Giant dandelions - the supervegetable

A few years ago I started trying to breed a larger variety of dandelion (Taraxacum officionale).  I can't quite remember why.  It was a lot more difficult that I had imagined, but the results were pretty spectacular.  I wrote an earlier blog post on my giant edible dandelions.  I do a lot of vegetable breeding, and have produced some spectacular new varieties of plants.     

Dandelions are tremendously useful plants.  They are edible and far more nutritious than almost every vegetable I can think of.  All parts are edible and incredibly nutritious.  Livestock and poultry love to eat them, bees and many other beneficial insects adore the flowers.  The roots are deep and bring minerals up from the subsoil.  A nice coffee substitute can be made from the roots, or the roots can be roasted and eaten as an interesting vegetable.  People make coloured dye, syrup, or even wine from the flowers.  The flowers are pretty, and kids (and adults like me) like to blow their seed heads.  

Here are some leaves of my giant dandelions.  While it does change throughout the seasons, leaves over 50cm long are not uncommon.  Even the smaller leaves are very large and easily big enough to be useful in a salad.

Giant edible dandelion

Giant edible dandelion leaf

I find the leaves of regular lawn dandelions to be too small and too bitter to be useful in salads.  Leaves of these giant dandelions are far larger than regular dandelions, the pictures above show them on my hand for scale.  Being massive they seem to be less bitter.  Some people like bitter leaves, but I don't.

I find that bitterness changes in all dandelions.  They become more bitter when they flower.  They are less bitter when given a lot of water when growing fast.  I find new leaves from fast growing plants prior to flowering to be the most tender and least bitter.

Giant dandelion leaves, 30cm ruler

Leaves around 50cm long are not uncommon

I have grown a number of seedlings from my giant edible dandelion plants and they are spectacularly large.   

My giant dandelions seem to need more water than the regular lawn kind, so I figured they would never survive in the lawn as volunteer seedlings.  This summer was wet and cool, and a small number of my giant plants have started to grow in my lawn.  I am happy with this.  I also think next summer they will likely die off.  Time will tell on this one.

Giant edible dandelion leaves

Even the small leaves are large enough for salads

As you can see, leaves of dandelions vary a bit in shape and size on each plant.  I really should grow one giant dandelion in a pot and grow a regular dandelion in a pot as a comparison to show just how impressively massive these larger plants are.

I sell seeds and plants of my giant edible dandelions.  I also grow pink flowered dandelions, which grow to a normal dandelion size but the flowers are fairytale pink, and sometimes sell seeds of those.  If you are interested they are listed on my for sale page with some other perennial vegetables and other seeds and plants.

Drosera capensis Hercules

I was given a small plant of Drosera capensis 'Hercules' by an extremely generous person.  As far as I know there are very few of these in Australia.

At first this plant grew well for me, then it died back somewhat.  It grew larger, then died back again.  It kept doing this and each time it died back to a larger plant and grew larger than the previous time.  

Drosera capensis 'Hercules' foreground, 'typical' and 'alba' in background

Drosera capensis Hercules

I originally had it growing in a pot with Drosera capensis 'True Giant'.  The capensis true giant is an interesting clone, but that is a story for another time.  I should have had them both in their own pots from the start, but I had issues buying peat moss.

I had it growing inside my house next to some typical and alba capensis, so figured the position was not too bad.  It turns out that my capensis Hercules did not like this position, its leaves got stretched out and is started to lose colour.  I don't think it had enough sunlight there.

Capensis Hercules Petioles are about 4mm to 5mm wide

I moved it outside, where it grew a little but was really not happy.  I moved it back inside again and expected a better result.  I tried a few different positions and eventually moved it to my greenhouse, and put it in its own pot, where it has really started to grow.  

I am not sure if it is the location, or having its own pot, or the incredible number of insects it catches, but it is now growing well.  To be honest, I can't imagine having a greenhouse without a few carnivorous plants to control the insects.

Drosera capensis 'Hercules' catching a lot of insects

This year my Hercules sent up a flower scape.  It grew many, many flowers and the scape grew incredibly long.  

The flowers on capensis Hercules are absolutely huge, far larger than any capensis flower I have seen.  

The seeds have just started to ripen.  I plan to plant a few and see what the seedlings are like.

Drosera capensis Hercules flower

This plant was originally registered as an interspecific hybrid between Drosera capensis 'alba' and Drosera aliciae.   The current belief is that this is a wide leaf variant of Drosera capensis.  

From what I have been told, capensis Hercules grows reasonably true from seed, which indicates that it may be pure capensis rather than a hybrid.  My first seedlings are still tiny, so it is too early for me to know how true to type they will grow for me.

The leaves on capensis Hercules are rather wide.  Which is similar to, but distinct from other wide forms of capensis.  The leaves grow reasonably long.  

The leaves and flowers have the same colouration as typical capensis.  The young leaves seem a little hairy before they have unfurled.

Capensis Hercules is a really nice looking plant.  Strangely enough I don't have any nice photos of my capensis Hercules plant.  The leaves never look picturesque and dewy because each leaf catches so many tiny insects.  This is a good thing, it means my plant is well fed and (more importantly) it means that there are far fewer tiny insects flying around in my greenhouse.

Drosera capensis Hercules on left, capensis True Giant on the right

The capensis Hercules flowers are truly massive.  They are the same colour as typical capensis flowers.  The scape grew very long, and had a lot of flowers.  Much like typical capensis, the first flowers to open drop seed while the last flowers are still buds.

From what I have seen they set seed and appear to be highly self fertile.  Again this tends to indicate that they may not be an interspecific hybrid.

capensis Hercules flowers are HUGE

Young plants of capensis Hercules and True Giant 

The capensis Hercules plant I am growing was taken as a cutting from a clone, meaning it is the true Hercules.  Seed grown plants may be slightly different and should never be labelled as Hercules.

I sell some carnivorous plants through my for sale page.  If I sell or trade any seed grown plants I will make sure that they are labelled Hercules x self or something to indicate that they are not the true Hercules clone.  If I ever trade the true Hercules clones I will also make sure to label this to distinguish between them and its seedlings.

Micro woolly dwarf tomato progress

I wrote an earlier blog post about crossing a micro dwarf tomato with a high anthocyanin tomato with angora leaf.  I am not great at cross pollinating tomatoes, but my cross worked.  

I dabble in vegetable breeding and have created some interesting new varieties.  I want to develop some lines of micro dwarf wooly tomatoes.  Eventually I would like a micro dwarf tomato that has high anthocyanin blue fruit as well as woolly foliage.

Micro Woolly Dwarf tomato progress

Micro Tom was the seed parent.  This is a micro dwarf tomato with red round fruit that tends to be slightly pointy at the end.  The pollen parent was a dwarf tomato with woolly foliage, this had round fruit that was black where hit by the sun and yellow underneath.  Using a dwarf crossed with a micro dwarf makes progress a little faster as there is one less gene to segregate in future generations.

The F1 cross was a dwarf plant slightly taller than the pollen parent.  It had slightly fuzzy leaves and fruit.  The fruit was red and round that was usually slightly pointy at the end.  Strangely enough not all of the fruit was pointy, I only had one plant but nothing was overly uniform.  This plant had high anthocyanin fruit that was black where hit by the sun.  It had traits of both parents, which was fun.

Most of the early fruit was red as it grew on the shaded side of the plant.  Strangely enough the fruit that got more sun didn't ripen until later.

Micro Woolly tomato progress

Some of the fruit is very black where the sun hit it.  This is a trait I would like to keep in some of the lines that I will develop.  Others will probably not have this trait.  I am planning on focusing on getting a few micro woolly tomato lines going.

One truss of tomatoes has confused me.  Somehow one tomato in that truss is black, and the rest are red.  I don't understand how this could have happened.  I can't imagine one tomato in the truss getting sun while the others were in shad.  Perhaps there is an early stage of development where they need sun to turn black and all except one were shaded?  

How is this even possible?

I like the look of black tomatoes

Micro Tom tomatoes are a tiny plant, the tallest I have ever grown is 10cm tall.  Next generation I should be able to produce some micro woolly tomatoes that won't be much taller than that.

As I will be largely dealing with recessive (or partially recessive) genes it should be easy to plant a huge number of seeds and cull anything that is not woolly or micro dwarf.  Micro dwarf should start to appear in the next generation, they should not be a great deal taller than Micro Tom.  I don't plan on keeping anything that is over 15cm tall.

I am tempted to plant some seeds now and try to sneak in an extra generation on my window sill over winter.  Then again it may be best to wait until spring and plant several hundred seeds and cull them hard.  There won't be room on my window sill for doing something like that.

Full grown Micro Tom tomato

The next generation should see some real progress, then it will be a few generations after that to stabilise any lines.  Luckily I can normally grow two or so generations per year of micro tomatoes so this should not take as long as other things that I am breeding.

At some stage I will sell seed through my for sale page, but that won't be until the lines are stable.  I do have seed of other things that I have bred.  If you are interested go and have a look.

Venus Flytrap - DCXL

Late last year I bought a DCXL Venus Flytrap.  I have not been growing it for very long, and my plant has not yet demonstrated its true potential, but already it is one of my favourite Venus flytraps. 

DCXL has upright summer growth, and is meant to die down to have low growth over winter.  The traps are rather large, even on my young plant, and it puts out a lot of traps.  The traps don't have a huge amount of colour, but they make up for it with their large size.  So far mine is upright but has not grown overly tall, but I can see its potential for growing very tall once established.

My plant arrived in the mail rather small, and has exploded in growth, faster than any venus flytrap I have seen.  It is pretty impressive how quickly it grew from a tiny thing into a large impressive plant.

Venus Flytrap DCXL big and beefy

My plant attempted to flower not too long after I got it.  I cut off the stalk as I wanted my plant to focus on getting strong and healthy rather than flowering and producing seed.  I planted the stalk, and it has produced a few baby DCXL plants from that cut off flower stalk.  

My DCXL plant also appears to be dividing.  So far there are two large divisions in that pot and maybe the start of a third smaller one.  I will be interested to see how many divisions it will produce between now and winter as I hope to grow a few more of these in my collection. 

Venus Fly trap DCXL

I am not great at describing these plants, so have cut and paste some descriptions that I found which were written by people far more knowledgeable than I am.

Flytrapstore.com description:

This is it! THE LARGEST TRAPS WE'VE EVER SEEN! Out of the thousands of flytraps we have growing here at FlytrapStore, DC XL grows the largest traps of any flytrap we've ever grown. The first traps in spring are usually the largest and can approach 2 inches in size on a fully grown DC XL flytrap. In addition to being ginormous for a Venus flytrap, DC XL is also an extraordinarily hardy grower, more than any other type we know of. DC XL is a handsome hardy monster flytrap, and we learn to love it more and more as we watch it grow over the seasons.

DC XL produces the largest traps we've ever seen! A giant monster of a plant. Grow one and judge for yourself! The "XL," in case it wasn't obvious, stands for X-tra Large. 

The challenger to B52 for the "world's largest traps" title. The "DC" in DC XL is for David Conner, the original source for the single plant of DC XL we obtained and subsequently grew and propagated in tissue culture in the FlytrapStore Lab. David Conner is also the original tissue-culture source of the famous B52 Venus Flytrap.

I also could paraphrase the history of the DCXL VFT, but thought I could just cut and paste directly from the source.  Flytrapcare.com gave a bit of a description of its history:

A few years ago before I knew Matt and was raising and selling Venus Flytraps as the Flytrap Ranch, I bought quite a few young B52 Venus Flytraps from David Conner. He was the original tissue-culture propagator of that great clone, and I'm still grateful to him just from a personal perspective for helping to generate enough for B52 to become widely distributed and cultivated, now in many countries, not just its home country of the United States.

When I received one of my orders from David, he included several gift plants, single young plants of specific Venus Flytrap clones he was thinking of tissue culturing. One of them was "All Red" (which Matt is propagating and we are growing for sale, a magnificent deep red clone whose name we added the prefix "DC" to in order to identify its source), another was "Giant Red," which turned out to be disappointing after growing it for several seasons, and another was the XL (which we've added the "DC" to to indicate the source).

The XL (now DC XL) grew very vigorously that first year and divided into several plants. I was impressed with its growth. The second growing season, it produced the sturdiest wide leaves, with the largest midrib (the vein that runs the length of the leaf), most vigorous growth after dormancy and the largest traps I had ever seen on a plant that was still immature. Matt used a flowerstalk of DC XL (right, Matt?) to get the plant into viable (noncontaminated) sterile culture and has been propagating it since. 

Venus Flytrap DCXL - a large robust carnivorous plant

I myself don't currently have any carnivorous plants in tissue culture.  I grow all my named venus flytrap plants from divisions, leaf pullings, or flower stalk cuttings.  This means increasing numbers can be slow, but I am growing them as a hobby so I don't need to produce thousands of them.

I can't help but notice the price of these has gone up since I bought my plant, the average price in Australia being $50 plus postage for one small juvenile plant!  In my opinion that is far too much for a flytrap.  I hope to divide my DCXL vft and have a few plants to grow for myself, but I may be able to produce a few extras on top of that.  

When I have any extras I might list them on my for sale page but the price won't be as high.  I have a few other named varieties of venus flytrap and other carnivorous plants for sale, or I would be willing to consider a trade for other interesting plants.  

How I grow maidenhair ferns

Back in early 2016 I got a little fern to keep in my office.  Maidenhair ferns don't cope with direct sunlight, they don't love extremes of temperature, and they appear to dislike change, so they are really well suited to office life.  

Over the past 5 or 6 years my little maidenhair fern has grown rather large.  To give you an idea of size of my maidenhair fern, the pot is about 20cm across.  There is a bit of variation but most of the fronds measure about 50cm long.

Maidenhair fern

One year later, same fern, lush growth

My little fern grew well.  I used to bring it home over Christmas as there was no one around to water it.  Other than that it was always in the office.  People often used to comment at how much they liked my office fern.

I had to bring my maidenhair fern home a while ago because I have not been in the office very much.  It wasn't really happy where I had it at home, it was a little too dark and I didn't rotate the pot so it only grew on one side.  I eventually worked out the problems.

Now I rotate the pot each week and my fern is picking up again and starting to fill out on all sides like it once did.  Hopefully it doesn't take too long to long good again.

Office fern front of pot

Office fern back of pot

Office fern side of pot

The same fern a year later - growing strong

Maidenhair ferns have a reputation for being finicky and difficult to grow, but they look so nice that I think the effort needed to grow them is worth while.  

By far the easiest way to grow them is to accidentally stumble on their preferred growing conditions.  Failing that I have noticed a few of their needs and listed them below.

Maidenhair ferns need constant moisture, but really don't like to sit in water.  I grow this one in a self watering pot and always keep water in the reservoir.  Other than the few times when I tipped out the water to take the fern home or take it back to the office the reservoir has never been empty, not even for a little while.  They don't like sitting in water as it will rot, so a self watering pot is perfect.  I have others growing in regular pots that I feel like I am watering all the time, but it is less work having them in self watering pots.  

Maidenhair ferns need bright indirect light.  From what I have seen, direct sunlight burns them and kills them pretty quick.  While I never let direct sun hit mine, if it is too dark he plant suffers and slowly declines.  Office lighting was good for this as it had many hours of low level light every single day.  At home I have it on a book shelf not too far from a glass door, it is a little dark for it there but not too bad.

Maidenhair ferns don't like being touched by people.  I am told the acid on your hands burns their fronds.  If you have to touch them please wash your hands first.  Kids shooting nerf darts or throwing paper planes also seem to do some damage to their fronds (don't ask how I know).  I don't have cats but assume that a cat rubbing against them is not great either.  If you can put them somewhere that they are not being touched they will reward you with nicer looking growth.

Maiden hair ferns don't love draughts or being blasted with an air conditioner.  That being said I have seen them in some extremely windy positions in nature and have a few growing outside under cover where they get lots of wind.  Perhaps they can survive strong wind if they have some sort of protection, being in a pot on your shelf they have no protection so it is best to protect them from wind if you can.

Ferns don't love regular fertiliser, it is usually too strong for them and burns their new growth.  I was told many years ago to tear open used tea bags and sprinkle the leaves on their soil to fertilise ferns.  I can't remember the last time I did that with my fern, but it always grew well afterwards.  It also seemed to encourage some kind of fungus, so I haven't done that in a while.  I am also told that banana peels are good for ferns.  Spreading banana peel on the soil causes insects to be an issue.  Cutting up the banana peels and drying them before mixing in the top of the soil seems to prevent insects from being a problem.

Maidenhair ferns don't love change.  When you bring your fern home, or repot them into a larger pot, or move them from one shelf to another some of the new growth will likely burn off and you should expect them to look bad for a little while.  I am not sure what the deal is with this, maybe it is because I have touched their fronds with my hands or maybe it is some other reason.  It isn't too big an issue as they seem to recover pretty fast.  Do rotate the pot each week to ensure they grow evenly on all sides, other than that try not to change too much too often.

I do sell maidenhair ferns, as well as a few other plants, through my for sale blog page.  If you are interested you should have a look.  From time to time I may have variegated ferns for sale.