ethin's doings

[shoshannah]

philagardener,  I found a better picture. 

[philagardener]

Looks like a Painted Lady. Both species are very similar in this view (it is the other side of the wing that is diagnostic) and both tend to migrate in large numbers at certain times in the year. Almost magical!

[steev]

My farm being in a chain of valleys running N/S between the Coast Range and a range of hilly mountains, lots of butterflies and birds migrate through; the butterflies are a pleasure; the fructivore birds, being voracious, not so much; I enjoy lots of raptors this time of year.

[ethin]

Aug 28, 2016 18:17:42 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Aug 28, 2016 16:26:49 GMT -5 shoshannah said:

Joseph Lofthouse , Are those beans used for fresh green beans or for soup?

I'm growing them as soup beans... But since they came out of a snap-bean background, I'm wishing that I would have tasted them during the green bean stage. I bet that at least some of them would make great snap beans. They were a mix of yellow-podded and green-podded beans.

I can't say what the golden wax descendants tasted like ether. I did try a bean from one of the new f1 hybrids that showed up in the snap bush beans today, that was one juicy bean, ether that or it had magic salivation properties.

[ethin]

Dug the carrots yesterday, grew too many, had fun trying to find containers to store them in.

[richardw]

Thankfully carrots store fine left in the ground but beetroot doesn't so i keep them in large polystyrene(50 litre)boxes, the polystyrene keeps the cold out really well

[ethin]

Well the garden is covered in snow so I guess I list some points of interest. Interesting to me anyway.



First a grow report for Joseph.

Spinach: Failed, not just yours but everything I planted, not sure why, very poor germination and the few plants that did come up got eaten off soon after.

Parsnips: Failed, you did worn me that the seed was old.

Shelling pea landrace: got a good return of seed.

Soup pea mix: Did well, harvested each plant as a specimen so I could better evaluate traits and on the off chance of hybrids easier identification.

Biskopen Pea: Did great, got lots of seed back from only a few plants. Some of the seed you gave me was f1, half the seed I got back was different than what went in the ground.

Dry bean landrace: Did ok but not as well as what you gave me last year, but that was my fault.

Tepary bean: Did ok, might have produced better if I had given them less water.

Watermelon/Muskmelon: Poor, but I know it was my fault, poor garden layout and care.

Medium moschata landrace/Buttercup squash: Poor, my bad again, the soil where I planted them was so depleted even the weeds struggled. But I did get some fruit off them.



Other Garden highlights/notes for 2016.

Attempted some manual crosses of peas and chickpeas.

Lots of excitement with beans. Had 12 plants that where definitely hybrids and a dozen more that might be. Grew out the f2 seed from last years f1's, the Golden Wax cross generated at least 23 different looking seed types. Tried 3 new snap beans this year, all keepers.

Tried some blue/purple/black tomatoes, I thought they where ok, for tomatoes (I don't enjoy tomatoes much).

Had some very interesting lettuce show up this year. Had two large plants that where very red, had a very extreme form of the oak leaf trait, and where the last plants to bolt. I harvested the lettuce seed heads back in September but haven't threshed them yet, might be able to pick out those two.

The Jicama didn't do too well, dug them at the end of September, tubers the size of large marbles, there now growing inside in a pot.

Peanut project second year: Fail.

Rice project second year: Fail. 

[ethin]

Dec 24, 2016 2:58:07 GMT -5 William said:

Ethin, you direct seed tomato in Cache Valley but Joseph can't?! I barely got a few ripe tomatoes this year from some direct seeded plants near Ronan Montana and it has lit a fire under me for more experiments next year. It seems to me like a direct seeded tomato landrace in a 100 day growing season would be pretty neat.

I not sure why I've manged to get it to work, probably location.

Ive only done this the last 3 years, the first year it was one plant from one variety, last year it was two plant from the first years plant, this year I just used some of all the home grown seed I had which bring the total to 5 varieties and the direct seeded line from one of those varieties, far from a landrace. I'm only getting a few fruit from each plant as well, not enough to stop doing starts.

It would be interesting to get some of Joseph's tomatoes, but I don't have a lot of room. I suppose I could cram quiet a few plants into a 30' row, it would make selection a bit hard, but in the end I guess the only selection needed is to get rid of the slowpokes.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Ethin's garden is 300 feet lower elevation than mine. That gives him about an extra month of frost-free growing season. His garden is located on the brink of a hill which mitigates frost even further.

I am often fiddling with direct-seeded tomatoes, and get a few from time to time, and occasionally a successful volunteer, but it hasn't been a priority. I certainly have enough seed laying around that I could throw thousands of varieties at the problem to see if anything survives. Seems like it would be best for me to wait until I get self-incompatible tomatoes, then give the problem of direct-seeded-tomatoes to that gene-pool for a solution. I could also give the problem to the frost/cold-tolerant gene-pool, but again, I think I'll wait until the self-incompatible gene-pool is ready to take on the challenge.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

ethin, first of all that is a good harvest of Carrots! I've envious. Maybe some day i'll get there. (p.s. do you have any varieties that do well in hard/compacted clayish soil?)

Interesting to hear some Biskopens peas did well for you. And that some were F1 hybrids?! I know the first time i shared them with Joseph they did not do well for him. I think last year when i sent him some new seed i also mentioned that there may have been some potential hybrids in the seed i sent him since i tried many haphazard cross pollination with it, but i did not keep good records. Were the F1s you had from the ones i had attempted or are these F1s you or Joseph were able to do. I'd be interested in following any hybrid lines for Biskopens and eventually obtaining seed samples back, though no immediate rush. Photos would be welcome!

Biskopens is a pea variety i like for a number of reasons, including what i think might be heat tolerance, but the reason i worked so hard in 2015 to cross it to any other peas is because it is such a long season pea, plus i think it could be improved overall. As it stands it probably makes an excellent soup pea though, and the brick-red seeds are unique. What do you think?

[ethin]

keen101 sorry but I wouldn't know if I have any carrots that could handle hard/compacted clayish soil, my soil is sandy/gravelly/rocky loam.

The label that Joseph had with the Biskopens peas said 2016 so probably the newer seed. I planted half the seed Joseph gave me so about 20 seeds. The F1 plants where bigger and lasted longer in the heat, seems like they might have been earlier than the non-hybrid ones too. Excited to see what they do next year.
I attempted some crosses with Biskopens as the pollen donor, mainly for the red seeds.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Cool. Well keep us updated, i'm curious to know what this line or others ends up doing. Let me know if you happen to get any that are much earlier but still retain the red coloring as i'd like to use them for other crosses. I'm also curious if the F2 seed develops any umbellatum or crown pea types as that was one of the ones i had used for crosses in 2015. But eitherway very interesting.

[ethin]

Some interesting peas from Joseph's mixed soup peas.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Dec 24, 2016 17:48:38 GMT -5 ethin said:

Some interesting peas from Joseph's mixed soup peas.

Those look remarkable similar to the crossed purple passion peas i posted in the crossing peas thread earlier. (alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/1804/tutorial-cross-peas?page=7&scrollTo=119842). Interesting. Joseph Lofthouse, did i send you some purple passion peas this spring? And if so were you able to make some crosses with them? If not i imagine those could be seeds from Josephs red-podded soup peas, sometimes purple coloring shows up from gray speckled pea lines, but it is never stable. The only stable colored peas lines i know of are Biskopens and Purple Passion.

[ethin]

Dec 24, 2016 15:18:49 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Ethin's garden is 300 feet lower elevation than mine. That gives him about an extra month of frost-free growing season. His garden is located on the brink of a hill which mitigates frost even further.

I have a month over Joseph?! So about 120 to 130 days , that's good to know.

Alright peanuts, I think you have some explaining to do as to why your not producing.