|
Post by galina on Jun 14, 2010 12:49:47 GMT -5
Bungkan? Interesting. Is this one of the moschata x maxima cultivars? The pictures on www look very good indeed.
Triamble looks great, jolly weird, makes you laugh. Apparently fairly late. I have seen them in a demonstration garden in the south of England, great big things.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 10, 2010 19:04:41 GMT -5
Many of my blooming turnips blew over in the wind... The roots had rotted inside, and were not firmly anchored into the ground. I'll hill up the remaining to see if we can keep them alive long enough to set seed. Regards, Joseph I hope so too. Mine are tied together a foot off the ground and a second time higher up and tied to tomato spirals to keep them from breaking and flopping everywhere in the wind and still bits break off. Fingers crossed yours will be fine. Yes I have read with great interest about your methods of keeping weeding manageable. Also I am recovering from a bout of sciatica at the moment and have been struggling with these chores :-) Because I plant much closer together, almost everything needs hand weeding or careful weeding with a hoe. Probably less really is more - and I should be thinking of fewer plants. Thank you for the push to 'think weeding' at the garden planning stage.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 6, 2010 19:03:42 GMT -5
Galina, you're right, it wouldn't perform the same every year which is why earliness is important. Nevertheless, most of my tomatoes are doing fine, because I selected most of them for reliability despite cool summers. . Some of them are probably "parthenocarpic", meaning they will set fruit even if it is too cold for them to self-pollinate at all. Problem is, then it doesn't have any seeds. Usually though, it's just the first few tomatoes and the rest end up with seeds I can use for next year. They were bred in: Sweden (Glacier and Imur Prior Beta), Oregon/Idaho/Yukon (Forest Fire, derived from "Sub Arctic Plenty" crossed with "a beefsteak" to get its ancestor "Prairie Fire", then I don't know what Tim Peters did with it), Alaska (Polar Star), Canada (Manitoba and Coldset), Russia (Silvery Fir Tree), and locally (Seattle's Best of All). These tomatoes ripen every year, even in our worst. It is more important for them to be reliable, than to give me a significantly bigger crop in "good years". Similarly with the squashes, I am using fast ripeners bred in places like Montana and North Dakota. Interestingly, their vigor has been good despite the cold weather; they are still growing. There is also the question of how much of the fruit is easily useable. Some squashes not only have a large seed cavity, but a certain amount of pithy fiber that has to be cleaned off the fruit as well, and some gets lost stuck in on the shell. Other squashes have smaller, off-center seed cavities and less fiber, so a high fraction of the fruit is fully useable. That's one way to compensate for smaller fruit. BTW, the end result of my amateur breeding efforts are not just for my own benefit. I think others will appreciate the merits of reliability as food prices keep going up. Indeed, such a maxima will be potentially appreciated by a very large group of cold summer gardeners, Joseph. Here are my best performing c maxima: Buttercup Burgess, Uchiki Kuri, Sibley (you may not like them because of their larger than average seed cavity), a 'Kapocha' type squash (possibly a hybrid, plants were variable), Queensland Blue, Australian Butter, Jarrahdale and Whangaparoa Crown (aka Crown Prince) from Australia and New Zealand. Dense-fleshed Flat White Boer from South Africa. The hubbards and bananas are very poor some years and want more heat. Amish Pie I have grown once only and loved its flavour, similarly Sweet Meat - not sure how well either perform in a really awful summer. Tomatoes that usually, but not always, produce outdoors (I grow most of my tomatoes under cover): De Barao, Early Tanana, Galina's, Glacier, Siberia, Sub-Arctic 25, Bloody Butcher, Brown Berry, Matina (aka Tamina), Latah, Giant German cherry, Stupendous, Whippersnapper, Silvery Fir Tree and Tim Peter's Fruity Yellow (which is red, tastes delicious and amazingly can recover from some strains of late blight up to a point). Stupice is one that many gardeners rave about for real good flavour and earliness, but I can't get it to perform here. Sorry for the side-track to tomatoes, but I really appreciated reading and comparing notes on suitable varieties for more difficult growing conditions. Looking forward to hearing more about your breeding progress.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 6, 2010 17:47:06 GMT -5
Joseph, This looks just great, such a huge space and such wide paths too. Looks as good as a demo garden. Snap! on the flowering turnips. What did you do to protect your turnips over winter? The turnips here were sown during July and wintered under a blanket of doubled-up fleece/frost cloth cover and they all made it, although we had a grim winter. Grunt, I am sorry the couve were so frost tender and you ended up with only the one.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 6, 2010 11:35:15 GMT -5
I read 'Seattle' in the North and wondered whether such a squash would perform the same every year. Here in central England (more northern still) I can end up with 5 winter squash fruits from 20 plus plants or with 65 and it pretty much depends on the type of summer we are having. If I could grow 30 every year reliably , I would be happy, but some years it just does not work out.
The usual 'early' ones do perform better and with more fruit, but honestly one fruit from an Amish Pie (for example) is still much larger and more food value than 2 fruits from a buttercup plant. I just happen to love buttercup and will always grow them because of that, irrespective of the food to foliage value.
I think you could go down two separate routes. Firstly grow as many likely candidates as you can find, study them carefully, and select down to just a few cultivars that you will grow every year. Alternatively, let all likely candidates with the right attributes between them cross naturally, and 'go with the flow' to breed your own. Anything good in further generations could become a seed parent for your own adapted maxima. Choose the earliest fruit from one plant, a second fruit from the least mildew troubled type and finally a third from the nicest tasting. Next year carry on with these that were chosen because of their traits. They will cross with each other again. After several generations, I hope your 'house variety' that is uniquely adapted to your conditions will emerge and with all the traits you desire.
This is pretty much how Glenn Drowns created his own very early water melon, Blacktail mountain.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 6, 2010 10:53:59 GMT -5
I have heard that other people also grow squash in fresh horse manure with great success, but not that seeds germinate in the stuff. Sounds a great way of doing squashes and I envy you all that lovely manure.
We used to have a farmer at the top of the garden who let us use from their manure heap what we wanted and I gave them the odd basket of produce. The people who live there now dowsed the huge mature manure heap in petrol and burnt it all! We now have to buy horse manure by the sack and I am using pelleted organic chicken manure as the main source of fertility together with liquid comfrey tea.
I am looking forward to your pictures later on. Your property and the free running horses sound very nice.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 6, 2010 10:02:22 GMT -5
Yes it does. DH does not want chickens or any pets (allergies) so making any use of these eggs is academic. Just a pity mother pheasant goes to so much trouble and then abandons the eggs so readily.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 5, 2010 15:50:34 GMT -5
Pretty scary. Please wear good strong shoes or boots in the garden.
At least this King Snake is not venomous. Thanks for sharing.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 5, 2010 6:53:18 GMT -5
We have a lot of pheasants living in the hedge at the bottom of our garden. They screach noisily, ate all the tops of my garlic and parsley (both recovered, no problem). Now we get eggs in our garden several times a week, laid in cut-grass mulch. Unfortunately these eggs are abandoned by mother pheasant just as soon as they are produced. Other wild creatures enjoy a meal and these eggs disappear about as fast as they are abandoned. Last time I went to fetch the camera and by the time I returned the egg had gone, but I managed to snap this one! Attachments:
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 5, 2010 6:41:02 GMT -5
Johno,
what type of snake is it, do you know? We have a very occasional adder scuttling out from underneath the grass mulch around the potato plants, but they seem to want to get away from me as fast as they can. Don't have time to scream :-) they are gone so fast.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 2, 2010 19:47:54 GMT -5
blueadzuki you know a lot more about butterflies than I do. What I have learned is summarised nicely on this BBC webpage: www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/410.shtmlThe actual butterfly looks more yellow than red on the various photos on the web. I will let you know when I see one and take a photo if possible.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 2, 2010 19:34:35 GMT -5
Agreed, Potimarron/Uchiki Kuri/Red Kuri (call it as you wish) is very good, but it really has only a trace of chestnut flavour and is not nearly as flaky/crumbly as chestnut, it's more on the moist/creamy side. I have eaten much better chestnut flavoured squashes that were really dry and flaky, though less sweet that the chestnut. You are describing my favourite type of squash. Buttercup can occasionally taste like that, but it needs a warm season. Whangaparoa Crown and Queensland Blue occasionally taste that good too. Sure, soil matters, sunshine hours and sufficiently warm growing weather matter more. All maximas improve with post harvest ripening time. But I could not tell you how long this should be for best flavour, unfortunately. I have always thought that the term 'chestnut' refers to consistency rather than flavour??? Looking at various seedbank listings (and google translator in use), there are an awful lot of maxima varieties with the word 'chestnut' listed. Many with Eastern and South Eastern Europe as origin.
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 2, 2010 19:15:10 GMT -5
Thank you Ottowagardener and Stevil
|
|
|
Post by galina on Jun 1, 2010 7:45:16 GMT -5
Martin, thank you for this explanation and for taking the time to answer. Unfortunately it did not help me understand the difference between them. I hope you don't mind me restating my question and trying to be a little clearer: Your climate it probably very different to here, but my walking onion topsets will grow into a spring onion lookalike in a single season, not into a topsetting walking onion. Only split bulbs will grow into topsetting walking onions in one season. However, hardneck garlics with few large bulbils will grow into proper bulbs with divided cloves from a 'seed' bulbil in one season. Using a 'seed' clove, the bulbs merely get a little larger. Hardnecks with lots of tiny pinhead bulbils, or softneck sidebolts, will not grow into a divided clove, a small round at best, most will just perish in the ground. Babbington's leek does not grow into a mature flowering plant from scales, bulbils (if that is the right term) nor from cloves in one season.
I 'get' that you say that onions have topsets and garlics have bulbils. My question is why? Is this is a linguistic convention or does it refer to an actual botanical difference? Also please would you tell us the correct equivalent term for Babbington's leek bulbils?
|
|
|
Post by galina on May 31, 2010 7:24:12 GMT -5
Martin, please explain. Is the difference between bulbil and topset a convention of language? Or are they actually different?
My Babbingtons Leek produces bulbils instead of (alongside unfertile) flowers and quite often produces a second tier too. Is that different to the second tier of my Walking onions as far as botany goes?
|
|