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Have any of you guys tried seeds from Tough Citrus?  I keep eyeing his seeds and thinking, "I wanna have some of those tasty fruits with trees that are hardy to zone 7a!"

Oh, cool, Ipomoea leptophylla is on the list!  That's one I'd really like to see crossed into sweet potatoes, to see what would result.  Ipomoea leptophylla is supposed to be super drought tolerant, and the roots are edible (though by most accounts, apparently not very tasty).

I think I've read somewhere (Cultivariable?) that potatoes tend to gradually accumulate viruses throughout their lifetimes, and the longer they live (in other words, the more years they are cloned), the more their productivity and fertility tend to decrease.

Maybe a lot of root crops might be the same way?  Like sweet potatoes?  The hypothesis could be tested by taking some sweet potatoes that used to be able to make seeds and stopped being able to, and tissue culturing them to remove any viruses, and seeing what the resulting clones do.  My suspicion is that, because that works for potatoes, it may work for other root crops, too.

This is seriously cool.  I've been curious for ages about what a cross between the two species might be like!

Have you made any interesting crosses yet?  I'm very interested in seeing how this goes.

I'm also curious about something you can probably answer.  Is Rubus deliciosus thimbleberry?  I thought thimbleberry was Rubus parviflorus.  I've never heard of Rubus deliciosus before, and having looked it up, I'm now very interested in its thornlessness, tastiness, and drought tolerance.

Possibly you may consider this:

Dig a really deep swale next to your plants.  Fill it with wood chips until it's taller than before, which means it's now acting as both a swale and a berm.  Walk on it as a pathway.  Eventually, once the wood chips have rotted down enough to make nice compost, scoop that compost onto the garden and fill up the berm/swale combo with new wood chips to rot down.

That is what I'm planning to do for my food forest rows. 

I have wondered that myself, and gone looking for it.  No sign of it anywhere.

I believe what happened is that she wasn't able to replicate it, so she started again from scratch to try to breed something like it on purpose, and that's what led to Goldini.  If you read her other two books (I think it might be in her third one, The Tao of Vegetable Gardening?), she talks about the process of breeding Goldini.

I've never read the first edition of Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, but I seem to recall the introduction to the second edition says that part 1 is the original first edition, and parts 2 and 3 are new.  Part 1 is about three-quarters of the book.  I would definitely recommend getting a copy of the second edition, for all that new content.  I also strongly recommend her other two books, The Resilient Gardener and The Tao of Vegetable Gardening, which are equally excellent, and contain a lot of further ideas for people doing plant breeding.

Wow, a fee for a table space?  When the idea is for it to be a seed swap?  I agree with you.  Pass.

Traveling anywhere outside Provo is hard for me, but your SLC idea does theoretically sound very neat.

I've been told that Black Mitla is a common bean variety that was mislabeled at some point as a tepary.  I grew a bunch of Black Mitla plants this year, and I can confirm that their leaves and behaviors (and lack of drought and heat tolerance) are totally common bean, not at all tepary bean.

(Gasp.)  You don't trust squirrels?  But they're always so well-behaved and non-invasive! 

Funny story.  My sister's Halloween pumpkin got eaten by a squirrel.  After it had been outside for only a few hours.  It wasn't even carved.  The squirrel chewed through the hard rind and ate the entire interior.  She was exasperated!

Awesome.  Thank you!  That's very helpful!

Are tomatoes like peas and squashes?  If you pick all the fruits sooner, will it stimulate new flowers and fruits sooner?

I'm wondering it that would be a possible extra benefit to picking them as soon as they start to blush.

Actually, another thought occurred to me.  Tell me if I'm totally crazy.

Ethylene gas is supposed to help unripe tomatoes ripen.  I know ethylene gas is emitted by bananas.

Is this true with tomatoes still on the plants?

At the end of the season, what if I put a hoop house around the tomato plants and stick a bunch of bananas in there with them?  Would that help the fruit ripen faster on the plant?

I want to get as many seeds as possible from my tomato plants this year, so when the first frost is imminent, I'm thinking I'll pick all the fruits that are just starting to blush, and take them inside to ripen.

How much difference will that make to the vigor of the seeds, as compared to letting the fruit fully ripen on the plant?

I'm also wondering if I would get a lot more fruit (and thus a lot more seeds) if I do that throughout the whole summer.  Would that encourage the plants to set more fruit?  Or would it make more sense to leave them on the plant until they're fully ripe, as long as there's no frost incoming?

Oh, that's a clever idea!  Sure, I can do that.  I've just saved mature seeds from the orange-podded, and the large-podded has stopped flowering and is maturing seeds, so I'll have to do that with the next generation.

When do you recommend planting the seeds for the next generation?  I've toyed with the idea of doing it now, to test how heat-tolerant they are.  Do you think it would be better to wait until the temperatures have cooled off a bit, in fall?

I've been testing out a half dozen other varieties, as well.  Here are the varieties I've grown this year:

- Austrian Winter Pea.
- Wild Pea of Umbria.
- Easy Peasy.  Burpee.
- Burpeeana Early.  Burpee.
- Cascadia Sugar Snap Pea.  Burpee.
- Orange-podded (from you).
- Large-podded (from you).
- Sugar Magnolia Tendril (purple-podded).  Baker Creek Seeds.
- Golden Sweet Snow pea (yellow-podded).  Baker Creek Seeds.
- Tall Telephone pea.  Baker Creek Seeds.

Here are my evaluations of all of them:

Wild types:

Austrian Winter Pea:
Definitely the most cold hardy.  The first ones I planted, and the last ones to flower.  The pods and peas are small, and not very sweet.  4-8 peas per pod.  2-4 pods per node.  (!!)

Wild Pea of Umbria:
Very similar to Austrian Winter Pea.



Baker Creek Seeds:

Tall Telephone:
Not a single one germinated!  I'm sure they were good seeds, since Baker Creek Seeds is a great company.  They must be poorly suited to my climate for some reason.

Sugar Magnolia Tendril:
Purple pods.  Huge pods with huge peas inside, which taste good in the pods or out of them.  Flowered only a few days after the first variety to flower.  7-9 peas per pod.  1 pod per node.

Golden Sweet Snow Pea:
Yellow-podded.  Medium-sized pods with big peas inside.  The sweetest and most delicious flavor.  Flowered at the same time as Sugar Magnolia Tendril, only a few days after the first variety to flower.  6-8 peas per pod.  1 pod per node.



Burpee:

Easy Peasy:
Very uninspiring variety.  The plants were tiny and stunted.  They didn't find the trellises I gave them; they stayed 2-4 inches tall and produced only 1-3 pods each.  I know this was the fault of the variety, because I planted a few Austrian Winter Peas randomly among them, and those all found the trellises and did great.  The pods were very tasty, but very small.  1-3 peas per pod.  1 pod per node.

Burpeeana Early:
Most of them died, but the few that survived were great.  I didn't give them trellises, and I didn't water them nearly as much as I should have, so the few that survived were troupers.  They grew into vigorous bushes with lots of pods on them, even though they were only about eight inches tall.  The pods and peas were medium-sized, but tasted good.  4-6 peas per pod.  1 pod per node.

Cascadia Sugar Snap Pea:
Really thick, sweet, juicy pods.  The peas were just okay, but the pods were delicious.  Unfortunately, and this is a HUGE downside, the bugs agreed with me about that, and a lot of the pods I kept on the plant in order to save for the seed got eaten clear through by insects.  I saw a little bit of insect damage on the pods of Golden Sweet Snow Pea, too, but only a little bit.  The insect damage on this variety was pervasive and on most of the plants.  I only saved seeds from the pods that showed no insect damage at all.  The pods were really fat, which turned out to be because the pods themselves were so thick (and crisp, and juicy).  The peas were only medium-sized.  3-5 peas per pod.  2 pods per node.



From you:

Orange-podded:

The first variety to flower, by a few days.  The plants that found the trellis grew tall and produced abundantly.  The plants that didn't stayed about six inches tall and produced a few extra stalks with a number of pods on them.  The bush ones that didn't find the trellis were about 60% as productive as the tall ones that did.  About half as many pods as Golden Sweet Snow Pea.  6-8 peas per pod.  2 pods per node.


Large-podded:

The pods are enormous, and the peas are, too!  About half as many pods as orange-podded, which means a quarter as many pods as Golden Sweet Snow Pea.  9 peas per pod.  2 pods per node.


The three Burpee varieties all had white flowers.  The rest all had purple flowers.


I've described them all in detail so you can evaluate if you want me to cross your varieties with any of the others I have this year.    I'm thinking Golden Sweet Snow Pea, Burpeeana Early, and maybe Sugar Magnolia Tendril and Cascadia Sugar Snap Pea would be worth trying as crosses.  Maybe Austrian Winter Pea and Wild Pea of Umbria as well, if and only if it's worth having to reselect for large, sweet peas and quick flowering in order to get more cold hardiness into the population.  What do you think?

Hey, Andrew, you'll be happy to hear that the orange-podded peas I got from you last year were the first to flower and set pods!  My yellow-podded and purple-podded peas from Baker Creek Seeds were only a few days behind, and almost everything else was two weeks or more later.

The large-podded peas I got from you last year have HUGE pods!  Not very many of them, which is a shame, but they're massive, and that's pretty cool.