Garden Faerie Botanicals

08/21/2026

Past Their Prime, Still Sublime

08/20/2026

Richmond River Longkeeper Cucumber

I am self pollinating this variety right now and found a young fruit!

Richmond River Longkeeper is an old Australian cucumber variety associated with the Richmond River region of New South Wales.

What makes this cucumber particularly interesting is its long-keeping ability. Unlike most cucumbers that are harvested while young and green, Richmond River Longkeeper can be left on the vine to mature, developing its characteristic larger size and brownish, mottled skin.

But the young fruit can also be eaten as a cucumber while it is still small, green and tender.

I’m especially excited to be growing this one from Seed Savers Exchange seed vault. I have been drawn to long keeper varieties and am excited to add this to my collection. It is very rare!!

08/19/2026

Early Girl 🍉

I’m trying to self-pollinate and save seed from this Early Girl (Otome) variety.

I had one fruit successfully self-pollinated, but unfortunately the birds got to it and pecked it open before I could let it mature. 😩🐦

So I’m trying again and hoping this some make it all the way to maturity.

The melon I’m showing here also experienced some water stress from this year’s drought. It simply didn’t get watered as often as it should have, so it isn’t a perfect representation of what this variety can produce under better conditions.

Early Girl is a Japanese mini watermelon, known for its very early maturity and small fruit size. It matures in roughly 60–70 days, making it particularly interesting for areas with shorter growing seasons. The fruits are generally 1–4 pounds, with light green skin and salmon-rose flesh.

Despite its small size, it is known for being very sweet, crisp and productive. The vines can also be grown on the ground or trained up a trellis, making it a useful choice when space is limited.

The variety has a history in Japanese watermelon breeding. The name Otome refers to an established Japanese watermelon type. It is important to distinguish the documented history of the Otome type from some modern seed descriptions that attribute a specific Yamato 3 × Kaho cross to Early Girl (Otome), because that particular breeding claim isn't well supported by primary historical documentation.

08/17/2026

HOW THE FRIULIANS KEPT THIS SQUASH

Zucchino Rugoso Friulano. Pale yellow, warty, goose-necked, and almost impossible to find outside northeastern Italy. I have a crate of it right now.

Here's the thing about this variety: the flesh is white, firm, and barely wet at all. It tastes closer to a pumpkin than a zucchini. It holds its shape in the pan and releases almost no water. In Friuli it's known for risotto, frittata, and eaten raw in a carpaccio with olive oil and lemon.

But the interesting question was what happens when you have too much of it - and that sent me into the Italian preserving record.

There's no preserve documented under this variety's own name. What there is: Friuli has a strong vegetable-putting-up tradition, and alongside their famous brovada, the vegetables most often preserved there are turnips, asparagus, cauliflower and zucchini. And every one of those methods works better with this squash than with a common green one, because the usual failure of preserved zucchini is that it goes to mush. This one doesn't.

Three methods, oldest tradition to newest.

SOTT'OLIO — under oil, the Friulian way

A producer in Cordenons, Pordenone, still makes theirs with zucchini, oil, wine vinegar, onion, sea salt, basil, black pepper, and juniper. The juniper is what tells you this is northern Italy and not the south.

4 lbs squash, cut into batons or 1/4 inch coins
3 tbsp coarse salt
2 cups white wine vinegar
2 cups water
1 small onion, sliced thin
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp juniper berries, lightly crushed
Fresh basil
Extra virgin olive oil to cover

Salt the cut squash in a bowl. Leave 2 hours to draw the water out. Rinse and squeeze dry. Boil the vinegar and water together, blanch the squash 2 to 3 minutes only, drain, and spread on clean towels overnight until completely dry. Pack into sterilized jars with the onion, pepper, juniper and basil. Cover fully with oil. Work out the air bubbles. Rest at least a month before opening.

IN SAÒR — sweet, sour, and genuinely old

Same treatment as sarde in saor: vinegar, onions, raisins and pine nuts. This wasn't invented as a flavour idea. It was how Venetian sailors kept fried food from spoiling. The firm flesh of the Rugoso is exactly why it works here - it won't fall apart in the vinegar.

3 lbs squash, sliced 1/4 inch, grilled or pan-fried until just marked
3 large onions, sliced thin
1 cup white wine vinegar
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 tbsp sugar
Salt, a bay leaf, a few cloves

Soften the onions slowly in the oil. Add the vinegar, wine, sugar, raisins, pine nuts and spices. Simmer 10 minutes until slightly reduced. Layer squash and saòr alternately in sterilized jars, cover with the liquid, seal. Give it a day minimum for the flavours to marry.

ESSICCATE — dried

The oldest preservation method there is. Italian farmers cut zucchini into rounds or long strips, sometimes threaded them onto string like necklaces, and hung them outside or laid them on cane and wood frames in the summer sun.

The documented protocol is Pugliese rather than Friulian: cut by hand lengthwise, salted, dried in the sun down to 30–35% moisture, dipped in pure wine vinegar for a few seconds, dried again, then stored dry or packed under oil.

August in the Okanagan is made for this. Slice thin, salt lightly, lay on screens, turn often. Two to four days. Store bone dry in paper bags or sealed jars.

To use them: soak in warm water 30 minutes and treat them like dried mushrooms - risotto, pasta, stews. Ground fine, they make a squash flour for thickening.

AND THE EASIEST METHOD OF ALL

One grower who trialled this variety harvested his last fruits — the ones he'd chosen for seed — at the end of November. They kept so well he didn't cut them open until February 10th.

So let a few of your best fruits go hard-shelled on the vine. You get seed for next year and eating squash into late winter, with no processing at all. That's the whole point of an open-pollinated variety: it feeds you twice.

ONE SAFETY NOTE, BECAUSE IT MATTERS

The vinegar blanch in the sott'olio and dried methods is not for flavour. It's the acidification step that makes oil-packed vegetables safe. Skipping it is the classic route to botulism. Don't skip it.

And salt-and-drain first no matter which method you choose. Even a dry-fleshed squash will weep into the jar otherwise.

Seed for Zucchino Rugoso Friulano will be in the shop in January 2027.

08/17/2026

I was told that Adam has a leak and the water was turned off. .that it was on now.

Is this a joke? The water is still turned off and my crops are dying and many are dead.

I hope that I can get at least $500 back as i never was given a full season. Just less than 3 months and dead crops.

08/16/2026

Amber Tomato

Local bird population approved.

The birds have chosen this variety as their favourite tomato in the garden.

No other tomatoes are being pecked as thoroughly as this kind.

This Russian heirloom is an open-pollinated, determinate dwarf variety that matures in about 55–60 days. It produces loads of small 1–3 oz yellow-gold globes on very compact plants. Despite being determinate, it is remarkably productive and is compact enough for container growing.

Adaptive Seeds first grew it in 2010, describing it as one of their earliest and tastiest tomatoes that year. It performed especially well during a difficult season when many tomatoes were late and lacked flavour.

I love this dwarf tomato variety! I just wish the birds would let me harvest them whole!!

08/16/2026

The reality of agriculture in Vernon, BC.

08/14/2026

https://youtu.be/Jpd1kS1vUgk?si=GEKm5FLki4DB1d-_

Before we decide what to eat, countless other decisions have alread...

08/14/2026

Rugosa Friulana: An Italian Squash With a Mysterious Past

Rugosa Friulana is an Italian heirloom summer squash associated with Friuli in northeastern Italy. Rugosa means rough or warty, which perfectly describes its distinctive fruit.

But its history goes much deeper.

Rugosa Friulana belongs to the Crookneck Group of Cucurbita pepo, a group with roots in the central and southern United States. Warty crookneck squash were being cultivated by Indigenous peoples at least 1,500 years ago.

By 1811, Italian horticulturist Filippo Re described an early Tuscan squash called zucca a nodi, or “knotted squash.” Researchers think this may have been Rugosa Friulana, although its identity can't be proven.

Modern genetic research has found that Rugosa Friulana is unusual even among crookneck squash. It has light-green stems, retains its yellow fruit colour as it matures, and has an uncommon genetic makeup that sets it apart from other crooknecks. Researchers still don't know exactly how this unique combination arose.

And that's part of why I'm paying close attention to the plants I'm growing.

I'm self-pollinating selected plants and watching for variation. One plant has unusually patterned, pale-green leaves, while another is producing shorter fruit. I'm not automatically carrying those traits into my seed stock.

08/13/2026

🌱 Rugosa Friulana — the squash that refuses to quit.

This gorgeous Italian heirloom is one of the varieties I’m growing in my dry-farming area this year.

Rugosa Friulana has a reputation for performing remarkably well under low-moisture conditions — and I'm putting it to the test during this drought.

It has been growing in my dry-farmed area, although with the drought being as extreme as it is, I’ve had to give it some water to compensate for no rain.

And then there’s the fruit. 😍

Those wonderfully ridged, wrinkled, almost warty fruits can be harvested young as a summer squash, when they have that firm, dense texture and rich flavour.

Or you can let them mature much further — particularly when you're saving seed.

So this is more than just a strange-looking squash.

It’s an heirloom with excellent eating quality, fascinating seed-saving potential, and some seriously interesting drought performance.