Red jelly bean succulent

Red jelly bean succulent (Sedum rubrotinctum) is green with a slight reddish tinge for most of the growing season.  When stressed, however, this variety of jelly bean succulent gets a lot of red colouration.  

Red jelly bean succulent

Winter brings out the colours

Many succulents can take on some impressive colours when under stress, the red jellybean succulent is no exception.  

Over summer many succulents take on some impressive colouration to protect themselves from the harsh sun.  The cold weather of winter seems to bring out the best colouration where I live.  During spring and autumn they are less red and more greenish.  

Various succulent cuttings - some have winter colours

The little plant in the front of this picture is usually green

String of beans gets purplish in my winter

The slight pink is only over winter in this one

Red jelly bean succulents are very simple to grow.  They grow equally well in a small pot on a window sill as they do in the garden.  They prefer full sun, but can survive a little shade.  These little succulents look delicate, but are surprisingly hardy.  

The healthiest red jelly bean plants I have seen were under large eucalyptus trees in poor soil.  The tree had sucked most of the moisture out of the soil, and provided a slight frost shadow.  Life under that tree would be pretty harsh, yet these plants thrived there.  

I am told jelly bean succulents are not frost hardy, but mine have survived years of heavy frosts with little protection.  They survive drought and blasting sun, and they cope surprisingly well in the wind.  

Red jellybean succulent

Propagation of jelly bean succulents is simple.  Each leaf, each little jelly bean, can be planted and will produce a new plant.  Given how small the leaves are this is a slow way to make more plants and I prefer not to propagate this plant from its leaves.  

To propagate them I tend to take stem cuttings.  Snip a section off that has some leaves attached, leave it for a few days somewhere in the shade for the wound to heal, then plant it in soil.  It really is simple.  A stem can usually be cut into several pieces if wanted, or left larger, either way works well as long as the stem has at least one leaf attached.  

Sometimes the stems already have roots, sometimes they don't, either way I get 100% success rate from propagating these from stems.  The stems I use always have at least some leaves, I have never tried to propagate using a stem with no leaves, it may work.  

They get more green when not stressed

For me these succulents flower in spring.  The flowers are small and yellow, and appear in clusters.  I would not grow these for the flowers as they are not overly impressive, but I don't make any attempt to remove the flowers as I don't dislike them.  

The flowers aren't large and don't seem to have a scent.  I have seen some insect pollinators on the flowers from time to time.  I don't know how easily these set seed, or how easily they grow from seed.  

There are various (remarkably different looking) forms of this species, if they grow well from seed it would not be difficult to develop a new variety by crossing them.  

Clusters of small yellow flowers

Red jellybean succulents are relatively common succulents.  They look nice, are simple to grow, and are very simple to propagate.  They may be found for sale in a local garden center.  

If you can't find any for sale in a local plant nursery I sell red jelly bean succulents and can post to most states in Australia.  During postage some leaves may fall off, if this happens don't worry.  You can plant these leaves and you should end up with one large healthy plant that you bought, and a bunch of cute baby plants from the leaves.  The baby plants can be left in the same pot as the mother and allowed to catch up in size before repotting.

Fragaria virginiana breeding larger berries

I grow a few different strawberries, some different species and some garden strawberries.  One of the species of wild strawberries I grow is Fragaria virginiana. 

Fragaria virginiana strawberries

F virginiana comes from North America.  This species was used as one of the two main parents to develop the garden strawberries that you can buy from the shops.  This was used as a parent due to its great taste, the other parent was used for its larger sized berries.

The taste of these berries is similar to a garden strawberry, but nicer, and more concentrated.  The original berries were too small for my liking, so I decided to do some breeding for larger berry size.  

Larger F virginiana strawberries

When I first got seeds of this plant they took a while to grow to maturity, the resultant berries were about the size of your finger nail.  The berries tasted great, but were too small.  Even the smallest berries in the photos are larger than the original berries.  I don't know what size berry is normal for this species, I know there are several cultivars overseas with larger berries.  I think the wild ones tend to be a lot smaller. 

I originally obtained seed that had been collected from the wild.  These tiny berries certainly had great taste.  They also had a lot of genetic diversity, which made this selective breeding project a lot simpler.  

I collected seed, grew out a lot of plants, culled the ones with the smaller berries, and grew seeds from the ones with the largest berries.  I did this for a few years.  

It takes time for these to go from seed to fruit, and these only flower once or twice per year in my garden, so this project took quite a while before I could see any progress.   

Saving seed from strawberries, and growing it out to maturity, is fiddly.  Luckily you get a lot of seed per berry, and a lot of genetic diversity combined with a lot of seed means there is a good chance of stumbling across the right plant.  Growing out large numbers helps your chances of getting the right genetic combination.  

Some are too small and will be culled

After a few generations it was clear that the berries are significantly larger than the original ones.  As you can see in my photos, some plants produce larger berries than others.  It takes the same space and effort to grow tiny berries as it does larger berries, so the smaller ones are culled.  

This is still the same species, it has not crossed with any other species, or messed around with ploidy levels.  I have selected for larger berries through growing many seedlings and culling hard.  Some of the smaller ones also don't look typical of this species, given they open pollinated they may have crossed, so I have also culled anything that appears to be an off type.  

I was worried that the taste might be diluted in the larger berries.  I am happy to say that this has not been the case.  The larger berries taste the same as the smaller berries.  When under ripe they are not great, but when ripe they taste incredible.  

These plants all produce runners in my garden.  This means I am able to cull the smaller ones and propagate the larger ones quickly and easily.  If they did not produce runners it would likely mean another 15 or so years of growing out seeds to produce a stable variety, so runners are great.  Runners also mean the plants spread to different parts of my garden, if we have another dry summer that kills off lots of things there is a chance one runner will be sitting somewhere protected and I will be able to us it to restart the patch.  

Realistically this is probably the largest berries that these plants can produce through selective breeding.  I think they have reached their genetic potential.  I will still try to grow seed from the largest ones and see if there are any further gains to be made, but I am not expecting much from here.  

If I were to induce polyploidy, or hybridise with another species I know the berries could become far larger, but I have no plans for attempting things like that.  

Further breeding work could be done with these to introduce day length neutrality, or more flower production.  I am not sure if my stock has the genes needed for this, and I probably can't source any Fragaria virginiana with the needed genetics, so it is unlikely I will breed towards this any time soon.  

I sell bare rooted plants of the largest ones through my for sale page.  The plants flower in spring and fruit spring/summer.  Sometimes they provide a second crop in autumn.  They produce many runners and can fill a garden bed relatively quickly.  Their productivity is low, but they make up for that in great taste and ease of growing.

Black Nebula carrot flowering

I like dark purple carrots.  Unfortunately there are few varieties of purple carrots in Australia, and  many of the purple carrots have lovely purple skin, and a disapointingly orange core.  

I had started a breeding project to develop carrots that were purple all the way through, then I found Black Nebula carrots.  

Black Nebula carrots are great.  They are purple/black all the way through with only a few areas of lighter colour.  They taste almost like a cross between beetroot and carrot, which I quite like.  They also grew well for me.  

I grow everything organically in my garden.  Generally speaking, pollinator insects seem to like carrot flowers.  Honey bees never seem overly interested in Apiaceae flowers, but there are many other pollinator insects and other beneficial insects that seem to enjoy them.  

Black Nebula carrots are a stable variety of carrot so seed can be collected from them and will grow true to type.  They (like any/every vegetable variety that I can access) are not Genetically Modified.  

I am told that, unlike many modern varieties of carrot, Black Nebula carrots do not have the genes for cytoplasmic male sterility.  This is a great thing for the home garden as it means they can easily be open pollinated and makes seed saving reasonably simple.

Black Nebula Carrot Flowers

I had cut off the tops of the carrots we ate and was going to grow the carrot tops to produce seed.  Unfortunately after a mishap the tops all died.  

I still had some black nebula carrots growing in the garden that I was planning to eat.  Instead of eating them I have let them all flower and hope to collect their seed.  

Strangely enough, even though 'Black Nebula' is a stable carrot variety, they do display some genetic diversity.  Genetic diversity is a good thing, especially in carrots!    

Organic black nebula carrots are dark purple

All of the black nebula carrot roots were dark purple, all had varying amounts of white.  I believe the white to be environmentally induced rather than genetic.  All of the roots were similar length, shape, and thickness.  Strangely enough the genetic diversity could only be seen in the flowers.  

Some of the black nebula flowers were almost white with a very faint purple tinge that you can't see in my photos.  

white/light purple carrot flowers 

Black nebula carrot flowers

Others black nebula carrot flowers were various shades of purple.  Some light, others darker, and some had a patch of flowers in the centre that were darker purple.

Black nebula carrot flowers

I may only collect seeds from the darker flowered plants.  Or I may collect seed from all of them.  I am not sure at this stage what I will do.

Genetic diversity is a good thing, even in a stable (inbred) line like this.  It allows me to apply selective pressure and have some genetic drift.  This enables me to make this variety more suitable to my climate and more able to withstand the pests that it will encounter in my garden.

Carrots are also known for suffering from inbreeding depression, so I want some genetic diversity in my plants.

As I want at least some genetic diversity I am allowing all of these plants to flower and have a chance of their pollen being used for the next generation.  This will increase genetic diversity in my seeds.  

I also  want the highest anthocyanin line possible, and I am unsure if flower colour has any linkage to root anthocyanin levels.  Perhaps when I learn more about carrot genetics I will rogue out some plants in favour of others, until then I will just try to keep the darkest ones.

Various black nebula carrot flowers

If all goes to plan my plants should produce copious amounts of seed with a reasonable amount of genetic diversity.  Once this is ripe I will collect some to plant and some to save for the following year.  

Carrots generally produce a lot of seed so I should have some extra black nebula carrot seed at some stage.  Once I have some fresh seed I will list it on my for sale page.  

Litchi tomato Solanum sisymbriifolium

A generous friend sent me some seeds of litchi tomato (Solanum sisymbriifolium) a while ago.  I had never eaten, grown, or even seen this species before so this was something new to me.  

Litchi tomato is also called Morelle de Balbis, vila-vila, sticky nightshade, red buffalo-bur, or fire-and-ice plant.  My kids call these 'prickle tomatoes'.

Litchi tomatoes - can you see why my kids call them prickle tomatoes?

Litchi tomatoes are somewhat related to tomatoes, tomatillos, and ground cherries.  Like many of the vegetables we grow, they are a perennial that is treated as an annual.  

I left my plants where they were over winter, fully expecting frosts to kill them.  To my surprise they handled mild winter with frosts down to about -4C with minimal damage.  I have no idea if they would survive a cold winter, but a mild winter didn't seem to bother them too much.

They flowered through winter but didn't set fruit in the cooker weather.  I transplanted them in spring and with warmer weather they started fruiting pretty quick.

Litchi tomatoes flowering

The leaves look deceptively soft and velvety, but have prickles on them.  The stems and fruit husks also have prickles.  The leaf shape varies a little from plant to plant, some have deeper divisions in the leaf while others are not as deep.

Litchi tomato leaf

Leaves look soft, but have prickles

I am told that they need more than one plant in order to set fruit.  I don't have heaps of space to use so I plant several plants in the one hole.  This ensures a pollinator is never far away.

I probably get less fruit per plant by having them this close, but it frees up space to grow other things so I am happy with the result.

I grow several plants in the same hole

Litchi tomato stems are prickly

Litchi tomatoes produce reasonably large, showy flowers that were white or bluish.  They varied from plant to plant but were always rather ornamental and showy.

Litchi tomato flower

Prickle tomato flowers

Flowers vary slightly from plant to plant

Fruit are born on a small truss with up to a dozen red fruits per truss.  I found they took a while to flower, then the wait from flower to ripe fruit felt like it took some time, once they started to ripen they were nicely productive.

Fruit can be harvested once the husk starts to turn brown.  Either individual fruits can be picked, or the entire truss can be snipped off and brought in.

I am told that ripe fruit slips out of the husk, but didn't experience that even once.  I assume different strains act differently, and this one does not slip from the husk.  

I was able to harvest carefully bare handed, but think using gloves would make harvest a lot faster and easier.

Litchi tomato truss

Unlike many other fruits, I found that picking them when fully ripe made them taste bland.  They were sweetest earlier, and got progressively less sweet and lost complexity of flavour the longer I left them.  

Their taste varied from plant to plant, as well as varying as the fruit ripened.  Some tasted a bit like cherry, some a bit fruity.  Some tasted like kiwi fruit mixed with something nice, I liked those ones the best.

Ripe Litchi Tomatoes

The fruit were glossy red on the outside, orange on the inside, and had a lot of small hard seeds in them.  

I didn't mind the seeds at all as I didn't really notice them, but my wife disliked them and found them annoying.

Litchi tomato fruit with seeds

I don't tend to grow many things with thorns and prickles.  Unfortunately Litchi Tomatoes have a lot of prickles on pretty much all parts.  

If you ever grow Litchi tomatoes be sure to stake or cage them to prevent them sprawling, and try not to grow them anywhere that you will be brushing past.

Litchi tomato - so thorny

I am glad I got to grow these, and I am growing the overwintered plants again this summer.  I really like the taste, plus the plants are intriguing and ornamental, so will likely grow them most years.  

I don't have endless space, and there are a lot of things I want to grow, so going forward may have them on rotation and grow them every second year.

I do sell seeds of Litchi tomatoes, as well as a few other interesting edibles and perennial vegetables in Australia through my for sale page.

Heirloom Russian Tomato Varieties

I grow a lot of different varieties of tomatoes.  Some are very old heirloom tomato varieties, while others I am developing myself.  

Some of the tomatoes I grew 

Some of my favourite tasting tomato varieties are old Russian heirloom varieties.  As a generalisation, Russian tomatoes have been bred for rich tastes and high productivity.  There are very few heirloom tomatoes in Australia that can rival the flavour of the old Russian varieties.  

I always used to be under the impression that Russian varieties would be quick to ripen and not mind the cold (unless there is frost) and perform well with short days with only weak sunlight.  From what I understand now, that is not always the case as many Russian tomato varieties were developed for greenhouse culture.  That is ok as they make up for any short comings in having a deep and often complex tomato taste that is hard to beat.  

Unfortunately I have not grown very many heirloom Russian tomato varieties.  I would like to grow a few more of them as their taste is often superb.  Some of the Russian tomatoes I have grown are listed below.

I like tomato season 

Japanese Black Trifele - Yaponskiy Trufel Chernyyi   Японский трюфель

Tomato - Japanese Black Trifele

Japanese Black Trifele is a great Russian heirloom tomato and one of the few varieties that I will grow each and every year.  They produce mahogany brown, pear shaped fruit, that is often green on the shoulders.  The size and shape of the fruits varies a little even on the same truss.  Apparently it was named 'Japanese' to make it sound more exotic, but was developed in Russia and it is a commercially produced tomato in Russia.  These produce a large yield for me every year under different conditions, and they taste incredible.  They are great raw or cooked.  This plant has potato leaf and is indeterminate.

Malakhitovaya Shkatulka - Malachite Box - Малахитовая Шкатулка

Tomato - Malakhitovaya Shkatulka

Tomato - Malakhitovaya Shkatulka

Malakhitovaya Shkatulka is another great Russian tomato.  The size and shape of the fruit lend it to slicing for sandwiches, and it goes well in a salad.  Everyone who tastes this has loved it.  It is difficult to tell when they are ripe from a distance, but you are close enough to touch them it becomes pretty simple.  They tend to have small yield in my garden, I wish that it was higher yielding as they taste so great.  It is often said that Russia does not produce green when ripe tomatoes, often when being sold in Russia it is listed as having yellow skin.  I don't care how you describe it or what colour you want to call it, this variety tastes great.

Giant Siberian Pink - Sibirskiy Velikan Rozovyi - Сибирский Великан Розовый

Tomato - Giant Siberian Pink

Giant Siberian Pink is a good tasting Russian tomato that produces very large, mostly round, pinkish fruits.  This variety produces firm flesh, and has a decent number of seeds which makes seed saving easy.  This plant produced a medium to large yield (medium number of fruit, super large sized fruit) over the season.  Being a large fruited tomato it does not ripen early in my garden.  

Little Oak Like - malenʹkiy dub, kak   маленький дуб, как 

Tomato - Little Oak Like

Little Oak Like is a great tasting heirloom Russian tomato that is far too rare.  It is only a small plant, maybe a foot tall and wide.  The red round tomatoes have green shoulders and taste great.  Little Oak Like tomatoes have the deep, rich, old fashioned tomato taste that people think of when they think of home grown tomatoes.  This is one of the best tasting red tomatoes I have eaten.  This plant has a large yield over a reasonably long season for a short determinate tomato.  It is usually among the first tomatoes to ripen in my garden.  The fruit are a little small, but more than make up for that by tasting great.

Black Russian - Chernyy Russkiy - черный русский

Tomato - Black Russian

Tomato - Black Russian

Black Russian is probably the most famous variety of heirloom tomato in Australia even though it is one of the worst.  Black Russian tomato is by far the worst Russian tomato I have ever grown!  Crops are small, the fruit cracks often, and it lack any real depth of flavour that you expect from home grown tomatoes.  If you disagree with this I dare say you are either comparing it to the ethylene ripened cold stored garbage from the shops, or with other home grown insipid varieties such as 'Roma'.  Let's face it, a home grown Roma will always taste bland compared to a home grown flavoursome variety.  The colour of the black Russian tomato fruit is amazing inside and out, and they are a good size, unfortunately the taste, yield, and time it takes to mature always let it down severely in my garden.

Various tomatoes I grow

I often sell seeds saved from my open pollinated organically grown plants through my for sale page.  If you are interested please have a look.  

If you are Russian or have a Slavic background, and know about some other traditional vegetable varieties I would love to hear from you.  I would be interested to grow some more Russian vegetable varieties, not just tomatoes but other vegetables as well.  I would love to grow an old Russian beetroot variety but seem unable to find the names of any.  

If you grow some other Russian tomato or other Russian vegetable varieties and would like to swap some seeds or sell me some seeds please also let me know.  Either leave a comment on this blog post or my email address can be found on my for sale page.  

Vietnamese coriander flowering

Vietnamese coriander (Persicaria odorata) is an edible perennial herb from south east Asia.  I wrote an earlier post with Vietnamese coriander growing notes.  This is a very simple to grow, productive, and great tasting edible herb.  This is not related to coriander in any way, but can often be used in a similar way.

Vietnamese coriander loves heat, humidity, water, yet strangely does not appear to like full sun all day (although this may just be in my climate where humidity is too low).  For me leaf production is best when it gets part shade.  This is easy to provide by growing it next to something taller.  

I often grow it in a container with no drainage holes, I have soil or leaf litter in the bottom, and a few cm of water on top of the soil.  I have grown it in a pot of soil, where it does well.  I have also seen people grow this in their vegetable garden.

I have always been told that this plant will not flower outside the tropics, but that is not true.

I first got Vietnamese coriander when I lived in semi-arid central west NSW, and it flowered there.  Now that I live near Canberra with its hot dry summers and cold winters (cold by Australian standards) it still flowers.  Most years I don't get many flowers from this plant.

This past year the weather was odd, it was mild and wet all summer.  My Vietnamese coriander flowered more than it ever has before!

Vietnamese coriander flowers

The flowers appear at the end of the growing stalks.  Many flowers are on each stem, they open sequentially from the base up to the tip.  The flowers don't really smell, or if they do I could not smell them over the foliage.  Flowers last a few days before dropping off.

Unlike many other herbs, the leaves do not appear to turn bitter or have any off flavours when flowering.  I haven't tried eating the flowers so don't know what they taste like.

Vietnamese coriander flowering

I have never seen any seed set.  I m not sure if it needs another clone to be able to cross pollinate, or if it in unable to set seed, or if my climate is all wrong for seed production, or if we do not have the right pollinators, or if there is some other issue at play.

I have had this plant for many years now, it grows so easily from cuttings.  Vietnamese coriander always grows prolifically for me, and produces many large leaves.  As such I don't need any true seed to be formed.

For me these grow best in spring, summer, and autumn.  My plants don't love frost, and growth slows during cold weather.  

I am growing some outside where it gets lighter frosts, these plants have reddish leaves over winter that are small, bitter, and not really worth eating until the warmer weather returns.  Once the weather warms they grow greener leaves that have no bitterness.

I grow some in my unheated greenhouse, the leaves of these are green and lush all winter and all year.   At this time of year they lose the arrow shaped markings on their leaves as the sun is not strong enough.  That doesn't bother me, they still taste great.

I also have some growing outside in my goldfish barrelponics, this is lush productive all year long.  The ones in the barrelponics has by far the most explosive growth and is not even slightly bothered by winter as the barrel water must keep it slightly warmer.  Over summer it can suffer slightly from direct sun, but there is always some that gets enough shade that it is still fast growing and great to eat.  Between this and water cress the goldfish water stays clear and clean.

If you don't grow Vietnamese coriander you should.  Sometimes plant nurseries carry them, but it seems to be a bit hit and miss.  I also sell organically grown plants of these through my for sale page.