Except for the seeds, you can eat the whole thing.  I’m looking forward to trying this in different foods.  I’m not sure if I like it yet.

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Taxi Tomato

If there was ever a controversial heirloom tomato, this must be it.  It’s probably the first heirloom tomato I ever grew, and I really like it.  If you look around on the Internet, you will see all range of comments on this tomato with most of them taking a very ambivalent stand.  As well as being called Taxi, it’s sometimes called Yellow Taxi.  It has quite a striking yellow color.  It’s an early determinate variety.

Yellow Taxi Tomato

I got the seeds for this tomato from Seeds Trust about 5 years ago.  Since then I’ve saved several generations of my own seeds.  At the time Seeds Trust were the only source for this tomato on the Internet.  Bill McDorman, the person who started Seeds Trust, is a reader of this blog and occasionally leaves comments.

Yellow Taxi Tomato

I have my own personal story that goes along with this tomato.  In the late ’90s we were in Chicago, and decided to have dinner at Charlie Trotter’s restaurant.  At the time it was considered to be one of the best restaurants in the US, and on top of that had a menu suitable for vegetarians which is very rare in this class of restaurant.  It was so popular at the time we had to make reservations six months in advance, and men had to show up in a suit and tie.  This isn’t our usual class of restaurant, so we were quite excited.

The theme of our vegetarian dinner was heirloom tomatoes!

We had never heard of heirloom tomatoes before, and at the time they were quite a novelty.  Dinner took nearly 3 hours, where they brought us course after course of plates with tiny servings of dishes that all had heirloom tomatoes in them.  I think it was about 15 courses, concluding with heirloom tomato ice cream for desert.  It was really a wonderful experience, and the presentation of the meal was also excellent.

The tomato held out as the most special and most prominently featured on the menu was Yellow Taxi.  It was really delicious.

Even now from time to time I see Taxi featured in seed collections of well known seed savers or heirloom plant collectors, but it doesn’t really seem to be a mainstream heirloom tomato because few seed companies seem to carry it.

I can’t honestly say it’s my absolute favorite, because there are quite a few other really excellent tomatoes around, but it remains one of my favorites nonetheless.  It’s certainly the tomato that inspired me to start growing my own heirloom tomatoes.

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Bolting Lettuce

Bolting Lettuce

I think bolting lettuce looks funny.  This is a romaine (or cos) variety, and you can see the flower stalk alone is about twice the size of the head of lettuce itself.  I’m growing this on my roof this year to save seeds.

While I’ve grown lettuce off and on for several years, last year was the first I tried to save seeds from it.  I failed, and the reason was I didn’t expect the plants to get so large and I used a container that was too small.  When you see this nice head of lettuce that you can hold in your hands, you don’t expect the flower stalk to get nearly as tall as you are!

The speed in which the flower stalk appeared was also a bit surprising.  This one took about 2 days to develop, whereas the rest of the head of lettuce was months in the coming.

I’m also letting some lettuce go to seed in the garden, but this one I’m growing on my roof so I can watch it more carefully and also because the seeds have dandelion like parachutes, and I want to be prepared to get them in time in case this is an issue.

Lettuce in the home garden has been getting a lot more attention lately.  My friend Lieven has been breeding lettuce for the last few years, and the Seed Savers Exchange is also offering an ever increasing variety.  Its really pretty easy to grow, and if you are prepared for the size not difficult to save seeds from either.

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New EU Seed Directive

Luigi over at the Biodiversity Weblog posted the text of a new EU directive on seeds.

It’s far from the end of EU Seed Laws we are all hoping for, but it’s kind of interesting because it seems to be vaguely worded and could let individual countries significantly relax their seed laws if they choose to.

The proof is in the pudding as they say, and we just have to wait and see what happens.