Harvest Monday - Feb 19th, 2018

Hope you like Chard...

...because my stomach doesn't. I've been trying to eat down my dozen plants so I can tear them out. Did I honestly think I could eat a dozen swiss chard plants? By myself? Because that... well, that was some ridiculously optimistic thinking Day.

I mean, cripes, this is one of the plants I have to tackle. See that center leaf, the one facing us looking all pretty?

This is for scale. The leaf behind it is an elephant ear. You could make a burrito the size of a baby with it.

So this Harvest Monday post is also me coming to terms with the fact that most of this chard is going to end up in the compost pile in the near future. I'm genuinely ashamed of that. It's true I need more green layers in the compost right now, seeing as it's full of dry leaves, but I prefer to use inedible sources for my nitrogen kick.

But I can't help it --  my body just can't do anymore chard and nobody else wants to take it.  
("Swiss... what?" they say, peeking cautiously over the fence and staring dubiously at the green stuff.)

And when I say my body can't do anymore chard... I don't mean it's a taste bud thing or a lack of inspiration on how to prepare it. What I mean is -- my GI tract is in full rebellion, torches and pitchforks, marching down main street level unhappy. It does not like chard. At all. Beets, cool, no problem. But chard? Burn the witch to the ground.

I'll save you the details, suffice it to say I thought it was the fava greens (above) so I stopped eating those for most of the week, and doubled up on chard instead. That... was a mistake.

Awkward 'on the trellis' photo. I need a potting bench.

I only took harvest photos of the endless chard when I also had something else to show, however small. See that pea shoot on top of the pile?

It attacked me.

I was just checking on the favas, minding me own business, and wham! punched right in the earlobe. Now, I didn't mean to break his arm off entirely, but c'mon... if something's poking around in my earhole, you can be damn sure I'm gunna go full ninja about it.

Anyway, the offending shoot was supposed to get cooked with the chard, but he got lost during meal prep. When I eventually found him while doing dishes, he was collapsed by the sink, wilty and sad. Aw.

Oh heartstrings, you pluck for the strangest reasons...

So he got a teeny vase. And a toothpick to hold. For whatever reason, I feel much better now.

Apart from chard, my biggest harvest this week was Golden Sage.

I mentioned a while back that I had two plants that needed to be lopped back. Cutting the first one gave me two jar vases of fresh sage that I'm still trying to use up. But I couldn't stand staring at the second, leggy, scraggly sage anymore. So I sheared him too, and I decided this batch was going to be dried straight off.

After a wash (evicted: 1 cabbage looper, 1 startled moth, and lots of dust) the sage made three hefty bundles that are now hanging to dry above the fridge.

Up until planting sage, I didn't cook much with it. I associated it with 'meat cooking,' and though I eat meat, I don't cook with it all that frequently. And while I do bake with eggs a lot, I don't prefer them alone. I've never been an eggs for breakfast person, bleh.

Last week however, I got distracted with life and didn't make it to the grocery store when I needed to. The cupboards were bare. Boo. I did have eggs, though, so I scrambled some up. Fine. I threw in some sage. Why not.  

Oh my. It's strange how some things smother sage's flavor, and other's highlight it. The eggs definitely highlighted it, in a very good way. And while I'm still not a convert to scrambled eggs, I'll remember the sage next time I'm forced to eat them alone.

Mitoyo Eggplant, tiny Paul Robeson Tomato, Swiss Chard

And while I'm on the topic of food conversion, I decided to try eggplant again.

Last summer I grew half a dozen eggplant plants (plant plants?) of two varieties: Mitoyo and Casper. Well, the spider mites had a fucking holiday on them, and at the end of a long and bloody war only one stood victorious: a single Mitoyo plant, since named Moriarty. But victorious is a very generous word... he lived. Barely.

During the battle I ate a lot of small and tender eggplant  from both varieties. I didn't find them insipid, but I couldn't fathom why people got excited about them. The plants were difficult to germinate, grew slowly, attracted every pest on the planet, and for all the care they required, they returned the favor by producing lots of flavorless oil sponges.

Hm.
I didn't get it. I tried cooking it a lot of different ways, and the appeal alluded me.

But it's been half a year since my last bite, so I decided to try again. I'll save you the cook&prep hoohah and get to the point: nope, not converted. I did nibble on some of the raw flesh while cooking, and it reminded me of a grocery apple when it gets spongy and dry and old. Still, it was very faintly sweet. Not the worst thing I've ever tasted, but not something I'd snack on. Though I did prefer the raw to the cooked, to be perfectly honest. 

I wanted to like it, guys, I really did. But bleh, pass. Oh well -- you win some, you lose some.

Moriarty and his new best friend.

Moriarty will, however, get a reprieve from the compost pile and continue to live and grow purple sponge grenades despite my taste preferences. Eggplant make a perfect gift to give my neighbor-who-cuts-my-hair. So while I'm not eating them, at least someone is.

And the lacewings love Moriarty, as you can see. Though that's only because he's overwhelmed by spider mites... again. But that's enough about spider mites for now. It's only Monday.

Also, I nearly forgot, in the above above photo, you can see an itty bitty teeny weeny Paul Robeson tomatey.

Ok, it was mealy and tough skinned, but with decent flavor. I don't blame the plant. It's had a rough life. It made better fruit, once upon a time. The fact that it's even attempting to make tomatoes right now makes me happy. So I took my small victory and ate it during meal prep.

Um...
I guess you could call this a harvest... though it wasn't a happy one. And there were many more where this came from, unfortunately.

This year I'm growing four types of peas: Sugar Snap, Cascadia (snap), Golden Snow, and Sugar Magnolia Tendril (snap). As it turns out, my Cascadia gene pool is a disaster. They are supposed to be bush snap peas with white flowers. Well --

Golly gee willikers, I have tall plants, short plants, purple flowers, white flowers, snow pea shapes, shelling pea shapes, snap pea shapes  and way, way, way too many fibrous, inedible pods.
 
That one you see above is the first I discovered, as I innocently bit into it. In this particular one, the peas themselves were also super bitter. The shock and horror of it all had me gracelessly spitting the whole thing out onto the path.  No shame.

Above left: what a cascadia pea is supposed to look like. Above right: one of the many rogues, likely due to accidental crossing resulting from poor isolation practices.

So lot of my un-photographed 'harvests' this week were pea taste tests. When I found a fibrous one, I played the super confusing game called follow that stem! down to the root line so I could pull out the whole plant. And since the peas were growing in a wild mix of bush and pole, it was chaotic pea tumbleweed labyrinth to navigate. I was as delicate as I could be... but one of the patches still looked like this after I was done:

What a mess.

To add insult to injury, when I made my pea crosses last month I may have used pollen from some of these fibrous plants. I tag the females so I can find the pods I've crossed, but I don't tag the males. So despite the best laid plans of mice and Day, I may be culling the fibrous gene out of my pea crosses for years to come.

Once again: you win some, you lose some!

These beans were itty bitty things, grown mostly as a nitrogen ground cover. Most are Purple Teepee, which was a bean that grew poorly for me, set poorly, and produced tiny, scythe like beans.

I tried growing them twice last season, at different times of the year and in different places. Same results. So the few beans I had left in the packet were sown haphazardly before my five week disappearance. This week I pulled all the plants as they were getting powdery mildew.

The bitty baby beans were thrown into a stew. The few green ones are Calima, which is actually a great bean, but the plants were shaded out by lettuce so grew much slower.

The bowl is actually quite full, though not like you could tell: photo bomb courtesy of Greynoodle Noseypants who had to take a quick 'niff in case they were meats and I was holding out on him.

~*~*~

That's it for this week at the Shandy Dandy -- Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave @ Our Happy Acres: make sure to swing by and see what's he's harvested, and link up if you have harvests of your own.

Happy Planting!

Pea Genes, if you peas...

Two cool new 'Pea Things' have revealed themselves in my garden.
Let me introduce you:

This is a Sugar Magnolia Tendril Pea. I'll just call him Magnolia for now, because his official title is a mouthful and SMTP doesn't roll off the tongue either.

This is my first year growing Magnolia. They're pretty fun. They're a hyper tendril pea, which means they stick out  a crazy, almost disconcerting amount of grippy-grabby tendrils lacking leaves. They start like this...

HI.

Then they grab stuff...

MINE.

.... then more stuff, until they turn into little fists and punch each other while trying to grab more stuff.

MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE

They also have quite pretty flowers:

I'm pretty.

They have purple flushed pods, though I don't have any photos since mine are just starting to flower. But all in, that's what a typical Magnolia pea is supposed to look like.

Now... check out this Dude.

 

I really want to nickname it the "Lilliputian Leaves" pea but, alas, after a bit of research I discovered it already has a name: Parsley Pea.

(booo... fine.)

Here are few more pictures -- though my phone is obsessed with dirt and refuses to focus its attention elsewhere without some literal handling. 

So... what is a Parsley Pea and how did it get in with my Magnolias? Genetics time.

Now, if you know nothing about pea genes (but want to!) here's a fantastic link: Andrew's Blog - Following in Mendel's Footsteps. (I'm familiar with Andrew and his work on peas from the fantastic forum: Homegrown Goodness. If I haven't posted on my blog in a while, this is probably where you'll find me! It's definitely one of the best in-depth resources for anyone looking to know more about the vegetables that they're growing, and all the fascinating genes behind them.)

In a nutshell, the Magnolia type hyper tendril peas occurs when you outcross a Parsley pea with a regular pea. Though I haven't discovered how many genes are involved (still doing research!) it appears that within the Magnolia gene pool there are still enough recessives to occasionally unite and, with their powers combined, throw a Parsley pea.

Of the 30 or so Magnolia seeds I planted, two are growing like Parsley peas. And while they are very cool to look at, there are a few downfalls.

Firstly, since every tendril terminates in a leaf, the Parsley pea has no 'grabby hands.' Though mine may appear to be climbing, they are in fact just swept up in the arms of their neighbor Magnolias, being cradled and carried aloft. Ooo la la, how romantic.

Secondly, research has shown that the pea yield from Parsley peas tends to be very low, and much later in the season than Magnolia or other traditional varieties.

Regardless, a very interesting pop-up in this batch of Magnolia, and something I'm looking forward to saving seed from later in the season! Who knows, maybe they'll have purple flushed pods, too. We can only wait and see ~


OK< NEXT PEA


Second on today's agenda, a pea that caused a minor stir on this Homegrown Goodness thread earlier this week.
(spoiler alert: mostly unwarranted)

What's this red and white flower doing in my patch of Cascadia, which normally have all white flowers? Great question. Even stranger, when I posted an inquiry on the forum, a few people (remember Andrew, from above?) were genuinely surprised at the color arrangement. They'd never seen it before.

And while the good folks at Homegrown Goodness haven't seen everything, they sure have seen a lot.

Curious.

Remember the pink/purple colored flower from the Magnolia section? That type of coloration is quite common in peas. However, the particular and distinct division between red & white on the flower above was not something anyone on the forum had seen before. Also, see the slight red pigment where the leaves connect to the stem? That is also not traditionally present on the heirloom Cascadia plants (though you will notice, both the Magnolia and Parsley peas have it).

So over the next few days, I took photos and kept track of the flowers progress. It went a little something like this:

Interestingly, as the days went on the red & white flower turned more and more traditionally purple. The yellow spots indicate a different blossom on the same plant. I followed its progress closely, so see if it would open up red and white, like the first one, or go straight to a more traditional pink/purple.

Traditional pink/purple it was! The top blossom is the same as the one with the yellow spot next to it in the previous graphic. The darker purple one below is the original flower, that has begun to dry up and shed. If talking this subject has interested you, you can also check out this LINK for another short overview of the genetics behind purple flowers.

Now, why the first blossom looked so different and unique to anything we'd seen before remains a mystery.

But I have do a theory...

...wait, wrong theory.

Daylight. On Monday and Tuesday of two weeks ago, we had a crazy 48 rainstorm and extremely heavy cloud cover. The next day, the first blossom opened. It was overcast that day too. However, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday the sun came back in full force.

I suspect that, like some tomatoes that turn purple when exposed to light (while the shaded ones remain red), the first blossom remained such a distinct red color due to a lack of sunlight exposure on that first day.

The second blossom, which emerged pink/purple, did so during several days of heat and bright sun.

Perhaps this is the cause of the unusual red & white color? But what it doesn't help to explain is how colored genetics ended up in my white flowered gene pool of Cascadia. Since white flowers are recessive, the most likely cause is an accidental cross that happened at the seed farm (since all my Cascadia seeds this season came straight out of a packet).

Another strange arrival this week at the Shandy Dandy that I will definitely be keeping an eye on (and saving seeds from) in the near future!

In the meantime, this colored little Cascadia still needs a nickname. Thoughts?

-----

PS. It took me a few days to write/compile this post, and in the meantime the original red & white flower has started forming a pod.

Happy Planting!

Everything is an Experiment

A quick aside:

My posting habits have, so far, been rather higgledy-piggledy: One minute I'm crawling around in the dirt hunting for mutants and rogues; the next, I'm cheerfully shoving food at you for Harvest Monday.

Figuring out how to bring this blog up to speed on everything that's happened, happening, or soon to happen in my veg-hack lab (without boring myself to death by simply transcribing hours of things I've already written in my growing notebook) has been the true challenge.

And I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't a scientific journal, nor is it my chicken scratch growing notebook -- it's my blog. Which means I need to give myself permission to record things out of order, skip the boring stuff, and disregard anything I don't personally feel like writing about. 

In this vein, if there's an experiment/project I mentioned previously that I never returned to, don't hesitate to fling a question mark at me. I think addressing the projects people are most interested in is a much more efficient use of time then pouring out every detail of every experiment I run. Regardless, I hope you find something here that inspires you, entertains you, or enlightens you in some way. Questions are always welcome, comments are appreciated, but you should never feel obligated to post either. Feel free to just kick back, grab a coffee, and meander through the pages and pics of my wonky veg life.

There, now I feel better.

So FULL SPEED AHEAD! Everything is an experiment in my garden, so it's about time I update you on some of the projects I've got going. Two of them you've never heard of, and one you may have: Congo Watermelon, Cucumber Crosses, and the infamous Purple Peacock Pole Bean.

Onward!

CONGO WATERMELON

Here's the fast forward version. I grew two types of watermelon this season: Sugar Baby Bush and Congo. Or, I should say, I tried to grow. The plan was to cross them. Because when in doubt, that's always my plan. Long story short, all the watermelon plants were like, nah bra, and died before any fruits reached maturity. They were planted in different places, different times, and not a single one of them had a happy life. I have never had such abject and utter failure of a single crop in my entire gardening life. Very humbling. The causes of death were multiple, varying, but mostly spider mites, a strange brown crisping of the leaves (as of yet unidentified) and abrupt and inexplicable shriveling of the vines, despite much molly coddling and special watering.

The strongest, biggest Congo plant got closest -- and gave me this itty bitty guy:

blossom end rot, to boot

 And, as you can see --

-- he was not even close to ripe. Boo. And of course I'd promised to give a friend a watermelon this season, the only crop promise I made. Naturally.

But everything is an experiment, so I scooped out the seeds of the not-mature melon and fermented them for five or so days in an old pickle jar.

Bread and Butter all the way #FightMeDillLovers

Rinsed, laid them out to dry. Guess where?

Pickle jar lid, ftw. 

So the experiment is: How early can we harvest a watermelon and still get viable seed? (Important note: the mature seeds of Congo watermelon are white, not black or red.) Riveting experiment, I know. But waste not want not.

So after a week of drying, today I'm wrapping ten seeds in a wet paper towel and sealing them in a plastic bag. This may be too early, but that's an experiment in of itself: I've found that same-season germination is an art, not a science. It seems seeds need a certain amount of 'drying down' before they're willing to re-hydrate and sprout. Beans planted when the seeds were still green spent several weeks in the dirt before sprouting; melon seeds put in a bag with a wet papertowel germinated 0-20% after one week of drying, while those who had an additional week of drying had germination rates in the 60-100% range. Similar effect with early harvested corn and squash seeds.

Since I didn't know I'd be doing with experiment when I planted the congo, I didn't record the day the plant set this specific melon (as it wasn't one of the ones I hand pollinated). However the seed for the plant was pre-germinated on  a wet paper towel May 1st, and transplanted into the garden a few days later. The first male flower appeared on June 27th, and the fruit was harvested on August 4th. Which means, given bare minimums of a week later for first female flower and immediate first blossom fruit set, this melon was at most one month old. More likely, it was only two or three weeks along.

Do I expect viable seeds? Not really. But I've been surprised before, mostly with corn and direct seeding still green beans. So now, it's the 'hurry up and wait' game to find out.

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CUCUMBER CROSSING

Meet Olsen:

If you can guess why she's named Olsen, you get full 80's points.

Olsen is the Rogue I was originally going to do a Friday Rogue Round-up on. Except I realized my work/life schedule doesn't really allow for reliable weekly posts (as I've been learning trying to do Harvest Monday) so instead I just wrapped that post into this one and here we are.

A few weeks later and a week before I harvested her for seed.

Olsen is a fluke twin cucumber from a selfed Minute White pickling cucumber. That plant (called Mother White) was the only one to survive the heat we had back in June, and was also very productive considering it's less than ideal living conditions. Olsen is her last fruit, before she finally gave up and the vines died.

But there's more to this story -- I also harvested Mother White's first fruit. And actually... we should probably talk about him first.

I was about to say "Meet Dwight" but after twenty minutes of rummaging around in my photos, it seems like I never actually took a picture of him... bad Day.

Anyway, Dwight was an F1 Miniature White x Dar cucumber cross, the first fruit to set out of the trial planting of 3 Dar and 3 Miniature White seeds. Dwight was harvested about five weeks after setting. His seeds were wet processed, left to dry for a week or so, then 5 of those seeds direct sown on July 2nd.

All Dwight seeds were strong sprouts, but two of the five were particularly vigorous, shooting off at warp speed. Then aphids attacked, in numbers I haven't seen in ages. All plants were stopped in their tracks, completely infested. Despite the infestation, one of the two vigorous plants gave the aphids the finger and produced a fruit regardless of their sugary vampirism. That fruit set on August 14th.

The time from Dwight sowing to first set fruit was 6 weeks, 1 day. In contrast, the time from sowing Mother White (Dwight's mom) to first fruit set (Dwight) was a little over two months.

So here's Dwight's baby, the boy that lived the fruit that set. It is a Dwight x Dwight cross, as those were the only cucumbers flowering at the time. It may be selfed, or crossed with a sibling. I let the bees do their work naturally, since no other varieties were blooming.

Since nicknames help me keep track of breeding projects and their progeny, Dwight's baby has been named Divine, since, while technically bush, her mother was the most vigorous and vinelike of the siblings.

Divine: a few days old.

Divine, today

Miniature white pickling cucumber is a white fruited cucumber with black spines. Dar is a green skinned, star-burst butt cucumber with white spines. Green skin color is dominant to white skin color, and black spines are dominant to white spines. I'm still working on learning all the curcurbit genes, but the above holds true in most cases.

As you can see, Dwight expresses the dominant genes from both parents: Green skin and black spines. It has ripened to gold, as Mini White does, but there are seperate genes that govern ripe fruit color that I'm still learning about. So, it can be assumed that this offspring is heterozygous for skin color and spines. So Dwight is the F1 generation, and her fruit Divine is technically the expression of the F1 genes.

Divine's seeds, however, are F2. Much in the way that the baby inside the mother's stomach is a mix of the mother and father's DNA, but the mother's uterus and bulging belly are still entirely her. So planting Divine's seeds is when the real fun comes out. The heterozygous genes will segregate, and the fruits will range from greenskin/blackspines, greenskin/whitespines, whiteskin/blackspines, and whiteskin/whitespines.


Ok, now, back to Olsen:

Olsen, if you'll remember, is Dwight's stepsister(s?). They both have the same mother (Mother White) but while Dwight's father was a Dar cucumber, Olsen's father was also her mother. If that makes no sense to you, no worries. Cucumbers are monoecious, meaning each indivual plant produces some flowers that are males, and some flowers that are females. Bees can transfer pollen from one flower to another on the same plant, resulting in a fruit that technically has the same mother and father. In shorter language, this fruit is considered 'selfed.'

Olsen is selfed, as there was only one cucumber plant flowering (Mother White) at the time. All the rest had died, including Dwight's father. So the pollen could not have come from anywhere else, baring an extremely rare pollination from a neighbor's garden (rare because my closest neighbors are only engaged in growing lawns, weeds, and old car parts, respectively.)

Olsen was the last fruit to set on Mother White, while Dwight was the first. Whether this will ultimately result in 'earlier' or 'later' fruit set in their own offspring is the subject of another ongoing experiment.

Also, Olsen is visibly different: she's a 'twin' of sorts. I'm still researching the genetics behind this. Interestingly, Olsen wasn't the only twin Mother White produced. During her growing season, Olsen and Dwight's mother produced several little twin cucumbers, but none of them matured. Most were buried under the leaves and not visited by bees, and others were aborted as Mother White put her energy into ripening Dwight instead. So Olsen is not only special because she's a funny little twin, but her mother seemed predisposed to producing twins. Does this make her chance of producing twins higher? Another experiment.

The result may be that Olsen produces only twins, some twins, no twins, or doesn't even survive to maturity. Which, ultimately, is the Olsen experiment.

Olsen cross section - the figure 8 cucumber slices are kinda nifty

The hardest part of the Olsen harvest was deciding whether or not to save the seeds from each side of the cucumber separately. I chose not to, but I'm sort of regretting that. If Olsen's seeds end up producing any twins, I do intend to do that in the future though. Seeing as they both came from the same flower, they should in theory be identical twins. But with still more research to do on the subject of curcurbit genetics, I cannot yet say that are conclusively.  As a rule, I try to err on the side of saving more, as opposed to less. It's easy to throw seeds in the trash, but not at all easy to grow the genetics again.

So, to sum up:

MOTHER WHITE x DAR = DWIGHT (first fruit)
MOTHER WHITE x MOTHER WHITE = OLSEN (twin, last fruit)

DWIGHT x DWIGHT = DIVINE (first fruit, still growing)
OLSEN (just seeded) x ? = tbd

In all honesty, there's more to the project. I'm actually growing another variety, and hoping to do crosses with that as well, to improve heat tolerance and increase fruit size. But we'll save that for another post.

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PURPLE PEACOCK POLE BEAN (magpie rogue)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: this project has a special place in my heart. Since I don't like retyping stuff, my first post on this particular rogue is HERE. Clicking it should open in a new window, for those of you (like me) who hate navigating away from the page.

For those too lazy, here's a poor but swift summary: The Purple Peacock Pole bean was supposed to be a Magpie bush bean, but it started growing tendrils and put on purple flowers instead of white. The location where it was planted turned out to be full sun death by June, so I had to erect a strange palm umbrella (that looked like a peacock tail) to shade it from the worst of two, week-long 115° heat waves in June. It somehow managed to survive, put on some beans, and today, finally...

....I gets a dry one :3

 
yeah yeah yeah, it's one dinky bean. But there are about a dozen bean bulges in a handful of other still drying pods. I couldn't wait for the rest. I had to know, today. 

(To see what Magpie beans are supposed to look like, click the link above to my other post.) 

So here we have it, the first bean from the Magpie x Unknown F1 rouge, aka, Purple Peacock Pole bean. Please excuse the photo quality, my camera is my phone and it hates close focus.

 

 

Color: It was hard to get the purple/blue to show, as in regular lighting the seed looks almost completely black. But once I put it under a lamp, the color and pattern really emerged. Since the original beans came to me as accidental F1s, I have no idea what the father bean might be, as the cross would have occurred at the field of whoever Baker Creek hired for the grow-out.

Shape: Magpie beans are originally long and filet types, but this one definitely is not. It's flattened, not very plump, and the edges are smoothly rounded.

Size: I completely forgot to take a size comparison shot before leaving for work (where I'm typing this, shh) but if I had to give a qualitative size estimate, I'd say imagine a regular store bought kidney bean, then cut it in half. The photos make the bean appear larger than it is. I would say it is bigger than a typical magpie bean, yes, but not as long. It probably weighs slightly more, but not substantially so.

Once I've harvested a few more of the beans, I'll scavenge some garden space to plant the F2. We've currently been hit by another 100+° degree week, and temps haven't dropped below 105° during the day and high seventies at night for the past three days. Not fantastic bean weather. So while I'm dancing to get the F2 in the ground, I'm also keenly aware that I will only have about twelve beans to play with. So I'll probably wait until mid September before getting them in the ground. That should hopefully help avoid the next few weeks of scorcher temps, while still getting the F2 harvested before the temps swing too much the other direction.

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That's all I have time for today, but if you've got any ideas on who may have fathered the Peacock bean, let me know! I'd be curious to hear everyone's thoughts. With our bean powers combined, perhaps we can riddle it out.

Happy Planting!

Friday Rogue Round-up: Wonky Corn

It was originally called "Friday Rogue Roll Call," but then I said it aloud and it sounded like I'd choked on a golf ball. So we'll stick to Round-up, despite the word's somewhat chemical and weedy connotations.

So welcome! This is the first Friday Rogue Round-up: my new tradition where I highlight one (or a few) of the weirdos that've popped up in my garden recently. It's also where I try not to type rouge every time by mistake.

This week, I'd like to introduce you to a very interesting chorus line. Or should I say... corn-us line? 

(no, no I shouldn't.)

IN THE BEGINNING -- there was mom.

Hi mom.

Mom was a very, um... interesting ear of corn. So unusual, in fact, she earned herself the name "Jaberwocky." She came from the first batch of Painted Mountain I planted April 24th. This ear was harvested around July 17th. She was a tiller ear, not a main ear, and silked after most plants had already tasseled (hence the very poor pollination).

Painted Mountain corn is a notoriously early corn; for me it silks approximately 40 days after sowing.
When I harvested this ear, the stalks had not yet dried down. I had only sown a small bed, and any weak/slow to mature plants were culled. I ended up with fourteen ears.

SIDE NOTE: Corn seed has very early viability as long as care is taken to dry the kernels well after harvest. No attempt to remove kernels from the cob should be made until fully dry though, to avoid damaging them. Viable corn seed can be obtained from ears as little as 20 days after silking. Commercial sweet corn seed is harvested around this time.  

While seed savers are usually encouraged to fully dry down the corn until the husks are brown to obtain the best most viable seed, I decided to test this -- I've now planted 50 seeds of my second generation. Some ears were relatively dry when harvested, others were still in the milk stage and the kernels easily punctured.

I dried the ears in mesh bags in front of a fan for about a week. Then I shelled several  of the driest kernels (mostly from the tip or end) from each ear and planted them. Many of the kernels were tiny, misshapen or shriveled. However, I've thus far sown 50 of these seeds and achieved a 96% germination rate (48/50 sprouts). There was, however, a wide sprouting period - the earliest seeds came up in four days, while others took around two weeks. END SIDE NOTE   

For the 2nd generation (not to be confused with the F1, as this was a Painted X Painted cross, not a hybrid breeding) I used 30 gallon tubs and planted 4 kernels from each mother ear, each in their own row, with several rows per tub. They will undeniably be overcrowded, but the goal here is to get an idea of the  characteristics of each mother ear's offspring, not necessarily to produce the most ample harvest.

Which, after all my above yammering, brings us to --

THE CORN-US LINE:

(I can't stop)

Jabberwocky Baby 1:

"Hi, I'm Baby 1. We're actually all the same age, but since I'm the biggest that makes me number 1."

Jabberwocky Baby 2:

"I'm Baby 2, and Baby 1 is full of shit. She's only Baby 1 because godzilla planted us left to right, so since she's leftmost that makes her 1-most. And I just... wait, where's my middle poker..."

Jabberwocky Baby 3:

"I'm Baby 3 and I thoroughly resent this numerical system. Also, I was buried too deep. And my dirt feels, I dunno... crusty.
AND this a terrible photograph. Look at that angle. What am I, a lawn clipping?"

Jabberwocky Baby 4:

*PRIMAL GARGLING NOISES*

Clearly, genetics are having some fun here.

After conferring with Greyweiner the cat and the Mantis army, we've named her Cthulhu. And while her sisters, thus far, seem to be obeying the laws of physics and normality, I'm suspecting that all four not only share the same mother (Jabberwocky) but also have the same father (whoever). 

Since it was a late setting tiller ear, and the pollination was so poor, I'll venture a guess that only one plant was still capable of puffing out a last little bit of man dust. And while the pericarp (outer layer) of the kernel is always maternal, there is a striking degree of similarity between the planted kernels, as well as the few still remaining on the ear.

But Jaberwocky wasn't the only strange ear in the first gathering of fourteen. That said, she was definitely the wonkiest, and is the only one so far to spawn a child of equal or greater wonkery. 

So, what does the future hold for Cthulhu?

Will she make it to adulthood unscathed? 

Will she produce little wonksters of her own?

*dramatic TV music*

TO BE CONTINUED.

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That's it for this week's Rogue Round-up! I hope you've enjoyed meeting one of our newest unstable celebrities. And if you've encountered (or posted about) any of your own rogues recently, do share!

Rogue! In the Garden!

...thought you out to know.

Magical movie quotes aside, this has definitely been a good year for rogues. While many will end up with their own space on the "Current Projects" page, until now they've existed only in my garden and as pictures on my phone.

So today I'll highlight one of them, which has become something of a personal favorite:

MAGPIE BEAN

(aka: Purple Peacock Pole Bean Rogue)

This dude appeared in my first trial sowing of eight Magpie beans in late April. The trial wasn't to test out the variety, but rather to see if this particular location in the garden would be suitable for summer bean growing.
  

It wasn't.

Palm-in-Bucket contraption attempting to keep the Rogue from cooking

Once our first 110°+ heat wave hit, the beans were toast. The trial bed turned into an oven. None of the varieties (Meraviglia Di Venezia, Calima, Red Swan, Magpie, and Purple Teepee) were happy, with most dropping blossoms and ceasing their growth. About half of the plants died outright.

The eight Magpie (small bush bean with white flowers) exhibited a wide degree of diversity, more so than any of the other varieties. Some plants were very tall bush, some short bush, some covered in jungle-thick foliage (and producing no beans) while others put out scarcely a leaf.  However, the few dry beans I was able to collect looked true to type.  So despite their differences, seven of those eights plants I would qualify as Magpie.

This guy, however:

Not exactly bush.

Almost immediately after putting on his first set of leaves, he sent out a long tendril and started grappling for a hold on anything nearby. When all his bush buddies started setting blossoms, he showed no interest, instead sending out more vines and attempting to conquer as much of the Monopoly board as possible.

I figured he was just a "pole rogue" of the common Magpie. Cool, sure. But I often find bush and pole rogues on varieties claimed to be stable. However, the day before our second 110°+ heatwave hit, he put out his first flower:

Though the blossom quickly crisped and dropped, the color was worth it.

Now I was paying attention. I quickly pulled the rest of his half-dead trial buddies and erected the stupid looking palm awning to try to keep him alive. I also removed all the bricks from the bed wall to help keep the ambient temperature as low as possible during the hottest hours.

Then I bit my nails, and waited.

For the rest of June and most of July, he pumped out blossoms - and they all fried. Or they were aborted just as the tip of the baby bean emerged. The ground was a graveyard of crispy purple petals. But he kept on keeping on - putting out more vines, more leaves. More suicidal blossoms.

And finally, when we had a week of temperatures never cresting 100°, he did the thing.

Though we're still a long way from viable seed, and even that isn't guaranteed, I'm letting cautious optimism reign. Magpie was actually one of varieties that inspired me to begin this garden in the first place. I'd always found beans fascinating, and something about the look of those dried, B&W filet beans really appealed to me.

Apart from any practical purpose, I liked their aesthetic. Which is to say... i thought they were purdy. Which is also to say (since it's me we're talking about) I immediately began to wonder what I could cross them with.

It seems happy coincidence did the work for me. Because although I keep referring to Mr. Peacock as a "Rogue," odds are he's probably accidental F1 cross.

After Mr. Peacock's discovery, I poured out my remaining Magpie beans and examined them. The differences between beans were astounding. In my haste to get the first trial bed planted, I hadn't even noticed. Alas, I did not take a picture.

Some beans were exactly on point, just like the photo above. Others were filet shaped, but all black. Others were correctly marked, but shaped almost like cutshort beans. Others were plumper and had a slightly purple gleam. Still others were tiny, jet black Tic-Tacs.
 
Curiosity not satiated, I picked thirteen of the most differing ones and planted them in a new (slightly shadier) trial bed. Germination was good, but several were devoured by mysterious somethings. I re-seeded the gaps with more off type seeds.

So far, everyone looks pretty normal. 

Except this guy.

Off-color stem.

Meet Peacock Jr.

The picture is terrible, I know, but our morning sun is truly a force to be reckoned with when it comes to photoshoots. What's important to note is the stem. Difficult to see, since it's about the same color as the soil. But to give you some comparison, here's Peacock Jr's neighbor.

Green stem

And here's a photo taken a few days ago, with the two side-by-side:

Curious even before they sprouted, I did a little light digging. Even as infants, I noticed that Peacock Jr.'s coloration was different than the others. 

Purple flushed stem and cotyledons.

Typical green stem and cotyledons.

Though Peacock Jr. hasn't shown a tendency to vine like Mr. Peacock, I'll definitely be watching him closely in the days and weeks to come. A single mutant in a batch would not be unlikely, but two in twenty-one sharing similar characteristics makes me think that there was likely some crossing between Magpie and the neighboring variety. Score.

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That's it for today, though I'll be sure to post more Rogue Spotlights soon. Happy Friday!