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Row 7
Mar 10, 2018 13:28:31 GMT -5
Post by billw on Mar 10, 2018 13:28:31 GMT -5
I'm with you, Steev. I like some bitterness, particularly in greens. When vegetables are too sweet, it is hard for me to eat much of them. I can hardly handle a few mouthfuls of modern sweet corn, for example - it is just too much.
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Post by billw on Mar 9, 2018 15:17:10 GMT -5
So what are your thoughts on the taste of them Bill. These are new and small, so I won't taste them until after I've grown them out this year. But, in general, I don't detect a lot of flavor differences between ulluco varieties. There are definitely texture differences though. Some are much more mucilaginous than others. Like probably most people with western palates, I don't favor slimy foods, so I will probably select against those eventually. At this point, the only trait that I am selecting for is seed set. It is really interesting to reflect on how little we know about these Andean crops even though they have been domesticated for thousands of year. There are maybe 300 to 500 varieties of ulluco, but to the best of my knowledge, there is no written information in any language describing any agronomic or culinary traits of those varieties. For all the time that I have put in working on ulluco, I still know next to nothing about it.
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Row 7
Mar 8, 2018 17:35:22 GMT -5
Post by billw on Mar 8, 2018 17:35:22 GMT -5
Fragrant cucumbers certainly sound delightful. Store bought cucs don't smell or taste like much of anything to me.
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Row 7
Mar 8, 2018 14:14:52 GMT -5
rowan likes this
Post by billw on Mar 8, 2018 14:14:52 GMT -5
It is encouraging to see more universities coming back around to public plant breeding, but I wish it felt like more than window dressing.
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Post by billw on Mar 7, 2018 15:33:26 GMT -5
I ran across a pretty awesome procedural manual for advanced potato techniques (determination of ploidy, pollen viability, pollen germination, embryo culture, etc.). This sure would have saved me a lot of time a few years ago! Potato Reproductive and Cytological Biology Manual
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Post by billw on Mar 2, 2018 13:49:28 GMT -5
Yesterday I harvested pots of ulluco seedlings that germinated in the fall. A disproportionate amount of seeds germinate in fall and I haven't been able to recreate whatever conditions make that happen, so I just work with it. By harvesting even immature tubers about now and storing them in plastic bags at room temperature, I can get them to break dormancy by June, which allows a sufficient growing season (harvest in December). I'm pretty happy with the results. This is the first year that second and third generation seeds have had much germination. 7 of the 16 here are second or third generation. There is 1 orange, 3 white, 3 red, and 9 yellow. Colors will be darker and many will be spotted at full maturity. The ratio of whites to colored varieties (about 19%) is still supportive of my guess that ulluco color inheritance is similar to beet.
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Post by billw on Feb 27, 2018 23:02:18 GMT -5
If you exhale over the pollen about 10 times, that is usually enough water. A tip picked up from my high school biology teacher.
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Post by billw on Feb 26, 2018 15:03:05 GMT -5
L.lucidus has significantly larger tubers than the other Lycopus species that I grow, which are L. uniflorus and L. asper. It may not be a fair comparison because I started the other two plants from seed, while I started L. lucidus from rhizome. It may already have been selected for improved tuber size while the others are wild.
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Post by billw on Feb 25, 2018 20:08:05 GMT -5
I've had the best luck with G.41 here in very wet winter soil.
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Post by billw on Feb 25, 2018 16:14:10 GMT -5
I know next to nothing about TCM. It appears that they use both the stems and leaves and dried rhizome for different things. The conditions that they are used for just read like nonsense to me. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycopus_lucidus
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Post by billw on Feb 24, 2018 20:39:19 GMT -5
I just harvested my first crop of Chinese bugleweed and was fairly impressed by it. Trixtrax sent me a couple of rhizomes last year and they did really well. It is most commonly used in Chinese medicine, but also at least occasionally as an edible in China and Japan. I found it very productive and easy to grow. The tubers are much like the other tuberous mints, but a little more bitter, similar in flavor to rough bugleweed (L. asper). Not too bitter though - just at first chew. After that, it is pleasantly sweet. The tubers are a good size and the plants yielded about four pounds each. I probably should have harvested them in the fall, as they are already sprouting. It looks like they aren't super cold hardy, probably zone 7 or so. We had temps down into the low 20s last week and the sprouts on many of the rhizomes died back. Lycopus species use stachyose as their primary sugar, so I expect this will be a gassy vegetable if eaten in quantity.
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Post by billw on Feb 23, 2018 14:29:14 GMT -5
Right, worked out mine has been growing 8 months now, some of that time in a large pot. Would a hot summer reduce the likelihood of flowering It might, but people report flowering all over the US, where the summers are usually pretty hot. As always, my expertise ends at the border of my garden. You will need more than one variety to get seeds.
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Post by billw on Feb 23, 2018 13:56:36 GMT -5
Orflo, I am really excited to hear that you saw seeds on my ullucos, even if you didn't collect any. That is the first report that I have heard of anyone else seeing seed set. That is one step closer to being able to breed ulluco in climates that are at least a little different than mine. I collect them when they are about a week from maturity by removing the entire inflorescence. Once the seeds are mature, they fall off really easily.
I got four seeds from your yacon/S. riparius hybrid last year and I hope that they will germinate. I hand pollinated them from yacon, but where I grew them, I can't be sure what else might have pollinated them. It also could have been S. connatus, S, maculatus, or S. uvedalius.
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Post by billw on Feb 22, 2018 22:06:01 GMT -5
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Post by billw on Feb 22, 2018 17:54:36 GMT -5
The heirloom yacon varieties flower here anywhere between about 180 to 250 days after planting, depending on variety. Bekya, Morado, and New Zealand are the earliest. Some of my seed grown varieties start flowering in as little as 150 days. It takes them about another month to get a good number of flowers going, so you need a minimum of 7 months in the ground to get much flowering.
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