Radishrain

There's a huge rumor on the Internet that tomatoes taste better unrefrigerated, and pretty much everyone who says anything about it on the Internet believes it.

I've tried both, of course, and here's my opinion:

Tomatoes don't taste better or worse when refrigerated. They taste different. When refrigerated, they tend to be firmer, and have a nicer taste/texture for dicing and such, in my opinion. For eating fresh, I'd suggest keeping most unrefrigerated (and eating them sooner than later). For tomatoes you'll be storing for a while, I think they tend to taste better refrigerated (unless maybe you're going to cook them afterward or something). Unrefrigerated tomatoes continue to ripen faster (and get softer faster, which is fine for juice, but not the best for dicing and literally slicing).

Refrigeration may reduce certain flavors.

One variety I think tastes better refrigerated is called Valencia (a medium-ish orange tomato).

Tatiana's says that it is claimed that Black Pearl F1 (developed by Burpee), when refrigerated, develops "a unique extra sweet, 'Concord' grape flavor". She seemed skeptical to me, though. I'm not terribly skeptical, personally, but I understand why someone would be skeptical.

This article about the edible qualities of nasturtians says that they contain vitamin D. That's a rare claim when it comes to reading about plants, in my experience. The only other plant I know where someone has made the claim about it is the Cape Gooseberry ground cherry; of course, the amount isn't said to be a lot for the ground cherry (not sure about nasturtians):

https://garden.org/learn/articles/view/4112/

The article says that the flowers have a peppery, zippy taste, and that the leaves are also edible (and it implies that the buds are edible).

I wonder if you can eat the seeds, too.

How to Grow Tree Collards:
https://blog.gardeningknowhow.com/guest-bloggers/john-jeavons-tree-collards/

You can grow them from seed or from cuttings, apparently. They're perennials.

This is a fascinating article mentioning how jackfruit (native to India) does in Hawaii, as well as some other general jackfruit information:
http://www.gardenguyhawaii.com/2013/04/what-is-jackfruit.html

I didn't know you could make jackfruit seed flour as a gluten-free substitute for wheat.

Cottonseed is toxic to humans (not necessarily some other animals), but they've genetically engineered a kind with edible seeds for humans to eat: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/17/658221327/not-just-for-cows-anymore-new-cottonseed-is-safe-for-people-to-eat

Sounds great. Finally they're doing something cool with genetic engineering. This isn't a statement as to whether I think genetic engineering is moral or not. I reserve judgment on that.

I've been organizing the forums more, both for the sake of education, and to make it easier to add more kinds of vegetable forums. For instance, there are now forums for some clades and several orders. So, they contain families and such, and this makes it easier to build the forum structure. Don't worry. I plan to make more pinned posts to make it easy to find stuff, as well as more subdomains.

I've been adding new forums, too.

The Fruits and Nuts forum has been assimilated. I plan to make pinned posts to replace it.

The quick access links should be updated, eventually, too.

An experimental seed-saving process that I do, and enjoy, is this:

I remove the seeds from the fruit, into a strainer, wash them in the sink and rub the gel sacks (if present) off, put them in labeled herbal tea bags, and zap them with a Z4EX in a quart or pint jar filled a couple inches or so with water. I zap 15 minutes per each of the three frequencies. Then, I remove the bags, get the water out, and place them (still in the herbal tea bags) on brown paper bags in a room with a fan.

Because salt is very strongly antimicrobial, I hypothesize that soaking seeds in a strong salt water solution might be enough to disinfect them of diseases that are not inside the seeds. This could potentially be more effective than bleach when it comes to fungus.

I don't think this would harm the seeds of many vegetables, considering a study I read about where the conductor of the study was interested in determining whether vegetable seeds could survive crossing the ocean. The seeds tended to sprout after soaking for a month or so in a certain solution. For my hypothesis, I think an hour-long soak might be sufficient, however (but I would probably want a saltier solution).

The clouds looked really cool, today. So, I thought I'd take some pictures. They don't look as cool on my camera, but they're still nice.












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Today, I saw, for the first time, yams at Walmart (in Idaho), which were not sweet potatoes. They were probably Dioscorea, by the look of them, but I'm uncertain. Definitely nothing I've ever seen in the grocery store before. Exciting.

This is in the Monocots forum because the alternatives to sweet potatoes that I know it could be are all Monocots.

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