|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 14, 2015 1:35:49 GMT -5
keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.): It's been a few years since I actively selected for frost tolerance in watermelons. I have only selected for tolerance in the spring. I'll try to pay attention this fall. I suppose that I aught to do another frost/cold tolerance test now that I can actually grow watermelons and they produce enough seed that there is spare to play around with. This winter I did germination testing and tossed the used pots into the greenhouse. A few watermelons survived the freezing temperatures while the rest died. I don't remember what I did with the survivors... But the experiment is readily repeated.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 14, 2015 1:30:00 GMT -5
oldmobie: Yup. That watermelon was still immature... I wish that it was as easy as letting the tendril dry up and the bottom turn yellow. I usually wait until the tendril dries up AND BLOWS AWAY.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 14, 2015 1:27:07 GMT -5
I so hate watermelon, because they don't work by the "smell" test, nor the "release" test. So often under- or over-ripe; not that I don't love a good one; just that they're problematic. I'm working on this problem. It'll be a few years... My strategy is for the skin to turn yellow when the watermelon ripens...
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 13, 2015 13:25:44 GMT -5
O' I forgot, that AD ear with the green tape has sweetness to it even as of taking this picture, very very interesting. The original Astronomy Domine had about 30% sugary enhanced genes in it, so if that ratio hasn't changed over the years we can expect about 8% of the cobs to be sugary enhanced. When I harvest seed, I taste just about all of the cobs, and toss any that are particularly non-sweet, so that might skew the ratio in favor of sugary enhanced. However homozygous sugary enhanced kernels germinate at a lower rate, so that might skew the ratio the other way.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 12, 2015 15:57:02 GMT -5
I also planted sweet kernels of F2:[Cateto X LISP Ashworth] next to a patch of the same seed that I planted about a month ago. I harvested the first cob of this corn yesterday... (66 DTM). It was only about 18" off the ground, so I picked it for the sake of denying it to skunks. It was super tasty and very sweet. I shared some with 2 friends saving about 1/2 the cob for seed. Then I took it home and measured brix: 23%. Woo Hoo! Looks like it is sugary enhanced. The LISP Ashworth is 50% sugary enhanced, so it looks like the gene lottery favored this cob.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 12, 2015 10:13:14 GMT -5
Yesterday I culled the sickly sesame plants and performed an autopsy... There was no obvious damage from bugs or animals. The phloem was brown. I speculate that the sickness is due to a virus or micro-organism...
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 11, 2015 15:23:47 GMT -5
I know it's too early to know if your project was successful, but assuming it was could you use the same techniques to produce fertile interspecific hybrids that would not normally be fertile by using the colchicine to then double the ploidy number? like perhaps actually cross a watermelon with a cantaloupe or something else just as crazy but exciting. I've been daydreaming about this sort of thing... I have oryzalin to attempt the ploidy doubling... I've been nurturing ill family the last couple growing seasons, so I'm not playing as much as I'd like with fun projects. I've been thinking about making tetraploids of all the common squash species, and then allowing them to re-combine... Sunroots have a ploidy of 6N, and annual sunflowers have a ploidy of 2N. So interspecific crosses between them end up being tetraploids. I expect some of those to arise in my sunroot breeding program since I have annual sunflower weeds growing near the sunroots. This spring I planted lots of sunroot seeds in a flat and identified a few that looked like interspecies hybrids. Alas, they didn't survive transplanting into the garden. The analog in the squash family would be to make one tetraploid squash, then cross it with a diploid to make infertile triploid squash, then paint the shoots with a chromosome doubling agent to make hexaploid squash which aught to be fertile... Then that could be pollinated with any diploid squash species, and if they successfully combine the result would be tetraploid squash. I like the hexaploid path to tetraploid squash, because in theory any closely related diploid squash variety could be used as a pollen donor, thus tremendously simplifying the addition of new genes to the pool.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 10, 2015 1:30:49 GMT -5
I picked a cooler full of amaranth for the farmer's market. I gave a big batch to the neighbor that told me about it. Sure was nice to get paid for weeding the garden. A few people knew what amaranth was and pigged out on it. A few recognized it as a common weed and went home to pick their own. Most were timid to try a new food. One lady gave me some to taste that she had way over-cooked. Super nasty that way, so I was recommending very light cooking.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 8, 2015 23:27:32 GMT -5
Some of my sesame plants are dying. I haven't looked for a cause, or even looked at the plants other than in passing. I'll call it keeling over just before the flowering stage.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 8, 2015 23:19:54 GMT -5
Sunroot is winter hardy through zone 4.
I think that sweet potato is winter hardy to zone 9.
Solanum potatoes are somewhere in-between. My zone 4 garden has some solanum potatoes survive warmer winters, but not notably cold winters without snowcover.
I can overwinter all sorts of root crops and brassicas if I bury them 18" deep in late fall.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 8, 2015 1:21:11 GMT -5
Is this the type of flowers that you are looking for? Sorta: The stigma is exposed which I want, but it has the pike-phalanx thing going on so that it makes it hard for pollinators to get into the flower. Today when I was in the tomato patch, the descendants of SunGold were being worked by a bumblebee.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 7, 2015 11:21:06 GMT -5
The corn that I am calling Oaxacan is a tropical corn from Oaxaca. It is day-length sensitive. So I wasn't able to grow it very successfully, because by the time the day-length is short enough it's already freezing here.
As far as I can tell, the corn called "Oaxacan Green" is a North American dent.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 7, 2015 11:14:59 GMT -5
mskrieger: My hazelnut seeds were grown locally. Someone with a few trees in the back yard sold them to the farm-stand that I got them from. They are small nuts and looked like clones of each other. So diversity is likely to be low. Send me a PM in early October about a swap. I don't know if they have any tolerance to hazelnut diseases, or about their preferred environment.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 6, 2015 23:13:13 GMT -5
Woo Hoo on the Oaxacan corn!!! I tried to grow it for years, until a pint of seed was almost exhausted. Hopefully the daylength and warmth will be suitable for oldmobie. This is the plant that I call "corn vine" cause it would just as soon crawl along the ground as stand up straight. For me it flowers in September regardless of whether it was planted in May or in July, so this seems like an auspicious time to be planting it. I see corn kernels in the tassels of a main stalk from time to time. The photo below is an example taken under UV light... (The only photo I could find.) More often I see that trait in secondary stalks.
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 6, 2015 13:44:33 GMT -5
mskrieger: We had unusually warm weather for a long time this spring, and then a few days of normal cold weather, so the apricot and peach flowers got frozen. A few cherry and plum blossoms survived, but in such small numbers that the birds cleaned them up before they could be harvested. The grape crop this year is tremendously productive. I ate a few today, but they are a little tart still to be taking to market, so I'll plan on starting the harvest next week. The grapes set fruit twice this year, so I will have a harvest at the regular time, and a second harvest about three weeks later. Pears and apples are doing great. Goji fruited really well. We has super hot weather just as the spring raspberries were starting to fruit. So that shut them down for the rest of the season. The fall raspberries are currently flowering. The Carpathian walnuts are looking good. I have perhaps 40 hazelnut seedlings that are in their first or second year. Wondering what to do with them.
|
|