Shenanigans at Homestead Nowhere

[Kadence Luneman]

Been hand cutting back the weeds. Pretty much done. Took out the tomatoes and posts. The marigolds have been hanging on longer than I expected. I'm going to pull the flowers for seed.

Now if it will stop raining for a bit I'll get it tilled and ready for next year.

[Kadence Luneman]

I went ahead and ordered a few things from Baker Creek seed.

Tom thumb lettuce
May queen lettuce
Little gem lettuce
Crisp mint lettuce
Barry's crazy cherry tomato
Danvers 126 half long carrot
Oxheart carrot
Yellow of Parma onion
Anaheim hot pepper

[Kadence Luneman]

Is there any kind of general expectation of crossing corns with different days to maturity what the offspring will be?

In sheep if I breed two sheep and one has more coarse wool and one has pretty fine wool I can expect the lambs to be about half way between the parents. However I've also bred a really great fleece ram to a ewe like a brillo pad.. and the resulting lamb had lovely wool and seemed to be more like 70% the dad's good wool traits.

With corn (or plants in general really) do you expect the offspring to fall in the middle? or some of everything in between the parents? Only a little bit earlier than the later maturity parent?

This is the corn I'll plant next year:
Dorinny sweet corn, 75 day (108 seed)
Atomic orange corn, 60-90 day (105)
Abenaki roy flint, 88 day (~70)
Painted mountain corn, 70-90 day (81)
Harmony grain corn, 85-115 day (106)
High carotene flint corn, 100 day (108)
Lofthouse flour corn, 100 day (113)

I'm thinking of planting the rows as listed. Kind of short to long days so whatever is tasseling at the same time can pollinate it's neighbors.
Then I can harvest the rows and evaluate them separately. Decide the keeper cobs for seed corn and keep them together like "seed from Atomic mother" etc. And the following year I can decide if I want to mix more or whatever. And if something was really not up to snuff then I can easily not keep seed from those mother rows.
To help them overlap timing in tasseling I'm looking at staggering the plantings. I'm not entirely certain how best to do that...

May 15 is the earliest I could reliably plant. 100 days later is aug 23. So counting back from that...
May 15.. 100 days
May 25.. 90 days
June 4.. 80 days
June 14.. 70 days

My idea is May 15 plant flour, carotene, and half of Harmony. May 25 plant second half of Harmony. June 4 plant painted and Abenaki. June 14 plant Atomic.
Thoughts on stagger planting to align tasseling time versus planting at the same time and seeing what overlaps on it's own? If planted all at once I'll optimize on growing and establishing in the time of reliably regular rain. Depending on the year May can be last frost and oh look we almost hit 90*.
I kind of want to just put it all in one jar and plant it in a block but I was thinking I'd get crappy cob fill because I would have 70 day plant next to a 100 day plant.

The area is 53ft (east-west) by 42ft (north-south). I've gone over a few ways to do it but not set on it. Wanted to plant the rows east-west. Definitely interested in suggestions.

Est frost dates are mid May and October. ~120-140 days depending on the year. I'm hoping to select for hardiness and survivable etc then probably select for the little faster maturity. I'd like to get to a point that if it's nice in April I can start stagger planting.

Priority phase 1
- hardiness & survivability
- resistance/resilience to pests & critters
Priority phase 2
- production. Number of cobs? Weight of shelled corn per cob?
Priority phase 3
- Selection for color/taste. Anything not kept for seed will be for eating (cornmeal, tortillas).
- After table use the rest will go to feeding the livestock.. useful traits other than production?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The days to maturity (DTM) of F1 hybrid corn tends towards half-way between the DTM of the parents.

I prefer to do successive plantings based on the growth of the previous planting. For example, planting the second crop when the first is 3 inches tall. That accounts for differences is growing degree days as the season progresses.

I typically plant my first crop of corn 3 weeks before average last frost.

[Kadence Luneman]

Thanks Joseph! I was just rereading over your book and saw it there as well. Dunno how I forgot about it. Good to know. Then it shouldn't be too bad to wiggle down the DTM and find what works best for me.

Just saw Joseph's Facebook post about sending EFN more bean seed. Exciting. Anyone know if there is a general time that EFN refills everything? It seems like it's small updates when they get stuff in, I was curious if they do a big one in the winter.

[Kadence Luneman]

Potatoes!

Seems like I may be able to figure out the diploids from the tetraploids before planting them out. If I can then I would like to keep them straight. With the domesticated mix if I can put the diploids together and the tetraploids together. So I can check the diploids for dormancy.

Seed to start:
Jancko Phinu, diploid
Ayock, diploid
High dormancy mix, diploid
All domesticated, 60% tetraploid, 40% diploid
Tetraploid reds
Clancy outcrosses, tetraploid

Space for 480. Evaluate all. Select best for planting tubers to propagate following year.

Selection points:
Dormancy (diploids)
Long day (diploids)
Flesh, white or yellow
Skin
Shape

Flesh... I just don't like the visual of pinkish mashed potatoes, etc. Or blue, mostly grey. I know I'll get some and I do want to taste test some. But not my long term plan. They are beautiful when raw, no doubt!

Skin... I'm not writing it off but I'll probably end up weeding out blue skin. White, yellow, and red all are fine. Pink will probably also be fine though some pics they can be very neon and that is weird lol. It's just in my head but I eat eyes first.

Shapes...
Visually I really like the Ayock shape, kind of like a long pine cone. Jancko Phinu looks like it's a rounded or oblong version of that shape.
Tetraploids seem to not have much for shape variation but we'll see if it comes up.

[Kadence Luneman]

Squash...
I decided against separating the groups and against growing one of the corn varieties with it. I'm going to plant them in the ~half acre area I've been working on grazing with the sheep. It's not that far from the garden or the sheep so I can check it easily.

I'm going to kind of separate them by moschata, maxima, pepo with cover crop mix between them. Numbers in front of variety name is tentative number of seeds to be planted.

<31> Butternut rogosia violinia (mosch) 100 day
<16> Butternut Lofthouse (mosch) ? day
<5> Black futsu (mosch) 105 day, saved seed, *remove male flowers
[Moschata, 52 total]

<36> Jarrahdale (max) 100 day, 6-10#
<8> Nanticoke (max) 110 day
<28> Georgia candy roaster (max) 95 day, 10#
<30> Blue hubbard (max) 110 day, saved seed
[Maxima, 102 total]

<20> Connecticut field pumpkin (pepo) 100 day
<20> NE sugar pie pumpkin (pepo) 100 day
<20> Mellow yellow pumpkin (pepo) 95 day, saved seed, an F1 hybrid, *remove male flowers
[Pepo, 60 total]

I'd like to get more Nanticoke seed. Other than that I'm hoping to not need to buy more seeds. Just growing and selecting from these.
I have Acorn seed but I'm not that crazy about them. Probably start them to sell/trade locally.

And then lemon squash, pepo, the lone summer squash variety. I've gotta find somewhere on the edge of the garden to put it. If I like it I'll bag and hand pollinate flowers to save seed. And it will be about 400ft from the closest part of the squash half acre so hopefully far enough away to not affect the pumpkins. Plus the pepo are the lowest on the totem pole so if they aren't that good I won't be that bothered to drop them.

[Kadence Luneman]

Watermelons...
I'm not really looking for anything specific with these so it'll be just letting them cross and seeing how they do. Landrace them, albeit starting with a smaller genetic base. The varieties read pretty much what I think I want for them.

Yellow and orange flesh. Quick DTM for melons. Let nature select for survivability.
Pretty basic selection for flavor.
Selection for fruit size. Seems the big ones take much longer to mature so I'll not keep seeds from the huge ones.
Going to plant 5 hill of each, 2 seed per hill.

Janosik watermelon, 80 day, yellow, ~10#
Clay County yellow meat, 90 day, yellow, 10-35#??
Leelanau sweetglo, 80 day, orange, 8-13#??
Early moonbeam, 80 day, yellow, 3-8#

[Kadence Luneman]

Hot peppers... (10 plants each)
Anaheim hot pepper, 80 day, gr/red
Big Jim hot pepper, green

Sweet peppers... (8 plants each)
Gregs Hungarian sw pepper
King of the north pepper, 68 day, ripen to red
Gr bell pepper, saved seed

I'm new to hot peppers. I'm not into really hot food but I like some salsa and stuff. So trying these out. I read through the reviews to find varieties that were rated decently low and not going to blow my head off hopefully! Ha!
Also I planned for them to be across the garden from each other. And if I decide to keep seeds from anything I'll bag flowers and hand pollinate.

The green bell seeds I saved from dad's garden this year. Store bought plants so plain old commercial type. The two varieties I bought looked nice. Bell peppers usually do pretty good here so not much to add here. We'll see how they do and what tastes good.

[Kadence Luneman]

Leeks...
American flag leeks, 150 day?
Carentan leek, 100 day, 2" across
Bulgarian giant leek, 110 day, long and thin

I may add to this later on, bring in new seed. Since I'm starting with a small group of varieties. I don't know what exactly I'm going for with these. Alot of my initial selection is just going to be culling out the weakest/slowest with thinning and let nature do most of it.

I have watched some videos of people breeding efforts with leeks to get bigger and stocky-er  (stalky-er? Lol) leeks. So I will be looking for where the leaf split occurs on the height of the plants.


Green Onions...
red welsh, 60+ day
he shi ko bunching, 60+ day

Onions...
Yellow of parma onion, excellent keeper, long day
Red of Florence onion, tall and narrow, long day
Yellow sweet Spanish onion, very big, long day

Not much to say here either. Keep the bulb and green separate. I'm hoping to sort the small onions from the nice sized. Start with the small ones and braid the larger ones for storage.


Lettuce...
May queen lettuce, 50 day, butter head
Crisp mint, 65 day, romaine head
Little gem, 50 day, romaine head
Tom thumb, 60 day, 3-4" cabbage-like heads
Merlot, 55 day, dark red, frilly leaf

Not much to say here. Selection for survivability and slow to bolt. Kind of funny, I had merlot on my maybe list and decided against it, then it came in as a free seed packet. Dark lettuce can be bitter so I don't know if it will stay in for breeding.

Not lettuce but salad greens...
Arugula & mustard, saved seed
I grew them all together in a bed a few years ago and saved seed. Bought more arugula seed to add to it.

[Kadence Luneman]

Purple top turnip, 50 day
Radish Japanese Wasabi, 60 day, daikon type, green
Hedou tiny bok choy, ~40 day, bolt quickly
Red cabbage, 75 day
Dutch Siberian napus kale grex
Spinach
Peas- Alaska & little marvel, 60 day
Peas- blue bantam, 80 day
White Cucumber, 60 day
L-O Muskmelon, 80-90 day

Turnips for livestock. I may have got a 3# bag....

Radish was a free seed packet. Going to try it but probably won't be keeping it.

Bok choy was another one on my maybe list that I didn't get and it came in as a free packet. Gonna give it a try.

Red cabbage.. I've recently found I actually enjoy cabbage so I'm trying it. Reading that brassicas can be tough with certain bug pests. We'll see.

Kale, again finding I like it mixed in salads. Can also be fed to livestock.

Spinach.. going to try it.

Peas, going to try it. I grew them a few years ago and they did good.

Cucumbers always seem to do good. I don't like them or pickles much. May be giving away alot of cukes lol. Another free packet.

Lofthouse Oliverson Muskmelon! I've never like cantaloupe but I fell in love with the story from Joseph in his interviews. Papa likes them so he'll get plenty. I'm going to try them.

[Kadence Luneman]

Tomatoes...

Big Hill (det) 70-90 day, beefsteak, bicolor R/Y
Exserted Orange (det?) 70-90 day
42 day (det) supposed to be 42 days, good for container growing, 1-4oz fruit
Barry's crazy cherry (indet) 75 day, Y 20-40 fruit per branch!, high yeild
Hartmans yellow gooseberry (indet) 75 day, Y 1" cherry, high yeild
Great white (indet) 75 day, white, 8-16oz
Big rainbow (indet) 85 day, beefsteak,  bicolor Y/R, up to 2#
Black beauty (indet) 80 day, antho blk skin, red inside, can get super tall?? 8-10ft??, maybe low production
Neandermato- habrochaites (indet), self infertile, *use pollen on others
Spoon tomato- pimpinellifolium (indet), 65-70 day, red & tiny, *cross pollinates both ways with lycopersicum
Cache valley currant tomato- pimpinellifolium (indet?), red & tiny
San Marzano (indet) saved seed, 75 day
Roma (det) saved seed 75 day
Pink beefsteak (?) saved seed from dad's garden
Dad assorted (?) saved seed from dad's garden random nice looking fruits

What the heck am I doing with all these?! Ha!

Will 42 days actually be super early? I read up reviews and it looks like it needs further selection for early-ness but it seemed worth a go.

I want to play with alot of hand pollinating. Big Hill with everything really. And Exserted Orange. I could do a grex, cross everything to them and put all the seed together. Select for exsertion and open flowers.

I want to cross crazy cherry and see if the high production stays or not.

Black beauty was a free packet. I've been curious about the anthocyanin varieties and hadn't wanted to necessarily buy them so this will be interesting. The reviews were kind of all over. Alot of "omg huge plant takes over everything"... "boring flavor"... "low production, plan for more plants than you think you need"... "take forever to ripen"... So not exactly sure but giving it a go. If they're terrible then that's that. If it's interesting I'll cross it to everything and grex it to see if anything worthwhile shows up F2. Particularly crazy cherry for production boost.
Antho pimpinellifolium? Antho great white?

Spoon tomato is listed as pimpinellifolium on the site and the packet says lycopersicum... So I bought the Cache valley currant tomato to compare it to.
I just watched a video on the dwarf tomato project. Really cool. It was interesting he said they've crossed some currant tomatoes with 2# beefsteak and the offspring are cherry sized. Some were cherry sized beefsteak! Like a shrinky-dink! *laugh-crying* So the tiny fruit genes are reallyyy dominant apparently.

And of course I'm really curious to compare the flowers to Neandermato in person. I'm curious to see how much pollinators activity they will get here. I didn't notice much on my tomatoes this year.
I had missed that there is habrochaites influence in Exserted Orange already.

And now after watching the dwarf tomato videos and looking at those on victory seed I'm intrigued! *facepalm* But really though they look great and being easier to stake would help alot. I could grow more and easier.
I emailed the guy via the website (darn my bad memory for names) about growing out excess seed to hunt for dwarfs. I don't know what to expect from that, I'm sure he gets plenty of emails. But it would be fun and I could select some dwarfs and start my own crosses. Work toward a dwarf, exserted, large flower, tasty tomato.

I'm not really wanting to bother with the romas or San Marzano. I have someone local who will buy lots of plants from me so I'll probably start them all and sell/trade them.

Hmm...

I have already allotted myself space for 42 tomato plants in the garden. I'm thinking to grow some of each to narrow down what does well (or not) and what is maybe not as interesting. Most of them will be made into sauce and canned anyway. [Note to self.. look at dehydrators..]

Variety, number of plants
Big Hill, 5
Exserted Orange, 5
42 day, 4
Barry's crazy cherry, 5
Hartmans yellow, 5
Great white, 5
Big rainbow, 5
Black beauty, 5
Spoon, 1
Cache valley currant, 1
Neandermato, 1

*edit- would anyone be interested in any seed of these or crosses? I'd love to trade for some potato leaf dwarfs next year when I have seed saved to share.

[Kadence Luneman]

Lofthouse Cowpea, 70-90 day

Dry bean grex, 75-90 day, bush
Gr bean, 50 day

Chocolate cherry Sunflower, 65-75 day, 6-7ft
Buckwheat

Hulless oats (mid March) 188 count

Fiber flax, 100 sq ft
Kenaf (like hemp, fiber)

-Permanent herbs/flowers bed-
Marigold (dye)
Woad (dye)
Dyers coriopsis (dye)
Cosmos (dye)
Black eyed Susan's (dye)
Yellow prairie coneflower (native flower)
Borage
Echinacia
Yarrow
Chamomile
Calendula
Crimson clover (annual, testing self seed ability)
Hairy Vetch (annual, testing self seed ability)

Cache valley alfalfa.. in herbs/flowers bed? Then harvest seed to be planted in pastures?

Fall planting-
Evolution wheat
Red turkey wheat
Grain rye
Composit rye
Austrian winter pea
Garlic

[William Schlegel]

Tomatoes...

Will 42 days actually be super early?

Variety, number of plants
Big Hill, 5
Exserted Orange, 5
42 day, 4
Barry's crazy cherry, 5
Hartmans yellow, 5
Great white, 5
Big rainbow, 5
Black beauty, 5
Spoon, 1
Cache valley currant, 1
Neandermato, 1

Were you not able to get a hold of any of Joseph's promiscuous project?

I would recommend growing a nice clump of Neandertomato maybe as many as ten genets. The clump might end up smaller than the single and it will give you fresh seed. A single should refuse to reproduce in theory.

I think Black Beauty is the one I picked up a packet of 5 homegrown seeds from the local seed library. I think I saved a little of it but it seemed pretty much the same as the other red and blue ones I've grown. Very long season for here.

The strain of 42 days I got hold of in 2017 was truly super early. It made my top early varieties list that year. As a group I consider all the best super early reds to be about the same including the hybrids.

I would suggest growing just one of Barry's crazy cherry. I crowded the plant I grew in 2022 but it still produced some. Kind of mild.

[Kadence Luneman]

I thought about putting 2 or 3 in the spot for the Neandermato for it to be able to produce. I wasn't sure because I'm not sure how much I'm going to use it. But more seed isn't a bad thing haha.

I didn't get anything from the project. I wasn't sure and then when I ordered they weren't in stock.

Good to know on 42 days. Maybe I'll cross black beauty to it.

You weren't impressed with Barry's crazy cherry?