Beautiful (Interspecific) Brassicaceae project

[Garrett Schantz]

Joseph's wide variation of wild tomato crosses has given me an idea of hybridizing Brassicaceae species, which could lead to new crops, flavors, disease resistances and the like.

Also nicely colored flowers - larger flowers, interesting seed pods. Anything goes here, and anyone who want to do this as well can select out for whatever they want.

This isn't a large scale project for me, I select out the most vigorous, nice flowered / leaved varieties and add them into a flowering group intermixed with each other.
From there I select out the nicest looking flowers / leaved specimens. I use the seeds from those, again saving seed from them. I allow at least a few plants from each Brassicaceae species in the group to stay there, regardless if it looks as nice as the others.

Any noticeable hybrids will get a few selections out of the group for stabilization into a new green/root vegetable etc.

I posted about the species I am using in this project on Permies. Other Brassicaceae are welcome here as well.

Here are some flowers from last year which were favorable.

[Garrett Schantz]

I don't have many things to post due to it being winter. So here are the interesting things I have found in my current group.

The first two images are nicely leaved - grew very well. Didn't get seed from it.

The last two images resemble those first two when they were younger - put leaves over them to overwinter.

I brought one of the plants inside earlier to clean it up - looked like it had a mildew problem. Hopefully this works out well.

I thought about putting this in Brassica crosses, but I am unsure if things in the family would be allowed there.

These appear to be large radish leaves, leaf pattern is a bit odd for the bottom two though.

[Garrett Schantz]

Didn't plant any turnips last year, flowers on the parent were purple. Only radish I planted was Black Spanish, if I remember correctly. This came up in the area where I put the seeds from that. Had to bring the root inside due to something eating the top - which became quite soft. Not a good thing with frosts still around.

It's now been inside long enough to get more greens on it.

[Garrett Schantz]

The leaves are smooth, none of the normal little bristles that radishes and turnips have on their leaves. Very smooth, texture reminds me of oyster leaf - maybe komatsuna. Leaf pattern is a bit off so far too. Should be able to say more once the leaves are larger

I have some tomato sprouts in there as well, just to see what the leaf types are going to be. I might take favorable plants out and cull the rest since the brassica is actually growing.

[Garrett Schantz]

Leaves are growing nicely.

Backside of the leaves show the outer leaf curling into the stem towards the bottom. All sorts of different leaf shapes so far as well.

Nice spicy aftertaste on the leaves. Small leaves seem tender, unsure how they will be when mature.

[Ferdzy]

So Garrett; you believe this to be a radish/turnip cross, is that correct? The root looks quite like rutabaga to me - is that the kind of turnip that was one of the parents? Or something else? 

Looking good, whatever it is.

[Garrett Schantz]

So Garrett; you believe this to be a radish/turnip cross, is that correct? The root looks quite like rutabaga to me - is that the kind of turnip that was one of the parents? Or something else? 

Looking good, whatever it is.

Unsure at this point. The only brassica root crop that I have planted in the past few years has been black spanish radish.

Flower buds in the images up top show quite a bit of aborted flowers. Bees went to them, but they just dropped. Some of them didn't even get to the flower point. Also haven't saw radish flowers that are completely purple - pink before. Usually they have a bit of white towards the center at the very least. Odd veins around the center as well. Petals also appeared smaller, more close together than usual.

The white-pink flowers actually had a bunch of different sized petals on each flower. It also didn't have spiky flower buds like the others.

Those plants had black storage roots, they were originally there from when I was testing radishes as a cover crop to till back into the soil. Only those types came up. Unsure if those were an F1 cross because they sort of came up around tall weeds, so there wasn't much in terms of foliage growth - just sort of grew upwards. Saved the few seed pods that formed and put them into a spot beside my herb bed, sort of just forgot about them because I didn't see germination. If the F1 wasn't male fertile, a black spanish radish that overwintered and flower at the same time could have caused the seed set.

Found this thing in that little area. Along with a few other light green, diseased / weak looking plants that I posted above. Posted those ones above. Those ones are still quite weak. Hoping that they recover - one of them had an interesting flavor. Brought them inside and removed the sick leaves - the herb bed was completely bare except for those plants, so they probably got damaged by frosts and other things.

If this is an F2, diversity wouldn't surprise me.

Unsure of what it is, but the leaves so far look somewhat different from either radishes or turnips. All sorts of odd leaf patterns so far. The leaf on the far right has a bunch of rounded grooves which is odd. Leaves curling inwards towards the bottom stems is also odd.

Should be able to figure out what this is once it flowers or gets larger leaves.

If this is a radish - brassica cross, I could probably do a lot of fun stuff - purple podded rat-tail brassicas, spicy turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, disease resistances, purple flowers. Daikon radishes apparently have white flowers, that could be fun depending on the cross. All sorts of fun stuff.

Brassicas that I grew two years ago were: mizuna, tatsoi, komatsuna, arugula, black spanish radish - kale all got killed by bugs that year. Can't remember planting anything else that flowered with the radish.

Could be Arugula x Radish I suppose. Would explain the diverse leaves on the plant, along with the overly spikey flower buds. Although not all arugula has spiky flower buds, some radishes have spiky flower buds. Hard to tell until this thing flowers. I'm hoping it doesn't flower for awhile though. Would prefer for it to do that outside, although I could just keep on cutting any flowering stalks off.

Seems to be a cross of something, whatever it is - I like it so far.

[Garrett Schantz]

I bought kohlrabi, rutabaga, turnips, arugula, bunch more radishes to grow this year. All sorts of other brassicaceae as well. If it is a hybrid, I'm unsure of how long it will be able to backcross into the parents. Other brassicaceae may be able to hybridize with something like this as well.

[Garrett Schantz]

Went outside to take photos of some of the more "odd" looking volunteers. Some of these are from different spots in the garden, but seemed notable enough to save and move to a spot to overwinter.

The serrated plant looked nice to me. Unsure of what crossed to make it though.

With the flower part of the project I can just cull whatever flowers aren't appealing. But the leaf section of this project are getting moved because they might end up selecting towards small leaves naturally, also harder to select for the leaves and flowers all at once.

[Garrett Schantz]

Suppose I will post a few more images. We had a frost couple of days ago. Probably would have had nicer images before the frost...

These are probably all getting ready to flower. I moved / dug up a bunch of nice looking brassica volunteers so that they would be closer together. Should attract more bees / better pollination / cross pollination.

First image resembles Komatsuna.

Second image has some weird looking types.

Last image is a root from the plant on the bottom of the second image. Most of the volunteers have a root like this.

Should be able to figure out what some of these are once they flower.

[Garrett Schantz]

Some things are starting to flower.

Pretty sure that the wild brassicas here are Barbarea vulgaris.

First image - my phone actually took a decent photo for once. Bit of red markings on a lot of the flower spikes.

Second image was an OK image as well.

Third image seems like some sort of brassica.

Fourth image has large Barbarea vulgaris plants - uncommon for them to grow this big. I checked the bases, seems like two plants.

Fifth image, leaves are much larger than usual - this one does look younger though.


I marked the off-type Barbarea vulgaris plants. I will probably save the seed from those plants just for fun - they will probably cross with all of the other plants unless i cut off the other plants flowering stalks or something. There are over 40 Barbarea vulgaris plants in the upper garden. I'm not using the upper garden at the moment, lower garden has enough room for all of my greens. Last year I collected B. vulgaris seed pods from the edge of the house to try them out as a cover crop / see how they would do. They did very well apparently. Bees should be happy.

[Garrett Schantz]

Some radishes volunteers have started coming back nicely. I only planted Black Spanish radishes last year, I usually don't check the foliage or much of anything on them.

One plant has a lot more greenery on its leaves, also glossier - no spines or whatever they are called.

The second plant has less greenery, spiny leaves.

I suppose that they should start putting on flower buds soon...

[Garrett Schantz]

Also posting my favorite brassica volunteer so far - in terms of how it is flowering and such.

There are flower buds towards the bottom, center and top of the plant. And they appear to be quite numerous. Having flowers all throughout a tall plant - not just the top, would be nice.

Broccoli - Rapini - Broccoli Raab would probably be something to add into this - just for the large masses of flowers.

Broccoli heads usually have issues when I grow them here.


Unsure of what species this is, it was a volunteer that I moved over to a protected area. There are some others, I am waiting until these all flower to post them.

Next year I will try a few different plantings of brassicas - early fall - mid fall - late fall. That way I can try obtaining the most developed plants possible without having them flower before the winter dormancy period.

I'm assuming that these volunteers would have more flowers, stalks etc, had they not just started growing towards the very end of fall.

Pretty sure that this is a brassica given how it was growing before the flowering stage. Same plant from the last two images on 04-04-2021 on this thread.

[Mikkel ImGrimm]

Nice project! I selected some winter hardy Broccoli, Romanesco and Cauliflower over the last years which I plan to cross this season.
Beside that I have a bunch of Brussels sprouts x Kale hybrids which are more close to Brussel sprout than to Kale as a 2nd project. I would like to cross Kohlrabi but it is not sure if it survived the frost, it is more frost tender than other cabages.
Would love to see how Kohlrabi crosses segregate.

[reed]

That plant looks quite turnip like to me except for the root but I grow mostly purple top white globe turnips. How do the little broccoli things taste?