Showing posts with label Perennial vegetables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Perennial vegetables. Show all posts

Friday 8 March 2024

Asparagus seed germination

I wrote in an earlier post about saving asparagus seed from my purple asparagus plants.  It was a bit of work, but the result was worth the effort.  

I got a decen number of seed, then got my daughter to count out 100 seeds, I soaked them, then planted them, and recorded the results.  

Planting one hundred seeds makes estimating the germination percentage both easy and reasonably reliable.  I don't like estimating percentage of germination with the number of seed any lower than this if possible, and higher numbers are more work to count.  

Asparagus seedlings - all pretty similar at this stage

I dried the seed.  Then prior to planting I soaked seed overnight.  You don't need to soak asparagus seed, but it makes me feel like I am helping so I sometimes soak it.  I have read mixed things about cold wet stratification of asparagus seed, I have never tried that and it appears that it is not needed in fresh seed.


100 asparagus seeds soaked   
Seeds planted        06/02/2024     Day 0
Germinated           18/02/2024     Day 12
Percent germinated: 98% - the remaining two seeds may still germinate later

Two weeks to germinate isn't bad.  Asparagus seed can take a bit longer to germinate if conditions aren't right, they can also germinate a little faster if they are on a heat mat.  

I grew seeds from a purple asparagus that was open pollinated.  The seedlings all look similar, which indicates there may not be too much genetic variation, and hopefully it has not crossed with a green variety.  

I didn't pay too much attention to the colour of the first spears, and will have to separate these and grow them out to see how many are purple.  Any green ones will have 50% purple genetics, so should still be much sweeter than most green varieties.  Any that have crossed should also display hybrid vigour and be more productive.  It is exciting to see what comes of this lot.  

Asparagus germination test

I wrote earlier that from bought seed I usually get low germination, and I have always thought that was due to the age of the seed.  Given that my fresh seed had such high germination I think this is likely the case.  
Asparagus seedlings divided 


Now I know I can save seed from my purple asparagus.  If many are crossed with green, I can take extra precautions next year to ensure only purple asparagus is able to pollinate my female purple asparagus plants.  

Hopefully this means I will no longer have to buy expensive purple asparagus seed and can grow my own.


Friday 16 February 2024

Giant Broad Leaf Dandelion

I have been breeding dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) for a few years.  Not just deliberately growing them, but intentionally breeding with the aim of improving them.

Given that every part of this remarkable plant is edible and useful, I mostly focused on breeding for larger leaves.  I also grow pink dandelions (Taraxacum pseudoroseum), I have not done any breeding work with pink dandelions and given how difficult it is to work with them I like never will.  

Giant dandelion leaf 47cm long

Breeding dandelions is difficult, I find it far more difficult than other vegetables.  

The 'flower' on a dandelion plant is hundreds of tiny flowers crammed closely together.  Individual dandelion flowers are tiny.  All parts of the flowers are tiny and are very difficult to work with.  Emasculating flowers to prevent self pollination is difficult as they are tiny, and not always effective as they can produce seeds through apomixis without any pollination.  Due to apomixis, when cross pollinating I have no idea if the cross worked, or if the resultant seed will be a clone of the mother plant.  Adding selective pressure does not always cause genetic drift, again this is due to apomixis.  

Further complicating dandelion breeding is the fact that most dandelions are triploid, and most dandelions in Australia are usually sterile triploids that reproduce by obligate apomixis.  

Unfortunately, while I understand the theory of this, I don't have a good understanding of what this means in practice.  There has been some research into dandelion ploidy and breeding, which I found interesting.  This research indicates that while it should be theoretically impossible to breed using triploid dandelions, it is experimentally possible.  

While there was a concerted effort to breed dandelions, there is very little literature on how to breed dandelions.  Most of this was written by the Soviets, is poorly translated, and largely deals with Taraxacum koksaghyz and breeding it for rubber yield.  

I believe there were a few dandelion farms in Tasmania and Western Australia.  Like much of this country's past, this seems to have been largely forgotten and lost to history.  I wish I could get hold of T koksaghyz, perhaps some day I will track down someone who has seed that they are willing to share with me.  

For these reasons I gave dandelion breeding my best shot, hoped it would work, and figured nothing useful would come of it.  I am happy to say, my breeding efforts yielded impressive results (and at the same time was kind of pointless).

These dandelion leaves grow wide

When starting to breed dandelions I focused mostly on length of leaves as this is simple to measure.  Dandelions produce longer leaves in certain seasons, and under certain growing conditions, so I had to be careful to 'compare apples with apples'. 

Dandelion grow out - leaf comparison

I have a good line in which mature plants consistently produces leaves around 50cm long.  This was a good start.  I considered leaving it there, but my plants weren't as useful as I wanted them to be.  

I had a few plants that produced leaves that were not quite as long, but were wider at certain times of the year.  These are probably more useful as a vegetable.  More leafy and less stalk.  I wondered if I could work with these wider plants, and make them even more useful.  So I (somewhat begrudgingly) did some more breeding work with them.  

Giant dandelion on left, regular dandelion on right

After a lot of fiddly work, most of which yielded exact clones of the parent plant or no seed at all due to rough handling, I started to see some progress.  This encouraged me to do a little more work.  

Again my efforts were largely frustrated by either aborted seed or exact clones of the parent, but among them were some successes.  I am certainly no expert in this area, and my results were patchy at best.  After quite some time my giant edible dandelions are incredible.  

The leaves of my dandelions often measure 6 to 7 inches wide, and are usually a little under 50 cm long.  In winter the leaves are smaller, if they don't have enough water they are smaller, and if shaded they can grow a little larger.  

Dandelion leaf over 6 inches wide

These larger wider leaves are great.  They are far more useable in a salad, or easier to feed to animals.  While I haven't tried it, I assume they could be used to wrap food similar to grape leaves or mulberry leaf. 

I am not keen on how bitter raw dandelion leaves can be, these large broad leaves taste milder and much less bitter.  Dandelion leaves tend to be less bitter before flowering, and become increasingly bitter as the plant flowers.  These giant broad dandelion leaves are pretty mild even when in bloom.  I didn't select for this trait, it was just a nice surprise with the giant plants.  

These plants need more water than lawn weeds if they are to reach their potential.  Regular lawn dandelions don't cope in the dry, these giant broad leaf dandelions really don't cope being very dry.  They tend to survive being dry if they are well established, but the resultant plants are a mere fraction of the size of what they could have been.  

Being so large, these plants need room to grow.  When grown in a pot they are always stunted.  When grown in the garden their roots can penetrate deep in search of nutrients, and they grow far larger.  They survive surprisingly well with competition, but grow a lot larger and faster if you remove their competition.  

I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone that fertile soil is needed for them to grow large.  Poor soils result in much smaller plants.  

Dandelion leaf over 6 inches wide

These massive dandelions also seem to suffer from a leaf disease from time to time.  This disease produces spots on the leaves, it is possibly some form of leaf rust fungus.  I see this appear on regular dandelions from time to time, but it seems to affect the giant ones far more.  

Dandelion leaf spot

I am sure you could spray with something to control this.  I grow everything organically, so I am not sure how to prevent this disease, all I know is if I leave the infected leaf alone the disease will spread to other leaves.  When I see this disease I remove infected leaves and feed them to the guinea pigs or chickens, this seems to stop it spreading.  

I don't put the infected leaf in the compost for fear it will produce spores and spread, feeding it to an animal seems to destroy the pathogen.  The plant grows replacement leaves and is healthy once the spotty leaf has been removed.  This indicates that the disease is not systemic.  

Dandelion leaves over a foot and a half long

Growing dandelions from seed is simple.  They germinate best when fresh, and germination rates seem to decline quickly as seed ages.  I find light improves germination, so I plant dandelion seed much like lettuce seed.  I plant them in pots or trays of soil, and press seeds into the mix and water in.  From there I treat them the same as I treat lettuce.  

I tend to sow the seeds reasonably thick.  Dandelion seedlings start out small.  I let the seedlings grow a while before transplanting them somewhere in the garden.  Once transplanted, they need a lot of water to become established, other than that I treat them like any vegetable.  

Dandelion seedlings
Dandelion seedlings larger and ready for transplanting

After several years and an absurd amount of effort, I now have good lines of giant dandelions.  They are so large that when people see an individual leaf they often ask me what they are, and do not believe me when I explain they are dandelions.  

I do sell seed of these giant dandelions, as well as pink dandelions, through my for sale page.  The flowers were open pollinated, but there is a good chance they will produce plants that are clones of the mother.  If they were somehow pollinated by another plant, they will have 50% genes from the mother plant and should still grow huge.  If you are interested, everything I have for sale will be listed on my for sale page.  


Tuesday 19 December 2023

Grow water chestnuts in milk bottles

I have written a few blog posts on growing Chinese water chestnuts in buckets and flexitubs, it's easy and they are very productive when grown like that.  As well as this I also grow a few aquatic vegetables in milk bottles.  

Growing water chestnuts in a milk bottle is not ideal.  When grown like this the yield is low or even non-existent, but it keeps the plants alive.  They can survive by growing in a milk bottle like this for years.  

I cut the base off a plastic milk bottle, fill it three quarters with soil, plant a corm, and add water to the top.  From here, I just top up the water.  Simple.    

Chinese water chestnuts 

I first did this as a short term thing so I could sell duck potatoes or water chestnuts at a garage sale.  I told people to plant them into something larger if they wanted an edible size crop.  Someone asked me how long the plants can survive like this because their pond was not yet ready.  I didn't know, I told them to give it a try and if they died I would replace them.  I never heard back so assumed it went well.  

Out of curiosity I kept growing some Chinese Water chestnuts in milk bottles to see how long they can last like this.  I assumed they would last a few months with no problem.  It turns out they will live like this for several years!  

Below are duck potatoes and watercress growing in a milk bottle.  This is their third year.  The water cress drops seed and grows by itself.  The duck potatoes go dormant each winter.  They multiply, but only slowly due to the lack of space.  

Duck potatoes growing in a milk bottle

Below is another milk bottle, this has water chestnuts, duck potatoes, and watercress.  This one has azolla and duck weed growing on the surface of the water.  The azolla and duckweed die back over winter, and come in strong once the weather warms.  

This photo was taken at the start of spring when everything was just breaking dormancy.  Once the weather warms the duckweed and azolla will cover the water surface, and becomes a self mulching living fertiliser.   They also seem to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in the milk bottle.

Duck potato, water chestnuts, and water cress

What you can't see from my photos is the amount of life in the water.  It is incredible just how many tiny organisms are in there.  There are heaps of tiny things swimming around that can be seen even without a microscope.  

Putting a drop of this water on a slide and viewing under a microscope is something else.  My kids are fascinated by the sheer number of things teeming in the water.  It isn't the number of things that surprises me, it is their diversity.  There are a lot of things living in there, and there are plenty of different types of things.  It is a remarkably diverse little ecosystem.  

I can't tell you how these tiny critters got in there, but I can tell you that they are thriving.

Azolla and duck weed starting to come back

I also tried putting a small pot of soil in the cut off bottom of a milk bottle.  Below you can see a water chestnut emerging from dormancy.  Once it gets taller I will fill up the milk bottle with water.  If I want I can either plant it into a larger pot, or just leave it for another year.  

Again, if grown like this the yield will be very small.  They need more soil to grow properly.  They can and do survive like this for several years, so this can be a good way to keep them short term while you get something larger ready for them.  If life gets in the way, short term can push out to a few years.  

Water chestnut in small pot of soil

It can be difficult to buy Chinese water chestnuts or duck potatoes at certain times of year.  Many people want to buy them to put in a pond or a water feature, but need more time to plan and build the water feature.  Buying the plants when they are available, and growing them in the base of a milk bottle like this, solves the problem.  They easily survive like this as long as needed, and can be planted into the water feature when it is ready.  If it isn't ready until next year, that's fine.

I have a for sale page on this blog where I sell water chestnuts and duck potatoes and other perennial vegetables in Australia.  I update the page regularly, and it has my email address that you can use to contact me.  


Thursday 30 November 2023

Flexi tub pond for vegetables

For over ten years I have been growing water chestnuts in a bucket.  It is simple, it is cheap, and it works well enough.  For the past seven or so years I also grew some duck potatoes and Chinese water chestnuts in a large flexitub with some soil in it.  

From this I got much the same result as I get from growing them in a bucket, but a yield of larger corms.  Strangely, I seemed to get a similar number of corms, but the flexi tub seemed to grow a lot more larger ones that were of edible size.  

Unlimited water, unlimited air, no weeds, aquatic veggies grow fast

As with the buckets, these tubs eventually degrade and fall apart from the sun.  Below are photos of a flexitub that I have been using as a pond, it has been there about seven years.  

The photos below were taken at the beginning of spring when the duck potatoes were starting to break dormancy.  You can see in the photo above that the duck potatoes get a lot taller than this and largely shade the water.  

Duck potatoes in flexitub

Being in a larger pond meant there was more room for soil, and the temperature doesn't fluctuate as much as the buckets.  I allowed azolla and duckweed to grow in there, eventually they cover the surface of the water and start to mulch down.  

Small birds come to drink from my flexitub, and dragonflies and water beetles seem to breed in there.  Over summer when the surface is covered in azolla, honey bees come and drink from my pond. 

The birds seem to prefer the larger tubs to the buckets, I like being able to provide some water for them over summer.  
Leaf litter breaks down to fertilise the plants

You may also notice that these larger tubs catch a fair bit of leaf litter and lots of flower petals, all of this breaks down to fertilise the plants. As the plants get taller they almost act as a net, catching leaves from the air, and depositing them in my tiny pond.  

The photos below were taken towards the end of spring.  You will notice a lot of growth happened over this time.  These plants have the best of all worlds.  They have unlimited access to fresh water, unlimited access to air, plenty of direct sunlight, lots of nutrients in the mud, never any weeds, and a healthy little ecosystem which captures and cycles nutrients.  

It doesn't take them long to grow large

Over winter I will add leaf litter from when I clear out the house gutters, and this combined with whatever else that lands in the water provides all the fertiliser needed for the growing season.

When it is windy the leaves capture anything that is blowing around and directs it into the tub.  This breaks down and feeds the plants.  Various insects such as dragon flies and water beetles breed in the water.  These insects eventually die in the water, and their little bodies eventually break down and feed the plants.  

Some insects that breed in there would fly away, taking nutrients with them, but this little tub seems to accumulate nutrients overall.  

Sadly these flexi tubs don't last forever.  You can see the one above is starting to degrade, it may only have another year or two left in it.  

I have had it in full sun, getting hit by wind, hail, heavy frost, and storms for over seven years.  While I would prefer it lasted a lot longer, seven or so years isn't too bad. 

These flexi tubs are great little ponds for emergent aquatic vegetables such as Chinese water chestnuts, duck potatoes, water celery, brahmi, and water cress.  If you were growing something like Lotus or Water Lillies they may do ok, but may benefit from a larger tub.  

Chinese water chestnuts 

Duck potatoes 

I have a for sale page where I sell water chestnuts and duck potatoes and other perennial vegetables in Australia.  I update the page regularly, and it has my email address that you can use to contact me.   

Friday 24 November 2023

Water Celery Variegated vs Green

I have been growing water celery (Oenanthe javanica) for a long time.  I have had it since at least  2015, I possibly even grew it for a year or two prior to that. 

I grow the colourful and attractive variegated flamingo or rainbow form.  It has a bunch of common names including: water parsley, Java waterdropwort, Japanese parsley, Chinese celery, rainbow water parsley.  This is a very vigorous, and very simple to grow perennial vegetable.  

Interestingly, the native range of this perennial vegetable is a whole bunch of countries, including Australia.  

Variegated water celery for sale Australia
Variegated water celery

Water celery has amazingly strong growth, while it seems to prefer having its roots submerged and its leaves out of the water it can grow in deeper water as long as its leaves can reach the surface, or it can grow on 'dry land' like a regular vegetable.  

It handles hard frosts well, and tolerates extremely high temperatures if it has water.  Full sun and part shade both seem to work well for this plant.  

When water celery is grown in floating raft aquaponics it can be used to effectively filter the water.  I trialed it with my goldfish barrelponics and it worked well.  It can be used to filter grey water, it is good at removing pollutants due to its fast growth rate.  

Above all this, water celery is edible.  It tastes like mild celery, and loses much of the taste when cooked for too long so is best added towards the end of cooking.  

I am not a huge fan of celery, so tend not to eat much of it myself.  Chickens and guinea pigs and other animals enjoy eating water celery raw.  The times of year that we don't have much grass I feed handfulls of water celery to our animals.  While water celery is great in the compost, I prefer to feed it to the chickens as I think that is a better use.

For years I have grown the rather pretty variegated form, and it is a very vigorous plant.  I have heard when planted next to a pond it tends to take over somewhat.  

I am told that the pure green form is far more vigorous.  I originally wanted the green variety, but couldn't find it.  A few places sell this green one online, but I can't justify the price when I already grow the variegated one.  I had hoped mine would throw a non-variegated runner, but that hasn't happened yet.    

Vigorous plant outgrowing its pot
Variegated water celery growing out of its pot

My plants sometimes flower.  They start to set seed, then each year something happens and I don't get around to collecting any seed to grow.  Sometimes it gets too dry and the flowers are scorched, or something eats off the flower heads, or I just forget about it and have no idea what happened to the seed.

The last time my plants flowered, I forgot about them and they were largely covered by fallen leaves.  Recently I was clearing up that part of the garden and noticed a plant.  It looks like a tiny water celery seedling.  It appears to be entirely green.  I was lucky that I even saw this little one.  

This little plant is most likely seed grown.  

Dark green water celery

I carefully dug up this little plant, put it in a small pot, and moved it somewhere safe.  Since then it has grown very quickly and started to divide.  Hopefully it is even more vigorous than its variegated parent.  

The parent has pink stems, with light green leaves edged in white and pink or purple.  The colouration becomes more vivid in cooler weather.  It really is rather pretty.  

This little plant is darker green, with dark green stems and dark green leaves.  Presumably this darker green is from increased chlorophyll.  Extra chlorophyll means it should have a massive advantage when it comes to growth rate, and it should be more vigorous than its variegated parent.  

I can hardly wait to see what it can do.  

Non-variegated water celery

From here I hope this plant grows well, and in time I hope to divide it.  Given how much it has grown in a week I don't think this will take very long.  I haven't tasted this plant yet, hopefully it tastes a little stronger than the variegated one.  

I will try to post an update on this plant in a few months once it has had some time to do some growing and I have had a chance to eat a little of it.  

Green water celery

When I have divided this plant enough I would like to try some as the filter for my goldfish barrelponics as I think it may perform well there.  Vietnamese coriander grows exceptionally well in my barrelponics over the warmer months, but stops growing over winter.  

I have a feeling the green water celery may grow well over the cooler months, and a combination of Vietnamese coriander and green water celery should be an excellent water filter.  

Green Water Celery

Green water celery has grown and divided

I currently sell bare rooted plants of the variegated rainbow water celery, I have some perennial vegetables for sale and other interesting plants on my for sale page.  At some stage in the future I may also have some of the green version for sale.  I post perennial vegetable throughout Australia, but not to WA or Tasmania at this stage.  


Friday 10 November 2023

Pink Dandelion

Pink dandelions (Taraxacum pseudoroseum) are probably a little different than you may think.  Pink dandelions are available in Australia, I have been growing them for a few years.  They are a pretty little flower that should be grown more commonly.  

I wrote an earlier post on pink dandelions and after growing them for a few years thought it may be time to do an update.  All of the photos on this post are of my plants, you will notice that there is a bit of diversity in colours, this is mostly due to the age of the flower.  

Pink Dandelion
I like regular dandelions (Taraxacum officionale), you know the ones in the lawn with yellow flowers.  They have a huge number of uses in an organic garden.  Pink dandelions are a different species Taraxacum pseudoroseum, they are just as useful and perhaps a little prettier.  

All parts of dandelions, both regular ones and the pink ones, are edible.  The leaves are incredibly high in vitamins and minerals, far more nutritious than most leaf vegetables.  Leaves are especially high in vitamin C.  The roots can be roasted and eaten like a parsnip, or they can be dried and ground to use like a caffein free coffee.  Even though I have never tried this myself, the flowers can be made into cordials or wine.  

Dandelions are great in the compost, they are often referred to as a 'compost activator'.  What this means is they contain high amounts of all the nutrients needed for the microbes in compost.  If you compost something that is low in a certain mineral, adding a compost activator is adding something that is high in that mineral.  Dandelions are high in pretty much everything, so they make a good compost activator.  

Starts white and gets pinker each day

Pink dandelions look superficially much like lawn dandelions, but perhaps a little smaller and the leaves never get very upright.  When not in bloom I would not be able to tell them apart.

When the flowers first open they are either all white, or white with a yellow center.  The white slowly becomes light pink the first day, and then gets darker pink each day.  

The photo below shows some pink dandelions blooming.  The white one opened that day, and the pinker one opened the day before.  It is fun how they change colour and become more pink as they age.  

Pink Dandelions blooming

The flowers almost always retain the yellow centre.  That being said, I have had a few that opened completely white and turned completely pink.  This is rare, and I believe has more to do with environment than genetics as other flowers on the same plant had the usual yellow center.  

Pink Dandelion Blooms

Beneficial insects are attracted to the flowers.  Larger pollinators such as bees, beetles, and hover flies love dandelion flowers.  If you are a beekeeper you would already know just how beneficial dandelions are to a honey bee hive.  Native bees and solitary wasps also benefit greatly from dandelion flowers.  They seem to flower for much of the year, which means pollinators almost always have a food supply.

The pink dandelion flowers also attract and feed many other beneficial insects such as the tiny parasitoid wasp in the picture below.  

These tiny parasitoid wasps kill pest insects that would damage other plants in my garden.  I grow everything organically, so this is important in my garden.  

Tiny beneficial wasp

I don't have any photos of this, but even though dandelion are not native several native birds like dandelion seed heads.  

Some of the smaller birds eat a lot of dandelion seeds.  Superb fairy wrens mostly eat insects (and are more than welcome in my garden), but I have also watched them eat dandelion seed.  We have a few tiny birds that migrate through each year, such as double bar finches and zebra finches, which I have seen eat dandelion seeds.  

Much more interesting than this is some larger birds eat dandelion seeds.  I have seen crimson rosellas eat dandelion seeds many times.  There are a few grass parrots that I have watched eating the seeds.  I have seen galahs and even a cockatoo eat dandelion seeds.

More pink dandelions
Pink dandelions are great

Pink dandelions are easy to grow, but they need a little water.  The pink dandelion are not as hardy as regular lawn dandelions.  I have missed collecting their seed many times, and am yet to find one of these in my lawn.  They grow equally well in a small pot or in the garden bed.  They seem to do well in full sun but appreciate afternoon shade in summer.  

Pink dandelions are simple to grow from seed if the seed is fresh.  I should write another post on growing pink dandelion from seed, even though it is simple the seeds need light to germinate.  I had a plant in a pot that flowered and set seed that I collected.  This original plant died one summer when I did not water its pot and it dried out completely.  All of the plants I now have are seed grown from that original one.  

I do sell pink dandelions from time to time, I should start selling their seed as they are simple to grow from seed.  If you are interested they are listed along with various perennial vegetables for sale.


Friday 3 November 2023

Grow water chestnuts and other aquatic vegetables

Chinese water chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis) are a perennial vegetable that are incredibly simple to grow.  I wrote a post about growing water chestnuts in a bucket.  It is simple and the yield was exceptional.  Each bucket often gives me a dozen or so edible size corms, and well over a hundred smaller ones to replant.  You could eat the small ones, but I find them too fiddly to peel.  

I grow duck potatoes (Sagittaria sp) in the same way.  They are just as simple to grow, and while the yield was nowhere near as large as water chestnuts the duck potatoes also give a great yield for a small amount of space.  

I am told duck potatoes are better suited to cooler climates than water chestnuts, but I find they both perform much the same even in the Canberra region.  Chinese water chestnuts are dormant over winter, so are not impacted by frosts.  I tend to leave some in the soil and as long as it doesn't freeze solid some always survive to grow the following season.  Below are photos of plants in my greenhouse where they are protected from frosts, until this year I have only grown them outside next to the fence where the water is covered in ice regularly over winter.

To grow them I would fill a bucket a bit over 3/4 full with soil and leaf litter.  Plant a water chestnut into this.  Then add water until it over-flowed.  I would put this in the sun, top up the water as needed, and harvest in autumn after the foliage died off.  Gardening really doesn't get much easier than this.  

The buckets would last about 4 years before they would start to fall apart.  Some lasted a lot longer, I still have some that have not yet fallen apart.  

Recently I started to wonder why some buckets degraded at 4 years, and others are still going after ten years.  I think the bucket degrades slightly from the sunlight and becomes brittle, but is able to stay together because there is no stress placed on the sides.  When I harvest I think I must put too much pressure on the bucket and it falls apart.  The ones that have not fallen apart are the ones I have been very careful of when harvesting.  

These buckets are very cheap (less than $1 each), so this isn't about money, I don't want to be wasting plastic if I can help it.  

This year I am trying something a bit different.  I am submerging a pot of soil in the bucket of water.  Come harvest time I can lift the pot out, harvest what I want, and return the pot, all without stressing the bucket.  I think it should work, and it should make harvest easier for me.  

Below are photos of what I am trying.  

I got a cheap 10 liter bucket, and a slightly smaller pot.  The bucket is the cheapest I can find, the pot was given to me second hand.  I already have water chestnut corms, and I use soil that I dug out of the drain in front of my garage, so it is not a huge financial expense.  

10 L bucket and the pot

I filled the pot with soil and leaf litter from a drain in front of my garage.  I didn't fill the pot the whole way, simply because I didn't have enough soil.  It would probably be better if it was filled higher.  These plants need soil if they are to return a decent crop.  

Had I thought about this earlier I would have done this a few months ago and added manure from the chicken house.  Poultry manure is great for the garden as it contains all essential nutrients for plants growth, but it can't be used fresh.  If I tried this now it would burn my plants as it would not have time to 'age' enough.  

Fill the pot with soil
I put some water in the bucket, and submerged the pot.  From here I will plant a water chestnut, or a duck potato, and top up the water.  

In autumn or early winter I will lift the pot out of the bucket, and tip out the soil for harvest.  This sounds much faster and easier than harvesting by digging through frigid water and mud in search of corms with my cold hands. 

Pot of soil submerged in bucket

In this bucket I planted one water chestnut in the soil.  The water level was slightly too high, so I lowered the water level so a leaf could emerge into the air.  

Chinese water chestnuts and duck potatoes both need their leaves in the air, otherwise they may rot.  For now the plant is still tiny and using its leaf as a little snorkel.  Once the plant grows taller I will increase the water level to the top of the bucket.  
  
Water chestnut planted

I tend to grow azolla on top of the water in buckets like this.  Azolla sequesters nitrogen from the atmosphere, and acts as a high nitrogen fertiliser when it dies.  I normally let the water level drop to the soil level every week so ants can carry off all the mosquito larvae.  Placing a pot in a bucket like this will make that impossible as there will always be free water in the bucket.  Azolla is also proven to reduce the number of mosquito larvae surviving to adulthood, so hopefully it helps.  

Water chestnuts ready to grow 

I put a few pots in buckets.  The plants will survive, and divide, and provide an edible crop, so even if this method proves inefficient I won't have lost anything.  

I have high hopes for growing them in a pot submerged in a bucket this, but I am also starting to wonder if I will have mosquito issues doing things this way... perhaps I should put fish in one bucket and no fish in another and see if what works better.  

Keep an eye on my blog as I plan to update how having a pot in a bucket works (or doesn't work) for growing water chestnuts and duck potatoes.  

If you want to grow water chestnuts in a bucket, it is far easier than you may think.  The most difficult part is being able to buy the plants.  I have a for sale page where I sell water chestnuts and duck potatoes and other perennial vegetables in Australia.  I update the page regularly, and it has my email address that you can use to contact me.  


Saturday 22 July 2023

Solanum acroscopicum - wild potato relative

I sometimes grow potatoes from true seeds, each seed grown potato is unique and can create a completely new potato variety.  I do a little potato breeding, and have developed some nice varieties that taste better than anything you can buy from the markets and better than any variety you have grown at home.  

Supermarket potatoes, and most heirloom potatoes, are tetraploids.  I grow some tetraploids, which yield high but lack any great flavour (I grow some tetraploids which taste almost as good as a diploid).  

I grow some diploid potatoes, which taste incredible and often have remarkable colouration, but often tend to have lower yields and smaller tubers (some of my lines are yielding higher than some tetraploids).  

As well as these, I also grow a wild potato, Solanum acroscopicum.  I don't think it has a common name.  This potato is very rare, and not many people in Australia grow Solanum acroscopicum.

Solanum acroscopicum flower
Solanum acroscopicum flower 

Solanum acroscopicum produces tubers with white skin and white flesh, mostly round or oblong, and small to medium size.  The skin is smooth and simple to clean (or simple to peel, if you are so inclined).  The taste is good but about as uninteresting as regular potatoes.  

Small yields of unimpressive tasting potatoes that don't have vivid colours makes it sound like it is not worth growing.  Even so, this variety has a few features that make it well worth growing.  It is great in smaller spaces, the plant looks nice, and its certainly worth considering in breeding projects due to its disease resistance.  

Solanum acroscopicum grows large, pretty flowers.  This plant would not look out of place in a flower garden.  I keep forgetting to take photos when it is covered in blooms (or when there are other flowers I can hold next to it for comparison).  Growing food in a flower garden is a good idea.  

Solanum acroscopicum flowers
Solanum acroscopicum flowers

The plant looks like a potato plant, but with pointier leaves.  The leaves mostly point upwards, which helps keep the plant looking compact.  It grows rather short, neat/compact plants that do not tend to sprawl unless they are shaded.  Being such a compact and neat plant also makes it look good in a flower garden even when not in flower.  

It dumps all of the tubers very closely together directly under the plant, and very close to the soil surface.  It is a good idea to hill soil around them as they grow to prevent light getting to the tubers.  You don't have to search for the tubers, they are all together rather neatly.  Unlike most potato varieties where you always miss some when harvesting, it is simple to get every tuber as they are all so close together.  

Solanum acroscopicum tubers
Solanum acroscopicum - tubers get a little larger than this

Being such a compact plant, and dumping the tubers so close together and close to the soil surface, make it better suited to growing in pots than any potato variety I have ever grown.  Even growing in soil in the vegetable patch, there is far less digging as the tubers are all right there, all bunched together.

I am told that this species is much lower in toxic alkaloids than regular potatoes.  I have never eaten them when green, and do not encourage people to do this.  I only include the next sentence for informational purposes.  I have been told that it is so low in solanine that this can be eaten when green, when regular potatoes are highly toxic and would cause severe stomach cramps and intense vomiting.  This is important: if you try eating them green please be careful, please only eat a little at first to see how you go, and if it tastes bitter stop eating.  I don't eat them green, and I don't encourage other people to eat them green, but if you are going to do this please be careful.

Small potato good for growing in pots
Solanum acroscopicum growing in a pot of soil

Solanum acroscopicum has genetic resistance to many potato diseases and tolerates light frost better than many other potato varieties.  From what I have read, this species seems unaffected by things that would destroy regular potatoes.  If you are into potato breeding, this variety would be useful to consider due to its disease resistance.  

I grow everything organically, so am interesting in plants that are resistant to pests and diseases.  This makes it suitable to breeding, or for growing in the flower garden where you may not look after it all that well.  

Wild potato
Wild potato

I have grown these for a few years and have tried to share them with some enthusiasts who I have encouraged to share them further.  Hopefully they don't go locally extinct in Australia.  

I have reached a point where I will sell some seed tubers for growing (not true seed) through my for sale page when they are in season.  I am not sure what the rules are in each state for sending potatoes from NSW for growing, so you may need to look this up if you want any.  If you are in a state that does not allow them, I may be able to send ware potatoes for eating.  Again, not really sure about this so you would need to look up what is allowable in your state.


Saturday 1 July 2023

How tall does asparagus grow

Asparagus grows much larger than you probably think.  Unless you grow asparagus yourself, you probably can't imagine how tall it can get.

I remember years ago reading about asparagus and being surprised to see the stated heights it reaches as being much shorter than what I have seen.  

Many places on the internet, including wikipedia, state it can reach 1.5 m (about 5 feet) tall, other places (such as Better Homes and Gardens) say it reaches 12 inches tall.  Asparagus grows far taller than this.  

I found this rather perplexing.  At the time we had orchards, and in them some asparagus grew that was much taller than any of those.  This asparagus had been there since before we moved in, given its location, presumably seed had been deposited by a bird.  We eventually moved from there and left the asparagus behind.  

Since moving to town I have started growing asparagus again.  I grow a few types of asparagus now.  The most delicious also happens to be the largest and most vigorous variety.  It is an heirloom variety called Precoce d'Argenteuil.  From seed it only takes about 6 months to reach 1 meter tall, and it produces the best tasting spears of any asparagus variety I have eaten.  

After harvesting some spears this year, I left a few spears to feather out so they can feed the crown for the following year.  I could not help but notice how tall this asparagus was.  I wanted to measure it and photograph it, but didn't want to take another frond so I let it grow for the remainder of the season.

Now that winter is upon us my asparagus plants have gone dormant.  This year they have gone dormant nice and early.  I was removing the old growth and decided to measure a frond.  There were a number of fronds on my plants that were around this tall.  

Asparagus frond and tape measure

The one in the photo reached around 282cm, or about 9 feet 2 inches.  That is pretty big for asparagus.  Certainly a lot larger than most places say they will grow.  

I don't look after my asparagus anywhere near as much as I should.  My plants are not pampered, they have competition from other plants, and I have not made any attempt to make them larger.  I certainly haven't done any breeding work with them.  

The strange thing is, I don't think this is the tallest asparagus I have seen.  I am pretty sure some of the ones we had at the orchard were much larger than this.     

Asparagus frond reached over 280cm

Not a great photo

It makes me wonder why so many garden books etc say the height of asparagus is so much shorter than they will actually reach.  As a gardener, these wildly inaccurate estimates can cause problems when planning what to grow where.  

Presumably the person writing about it does not have much experience growing asparagus.  Perhaps (as I suspect is the case with Better Homes and Gardens) the author has never grown asparagus themselves, and has probably never even seen asparagus plants growing.  This kind of thing is very common with gardening books and permaculture books, and the misinformation is often repeated by companies who sell plants (that have been grown by a contractor), and I find it rather frustrating.  When gardening books make up nonsense, or re-spout these inaccuracies, what else have they gotten wrong?

Some of my 6 month old asparagus plants

I only sell plants and seeds that I have grown and propagated myself.  While the information I provide is vastly different than you will find in books, it is based on actual experience.  I can tell you what does or does not work for me in my garden.  

Asparagus plants are dioecious, meaning that some plants are male while other plants are females.  Female asparagus plants tend to produce larger yields than male.  Female asparagus plants also tend to produce fatter, longer, higher quality spears.  Commercial asparagus farms only grow male plants (or super male plants) so they don't have to worry about seeds falling and choking the beds with volunteer seedlings.  Commercial asparagus farms usually grow low quality asparagus varieties, they really can't compare to the delicious asparagus varieties you can grow at home.  

New asparagus fronds already over 6 feet tall

I grow a few different varieties of asparagus.  Some are purple, some are green, all can produce tender white asparagus.  At this stage they are all seed grown, from seed purchased from reputable businesses to ensure the correct variety rather than a mystery cross.  

Late winter each year if I have any extra asparagus crowns I will offer them through my for sale page.  I sell a few different perennial vegetable plants, some berry plants, as well as some heirloom vegetable seeds.