Another corn update

This is a follow up from my previous corn post.  These are just some of the more unusual varieties I grew this year.  At this stage I don't know if I will be able to grow corn next year, but we will see what happens.  I will have the seeds to plant the following year so if I do end up missing a year or two it is not the end of the world.


Argent
The argent white corn ended up doing a lot better than I thought it would.  Very few of the super sweet corns cope with extreme heat, most died off completely.  I love this variety, it is the most delicious variety of corn I have ever eaten.  Most of the cobs were not completely filled out due to the heat and some of it was crossed with another variety of corn (this was deliberate, it is simple to tell which seeds are which) and I ended up with what looks like a good amount of pure seed.

I expected less seeds to form than I ended up getting so am pretty happy.  I have had a severe genetic bottleneck here by starting with so few parent plants so plan to grow out as many seeds as possible next time.  If possible I would love to track down someone who is also growing argent and swap some seeds.

I deliberately crossed the argent with another variety of corn.  The F1 seed is coloured and the pure seed is white so can easily be separated.  I would love to grow out the F1 seed and produce a stable strain, but I may not have time or space so we will have to wait and see what happens.  I may even ask for someone to do a growout of some of this seed.

Some of the poorly filled out Argent cobs, white seeds are pure and coloured seeds are deliberate crosses

Giant Incan White corn
Watching this corn grow was amazing, it was different from every variety I have ever seen.  From a distance it is easy to tell this apart from every other variety.  It grew huge, then the heat damaged a lot of the plants.  Most varieties of corn will not shed pollen if the tops are damaged (making F1 seed simple to produce) but this variety decides to sprout and grow new tassels.  It is very resilient.  Each plant grew a cob, then they grew half a dozen more cobs from the same point!  I have never seen this trait in any other variety of corn.  Unfortunately I got very few cobs with any seeds due to the weather and wildlife.  These cobs are drying at the moment, it looks like I will get a small amount of seed from these.

One cob, you can see more cobs starting to form underneath

Cobs forming 7 feet up the stalk, the leaves all have damage from the heat

The cob was just starting to produce silk

Giant Inca white corn next to mini blue popcorn

Glass Bead corn
What can I say, these guys know what they are doing.  Nothing particularly bothers glass bead corn.  It is now a good popcorn, in another year or two if things keep going the way they are going it will be a great popcorn variety.

Mini blue popcorn
This was damaged by the heat badly but still provided a decent yield.  The plants grew well, the cobs look great and are mostly well filled out and the seeds pop extremely well.  The plants had to compete with grass and had a small fruit tree close by with roots under them.  My kids think this popcorn is heaps of fun.  I wrote a separate post on this little guy.

Blue popcorn plants - growing well in less than ideal conditions

mini blue popcorn cobs - not too bad considering the growing conditions

Blue sweetcorn
This is actually a decent variety of corn, I don't know why I have not heard of it anywhere else.  I got a good number of cobs, most were poorly filled out due to the weather.  I like the look of blue corn so plan on growing this again.

Blue sweetcorn, poorly filled out cobs this year but it produced a good number of seed.

I am selling seeds of some corn varieties but not others.  At this stage I can not sell seeds from every variety, hopefully one day I will be able to do that.  Please visit my for sale page if you are interested.

Duck potato or arrowhead

I became interested in aquatic vegetables when watering plants in the morning and afternoon over summer was not enough.  The soil gets so dry here that no amount of water seems to be enough.

Planting in pots and sitting the pot in water works, but growing in the soil is difficult as the water gets sucked away from the plants into the subsoil.  Deep rooted plants such as comfrey are meant to be drought proof but they do poorly here as most of the soil moisture is in the upper layers of the soil and deep down is very dry. That is kind of the opposite of how things should be, but the climate here is semi-arid so all the rules are different.

Aquaponics sounds like a good idea, my small scale proof of concept tanks both work rather well, but the set up costs for a proper system are prohibitive.  Growing things in a bucket of soil covered in water sounded like a feasible idea so I decided to try some aquatic vegetables.  I have tried a few water vegetables and they have all worked well.

One of the best things about duck potatoes is that they look amazing.  They have cool leaves with arrow shapes.  People grow them on the edges of ponds purely for ornamental purposes.  I wish I had taken pictures of the leaves.  Next year hopefully I will remember to take more pictures while they are growing.

Duck potato tuber straight out of the mud, they are good looking little guys

How I heard of duck potatoes

I first heard of something similar to these when I was in the Arctic.  I stayed in a small village and the elders spoke of a water vegetable they traditionally used to eat but the young people have all but forgotten about, the english name was "Eskimo potato".  They said it grew in the mud under the water in a certain place, they described it to me and I did my best to understand.  As they did not speak much english and I did not understand much Inuktitut we did our best.

The next day I went out to the spot that was described to me.  It was a spot that was reputedly good fishing but some people said to never go to as large bears live there and they would kill and eat me.  I had a few close calls with angry bears earlier so knew they were not telling tall tales.  I went out and was followed by one of the town dogs who decided to follow me and protect me, he had protected me from a bear before so I figured I would be safe enough.  When I got there I saw lots of bear prints and bear poo, some of the bear prints were huge so I knew that large bears were around.  I wore board shorts and waded into the frigid arctic water and started to dig in the mud for something which I hoped was the word for 'tuber' and not the word for 'musk rat' or anything else that would bite me.  After a short time I found what I hoped was the correct thing, it looked a bit small but it is the arctic after all, then I found hundreds more.  I dug them up and threw them to shore.  I had planned on getting more but was too cold so took what I had back to the village and dried off and got dressed.

I was told never to eat these raw and did not know how to cook them so I did not try any of them, instead I divided them up and distributed them to several houses of the elders.  I figured if I did this without telling anyone the next time I saw an elder they would smile at me, something they only did rarely with me and never to any other outsider that I had seen.  The next day I was given some baked tubers, they were delicious.  I collected these tubers several times, most times the dog followed me and made me feel safe.  Each time I divided them between the elders and occasionally they gave me some cooked ones in return.

I have been searching for these "Eskimo Potatoes' in Australia but can not find them, the nearest thing I can find are these duck potato. If eskimo potatoes exist in Australia I would love to grow them and eat them.

Duck potatoes growing in a bucket

How I grow duck potatoes or arrowhead in a bucket

I grew these duck potatoes in a similar way to water chestnuts.  I planted each duck potato at the beginning of spring about 5cm deep in a punnet of moist soil, it was no damper than any seed raising soil.  The plants then sprouted nicely.  When the plants grew a leaf I put the punnets in a container with some water, kind of like how you grow carnivorous plants.  The water level was kept below the tubers at this stage to prevent them from rotting.  When the plants were 10cm or more tall and the roots were coming out of the bottom of the punnet I planted each of them into a separate bucket where it would spend the season. 

The bucket had manure, clay and subsoil mixed into it and had been filled to 5cm from the rim.  This bucket had been filled with water for a few weeks so the nitrogen cycle could work its magic as fresh manure would burn and kill plants.  I had duckweed growing over the surface of the water.  From here I pretty much just kept the buckets topped up with water.

The little duck potatoes grew very well at the start, each getting several new leaves and looking great.  We had a few late frosts, the duck potato is meant to be ok with this but mine fared worse than the water chestnuts and had all of their leaves burned off, but they grew back.  They grew well until the heat of summer hit, so I moved the buckets into the shade of a tree and they picked up.  I let them grow there in the shade until winter came, doing nothing other than topping up the water when I was out watering the other vegetables.  It really was rather simple, there are no weed issues as the weeds can not survive being submerged all the time.

Duck potatoes growing in a 10L bucket with duckweed starting to cover the surface

The yield

Harvesting duck potatoes is simple.  The plants are allowed to grow Spring, Summer and Autumn, when the leaves die off they are ready to be harvested.  Growing in soft mud makes it simple enough to feel around and pull them out by hand.

The yield when grown in a pond or a bathtub is meant to be rather high.  I do not have a pond and wanted to know if I could grow them in a 10L bucket like I did with the water chestnuts.  I planted one tuber per bucket and the first bucket returned 17 tubers, most of which were edible sized.  There may well have been a few more large tubers in there too but my hands got too cold searching through the mud for them and the kids were bugging me so I stopped.  I could have tipped the bucket out and searched through which would have made things easier but I was trying not to lose all of the duckweed.  The other buckets yield should be about the same, if not I will try to write a comment or blog post about it.

Yield from one 10L bucket, there may have been more but my hands got too cold looking for them

Using a larger container would have provided a larger yield.  Having the water deeper would have also been better for them too.  I think ideally the water needs to be 15 to 30 cm deep as the leaves get kind of tall and use the water to help support their weight.  They are a beautiful looking plant, one that could easily be grown in an ornamental pond.


Where to buy duck potatoes or arrowhead in Australia

I plan to grow these again.  Being perennial all I have to do is keep a few tubers each year to keep my little population going.  Next time I may try to find a larger bucket to see if that helps increase yield as much as I think it will.  I may also try to put a few fish into the water and see how they go.  I do sometimes sell duck potato tubers on my for sale page.

Reisetomate tomatoes in Australia

A while ago I heard of an ancient Peruvian heirloom tomato that did not grow round or oblong like most tomatoes, but grew segments that one could separate like a mandarin or an orange.  This tomato could be eaten one segment at a time without the use for a knife.  This sounded intriguing, I wanted to see a tomato like this.

After some research I found that it was called "Reisetomate".  I saw some pictures of it and it did indeed have segments like an orange.  The fruit looked amazing but I was concerned it may be just a novelty tomato.  I have no time for novelty vegetables so I wanted to know more.

Reisetomate tomato with some segments removed

Apparently it is an incredibly rare and ancient heirloom variety.  This variety may actually predate the Spanish conquistadors going to South America.  There are unsubstantiated stories of this variety being used by the Incas when they were traveling and tearing off a segment at a time to eat.  The name Reisetomate is apparently German and means "traveler tomato" eluding to the fact that this variety is carried on trips to be eaten without the use of a knife.  I also hear that this is one of the varieties of tomato that the Amish grow, if this is true then this variety is a no-nonsense productive variety.  I became more curious and wanted to grow one.

I wanted to try this variety, but they are so rare that it is difficult to find anyone who has seeds.  Tomato seeds can not be imported into Australia without huge trouble and expense so I had to find somewhere local to purchase seed.  After searching I found only one place which had Reisetomate seeds for sale in Australia.  There were not even any dodgy ebay sellers which I had hoped to see as they can drive the price down a little.  The one company that sold them was demanding an outrageous price for a small number of seeds and was a company which I have had a lot of trouble with in the past.  I rarely buy seeds anymore so there is a chance that company has lifted its game.  I did not know if the risk was worth it and was about to give up on trying to grow Reisetomate tomatoes.  

Luckily a friend of mine kindly bought me the seeds as he knew how excited I was about this variety.  I waited for weeks and the seeds never arrived.  Several weeks later my friend contacted the company and they then sent out the seeds.  I planted some seeds and kept some in case things went wrong.  Tomatoes are simple to grow from cuttings so I figured planting a small number of seeds would be ok as I could still get a large number of plants by taking cuttings.

The plants were growing well and were about to flower, then the heat of summer hit.  The flowers are not like an ordinary tomato flower, they an odd and multiply fasciated flower, some with exposed stamens and pistils.  Like many heirloom tomatoes this variety will cross pollinate with other tomatoes.  Apparently this variety is notorious for cross pollinating with other tomatoes so I was careful to plant it in a separate vegetable garden to my yellow pear tomatoes.  This is one of the positives to having two vegetable gardens spaced so far apart.

Reisetomate flowers

The plants all flowered and grew well, but the temperature was too high and the flowers withered and died.  Apparently temperatures in the mid 40's denatures tomato pollen and prevents fruit set.  Cooler nights may have helped overcome this, but the nights don't always cool down out here over summer.

The plants grew about 5 or 6 feet tall and probably would have grown a lot taller if they had more water, protection from the heat, and better soil.  Many of the stems are covered in small roots searching for soil and anywhere the stems touched the ground they firmly rooted.  After a little over 9 weeks of daytime temps in the 40's the weather cooled down (to the high 30's) and the plants started setting a lot of fruit.  The tiny green fruits looked very odd, kind of like weird little green brains, and gave me a good idea of what the fruit would look like when it ripened.

Unripe Reisetomate tomatoes - very productive plants

More unripe Reisetomate tomatoes

When the first fruits began to ripen I was perplexed.  Each fruit is like a cluster of small tomatoes fused together with many odd lobes.  The first set had one or two lobes on each fruit that looked like it was rotten so I did not know what to do.  After picking them I found out that the rotten looking lobes had been infected by fruit fly.  It was simple to remove and discard the infected lobes, then the rest of the fruit was unharmed and fine to eat.  After the first few I got on top of the fruit fly and all of the tomatoes were fine after that.

Ripe Reisetomate tomatoes

These tomatoes have provided large yields, far larger than any other variety I have grown.  I can not imagine how productive they would be in a more mild climate.  I have read some seed sellers claim they produce 1.1kg per plant and others claim over 25kg per plant, mine produced somewhere in the middle.  They are the highest yielding variety of tomato I have ever grown.  Perhaps next year I will weigh all the fruit from one plant to find out for sure.  They seem to survive through some light frosts with no issues but I am guessing the heavy frosts will kill them.  I am told in climates without frost they can be a short lived perennial which survive and produce for half a dozen years.  I am also told that without frost the stems can get as thick as your wrist after a few years and can only be cut down with a chainsaw.  After growing these under difficult circumstances and seeing how strong and determined they are I believe this is entirely possible. 

Reisetomate tomato, simple to pull apart segments

After tasting these tomatoes I want to grow them each year from here on.  The taste is amazing, they are by far the best tasting tomato I have ever eaten.  They have a deep and strong taste, they are not sweet or insipid like some cherry tomatoes. Sometimes they can be a bit too sour, a little salt reduces that and brings out their full flavour.  I love their intensity, just thinking about it makes my mouth water... 

We use these tomatoes fresh pulled apart in segments.  I love them like this and it is my favourite way to eat them.  We also use them cooked in any dish that requires tomato, they seem well suited to this and bring a depth of flavour and complexity to a dish that many tomatoes lack.  We slice them for sandwiches and the like, they taste amazing but their odd shape makes them less than ideal for this purpose.  They can be pulled apart and put into salads like a cherry tomato.  Being so intense and full of flavour I assume that they would make a decent sauce or paste but I have not tried this myself so can't be certain.

The question I keep asking myself is why these are so rare.  Many things are rare because they are not worth having or are too new.  Reisetomate tomatoes are older than any other variety of domesticated tomato that I know of, they taste amazing, yield tremendously high, apparently have disease resistance (I do not have tomato diseases so can only go off what I have read), and look great.  I can only assume their rarity is due to being unfit for mechanical harvest.

These plants show a lot of diversity of their fruit.  On one branch of a plant you will have some fruit that split into perfect segments as well as some fruit which does not split as perfectly.  Apparently this is mostly due to growing conditions rather than genetics.  I only save seed from the plants which have most of its fruit which splits cleanly and evenly into segments, I only save seed from the best fruits from those plants, I figure this is worth doing even though I don't know how heritable this trait is.

I do sell Reisetomate tomato seeds, I have them listed on my for sale page.

Corn update

This has been an extremely long summer.  We have had week after week of temperatures in the 40's and no rain.  Many of my types of corn have not survived, or has had a lot of trouble and will not produce much seed.  All of the corn has purslane (Portulaca oleracea) growing as a living mulch to keep the soil cooler etc.  In some beds this living mulch is well over a foot deep, but it is still not enough when the temperature is so high day and night.  I thought I would write about the progress of a few of the more interesting varieties of corn.

Argent - white super sweet corn
I planted all 11 of the precious 'Argent' super sweet white corn seeds that I had.  Out of them only 4 grew.  As far as seed saving goes that is rather precarious and any small mishap could cause me to lose them all.  This has prevented me from eating any argent corn this year as I want as much diversity in the seeds as I can get from such a small number of plants.  These plants suffered a lot of damage from the heat but are still growing strong.  The plants grew to about 1.5m tall and all are producing several (from 2 to 4) cobs.  Unfortunately as I had so few plants these cobs seem to be poorly filled.  The timing of the flowering was such that they were shedding pollen when the temperature was over 40C, as a result much of the pollen was denatured by the heat, resulting in few seeds being formed.  Extreme heat combined with a low number of plants is not good for corn cob formation.  Hopefully things go well and I end up with enough seeds between them so that I can do a large growout of this variety next year.  With work I should be able to keep this strain going without too much inbreeding depression.  If I ever find anyone growing this strain I will try to swap some seeds with them so that I can broaden the gene pool a little.

Inca giant white corn
I planted a small number of these seeds (only about 25), and most grew.  I have been told that this variety is highly daylight sensitive and it may not produce cobs in my location.  Being a landrace corn there is a lot of genetic diversity.  This has grown very tall and thick, some up to 3 metres tall with stalks that are about as thick as my wrist, some are far thicker.  Some plants are short and spindly.  They seem to be growing roots up the stalk, sometimes 3 or 4 nodes up.  Normally this would not seem odd, but when stalks are this tall it means that roots are growing a foot or two above the soil.  It has only just started to produce tassels and shed pollen.  Unfortunately it has shown no sign of growing any silk and I do not know if it will even attempt to produce any cobs.  Even if it does begin to produce cobs I do not know if it will have time to ripen before the first frosts kill the plants.  These have also suffered a lot from the relentless heat with many of the higher leaves damaged.  This small population has displayed a lot of genetic diversity in terms of growth, hopefully this is enough for it to survive and produce cobs in my climate.

Giant Inca White Corn - very thick stalks.  Purslane just starting to grow as a living mulch

Giant Incan white corn - another older picture showing the diversity in this population

Glass bead corn
These guys pretty much know what they are doing here.  While they experienced a little damage from the heat they seem to do a lot better than the other corn varieties.  Hopefully it will not be long until this is a good multicoloured pop corn.

Mini blue popcorn
These suffered badly from the heat but are still growing.  They are small plants, maybe some of the taller plants have grown up to a meter, most are shorter than a meter.  They have also only just started to grow tassels and have not yet shown any signs of silk or cobs.  Many plants have multiple stems so if they do produce cobs there should be a good number of them.  Hopefully they have time to produce a crop before the first frost kills them as the kids are keen to pop some blue corn.

Blue sweet corn
I grew a decent number of these in the hope of eating most of the cobs as well as saving seed from a good number of plants.  They grew from about 1.5 meters with a few up to 2 meters tall.  Unfortunately the heat has also damaged these badly.  They too have been shedding pollen in 40+ heat and mostly have poorly filled out cobs.  It has been a long and hard summer, I am happy that they have even survived as it shows how resilient they are.  Some plants produced multiple cobs, but most only produced one.  Some of the plants grew multiple stems but this trait does not seem to be too common in this variety.  As far as sweet corn goes, this one seems to be a winner.  Even though my preference is for white super sweet corn I plan to grow this variety again if I save enough seed.  The naturally high level of antioxidants as seen by the blue colouration is a bonus.  There are not many varieties of coloured sweet corn in Australia so it kind of makes it more important to continue growing it.

When they are ready, if I have enough I will try to sell some of these corn varieties through my For Sale page.

Growing Water Chestnuts in Buckets

The water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) is a type of sedge that is found growing in tropical wetlands of the world.  They are simple to grow, highly productive, and nutritious.  As well as providing food for you, they yield a decent amount of straw as well as providing habitat for frogs and water insects, all in all they are an excellent permaculture vegetable.

I always wanted to grow water chestnuts, but was never able to find any to plant.  People often comment that they are cheap to buy from supermarkets so they are not worth growing, but I have never seen them for sale except in cans.  I have no idea what chemicals are used on the water chestnuts that I do buy in a can.  I do not know where they grow, how far they have traveled to reach me, how they are grown, or anything like that so growing my own water chestnuts organically seems like a sensible approach.

I have heard of a lot of different ways to grow water chestnuts, and I have heard a lot of people complain that they tried to grow them and failed miserably.  So I thought I would write a post about how I grow them, this is not necessarily the best way, but it works for me and requires very little time and effort.

Water chestnuts growing in buckets

How I grow water chestnuts

The first mistake people make is rotting the dormant water chestnut corms.  I plant the corms in a small pot or punnet and keep it reasonably damp until they sprout.  I used 10cm square pots that we had in the shed, I put the cheapest potting mix in and planted the corms so that they were not quite touching each other.  I do not make it any more damp than I would if I were germinating tomato seeds.  If you put the corms under water prior to them sprouting I believe that they will mostly rot and die.  I planted them in late winter/early spring and kept them away from frost.

I then watered like I would any seedling until they were about 5cm tall.  At this stage I put the pot in an ice cream container and filled water half way up the pot, a few days later I put water up to the top of the pot so that the soil level was at the water level.  I then left the water level there for a few weeks.  This gives the water chestnut a chance to grow roots and the leaves start to collect energy for the plant ready for the next step.

People make a few mistakes in the nest step, they make the water too deep and they do not use enough soil.  Water chestnuts grow in soil, that is where they produce their crop, so if there is not enough soil then they will produce a small crop or a crop of very small corms.  They are an emergent plant, which means that while the roots are below water, the top of the plant must be in the air otherwise they will die.  I then separate the corms and plant them in soil which had about 10cm of water on top of it.  In this way the little plants were just under the surface of the water and would grow out of the water in a few days.  You can make the water deeper, but not too deep, up to about 30cm should not harm the plants but any deeper than this and they may struggle.

In a perfect world they never experience any frost, unfortunately mine seem to see a few light frosts when they are young.  I try to make sure the frost they see is not too hard and they seem to do fine with it.  Interestingly they handled a light frost better than duck potatoes.  They even had some ice on top of the water a few times, while it is less than ideal they are hardy enough to cope with that.

The water chestnuts then grow during the warm weather and die down in autumn.  When they die down the water level is dropped and the corms are left to dry a bit in the soil.  When they have dried down a bit they are dug up and eaten or stored.  If they are ever completely dry they will die.

Water chestnuts growing in the shade of a plum tree

Where I grow water chestnuts

Ideally you would grow water chestnuts on the edge of a pond or slow flowing stream.  In a perfect world they would colonise this water edge and all you would do is go and collect them.  Many people, including myself, do not have access to a pond or stream so this method is unachievable.  

Many people who do not have access to a pond grow them in a bathtub, while this method sounds great it takes up space and you have to be able to find a free bathtub.  Finding free things where I live is almost impossible so I had to think of another way.  I have heard of people growing them in an icecream container filled with soil and submerged in a fish pond, they say they yield about 30 corms per container.  Again this sounds great but requires a fish pond which I do not have.

People often tell of growing them in styrofoam broccoli boxes that they get for free from the fruit and veg shop, out here we can not buy styrofoam boxes let alone convince a shop owner to give them away so I had to keep thinking.  

There are a lot of plastic tubs and boxes that I have seen used, but they all cost too much, I want to produce high quality food for cheap.

I found some cheap buckets for sale, buckets hold water, they look ok, they are easy to find in pretty much every town, they are large enough for one corm each, and they do not take up too much space.  If you only had a balcony this method would still work.  So I decided that buckets would be the containers I would use in which to grow water chestnuts.

I then dug up some subsoil clay, mixed it with animal manure, put it in the buckets to about 5cm from the top, and filled with water.  The soil settles a bit over the next little while so you end up with more water above the soil level.  

It is important to leave it for a few weeks because if you planted directly into this the water chestnuts would rot.  Any weed seeds germinate in the wet soil, the weeds can not survive being constantly under water so they die off reasonably quickly and pose no problems.  Over the next few weeks the water goes green, then crystal clear, then green a few times as algal blooms deal with excess nutrients.  This is good, do not worry when this happens as this is what you want.  The water seems to do this on and off throughout the entire growing season, again do not worry as this is normal.

People are often afraid of clay or subsoil, but they hold a lot of minerals.  Being underwater it makes the soil soft enough for plant roots to penetrate and renders these minerals available to the growing plants.  The only thing to watch for is that no rocks are in the mix.

Water chestnuts growing in a bucket with duckweed

Once the water has had a few weeks to work itself out I then plant the water chestnuts in the fertile mud.  They were not tall enough to reach the air yet, but that is ok.  By now they should be strong enough to grow a bit to reach out of the water.  I also put a bit of duckweed floating on the water surface.  The duckweed grows to cover the water surface and blocks light from the algae.  It also slows evaporation, cools the soil by providing shade and helps out in a bunch of other ways.  If you have access to azolla I would include that too as it fixes nitrogen from the soil and fertilises your water chestnuts.

As the water chestnuts grow to fill the bucket they send out rhizomes, I had a spare bucket of mud so broke off one of these rhizomes and planted it.  It did not take long before it grew so much that I could not tell which bucket had a corm planted and which one was from the rhizome.  From here I simply kept the water at the top of the bucket by filling it up each afternoon when watering other vegetables.

Everywhere you read and everyone you talk to will say that you must grow water chestnuts in direct sun and avoid shade at all costs.  At first this is what I did and it went well for me, but then summer came along and it got too hot.  Even though there was still water in the buckets the plants were suffering from the relentless heat.  Being in buckets made it simple to move the water chestnuts under the shade of a tree.  I moved 2 buckets at first to see if that helped, those plants started growing again while the ones in direct sun were still going poorly.  Now I grow all the water chestnuts under part shade, they seem to be growing fine there.


How I harvest water chestnuts

When the time is right the foliage of the water chestnuts starts to yellow off.  This is a signal to stop watering the buckets.  When they have dried off for a while you then dig through and collect the water chestnuts.  It is important not to let the corms freeze if you are planning on replanting them the next year as freezing will kill them.  If you plan on eating them freezing is fine.

I wrote another post here about the yield I got from a bucket of water chestnuts.


Where to find Water Chestnuts for sale in Australia

I sell water chestnuts for planting and growing on my For Sale page. As you can see above they are simple to grow and very productive.  Chinese water chestnuts are a great perennial vegetable and fit in well in a permaculture vegetable garden.

Broadbeans

I am not all that fond of eating broad beans.  I think I have eaten them maybe 2 or 3 times in my life and have never particularly liked them.  I have, however, grown broad beans and saved their seeds many times.

Why grow Broad Beans (Vicia faba)

I used to grow broad beans as green manure or mulch.  As a green manure they are fantastic, they protect the soil, they prevent winter weeds from getting a start, the roots incorporate nitrogen into the soil, the tops add a lot of carbon rich organic matter, and they grow over the cooler months when little else needs the space, they are easy to chop/kill and you can plant seedlings directly into the dead patch.  As a mulch they do ok, being high in nitrogen it tends to break down a bit too fast unless you use a very thick layer, but it certainly has its uses in the vegetable garden.  The variety I am growing now, I first purchased seeds before my first child was born, he "helped" me to plant and save broad bean seeds a few times.


Then for some years I didn't plant broad beans.  I didn't really think about them at all because I don't eat them.  No great loss.

This year I decided to find the old seeds and plant them, just to see if anything would happen.  I wanted to grow a good winter green manure and remembered how good the broad beans are for this purpose.  I planted seeds which I saved about 5 years ago that had not been stored properly and am happy to say that I had an 80% germination rate.  The plants grew well, they flowered well, the bees loved them over winter when they had little else to eat, and they produced a decent crop.  I fed most of the crop to the animals as we have had no real pasture in a while, then decided to let some pods mature properly so I could save fresh seeds for next year. 

I now have a small jar of fresh seeds waiting to be planted in autumn.  This is the beauty of heirloom vegetables, you buy seeds once, then you have them forever if you like them and can be bothered saving seeds from time to time.  You can also add selective pressure for desirable traits, unlike store bought seeds which have mostly been selected for mechanical harvest.  I only save seeds from pods with the most seeds and the largest seeds, in this way I am adding selective pressure for longer pods and larger seeds.  If anyone eats broad beans these are useful traits, for someone like me who only wants green manure longer pods with more seeds make saving seed faster and easier.  Larger seeds tend to grow faster and stronger than small seeds.  Unfortunately I can not select for taste as I do not eat them, considering that no commercial seeds are selected for taste my plants certainly wont be any worse than theirs.

 

The variety I grow

The variety I am growing is called "Aquadulce".  It is an heirloom variety that is very old, no one knows the date for sure but certainly pre 1850.  Aquadulce originated in Spain from a selection of Haba de Sevilla Broad Bean.  It was illustrated in the 'Album Vilmorin' in 1871.  I don't know why but I find the history of vegetables, and where each variety came from, to be interesting.  Broad beans are one of the very few vegetables that people in Australia eat which did not originate from the Americas. 

To the best of my knowledge aquadulce is a reasonably common type of broad bean, it is hardy and productive so it is grown commercially in some places.  I mostly grow rare varieties of things, but sometimes the common varieties such as this one are great so I grow them.  My first aim is to grow things that are useful, everything else comes in second.

Aquadulce is a tall plant that grows to about 1 meter, sometimes a bit taller, sometimes a bit shorter.  It has never been inbred too much nor has it had much selective pressure put on it in the past hundred years so it has maintained a bit of genetic variability.  Some people trim the tops as they believe this enhances yield, honestly I do not know if that helps or is simply a commonly held vegetable myth which actually reduces crops.  Aquadulce broad beans grow multiple stems and are very bushy which helps to exclude light from the soil and helps reduce water loss from the soil and suppress weeds.  Some people stake them to prevent them falling over, I have never done that and after the first year or so I never had any plants fall over.  I think this is due to me saving seeds only from plants that did not fall over.

This variety grows 15cm long green pods with about 5 or 6 large yellowish/green/light brown (I am not real good at naming colours, they are nothing remarkable colour wise) flat seeds in each.  The flowers are black and white and have a nice fragrance which is difficult to describe.  They are often described as "heavy cropping" but as I have only ever grown this one variety I can not compare them to other varieties.  All I do know is that each plant does give what I consider to be an acceptable yield for a small amount of space.

This variety is known for having some tolerance to waterlogging.  While this trait is of no use to me here I am sure it is useful in other gardens.  In particularly wet years this trait should be useful.  It is also grown commercially in some places as it has tolerance to iron and manganese deficiencies.  Being tolerant to deficiencies of iron and manganese means that they grow ok if your soil lacks these, but if your soil is not lacking the plants are more robust and healthy.

Some of my Broadbean seeds

Saving Seed

Broad beans are notorious cross pollinators so if you plan on saving seeds please be careful.  They are simple to save seed from.  You let them flower and set pods, you let the pods mature and dry on the plants, then you select the best pods and remove their seeds and put them somewhere safe.  It is important to have a decent number of plants to save seed from so as to prevent problems arising from inbreeding depression.

Broadbean seeds, some dark, some light, the dark ones are higher in iron

I do plan on getting another variety to plant next autumn, I have not decided on which one as I have two in mind that each sound nice and both need more people to maintain them.  I would have to work hard to ensure the two strains do not cross and remain pure.  Having two vegetable gardens which are separate makes this a bit easier.  It also would not be out of the question to grow 2 or 3 varieties on alternate years as the seed remains viable for some time.  For someone like me who is growing broad beans as a green manure it does not matter so much which variety I grow as long as it works here.  I figure if I am going to bother growing anything, even if it is only for green manure, I may as well grow some pure strain and select for desirable traits.

Like everything else I do sell broad bean seeds on my For Sale page.

Who doesn't love corn

There are fewer and fewer varieties of corn available in Australia.  This is concerning as it is no longer possible to import corn seed for the purposes of growing (although supermarkets do import popcorn for eating, most of which is contaminated with GM corn).  Many of the varieties that I grew when I was a teenager are no longer around in Australia.  Some are no great loss while others will be sorely missed.

Many people who sell corn seeds on Ebay or similar places sell such small numbers of seed that you can not get a crop.  Even if you are lucky enough to get a crop their stock is often suffering from severe inbreeding depression because they do not know what they are doing when saving seed so it is nearly impossible to recover the variety.  Many also sell unknown crosses of corn because they do not know what they are doing when it comes to saving seeds.  When people are out to make easy money like this they also tend not to select for any desirable traits, so popcorn stops popping, long cob forms have regular sized cobs, coloured corn loses its vibrancy and so on.  This makes the heirloom corn situation in Australia rather dire.

It is not all doom and gloom though.  I know a few people who grow corn and attempt to keep their strains pure as well as avoiding inbreeding depression while selecting for desirable traits.  Others are developing new varieties.  Some of which have kindly sent me some of their seeds to grow. 

As well as these dedicated growers and seedsavers, the Australian Government has a seed bank containing seeds of various vegetable and agricultural plants.  They occasionally distribute small amounts of this seed to researchers, plant breeders and very rarely people who are interested in maintaining a particular line.  They impose a lot of strict rules regarding seeds when they do distribute them, I am lucky enough to have some of their corn seeds.

I am working on improving the Glass Bead corn by selecting for it to be a better popcorn.  So far I have made a lot of ground in a short amount of time.  If all goes well I will continue this and end up with an improved strain of glass bead corn, if things go poorly I should be able to cross it with a different type of popcorn to incorporate some more of the "popping" genes.

I also have dreams of breeding an improved blue sweet corn or blue super sweet corn.  If it works this will take me a few years.  I also have a few other plans, but do not want to say too much about them as I do not know how much time or space I will be able to put into any corn breeding projects so may not actually start them for a few years.

Below are some pictures of some of the corn seeds that I currently have, I have included a tape measure so that you can see the size of the seeds, some are huge while others are tiny.  They have come from people who are preserving particular lines, people who are breeding new varieties, as well as from the Government seed bank.  I also have a bunch of different yellow sweet corns and supersweet corns as well as bicolour sweet corn and supersweet corn but have not taken their pictures as they pretty much all look the same when they are seeds.  At this stage I have too many to be able to grow them all each year, so only the best will make it through.

Argent White Supersweet - I LOVE argent so it is too bad I have so few seeds

Fingers crossed I will get a good crop out of Argent and be able to save seeds.  I really do love this variety of corn, I don't know why it is so difficult to find.  Unfortunately I had a low germination rate from a low number of seeds so things are not looking good.

Aztec corn

Aztec multicoloured - a different variety of multicoloured corn

Glass Bead Corn - you can see that it is almost a popcorn and is distinct from other 'Aztec' types

This is the glass bead corn that I have been working on.  You can see clearly that it is a pop corn, what you can't see is that it is not a great popcorn yet.  Hopefully a few years will fix that.  It is very different from the two types of multi coloured Aztec corn above.  It also has some genes that the other types do not appear to have.

Blue Sweetcorn

Floriana Red Flint

Giant Incan White

Where do you begin with Giant Incan White corn?  So much potential.  Each kernel is absolutely HUGE.  To the best of my knowledge nowhere in Australia has this except for the government seed bank and they are not at all keen on distributing it to anyone for any reason.  Unfortunately it is also extremely daylight sensitive so I do not know if it will grow where I live.  I also do not know what "Viability NULL%" means.  I hope it simply means that it has not been tested and will still germinate well for me.  It has been planted and I am trying to be patient so only time will tell.

Hopi Blue Dent

Hopi Turquoise

Long Ear Synthetic

Mini Blue Popcorn - look how small the kernels are

I used to grow this when I was a kid.  The cobs are small and look pretty good.  The seeds are tiny, compare this to the size of the Giant Incan White and then to a regular corn seed.  From memory it produces half a dozen cobs per plant.  Like all popcorn it pops white.  It is fun for the kids to grow.

Thai Supersweet

Variegated Aztec - each kernel is stripey

It may not seem normal to catalog seeds like this, but it should be useful in the future.  As I start to improve varieties or create new varieties this will be useful to look back upon to see how far each one has come.

I am glad that the government has a seed bank with things like this, I am also glad that they distribute it to researchers and breeders.  I am very lucky that I have been considered worthy of growing these seeds, especially the Giant Incan White corn.  The only down sides that I can see are that they only give 30 seeds and you only get one shot at it, so I have all my eggs in one basket.  If we have a late/early frost, locust, fire, flood, or anything else that causes crop failure then these seeds are gone and there is no way for me to ever have another try.

The only corn seeds I will be selling for the moment are the glass bead corn, hopefully I will be able to add some of the others at some stage.  Everything that I sell is listed on the For Sale page if you are interested.

Pickled Eggs - with challenge

What to do with a massive abundance of eggs i.e. 8+ dozen eggs?

Option 1, have an egg overdose. I tried hard oh boy did I try hard. Eggs for lunch, eggs for afternoon tea and quiche for dinner. So after a day or two of that, I got pretty jack of eggs.

Option 2, feed them to the dog. Opted out of that dog food is cheaper.

Option 3, cook-a-thon. Meringue, magic bean cake, pancakes with double eggs, smoothies with 4 eggs. custard...... ok so I have a newborn this is not going to happen. I may have made each of those things once over a week. I need more hands, more sleep and more time.

Option 4, preserving the eggs. Insane yes. Has this ever been done of course it has. So we decided to brine some and pickle some. Do they taste good, no one will tell us.

Today we look at pickling the eggs.

Step 1. Boil 28 eggs (tip boil extra you may completely cock up the shelling of some and they wont be usable)

Step 2. Peel the eggs, oh yes have you ever seen an egg peeled. I am the master of all masters of egg peeling. I challenge you to better my peeling and share your pic.

Step  3. Pickle your eggs. We decided on a beetroot pickle.
RED BEET EGGS
1 cup red beet juice (from canned beets)
1½ cups apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon brown sugar
a few canned whole tiny red beets (or several slices of beets can be used)

We fit 21 eggs in this jar. Looking now I am wondering if they are too cramped. Time will tell.

Step 4. Store in fridge and wait 1-4 weeks depending where you are reading before you get to taste test your efforts.