Experiments for 2008?

[johno]

Good links. Thanks, Bill.

[Alan]

Thanks for the link to Ne seeds Bill, i've never ordered from them before, but looking at their carrot seed prices for some of the colored types I have a feeling that I will be ordering from them sometime soon, i'll let you know if I do so that we can get an order going together.

-Alan

[Jim]

I think I'll try crossing tomatoes this year. I think I'll try garden peach x yellow pear and maybe hillbilly potato leaf x some dwarf. I've never tried to make any hybrids so this is gonna be cool.

[johno]

I tried to cross some tomatoes, but my motor skills don't seem to be good enough anymore. I wasn't able to manipulate the flower parts without tearing them up. I have medication now to help with that somewhat. If it keeps working, I'll give it another try.

I'm on the lookout for a variety of tweezers and a monacle, and I think I'll grow the ones I want to cross in pots so I can take them to a bench and table.

[Alan]

Crossing definetly takes a little bit of patience and a lot of luck, but once you do it it's like a drug and you'll be doing it in your sleep and dreaming up all kinds of endless possibilities, my only problem is i'm somewhat bored of crossing tomatoes which I find relatively easy and easy to predict the results, i'm interested now more than ever in things like sweet corn crossed to dent or flint or waxy varieties, or cross species melon and squash crossing, only because I don't think that there are all that many people doing that kind of work independently anymore and because there are already up-teen thousand named op tomatoes and who knows how many hybrids, someone has to work on other food crops. Right now I'm also really interested in lettuce (hard to cross crop), Edamame soy beans (hard too), tobacco (harder) and I would love to get my Yuccon Gold potatoes or Russet Burbank's to set some true seed pods (darn near impossible) so I can see what would happen with those seeds....(crosses fingers for 08).

-Alan

[johno]

clarkbar, I'd like to hear more about your tomato crossing ideas.

I think Hillbilly X Whippersnapper would be a really good one. Whippersnapper was one of (if not THE?) the first ones to ripen for me last year, and pumped them out like crazy all summer from an impossibly small plant. I could almost say it was more fruit than plant! It's a pink cherry, not a dwarf, so it's indeterminate. I'd be even more curious to see what would happen if Whippersnapper was the mother.

As far as the other one you mentioned, Garden Peach x Yellow Pear, why not? You have nothing to lose but the space your growout takes up.

I wonder if it's worthwhile to make two crosses and then cross them together so you have the recessive trait you want in both parent lines, so you'd be more likely to get the recessive trait to show up in your hybrid you want to dehybridize?

[Jim]

Johno I have never seen whippersnapper but it sounds like a winner. I think the coloration of the hillbilly is nice and I'd love to see it is a smaller version. That damned yellow pear is just a producer but it's boring. I think the garden peach fuzzyness and coloration may spice things up some. I have no idea what I'm doing but I'll learn.

[Alan]

I had plans once upon a time of crossing yellow or red pear to some other colors, particularly Cheroke Purple or Black cherry and selecting for a black pear which would inebitably be called "cherokee trail of tears." It might just get done this summer now that I'm ready about your new ideas, time will tell.

-Alan

[Jim]

I like the weirder shapes and the pear shape is cool. I think the trick will be crossing it to something less mealy and dry than the yellow pear tends to be.

SO if you've thought about it....let's collaborate. I can do the innitial cross this summer and send you a bunch of the f2 f1 seed. We can work on it together.

I need to learn how exactly to cross them but it would be cool.

[Alan]

Sounds good to me, if you and Johno want to do so I would love to do an experiment like this. Heck, maybe it is time even to do our own forum breeding project like what tomatoville has done with their dwarf project, I mean heck I'm already sending out F2-F4 material anyhow, why not.

-Alan

[Jim]

Soounds cool to me. I got to be honest. I am an engineer by education ( mechanical ) but I never saw myself as ever being someone interested in breeding plants....it must be a syndrome

[Alan]

It's like doing drugs, once you try it you are addicted. Just think of it as plant engineering. I'm getting ready to go out and engineer a new worm harvester momentarily, I hope it works.

I may have some F1 material to send out to some select folks come the begining of '08, i'll take a look and see if I can find any interesting crosses that I made and send them out to you and johno if he is interested.

-Alan

[Jim]

I'm there man. We ought to have a project like tomatoville's.

[flowerpower]

Jim, I mailed you a bunch of seeds yesterday. I just let the bees do their thing, so I cant guarantee purity. I actually did send you some garden peach and yellow pear. It would be kinda interesting if the peach crossed w/ Mer de Nom. It was the closest plant.

Am I mistaken, or is there no Pink Pear variety? Even a bicolor pear would be cute.

[Alan]

We will definitely get this project rolling in '08. Is there really a pink pear? If there is I need to track that sucker down, I want it.

-Alan (only slightly obsessed with growing every vegetable known to man)