Reed's Garden Report(s)

[mskrieger]

Reed, I always get some flowers on the garlic scapes I don't get around to picking. Is that not normal?

[reed]

I don't think I have ever seen the flowers before. It could be that I wasn't as attuned to it in years past as I am now but pretty sure it hasn't happened before. This garlic never had such pronounced curling before either. I am hoping for better luck with seeds than I had with the onions but glad to see the normal looking little bulbs too, just in case.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

reed: Great avatar. Good looking crop of corn...

[reed]

Thanks!


I couldn't stand it so I peeled down the shucks on a PM x se ear and this is what I found.
I wonder how much longer I have to wait till these seeds will sprout. If I can get them up by the end of July I bet I can grow the F1 generation this year. [add] I have plenty of these ears so if it goes bad I have back up. 

[jondear]

I do well to get a dried down crop from corn. Let alone a second crop. It would sure be be cool if you could go from seed to seed twice in a season though.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

reed: My standard-operating-procedure is that corn kernels are viable about 25 days after tasseling. (That corresponds to the fresh eating stage in sweet corn). Looks like your PM is about a week away from that stage.

[reed]

Thanks, my poor record keeping is coming back to bite me. I'll just keep an eye on it and in another week or so pluck off a few kernels and see what happens. I occurs to me in making such wide crosses I don't need a lot of plants and also like Carol says in her books I don't need to grow all my seeds the same year. That makes me think I could grow some of the later ones also in pots and if it gets frosty say about October move them into the green house. Our first frost might be in September or it might be in December.

Peeled down a few others and have lots of cool looking colors and patterns. Anxious to see what it will look like dried down.

That one little melon is about the size of a softball now. Needs a little sunny dry weather and so do the tomatoes but that isn't in the forecast. The "fern" tomato is making clusters like a cherry except they are bigger than cherry.

[reed]

I harvested a lot of the carrot trials to see what I got. In some of my trials I purposely ignored what kind was planted where but I wanted to keep track on the carrots. I was defeated in that by a gully washer rain back in early spring that washed all the seeds out and redeposited them in clumps all mixed up. I am pretty sure the two on the right are Ox Heart. Next to them are probably Paris Market. On the left are for sure Joseph Lofthouse 's landrace. They were planted farthest upstream and that's where these were harvested. I sliced some up saving the top inch or so and sorted the rest, picking out abut twenty of the darkest orange ones. I love the color of the purple one but it has slightly fuzzy stems so I won't include it for seed to avoid confusion with QAL. 

I'm going to try replanting them in a special seed bed for next year. I'v never tried that before so I guess I'll see how it works out. Also will be planting lots more seeds later on to try to get winter harvest and also some to winter over. My one that lived last year produced flowers in it's central head well ahead of the local QAL. I'm going to try to expand on that to eliminate crossing, there should be plenty of seeds in just the first flowers, I'll clip off the side ones that bloom later. 

[reed]

I was getting afraid that with the ongoing rain and clouds that my corn won't dry good or maybe even mold. I pulled pack the shucks on some of the ears I had opened and sure enough a couple of them did have some mold. I went ahead and picked six ears of PM x se and three each of CCC x se and of PWM x se. They appear to be fully developed and are way past anything that might be described as milk stage. Much to my surprise that while tough and chewy two of the PM ears and one each of the others have a definite hint of sweetness.

I wonder, could the se parentage have effected it already or is it just there from the mother's side? I'm not talking sweet like in a modern hybrid but sweet enough to my taste to be very encouraging for what these seeds might produce. I had intended to detassel (x se) this cross again before I started letting it segregate on its own but now I'm not so sure.

Plant breeding is full of surprises!

[reed]

Here are a couple interesting volunteers for this year. I have little clue where the pumpkin thing came from unless from last years decorations that the girl bought except that they were much larger and were not disposed of in this corner of the garden, which was a compost pile. I'm sure it is selfed because it was already on the vine before any of our squashes even bloomed. It was still pretty cold when it came up. I don't know if is a bush type or just stunted because it was until recently buried in weeds. I guess I'll watch it awhile and then see how it tastes. 

I didn't know the tomato was there till I was cleaning out the weeds and first thought it was just a currant cause they are all over the place. Just as I was about to pull it up I saw the fruits were much bigger than my currents always are and now that they are ripening they are also much darker orange. My volunteer currants are generally golden yellow and not much bigger that a large pea. I'm going to taste one later today and save the seeds. Even if it isn't very good I probably will still plant it next year as with weather this year none of our tomatoes are as good as they generally are. I don't expect to be able to do much in judging tomatoes by flavor this year.   [add] unless some taste good anyway despite little sun and tons of rain. 

[reed]

I went ahead and harvested my detasseled flour X se corns for fear of losing them to mold. Don't have near as much as I originally hoped for.
I first eliminated anything that tasseled at less that four feet or so. Anything that didn't have at least one ear at least two feet off the ground got dumped. Anything that erupted out of the end of the shucks letting bugs and water in got ditched. Anything that had large amounts of mold or little black bugs was eliminated even if some kernels looked OK. I kept that curled up ear cause it tasted sweet and since the plant was buried when the blackberry trellis collapsed I don't hold its appearance against it. The pink tinted ear is particularly sweet even now. Varieties are Cascade Cream Cap, Pancake White Manna and mostly Painted Mountain. I hope they are mature enough, pretty sure they are as other discarded ears were sprouting in the shucks. Some that erupted out of the shucks let in so much water that the base kernels and even the cobs appeared to be fermented.  


An

[reed]

I'm real excited about my Joseph Lofthouse  melons. None of them are very big, about softball sized for the biggest ones but that is fine with me. They have really been put to the test, planted in poor clay soil with little prep, no fertilizer, bad weed competition, terrible wet cloudy weather BUT they are still here. There are lots more smaller ones but here are some of the biggest. The first one in the third row looks like it could be ripening a little, 




Just waiting now to taste!! 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I have two clues about when to pick my muskmelons: They turn yellow, and the stem separates from the fruit if it's jostled.

[reed]

I got down on the ground and sniffed that one, it is starting to have a wonderful melon aroma and has yellowed up more since the picture, another hot dry day is predicted for today. I want to leave it as long as possible but have had some renewed coon activity even after killing dozens of the nasty things and I'm starting to get worried.  Tonight might have to be the day.  

Will it and its seeds continue to ripen any after picking? 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

It seems to me, that muskmelons don't ripen much after picking. They just get softer and softer until they collapse.

By the time my melons turn yellow and slip from the vine the seeds are already fully matured. I started growing these in a new field last growing season. It turns out that in that field the most annoying predator is a small mammal that burrows into the fruits from a tunnel.