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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 29, 2016 11:43:26 GMT -5
nice! Now That is the kind of science i like to see! The cell in the bottom left hand corner looks particularly promising. ...now for some 80s nostalgia music: Weird Science: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm-upHSP9KUhmm.. good point.. perhaps one could reliably repeat this without the need for the exact weather conditions using a snow cone machine.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 28, 2016 22:49:12 GMT -5
Joseph, this year i finally planted the seed you sent me for Joseph's Best Cantaloupe (2015) and two packs of Bush Cantaloupe you sent me in 2011. I also planted old seed i had from Hairy Moose Knuckles @ idig, one of which is named Rich Sweetness 132 melon. And seeds for canary melon and Dalamon melon from ebay from Turkey, i think. Most of these seeds are from 2011, so we will see what we get.
I had a question though. How does one tell a mal-adapted melon from a bush melon?
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 28, 2016 19:39:24 GMT -5
I had a cat with 7 toes on each foot, but he only had two ears. ahaha... i think that deserves a gold star...
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 28, 2016 9:28:26 GMT -5
Yes, when i first started planting my Indian flint corn several years ago i got quite a few. Since the start of my corn breeding started from one cob it made sense as it is a recessive trait. Most like this will die. One year though (2010?) i think i had a few who did produce chlorophyll and did survive. One was unique in that directly down each seedling leaf it was half white and half green. That plant was a runt and did not grow well, but it was the only one that i ever saw have a purple stripe down a green leaf in adulthood. Sadly it did not produce much and was not able to save seed so the trait was lost. Im not surprised you've seen it in glass gem as i suspect that is a highly inbred line. Maybe that one had some Japonica striped in its heriatage It's possible as i had planted some japonica the year before, but hard to say. It did not seem to show other leaf traits consistent with japonica. It is possible that the transposons found in the kernels i was selecting for moved some anthocyanin genes around to new areas. Or perhaps both were true... hmm.. If that last idea is correct then it might be possible to recreate it by crossing a japonica corn with a line that has darker and more active anthocyanin genes. i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af224/keen101/Garden%202010/SUNP0002.jpgWhile we are on this subject, does anyone know of a corn that has high instance of varigation other than japonica? What i'm really asking for is any lines that are just variegated green and white (without pink)? There had been a dwarf corn marketed many years ago from the research i had done at one point. I forget the name though, but i think it's long been out of cultivation even if i could remember.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 28, 2016 9:20:02 GMT -5
Most are an ugly orange. I saw a clearly red chinmarked ear on the internet once, so i know that variation exists somewhere. Perhaps Mexico? My kernels i have been selecting for purple chinmarkin on mine. A few years back i was having some fair success. Sadly i don't really have any photos i guess. They look similar to Rowan's picture above but they have been selected for several generations and filtered out the orange color. So in short while few chinmarked colors currently exist, what i'm saying is that it is possible to breed for other colors it just takes a bit of work to do it. The best photo i have right now is from last year (which is a very poor photo). But if you really zoom into the left cob you may notice light purple chinmarking on some of the white kernels. I was not very happy with the way this cob turned out, but there are some other seeds i think i can grow out to select for better and again. I sent my seed to Joseph a few years back, so it's possible he has these in his population now. Not sure if he has noticed it or taken photos of it specifically. But worth asking him about. i1010.photobucket.com/albums/af224/keen101/Garden%202015/DSCF7256_zpsbkv6aa6q.jpg
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 28, 2016 1:08:53 GMT -5
Yes, when i first started planting my Indian flint corn several years ago i got quite a few. Since the start of my corn breeding started from one cob it made sense as it is a recessive trait. Most like this will die. One year though (2010?) i think i had a few who did produce chlorophyll and did survive. One was unique in that directly down each seedling leaf it was half white and half green. That plant was a runt and did not grow well, but it was the only one that i ever saw have a purple stripe down a green leaf in adulthood. Sadly it did not produce much and was not able to save seed so the trait was lost. Im not surprised you've seen it in glass gem as i suspect that is a highly inbred line.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 23, 2016 21:57:52 GMT -5
Another photo from Joseph Tychonievich's book.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 23, 2016 6:52:34 GMT -5
Well... We are now in the midst of a blizzard. The snow did come in, it came in cold and it came in fast. Very windy snow. I suppose that means there is a fair chance the peach tree buds wont bloom this year. Plus i happened to look outside as what i think was some sort of power line transformer exploding.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 23, 2016 0:49:23 GMT -5
Yea! It's raining to water my pea seeds. Snow i guess is predicted for tomorrow, but i suspect it will be a light snow and will melt quickly since there is rain forecast in between these days. Snow apparently is predicted again for saturday with things warming up again after that. This year it seems we have April weather in March. Perhaps that means we will have May weather in April.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 23, 2016 0:46:28 GMT -5
I've heard you can, but obviously you would want to do it as little as possible as the freezing thawing cycle could damage seeds in the long run. Instead i put some of my squash seeds in a sealed and tape covered container in the fridge. Might not keep them quite as viable as in the freezer, but almost as good.
The real killer to seed long term is oxygen. I've had ideas to create my own canning jars with a connector and a valve to use a vacuum pump for storing seeds really long term. A vacuum should work well. Since plants breathe CO2, a CO2 filled container might work even better. But this is all speculation on my part.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 22, 2016 11:25:47 GMT -5
only marginally related, our tap water treatment is not required (and probably not even capable) of filter out the massive amounts of birth control chemicals that are being flushed down our toilets. And people wonder why all the frogs are having gender crisis issues. If such horrible things are happening to the frog population one wonders what is happening to the humans. Edit: I tried looking for the frog documentary i saw a long time ago, but i can't seem to find it. This one looks interesting though: topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-disappearing-male/
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 21, 2016 20:18:49 GMT -5
Is that where they are to grow? Is the coldframe portable? The notion of such prompts me to think that the white (somewhat translucent) plastic barrel that I cut in half, so I can use it to cover transplants in the p'up for transport with bags of bunny-beans piled on, would prolly serve as a tempo-coldframe if I drilled some strategic vents to avoid baking plants. Don't know where I can score some white barrels at the moment, but I can re-purpose the one, replacing it with a less-translucent blue one that I have, for p'up use. Well, yeah that's where these particular peas are going to grow. There's only a few plants in this spot, but they seem to be in ok condition. This is my first coldframe that i just threw together. Where my hinges are there are actually quite wide gaps, so in some ways that helps to vent excess heat, but it probably lets some heat out at night too. It probably only heats things up a tiny bit, but i guess it works well as a protector if nothing else. Technically i guess it's portable. It's not overly heavy and has a hollow bottom. I just don't have any other good use for it to plan on moving it right now. I've never seen bird predation on pea seedlings here, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Rabbits or deer would be a more likely concern for me. The other peas are planted with no covering along their trellis. I haven't seen any sprout yet, but other than the melted snow from friday they haven't got much water.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 21, 2016 15:24:51 GMT -5
keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) Watermelon seeds? REALLY?!?!?!? Are you really in northern Colorado? I knew it was warmer than the northeast, but melons? Are you really expecting not only no frost, but nights above 50F for the forseeable future? (forgive all the question marks. I'm just flabbergasted. Considering it snowed here this morning, and we're having a very warm spring for New England...and considering I was snowed in, badly enough the highway was closed, in June along the Wyoming/Colorado border once...) Yes, it does seem a little crazy doesn't it? I will admit that it is early even for me. We actually got a nice snow last friday and it's all melted today and warm again. There will almost certainly be snow again in the coming weeks if not next month, but whether it will be light snow or heavy snow and whether it will disappear quickly is yet to be seen. The nights were pretty chilly last week. Since i'm only planting the seeds and not watering them yet it gives me a little leeway. A few years back i did something similar by direct seeding them on april 1st or somewhere around there and everything turned out fine. I guess what i'm really counting on is that they don't germinate early in cooler conditions than they can grow, but most seeds are actually pretty smart. There is at least some risk involved, but with the warmer weather than usual i felt it was worth the risk. If nothing else it will be an experiment to see just how early watermelon seeds can be planted.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 21, 2016 14:37:29 GMT -5
Today i found three packets of pea seed i did not plant that i figured would be worth finding them space, so i set up the last remaining mini trellisi (is that the plural word?) and planted them. They were labeled: Partially red podded peas (joseph's line), Joseph's partially red pods, and partially-red snap. Also the peas in my coldframe are alive and growing. Not really sure if the coldframe helped that much, but whatever.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 21, 2016 7:54:09 GMT -5
For a red watermelon variety one might look into Sweet Dakota Rose. It was included in my landrace more than once and it may be responsible for some of the better reds, but i've never grown it by itself.
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