andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Feb 20, 2018 0:46:32 GMT -5
keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) The original quote you posted mentioned an emulsion. I'm imagining using something like this technique: livesimply.me/2016/08/12/smooth-homemade-lotion/but with walnut oil, sugar, water, and ant poison (boric acid). I would store it in a locked container way, way away from anywhere a kid ever goes. I'm guessing it would go bad really fast, too. It also refers to trilinolein as a substance that's known to promote pollen germination. Since boric acid seems to serve the same function, even if the walnut oil doesn't promote pollen germination its presence in the emulsion might provide the stickiness and moisturizing qualities that I think I need, while the boric acid might trigger pollen germination.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Feb 19, 2018 22:33:22 GMT -5
Looks like 00 gets you the introduction.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Feb 19, 2018 22:30:23 GMT -5
Heh. I saw your previous post this morning and navigated my way to that exact table on Wikipedia. I ended up attempting seven runner x tepary crosses with severed styles. All seven flowers dropped off the plant without setting pods, while almost all of the crosses I attempted with my normal emasculation/pollination process set pods on that plant. When I looked at the cut end of the styles with a hand lens, they generally seemed dry, with very little pollen adhering. They also seemed to dry out pretty quickly. With the diagonal cut, the thin edge would shrivel within half an hour or so. When I tried smashing up some tepary stigmas/styles to try to get a paste or liquid, it just didn't work. The amount of plant material I was working with was really small and I think it was drying out pretty much instantly, before I could get it onto the cut style. My organic chemistry is pretty weak, but it seem like messing around with a variety of different oils and emulsions and possibly glycerine is worth a try. At the very least, more pollen would stick to the cut end of the style. I found some boric acid at a hardware store, so I think I have everything I need. I'm not going to have any bean flowers to work with for the next two months or so, as I try a grand de-fungus-gnatting of the house and then start the tomatoes and peppers for this year's garden. When I do, I think I'll try some more experiments. I'll be interested to hear what you figure out with your own experiments before then. On a related note, I came across this talk by Dr. Charles Simpson, an emeritus professor at Texas A&M who has done a ton of work with peanuts and their wild relatives. In passing during the question and answer session, he mentions that he learned of a crossing technique that produced two seeds from five crosses of a particularly difficult wide cross that originally took 3500 crosses to produce one seed. I've been meaning to send him a note to ask him what the technique was: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cDaMMjvrCY&t=2595s
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Feb 14, 2018 1:11:47 GMT -5
Joseph Lofthouse I just got home from the talk you gave near Seattle. It was great, and it was even greater to meet you in real life. I also enjoyed the group discussion afterwards. Good stuff!
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Feb 7, 2018 22:52:10 GMT -5
I've been cutting them at an angle, figuring that the larger surface area will hold more pollen grains. Just speculation, really. Cutting half way into the style is a good idea. If nothing else, It would give some mechanical protection to the pollen on the cut. On my normal crosses, I've been closing up the flowers and clamping them with a cut-up piece of a twisty-tie to keep the environment moist and protected, but I've been worried that I would brush off whatever I put on the end of the cut style. Seems like you could do all sorts of fun style grafting on cucurbits, since everything is so big. walt Thanks for the input. I have enough other ideas to try that I'll skip doing more water droplet experiments for now.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Feb 7, 2018 1:55:10 GMT -5
I've also been experimenting with cut-style pollinations, but for some runner x tepary bean crosses. To keep it simple to start with, I've mostly cut the style at an angle and brushed pollen on. Tonight, I put a tiny drop of water on the end of the cut style and tried to stick a lump of pollen onto the drop of water. It seemed like a good idea but it didn't work very well in practice. After reading the pamphlet you linked to, I might try mushing up a pollinated tepary stigma and using that to pollinate a cut style. Worth a try.
How are you applying the pollen in your crosses?
All of my attempts at style grafting have failed miserably, though I'm still trying. I'd guess that tomato styles would be even harder to graft than beans, since they're so delicate and easy to break off.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Feb 3, 2018 23:50:38 GMT -5
Quick question I just got some honey that happens to have pieces of comb in it. I'm a little worried that, if I put it in unfiltered the wax will clog the bubblers. If I heat the honey, then let it cool, can I just skim the wax off? I'm not sure exactly what process you're using, but it seems like the wax would be easy to remove after you've diluted the honey with water, before you add the yeast. It should float to the top or be easy to strain out, I'd think.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Jan 31, 2018 20:03:51 GMT -5
I should be able to make it to the Seattle area event. Looking forward to meeting you in real life; maybe some other folks from the area as well.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Jan 28, 2018 0:20:58 GMT -5
toomanyirons, nice thread! Like Day, I rent, and I have pretty severe limits on where I can plant. I have two raised beds in the back yard with an overhanging cherry laurel tree. My son calls it the poisonous tree; every one of its tissues has cyanide in it. Yay. Those are my best beds, but they only get full sun after about 1:00 PM. I have one other raised bed on the south side of the house that gets full sunlight. There's also a flower bed that I've partially converted to a vegetable bed. Finally, I have the start of an oregano grex in containers in the middle of the North fence in the back yard. All told, I have about 11.5 square meters of outdoor growing space. In addition, I have some shop lights set up in the basement, where I can grow 10 bean plants at a time. That's where I'm doing most of my bean crosses. My limited growing space really drives what projects I take on. Cilantro is a small enough plant that I can grow and evaluate a few hundred plants in my smallest raised bed or in half of one of the larger raised beds. The interspecific bean crosses take a lot of time, but very little space. We're going to grow tomatoes no matter what, so my tomato project is just along for the ride.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Jan 26, 2018 0:05:53 GMT -5
Four years ago, for Christmas, my wife gave me a copy of "Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties." I was hooked. Problem was that it was the middle of the winter and my garden was put to bed. No vegetables to cross...then I saw my budding amaryllis. Lovely orange and white flowers. I pulled off an anther and dabbed pollen on the stigma of a different flower on the same plant and made my first hand pollination.
About a week ago, for the first time, one of the plants I grew from those seeds bloomed. It was the same color and pattern as the parent's, but smaller. Still, it made me happy.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Jan 18, 2018 0:01:47 GMT -5
A styrofoam cooler filled with water should have a very stable temperature and a lot of thermal mass. You could adjust it from sub-freezing (salty icewater) to absolutely stable 0C (icewater) to whatever > 0C temperature you wanted. Cheap, too.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Jan 6, 2018 0:50:34 GMT -5
Does anyone know of some simple Mendelian monogenic (conditionally speaking) early marker gene that could be used to identify successful crosses? There are many information about flower and seed coat color but they are late scoring markers. For indoor growing, space is very limited and growing plant till flowering or, even worse, till dry seed before cross can be identified is very unpractical. Hypogeal vs epigeal cotyledons, for common x runner bean crosses, are nice example (although not monogenic) of what I'm looking for. Something that can be scored early in order to focus efforts. So far my best candidate is hypo-, epy- and cotyledon color. Anyone knows any other example? I don't know of any specific genes to use as markers. For my projects involving more advanced crosses, I'm planning to mostly use the presence/absence of anthocyanins. This seems to be reliably visible in most of the tissues of very young plants as long as they've been exposed to light for a day or two. Is that what you mean by hypo-, epy- and cotyledon color? I also use the intermediate position of the cotyledons to identify F1 common x runner bean crosses. It's a good one. For common/runner x tepary crosses, I'm hoping to use the length of the petiole of the first true leaf in a similar way. it's really short on tepary beans and pretty long on common and runner beans. I haven't made any successful crosses or found any pictures of these crosses, so I'll have to wait and see. Let us know if you find any good marker genes. They would be really useful.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Jan 6, 2018 0:14:57 GMT -5
walt Thanks for pointing that out. I missed it as well when I was reading through this thread. I've idly thought about chromosome-doubling some BC1s to force the issue. To take it a step further, I'd be really curious what would result from crossing a symmetric pair of amphidiploids from backcrosses to both of the original parents. Chaos! I don't use Facebook but would be interested in chatting with the permaculture folks working with the runner/polystachios amphidiploid. Any chance you could write me a letter of introduction? nicollas Sorry to hear you're having trouble growing the P. polystachios. What issues are you running into? I put a couple of my seeds into a germination-test setup at ~70F over a week ago, with no other treatment, and there's no sign of germination. I guess I'll try cold stratification next.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Jan 3, 2018 0:49:19 GMT -5
andrew I just sent you a PM but it didn't come up with your avatar or autocomplete on your username. If you didn't receive it, send me a PM and I'll reply.
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andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Dec 30, 2017 18:41:41 GMT -5
andrew I have lots of cilantro seeds to share, including three accessions from ARS-GRIN. My mixed-up seed is infected with a seed-borne foliar disease and has a chalcid infestation, so I'd rather not distribute it. I'll thaw my jar of original seed that I purchased a few years ago and see what I have left.
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