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.

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.

Living-Mudflower Original Vegetables - vegetable breeding

I used to look at online plant shops at all the plants they had that were claimed to be 'exclusives'.  That used to impress me.  Then one of these places bought plants from me and started selling them as exclusives.  One of these places talks about saving heirloom vegetables, yet often renames things and then claims that they are exclusive to them.  I am no longer impressed in the slightest when I see claims of plants or seeds as being exclusive. 

Very few online plant shops carry things that they have developed themselves.  I am far more impressed by this as breeding a new variety takes years of dedication. 

I breed new vegetable varieties, and improved herb varieties, and berry varieties, and fruit varieties etc myself.  Some are listed below while others are not yet stable enough to list here.  Some are named, while others still need to be named.  Maybe I should have a competition of some sort one day to name some of my new things.

Some of them are for sale through my for sale page, while others are not for sale yet.  Everything I grow is organic, I don't even use the poisons that are certified to be used in organic farms.

Original Vegetables developed by Living-Mudflower

Igloo tomato

'Igloo' tomatoes were the first tomatoes I ever bred.  I had limited access to germplasm, at the time I was young with only a rudimentary understanding of genetics and no one to guide me, yet I was still able to get a great end result.  

Igloo tomatoes are short stout little plants somewhere between one and two feet tall, small red round tomatoes that are very uniform in size and colour.  They normally taste ok but it tastes far superior if left to fully ripen.  Large seeds make seed saving simple.  Great for small spaces or short seasons as it is one of the first to ripen and produces over a long period, and they are incredibly high yielding usually producing 10kg to 12kg of tomatoes per plant in my garden. That is a tremendous amount of tomatoes for such a small plant.

Igloo tomato

 

Nanuq tomato

'Nanuq' was another of the first tomatoes I bred back when I was very young.  Small wimpy looking but surprisingly strong plants, small red round tomatoes produced on plants that are about a foot tall.  These have wispy carrot like foliage that were bred for taste and early ripening.  Nanuq tomatoes are one of the first tomatoes to ripen and only takes up a little space.  I’m not blown away by the size of the crop but it makes up for that with the taste. 

Nanuq tomato

 

Immali corn

'Immali' corn is a pink/purple and white sweet corn.  I believe this is the first purple sweet corn to have been developed in Australia.  This purple sweet corn is healthier than yellow corn as it is high in antioxidants, and better tasting than any store bought corn.  Reasonably short plants around 5 feet tall, most tiller to some extent, they produces numerous cobs per plant but is highly dependent on spacing and soil fertility.  Sweet corn with su se+ genes means it is best suited for backyards rather than market gardens as cobs don’t store anywhere near as long as the Sh2 varieties, but they have a superior taste.

Immali corn - purple sweet corn

Immali corn - dry seeds for saving

Amiah potato (pronounced 'uh-my-uh')

In my opinion 'Amiah' potatoes are the best of the best of diploid potatoes.  They have the great taste of a diploid potato without having the low yields that are common among diploids.  The size of potatoes is small but reasonable, they don’t need peeling, and each plant produces crops that are good but not as large as many tetraploid varieties.  Amiah potatoes are healthier to eat and better looking than white potatoes due to its rich yellow flesh and interesting skin colour.  

Amiah potatoes have a great taste, easily produce two crops per year here, are quite stubborn/aggressive in its spreading, and always survives over winter in the soil with no care from me.  As well as all this they produce huge numbers of beautiful purple flowers on long stalks held high above the foliage.

Amiah potato and white tetraploid potato for comparison

Amiah potato and white tetraploid

 

Oaken (dwarf multiflora) tomatoes 

These produce dwarf plants with regular leaf.  Flowers are produced in clusters of about 150, but not all of the fruit sets in my garden and many of the flowers fall off.  The fruit is small, mostly round, and light orange often with some green stripes.  It has a sweet taste and is surprisingly late to ripen for such a small fruited tomato, but once it does ripen it crops until killed by the frosts as it is an indeterminate dwarf tomato.

The colour is off in this photo, they are darker orange than this

One truss of dwarf multiflora tomato flowers - good luck trying to count them all

Tracey tomato (black yellow/green)

Tracey tomatoes are the result of a more recent breeding effort, where I had greater understanding of genetics, more access to germplasm, but far less time to put into the endeavor than many of my earlier breeding attempts.  The plants produce tasty little tomatoes that are intensely black where sun hits the fruit, yellow/green under the black.  Tracey tomato produces the darkest true black tomatoes that I have ever seen.  The black is from the high levels of antioxidants, which make this a very healthy tomato to eat.  They have green flesh when ripe, and taste incredible.  Unripe tomatoes are beautifully purple, similar to an eggplant.  

Tracey tomatoes are very productive, producing mostly round ping pong sized fruit, but are not completely uniform and never will be.  This variety has produced well for me in hot dry summers, in mild wet summers, in dust storms, through drought, as well as during lovely mild years.  Ornamental, highly productive, with great taste makes these a great variety to grow.

Ripe Black Yellow/Green tomatoes

Unripe Tracey tomato

Unnamed things

Thornless Primocane Raspberry 

This is a dual cropping, thornless, red raspberry.  This variety is sweeter than many red raspberries and is always completely thornless.  The berries don't crumble, and ripe berries are easily and cleanly removed from the plant.  Each plant is very productive, they can produce several dozen flowers per cluster.  Not all berries ripen at once, some berries are ready while some flowers in the same cluster are yet to open, meaning that harvest is over an extended period.  It produces two or more crops per year and being a thornless primocane variety means pruning is simple.  All of these traits make it an excellent variety to grow in back yards.

Thornless primocane raspberry - highly productive

 

Giant edible dandelion

I can’t remember why I started to breed dandelions, it was a lot more work than it ought to be, and the end result is rather impressive.  They are much like normal dandelions you find in your lawn, but bigger in every way.  Every part is edible and useful, only bigger and better.  

Giant edible dandelions produce longer and wider leaves, larger yellow flowers on longer fatter stalks, it also has deeper fatter roots.  These won't escape into your lawn as they are so large that they need extra water, they are also strangely susceptible to disease and pests.

Giant dandelion - 30cm ruler and leaves of regular plant for scale

Massive parsley

The leaves are absolutely massive and have the strong taste that is common among flat leaf parsleys.  The leaf stalks (petioles) are so huge that they can be used in the place of celery.  The roots do fork a bit, and sometimes have a woody core, but are large and taste incredible roasted (as most parsley roots do).  

This is not yet a stable variety as it still produces a range of plants from large to massive.  Some plants produce large round leaves, but this trait is uncommon (even when self-pollinated) and may disappear from this variety.  I have mostly stopped growing this because it got too large.  It is too bad, I really enjoyed the look of absurdly large parsley plants.

Massive parsley leaf - 30cm ruler and leaf of regular plant

Improved coriander

I love coriander.  Far too often coriander is bred only using selection, and very rarely through crossing different varieties.  This is not a stable variety, and I am doing my best to ensure that it never will be.  I deliberately mass crossed a dozen or so varieties of coriander, some that were bred for leaf production, others for seed production, others were said to be slow bolting.  I keep introducing parent varieties, earlier generations, and other improved varieties.  The result is a highly genetically diverse population of mostly large leaf, large seed, and slow bolting coriander.  Most have the usual white coriander flowers, but some have pink/red stems and flowers.  When you grow this you cull anything that flowers early and you quickly establish a variety that is slow bolting in your garden. 

Coriander leaf

I can't get enough coriander

I really should add to this list in the future.  I have a lot of breeding lines, some are almost stable while others are still segregating.  

I also have a few lines of spring bulbs and other ornamental plants that I have bred, perhaps I should add them in here too.  Or maybe they deserve their own blog post? 

Hacor Coriander, Hot & Spicy Coriander

I love coriander (Coriandrum sativum), it is a great edible herb.

People either love coriander or they hate coriander, there does not appear to be much middle ground.  Some people have a broken gene which makes this smell and taste dreadful to them, but for the rest of us coriander leaf is excellent.

I have been growing coriander and deliberately crossing as many varieties as I can for a while.  The resultant seeds are genetically very diverse, and allow to quickly select for plants that perform well in different climates. 

Last year I got some seeds of 'Hacor coriander'.  Hacor coriander is also called 'slow bolting' and 'hot and spicy Coriander'.  Hacor coriander is said to have a stronger taste than regular coriander.  Like all coriander, this plant is grown for its edible leaves (which confusingly Americans call 'cilantro') and seeds/fruits (which Americans call 'coriander').

I liked the sound of hot and spicy coriander, so I grew some of this Hacor coriander to test it out.  I grew it partly to see what it was like, and partly to include in my mass crossed superior coriander.  I grew some that I bagged the flowers and saved seeds to keep them pure.

Coriander leaves

I thought hacor coriander was good, but nothing terribly special.  I didn't find it to have a stronger taste than my superior coriander, and I would not have thought to call i hot and spicy coriander. 

I might grow hacor coriander again, but I probably won't.  It was good, and productive, but nothing special.  I have crossed it with my superior coriander to keep the genetics diverse, so will likely grow that instead of hacor.

I sell seeds of Hacor coriander from bagged plants, as well as mixed seeds from my superior coriander through my for sale page.

Potato seedlings from true potato seed Australia

I was transplanting my seed grown potatoes the other day.  I have a few different breeding lines, some diploid, some tetraploid, some wild ancestors of modern potatoes, all grown from true potato seed.  

Growing from true botanical potato seed yields interesting results, and allows me to breed and create new varieties.  As the parent stock is usually quite heterozygous, each seedling is genetically unique.

Most of my potato seedlings looked much the same, some had a few stolons, others did not.  At this tiny size neither is unexpected.  One of my seedlings is producing tiny little tubers.

I can hardly wait to see what these turn into.

Potato seedling with tiny tubers

I didn't break this off, there is soil covering the stolon

This little seedling really wants to live!  It had 3 tiny little tubers (not all of them are in my photos) and a few other stolons.  It has since been planted in its own pot so I can evaluate it at the end of the season.

I mostly try to grow diploid potatoes as I find they taste better.  Unfortunately they tend to yield lower than tetraploids.  

These seedlings are from tetraploid potatoes, their parentage is far superior to anything you can get from the shops so I decided to try a few seedlings and see what I could produce.  It is far too early to tell, but hopefully something great comes out of this line.

I sell a small number of seed potatoes each year through my for sale page.  These are from lines that I have developed myself and grown from true potato seeds.  I can only do this in their correct season, some lines harvest several times per year, other lines only harvest once per year.  If you are interested keep an eye on my for sale page.

Breeding micro woolly tomatoes

I grow some varieties of micro tomatoes, the plants themselves reach about 10cm (4 inch) tall.  I also grow another variety of tomato with woolly leaf and black fruit.  So I decided to try and cross them and aim for a micro tomato plant with woolly foliage and blue/black fruit.

For a few years I keep meaning to cross the two, and things keep preventing this or I am not successful in making this cross or all my seedlings die.  Last year I attempted to make this cross again.

One of these seedlings is clearly different than the others

I am not great at cross pollinating tomatoes, my hands are less steady and my eyesight is not as keen as it once was, plus I sometimes emasculate flowers that are a little too old and have already shed some pollen.  

I decided to use Micro Tom as the seed parent.  Any self-pollinated seedlings would be micro dwarf, any F1 plants will be regular sized and have non-woolly foliage.  It should be easy to see within days of the seeds germinating if my cross had worked.

The three seedlings below were collected from Micro Tom.  Two are micro dwarf, and one is clearly larger.  This one is a result of my cross.

Micro Tom x Woolly Blue tomato F1

Once they grew a little larger this cross, between a dwarf and a micro-dwarf, is one of my largest tomato seedlings.  Hybrid vigour means the F1 grows well.

F1 hybrid vigour

The F1 plants will all be large plants, none will be micro dwarf.  I need to save a lot of seed from this F1 plant and grow as many seedlings as I can as the F2 is where I will start to see segregation.

The F2 plants will be a mix of large plants and micro dwarf, each of them will have a mix of regular leaf and woolly leaf, each of them will have a mix of different coloured fruit.  

Given the genes the parent stock had, there is a 1 in 256 chance of getting the plant I want from the F2.

Growing 256 plants does not guarantee what I am after, so I need to plant many hundreds of seeds.  I will be able to cull anything that is not micro dwarf at cotyledon stage.  I should then be able to cull anything that is not woolly at the first true leaf stage.  This will leave me with a more manageable number of plants to grow out to see if there are any high anthocyanin.  

To be honest, I am keen to grow out and stabilise any micro woolly lines even if they are not high anthocyanin as I think that micro woolly tomatoes sound like fun.  There may be some interesting things to come out of this cross.

The seed parent was Micro Tom, the smallest tomato plant in the world.

Micro Tom tomato under 4cm tall

Micro Tom tomatoes

The pollen parent has woolly foliage and high anthocyanin fruit.  It also has a few other interesting genes at play, so there is a lot of potential for interesting woolly foliage micro tomatoes.

Black fruited tomato

I don't have much else to say about these just yet as it is just a seedling.  Hopefully it flowers and fruits in season and I can save seeds.  

Stabilising micro dwarf tomatoes is a bit faster than normal tomatoes because I can usually get 2 or sometimes 3 generations per year out of them, while I can often only get one generation per year of larger tomatoes.

Breeding Better Tomatoes

I have been breeding tomatoes for a number of years, far more than I care to admit.  

I have a bunch of different breeding lines, each with a different end goal in mind, as well as a bunch of stable varieties that I have developed.  Some are named, some are not, some are better than others.  

If you read this blog you probably do a little backyard vegetable breeding, so you know what it is like.

Black on yellow skin, green flesh

I have been working with one line of tomatoes for a number of years now, and I think it is pretty close to a perfect salad tomato.  

It has all the traits I was after with these, and after the number of years I have been working on them I think they are stable enough for me to name them.  

These are probably the darkest true black tomatoes that you will ever see

They are a high anthocyanin line, meaning they are high in the same powerful antioxidant as blueberries and turn black where the sun hits them.  They carry more of this antioxidant than most other black tomatoes as they are intensely black.

The unripe fruit are purple like an eggplant, while the ripe fruit is incredibly black, which makes this variety ornamental as well as being productive and delicious. 

They are yellow underneath the black so you can easily tell when they are ripe without having to squeeze them.  They have green flesh, with an incredible taste.  They taste great raw in salads or on a sandwich, and are good cooked and in sauces.  

The fruit are round and smallish, but not too small to be useful on a sandwich.  They are very productive, and so far (heat, drought, smoke, and a mild wet summer) have not failed to crop well for me.

They are indeterminate and produce large crops from early in the season until killed by frosts.  They have regular leaf and in my garden do not appear overly bothered by any pest or disease.  The seeds are large enough that they have good germination, meaning seed saving is simple.

Black and yellow skin, green delicious flesh when ripe

I had a few lines and I was unsure which to continue with.  One tasted by far the best, but had green skin under the black so was difficult to see when it was ripe.  Another didn't taste quite as good, but had yellow skin under the black so was easier to see when it was ripe.  

Antioxidant rich and bursting with flavour

This variety has the best of both worlds.  It has the incredible taste that appears to be linked with green flesh, and has the yellow skin making it easier to see when it is ripe.  Where the sun hits the fruit it is darker black than any black tomato I have ever seen.

The richness of the black colour is incredible, only a few years ago this colour was unthinkable and all 'black' tomatoes were a muddy brown.  

Being so dark indicates incredibly concentrated anthocyanins.  Any part that is not hit by sunlight means you can tattoo them using stickers, much like what I did to my apples in the photo below.

Words and pictures can be stenciled onto apples using sunlight

these tomatoes are an incredible colour

Simple to tell when fruit is ripe

I have given these to a few people for a taste test, along with tomatoes from a dozen or so other varieties.  So far this has consistently been the favourite tasting larger fruiting tomato.  

I say they are consistently the favourite 'larger fruiting' tomato because so far everyone says that Verde Claro is their overall favourite tasting tomato.  Verde claro is a green when ripe cherry tomato, and has different uses to a slicing tomato, so you are not really comparing the same thing. 

Unripe tomatoes are purple like an eggplant

More unripe fruit

Tomato only turns black where hit by the sun

I am not good at naming things, but once they are named I will probably list seeds on my for sale page.  

While I am not certified organic (and have no interest in paying for certification) I have grown them organically since I started to breed them, and have selected for all the qualities that make them suited to backyard growing and delicious taste.