Reed's Garden Report(s)

[reed]

I like sweet corn steamed with butter or even better grilled in the husk but I haven't eaten any of the crosses yet. Last year was my first experiments with breeding and coons didn't leave enough to eat some and keep seed. I had given up on growing corn except by buying new seed every year. I know now that my corn I grew for a long time was a flour type but I liked it for sweet corn in milk stage. It got to where it hardly grew at all and only got two decent ears the last time I grew it. I know now that genetic depression from being grown in small populations was probably the culprit but I have a small garden and for a while didn't see any alternative.

In researching about seed saving and the like I first came on Susan Ashworth's book "Seed to Seed" It was interesting and has a lot of good info but found it, frankly, depressing. With all the emphasis on minimum populations and isolation distances most of its recommendations and rules are not doable for me, I almost gave up the whole idea of saving my own seeds. It left me thinking that beans and tomatoes were about the only things I could save because the world might end if I violate the "pure" rule. Then it occurred to me, why the heck do I care if an Oxheart carrot crosses with a Paris Market carrot? It's still a carrot. Then I found this forum and Carol Deppe's books and people with actual functioning brains and my whole attitude changed.

So, I’m gonna grow whatever I want with little regard to anything other than if it actually grows in my garden and tastes good. Take brassica for example. For forty years I planted cabbage and the like in early spring and waited months to get the traditional product. By then it’s hot and more and more I have to water it and treat it with bt for worms just to get one stupid head of cabbage, that’s a bunch of crap. This year by accident I discovered that fall planted cabbage and Brussels sprouts lived through winter but instead of growing normal this spring they started blooming. I’ve been eating the stems, flower stalks and seed pods since before the last frost. Seeds are drying now on some branches and the worms are here, they can have the rest, I’ll replant about September, and I’m glad they probably crossed. Radishes are four foot tall and full of pretty flowers, the pods are much more delicious than the roots and one plant makes fifty salads instead one, what a waste eating radish roots! Who knew? Same thing goes for turnips.

Back to corn, I intend to make two kinds, sweet and not sweet. They are going to be genetic depression proof even if something happens and I have to start over with just an ear or two or even just a few kernels. I don’t know the technical definition of “wide cross” but Carol Deppe said somewhere that you can make a new kind from just one kernel. I figure (ODG x multiple sweets) x (multiple sweets) should qualify as a wide cross. I have the same thing with Hopi Pink and Painted Mountain. I want both kinds to be drought tolerant, short season, tolerant to early spring planting and adapted to my garden. First step is to get the genetics mixed up good even mixing the two kinds. Then, I can just select for traits I like. Sweet I think will be fairly easy cause all I got to do is segregate the wrinkled seeds, if an occasional non-wrinkled kernel shows up I’ll plant it with the not sweet and vise versa. I doubt that some non sweet kernels in milk stage will even be noticeable at eating stage. For the not sweet I want to make my own corn meal, hominy and parching corn but I got a lot to learn there as to which traits to select for but in the mean time I can sell it for ornamental or feed it to the chickens.

[mskrieger]

Hear, hear! Especially love your discoveries with respect to brassicas.

As for corn tasting...I've heard you can steal little tastes of the corn in milk stage and that way, select for taste without sacrificing an entire ear. Have you tried that?

[reed]

I tried the taste test on some last year but every ear I opened was immediately attacked by a small black beetle, like a flea beetle but a little larger. It apparently laid eggs and followed with little worms about 1/4 inch long. They mostly stayed just at the tip where I had cut the end off the cob off but still, I'm not sure I want to encourage them. I also saw them on some Painted Mountain where the ear tip wasn't covered good by the husk. I'm not gonna keep seed from ears that do that.

[reed]

The stalky tomatoes have grown and getting ready to bloom more. It wasn't quite day light when I took the pictures so color is all messed up.


Blooms seem to be concentrated right in the top, interesting. 




I also have quite a variety of flowers, some open and some with exerted stigmas and some with both. Some are also very large. Been meaning to get some good pictures up and will one of these days. Have quite a few golf ball sized or larger fruits on various plants. I got tons of pollinators, bees, flies, wasps, butterflies of various types but have seen very little attraction to the tomatoes. Today I did see a small gold colored bee about 2/3 size of a honey bee checking them out a little but for most part every thing seems to prefer the radishes and other flowers.

Garlic scapes are straightening out now, won't be long till they start making bulbils. If any bloom this year I might try removing the bulbils to see if I can get some seeds. I didn't do it last year cause I was afraid I would damage the flowers but I didn't get seed anyway so it might be worth a try on a few plants. The biggest of all are on a clump that planted itself and escaped being cultivated out.  They are about 3 1/2 feet tall. 

[reed]

Dug my first hill of potatoes today, I don't know what a potato yield should really be so don't know if mine is good or not. Weight was right about three lbs, give or take a couple ounces because my thrift store scale isn't perfectly accurate. They were planted on March 23. I planted whole tubers about a foot apart in a forty foot row so that should make about 120 lbs, except one end is close to some trees and the vines are not as big so that part will probably be less. 


Almost forgot, pitched a couple of them in a pot with some fresh green beans, onions and a little bacon, yummm!

[philagardener]

Looks nice to me, reed ! 

[reed]

Thanks!  Also got some of my first seed harvests. Sweet Magnolia and Amish Snap from ferdzy, purple top white globe turnip, possibly with a little wild mustard mixed in and a semi stabilized wild X McKana giant columbine. The columbine will be planted, probably this weekend after I clean the ground up for it.

[kazedwards]

Jun 20, 2016 22:13:35 GMT -5 reed said:

The stalky tomatoes have grown and getting ready to bloom more. It wasn't quite day light when I took the pictures so color is all messed up.


Blooms seem to be concentrated right in the top, interesting. 

Those look like rugose leaves. It might be a dwarf plant. That would explain why it is so stalky too.

[mskrieger]

That looks like a healthy yield from a single plant, reed! Generally yields of 6-10lb per lb of seed planted are considered good and normal.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jun 8, 2015 15:45:10 GMT -5 reed said:

it looked almost like a fern.

Thanks for the on-going grow reports.

Wee Ha! You got a seedling from "Fern" tomato!!! That is one of my 3 most favorite varieties. It produces the earliest large-ish fruits. I grew several hundred plants of it for my community this spring. It is one of only 3 varieties with industrialized flowers that I am intending to keep long term.

[reed]

Aw shoot! I forgot all about fern. Lets see this is last of June, it hasn't frosted here in September in recent memory so plenty of time. Think I'll break into the seeds stash and start some.

I'm going out today and put a tag on the most open flower ones. Then a tag on the ones with best fruit set and later a tag for best flavor. I know already some will end up with two tags and hopefully three. Then I'll know what to plant next year. It's interesting to see differences in how many fruits have set on different plants and even between different ones of the same kind. A lot of the paste / sauce / juice patch across the road have heavy fruit set but the most loaded of all I think is the normal leaf version of the cold tolerant volunteers, while the potato leaf one is one of the poorest. 

I'm wondering since most have at least semi open flowers if maybe I should cull the ones with poor fruit set. 

[reed]

I had left my sunroots from Joseph's mix shrouded in weeds to protect them from the deer but thought were tall enough now to clean around, plus I was tired of not being able to see them. Was a week or so ago and the deer haven't bothered them. They are about 6 feet tall now. I think I may not dig any this year to let them get established better. Now that I know for sure what the plant and tubers look like I can go out and collect some wild ones. All seven kinds grew fine, one has some kind of issue with browning and drying of some of the lower leaves, I doubt it is anything to really worry about. 



Here is my processing tomato patch. Tom's ox heart mix, local ox heart, Joseph's named by me, Utah heart, Rutgers and Tom's paste mix. Each stake has a cattle panel leaned against it with five to ten plants. Looks like it won't be long till time to break out the canning jars. 



[add]
The stalky tomatoes from toomanyirons, past mix are beautiful little things and definitely not cherry. Don't know how big the fruits will get but they are a little larger than golf balls right now.
 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jul 3, 2016 5:17:48 GMT -5 reed said:

I think I may not dig any this year to let them get established better.

In my garden, no matter how many I dig, I still miss a LOT of them, and they still come back. Some of those plants may have 15 pounds of tubers under them by fall. That's a lot of propagules!!!!

[reed]

Wow, that's a lot. maybe I will dig some up and see how they taste. If I have lots I might start patches here and there along the road back to my house, maybe some on the state's hunting property. If anyone ever even notices they will just think they are weeds but I can always go harvest them if need be.

This patch isn't really on my land but in the abandoned road right away that borders it. Actually they are technically on Indian land. That road and the west boundary of my land follow the Greenville Treaty line, signed in 1795 after the Battle of Fallen Timbers it was never that I have read, abolished. At least not by mutual agreement. My borrowed garden is on Indian land too. I'm safe though cause I'm east of the line. 

[reed]

toomanyirons.. Tom, I might have spoke too soon when I reported the stalky tomatoes were just semi-open, don't know why I assumed they were both the same. Here is the second one to flower. It also has some larger than cherry fruits that were hiding under it's dense foliage. Flowers are more numerous, more open and much larger that the other one. the stigma isn't exerted and the tips of the anther cone kinda fold over a little but there is plenty of room for the little bees, plus the cone is split a little at the base and they like that, its the first thing they check....note: I'm having fun now that I'm figuring out how to use this camera.