Mini blue popcorn

Mini blue popcorn is heaps of fun to grow.  The plants take up little room, produce cute little cobs, and the popcorn from them is fantastic.

I first grew mini blue popcorn when I was a teenager as an ornamental corn that was also fed to the chickens and things.  At that time I don't think we ever popped it, I am not sure if I had even eaten pop corn back then.  After I moved out of home no vegetables were grown and what was left of the seed disappeared over the years.

After moving here I decided to track some mini blue popcorn down again and grow it with my kids.  My littlest boy Nanuq is particularly fond of corn and likes the colour blue.  He was very excited to help me plant some blue popcorn to grow.

I started with a good number of seed, then carefully picked through it to select the best seeds both in colour and conformation to plant.  I ended up planting a decent number of seeds, being a mini corn allows it to be fit into small spaces so I was able to grow more plants in the area.

mini blue popcorn starting to form tassels, stalks are shorter on the right hand side

The plants grew well, most germinated and those that didn't (or were eaten by birds and things) were replanted with extra seeds.  Being a small variety of corn they only reached below chest height.  Completely different to the 12 foot tall Giant Inca white corn which was grown in the same vegetable garden.  Only a few of the mini blue popcorn plants were multi stemmed which is unfortunate as multi stemmed plants tend to produce more cobs.  The plants had to contend with grass and other weeds as well as QLD arrowroot and fruit tree roots, the stalks were noticeably shorter as they got closer to the tree.

Notice the brown silk forming on the cobs from the left hand plant

As the season progressed it was noticeable that almost every stalk produced several cobs.  Some produced more than others, these are the plants that were worth saving seed from as more cobs means more popcorn per plant.  Some plants only produces 2 or 3 cobs, I did not save seeds from these.

When the season was over I got Nanuq to help me collect the little cobs, it was a bunch of fun.  All of the kids helped me to remove the sheaths in a process that we call "pass the parcel" then the little cobs were hung up to dry completely.  The cobs looked great, most were well filled out and the colour was good.

mini blue popcorn cob, almost dry enough to shuck

After the cobs were dry Nanuq and I shucked the cobs.  He worked for a long time shucking quite a lot of cobs with his little hands, he asked that I payed him.  When I asked what he wanted to be payed (I meant "how much") he told me he wanted corn seeds.  That little guy sure loves his corn seeds.

mini blue popcorn cobs

When all was said and done we ended up with a decent number of cobs from multi stemmed plants or plants that produced many cobs.  We decided to pop some and see what they were like.  To make the results mean a bit more we also popped some popcorn from the shops as a comparison.

Regular popcorn on the left, mini blue popcorn on the right.  Note how white it is

The mini blue popcorn has small seeds, these seeds pop smaller than regular popcorn as can be seen in the picture above.  Regular yellow popcorn pops white, the mini blue popcorn pops extra white.  I don't know what is expected in popcorn but I like the little super white popcorn.

With the store bough popcorn between 85 - 90% of the kernels popped, my glass bead corn is almost popping that well.  Every time we have popped the mini blue popcorn 100% of the kernels have popped.  We are yet to have a single seed from the mini blue popcorn that has not popped.  Clearly this variety has been bred well and whoever owned it before me had maintained and selected it well.

The mini blue popcorn tastes just like regular popcorn but feels different in your mouth.  It feels less dense, perhaps fluffier, it is difficult to explain.  I do not particularly enjoy eating popcorn very often, I really grow it for the kids, but I do like this popcorn.  I think I dislike the density of regular popcorn and the fact that little bits get stuck between my teeth.  I find this mini blue popcorn is nicer to eat.

I do sell seeds from the mini blue popcorn, they are listed on my for sale page along with the other seeds and perennial vegetables that I have for sale.

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.

Fun with strawberry phyllody

My little boy Nanuq grew some strawberries.  At first they were normal strawberries, then they changed.  Just like Nanuq these strawberries are a little odd, kind of complicated, and more than a little bit crazy.   I think that they (both Nanuq and the strawberries) are a bit cute.

I like the look of these strawberries, they are all covered in tiny little bracts instead of tiny flowers and fruits (the part people refer to as seeds).  This condition is known as "phyllody".  I hope that they keep doing this.  We have taken the following pictures.

I am certainly no expert in strawberries so asked a few people who breed them.  I have tried to find out what has caused this and if it is a bad thing, there seem to be three different possibilities that have not been completely ruled out at this stage.

First is "green petal disease".  This is caused by a mycoplasma like organism (often confused with a virus) which is spread by leaf hoppers.  It is a disease which can infect clover.  It can cause phyllody to be expressed in the flowers/fruit.  If this is the cause then the plants should be removed and burned as they will not recover and may infect other plants.  I certainly don't want to infect other plants as I like to eat regular strawberries.  I doubt green petal disease is the cause as the petals are white and it is not showing some of the other symptoms.

The second is a genetic weakness.  This is often seen in varieties such as "malwina" or in some varieties when the runners have been cold stored.  From what I have read they sometimes recover, sometimes don't.  There is a variety of strawberry called the "plymouth strawberry" which showed this trait many years ago and has never recovered.  It only reproduces via runners as it can produce no seeds as it forms no true flowers.  There is a chance that this is part of the cause even though I don't believe that phyllody has been observed in this particular variety before.

The third possibility is the weather.  The plants grew through the hottest and longest summer I have ever experienced, somehow missed out on Autumn, and are now in a weird winter with mostly warm/hot days and cool/cold nights.  If this is the case the plants should recover and produce normal strawberries.

My best guess is a combination of the last two, weird weather combined with a genetic weakness.  If this is the case then we may see some normal strawberries soon or it may keep doing this. I kind of hope they continue to make these crazy strawberries but do not infect any other strawberry plants.  If this is the case then I will try to distribute the plants to interested people.

I do sell some heirloom and perennial vegetables as well as herbs on my for sale page, at this stage I do not sell strawberries but may do so in the future.

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.

Everlasting Onions

Everlasting onions (Allium cepa perutile) are a rare perennial onion which is extremely productive and undemanding.  They do not appear to suffer pests or diseases, frost does not bother them, and if it gets too hot and dry they die down to bulbs.  I do not know why but I do not know of anyone else who has everlasting onions for sale in Australia.  They are one of the easiest and most productive vegetables to grow, just like all perennial vegetables you plant once and harvest forever.

I first heard about everlasting onions from someone who lives overseas.  They told me how great they were and said that they were extremely rare for some reason.  Importing onion plants/bulbs is more trouble/expense than I can deal with.  Importing onion seed is less difficult but everlasting onions never really set seed so this was also out of the question.  I then started to search for them in Australia.  No one seemed to sell them, it took me years to track them down in Australia.  Eventually I found someone who sold me some small plants.  She had these plants for well over 30 years and said that they flowered each year but had never set seed.  This sounded right so was worth a try.

Everlasting onion bulbs sprouting - normally they are far larger than these

At first I was skeptical that I had in fact got the right thing.  They looked like any spring onion or young onion plant before it bulbs up, but the plants were extremely uniform in size.  I planted them somewhere safe and waited.  In a few weeks most had split in half so I dug them up and divided them.  A few weeks later the rest had split in half so I divided again.  In another month or so they all divided again at least once, some of them divided a few times.  By this stage they were no longer uniform in size and I grew tired of digging them up and dividing them.  I now had a few dozen plants and was convinced that they were better than regular spring onions. 

Once winter hit these plants were not at all bothered by frost.  The growth slowed somewhat but other than that they looked happy and continued to divide.  Spring was great, they grew faster, divided faster and began to flower.  The flowers did not look complete and they did not even try to set seed.  They looked like Allium cepa flowers rather than Allium fistulosum, so I was then convinced that they were not ordinary spring onions and were most likely true everlasting onions. 

When summer rolled around some kept growing but most I let dry down to see if they produced bulbs.  They ended up growing small purple bulbs, a bit larger than a french shallot.  Being new to everlasting onions I decided not to eat the bulbs, instead I replanted them.  Each bulb divided into a dozen or more plants when it resprouted!  Over the past few years I have let some die to bulbs each year, if they are crowded they produce small bulbs, if they are given space the bulbs are much larger.

How everlasting onions are used

Once you grow everlasting onions you will never need to buy spring onions or shallot bulbs ever again.

We eat the green tops year round in place of spring onions.  Unlike spring onions they never get too thick and fibrous.  I have some spring onions that I planted as seed when we moved here, they are large and thick and a bit too fibrous to eat.  I do not have the heart to kill them, but do not know how to make them small and delicate again.  Cutting them to the ground helps but it does not take them long to turn into monsters again.

If we keep watering the everlasting onions over summer they keep growing, if we don't water they die down to nice little bulbs.  The bulbs can be used as salad onions, they are good for this purpose.  The bulbs seem to store forever, I don't know how long but it is at least several months.  We have fried the onion bulbs, they are nice but become very crunchy.  I think they must be reasonably high in sugars as they caramelise rather quickly.  Everlasting onion bulbs can be used in any recipe that calls for onion bulbs or french shallots.

Everlasting onion bulbs - they can be larger or smaller than this

How to increase your stock

Everlasting onions know what they are doing as far as reproduction goes.  They split in half numerous times throughout the year.  If they are divided each division will also multiply.  Neither heat nor frost bothers them.  It does not take long for a few to become a decent patch.  Like any other onion, if you plan to eat the bulb you do not have to kill the plant.  If you cut off the roots with a few mm of the base of the bulb this can be sprouted and replanted.  I have only done this once as I now have enough plants that they quickly replace any that we eat.

Everlasting onions are hardy, I planted one under a tree when I got them.  I do not water or weed this one after it was established, I had actually forgotten all about it.  This summer it was so hot and dry that we had no grass and I saw that it has divided into a substantial clump and is still hanging in there.  They are not as large or numerous as the ones that are well watered and weeded, but they are surviving and reproducing.  Planting an extra plant in an out of the way like this is a great way to increase your stock as you tend to forget about them for a while and when you find them again they tend to be rather numerous and in need of digging up and dividing.

The lady who I got the everlasting onions from had them flower each year for 30 odd years and had never seen any seed produced ever, the first few years I had similar results.  This year after they flowered I had a small number of seeds produced.  From several hundred flower heads I ended up with about 30 seeds.  I planted some of them and have a few seedlings appear.  I have no idea what they will turn into, perhaps exactly like their parent or perhaps something entirely different.

I have heard of someone who grew potato onion seeds and ending up with something very similar to my everlasting onions.  That makes me wonder if everlasting onions are another type of potato onion that was seed grown many years ago.  If so the results from the seed grown plants should be extremely interesting.

Where to find everlasting onions in Australia

To the best of my knowledge no one else is selling these other than me.  I am happy to be wrong on this as they are a great vegetable and more people should grow them.  I have everlasting onions for sale all year, they are listed on my for sale page along with some other perennial vegetables and heirloom vegetable seeds.

Chinese water chestnut yield

It is about time to harvest the water chestnuts.  This year I grew them in small 10 litre buckets, it was very cheap, simple and took up very little space.  This method could even be used on a balcony as it is not only productive but if you used nice looking buckets it looks good too.  I have put details of how I grew them here.

The buckets were cheap and easy to find, I filled them with clay and manure from the property, so it was also very cost effective.  They required no weeding, no pruning, no maintenance at all other than the initial planting and then filling up the buckets with water when I was out watering the rest of the vegetables.

Water Chestnuts growing in a bucket

Water Chestnut yield

One bucket was ready so I pulled the plant out and broke open the root ball in search of water chestnut corms.  There were a lot of corms in that bucket ranging from tiny to medium in size, unfortunately none of them were very large.  Most were too small to bother peeling and eating but about a dozen were edible size.  A dozen edible corms return per corm planted is not too bad considering how simple this was.

I ended up with around 127 corms from that first bucket (plus a heap that were too small to bother counting but are probably just as viable), all together they weighed around 365 grams.  That bucket also produced a decent amount of straw which I can use as mulch somewhere in the vegetable garden.

The bucket had a lot of corms squashed against the side as the plant tried to reach new ground, these corms will all grow and are genetically identical to the rest of the corms in the bucket so they can be used to grow next season's crop.  They are not easy to peel as larger and rounder corms so will not be eaten by us.

I am guessing that the other buckets will yield roughly the same in terms of weight.  I have high hopes that one bucket in particular will have less corms, but they will mostly be larger corms.  That bucket was not started off with planting a corm like the others, instead I had a spare bucket of soil so I broke off a runner from one of the other plants and put it in there.  I think that it will have produced less corms and they will all be a bit larger.  When I harvest that bucket if it is any different and I remember I will try to write a comment or another post.

All of those small corms are great as it means I have plenty of stock to plant next year and to feed to animals, but I would prefer to have a lot less corms all of which are much larger. 

Water Chestnut corm

How much did it cost me

Normally I don't do this but I thought I would write the cost of this little water chestnut growing experiment.  One water chestnut corm $2, one bucket $0.85, soil & fertiliser etc $0, water $probably a few cents.  

For a total expenditure of less than $3 I got about a dozen edible sized water chestnuts.  That means each of the larger edible sized water chestnut effectively cost me about $0.24 plus produced some straw and whatever added benefit of having insects and wrens hanging around due to the water.  

Next year I already have corms to plant and the buckets so each water chestnut will essentially cost a fraction of a cent.  I doubt the buckets will last more than a few years due to the sun, but we will see what happens.

Things I plan to do differently

One factor which may have made the corms so small is that we went away towards the end of the growing season and some of the buckets dried out which meant the plants died down early.  Some buckets are still actively growing as they did not dry out as much, so time will tell on this theory.  Perhaps if they had constant water in the late season, like they did throughout the rest of the season, they would have kept growing and the corms would have increased in size.

I think that I can make the plants produce larger corms in a few ways.  Firstly I think adding more manure and having less soil will help.  More manure will mean more fertility, hopefully this fertility will help the plants to produce larger corms. 

I will probably have the soil level slightly lower and the water level slightly higher, this will help prevent drying out on hot days as happened a few times here over summer.  During summer where the daytime temperatures were in the mid 40s for weeks on end meant I would fill the water container in the morning and by the afternoon they had dried out, having lower level of soil will mean that I can have slightly more water in the bucket.  Having a deeper and wider container would help, but that is not really an option right now so I am sticking to growing in buckets.  

Growing by splitting off shoots and planting them part way through the growing season should help to reduce the number of corms in each bucket and hopefully ensure that these corms are larger.  If this does not work I know that there are some improved varieties out there which grow larger corms, but getting my hands on them seems almost impossible.

I plan to grow them again

Overall I am happy with how this turned out, I got a good yield of edible corms from a tiny space with next to no work from me, a massive yield of propagation material (and/or animal feed), and a good amount of straw.  Considering that all this resulted from planting a single corm that was only the size of my thumb nail I count it as a win.  I have a few things to change for next year to hopefully ensure some larger corms.  

They taste nothing like the water chestnuts from a can, they taste a lot nicer.  They kind of taste like something familiar that I can not quite put my finger on, perhaps coconut.  I wish they tasted more like yacon or jicama as some people have suggested that they might, but they don't.

Being a perennial vegetable it means that if I decide that I want to I can continue to grow these for ever.  Considering that the largest cost in growing these is purchasing the corms, and given how simple they were to grow, having my own supply kicking over each year seems to be a sensible option.

Where to buy water chestnut corms in Australia

Like many of the other perennial vegetables I grow I do sell water chestnuts.  The corms that I sell are larger than the ones I initially bought, but they are not as large as they will get if you give them room.  If you are interested the details can be found on my for sale page.

Small scale home aquaponics

My fish tank started to get a bit stinky and I don't have a lot of water here so am hesitant to do a water change.  Being outside it gets a few hours sun in the early morning so the sides get covered in algae.  I used to scrape it off on the viewing side from time to time.  I used to leave it on the other three sides so that it helped suck some of the nutrients out of the tank.  I also always try to have duckweed growing on top to help improve water quality.  This works fine as long as some of the water is changed very now and again.

Then I considered turning my fish tank into a mini aquaponics type tank.  I have been interested in aquaponics for some time now.  After a lot of tyre kicking I am ready to give it a go, but we are planning on moving soon so I do not want to start anything too big so this works out well and helped me to learn how to do it properly on a larger scale.

I had a little bit of styrofoam in the yard.  That got me thinking.  I wanted to set up something that would work with my fish tank, something that was simple, something cheap, and hopefully something productive.  The more simple the better.

I bought two tiny bristlenose fish (Ancistrus sp, or as my kids call them "nibble fish") to eat some of the algae, but then I still had a lot of ammonia, nitrites and nitrates to deal with.  Adding extra fish only makes this problem worse.  Duckweed helps, but there are a lot of fish in my tank producing a lot of waste.

I then got a piece of styrofoam, punched a few holes in it, and inserted some herb cuttings which had tiny roots.  Within two weeks the cuttings had long roots, the water no longer smelled bad, the sides had noticeably less algae on them, and the water was a lot clearer.  I had no idea that it was not all that clear before, but the difference is remarkable.  This was fantastic, but I am not sure if this is due to the plants or the new 'nibble fish' or a combination of both, chances are this will only work short term as the plants may rot with the roots being in water all the time and oxygen levels not being high enough.

I then set up a small fish tank at work with a pair of Endler's who began to breed.  I planned on using this to do small scale aquaponics and try to be as productive as possible.  After the fish had been in for a few weeks and increased in number somewhat I removed the filter and started the small scale aquaponics set up with an eye to work out potential problems and see how productive a tiny tank could be.  This tank is far smaller than my tank at home, but this tank has a light on it.

Many aquaponic gardeners start with deep water culture to keep things simple.  The Aztec floating rafts, or "chinampas" was a way to farm using deep water culture on a large scale.  Clearly this approach can and does work, but there are a few things that one has to do right to make it work well and I needed to teach myself what these things were.

The timeline for my tank at work is as follows:
25/03/2014 - the cuttings were set up
28/03/2014 - first set of photos
10/04/2014 - 2nd set of photos
29/04/2014 - 3rd set of photos
12/05/2014 - plants grew far too large and were harvested

First I got some styrofoam, punched a few holes in it and inserted some herb cuttings, just like the tank at home.  I increased the oxygen levels in the tank to help prevent them rotting.  As expected, these grew like crazy.  I then included a pot of gravel with another cutting.  I "seeded" this pot with beneficial bacteria to break down ammonia and nitrites faster.  The herb in this pot also grew like crazy so a few days later I included a second gravel filled pot with a different type of herb.

small scale aquaponics, the fish are in there somewhere too

aquaponics 3 days in

herb cuttings 3 days after planting - note the tiny roots

I had great plans of taking pictures each 2 weeks to show the growth and development of the plants.  I originally planted basil, mint and pineapple sage.

aquaponisc 2 weeks on

root and leaf growth after 2 weeks

plants larger after 2 weeks

2 weeks of growth, all looks good

Then I went on holiday for 2 weeks, upon my return the plants were huge and crowded under the light.  The roots are spread nicely throughout the water giving the fry a place to hide.  I held off doing anything for a while but the plants got too large, so I cut them back pretty hard.  We made mint and basil lemonade with the herbs.

5 weeks of growth, ready for harvest

The herbs were larger than they look

I have learned a lot from doing this, many things I thought would happen have happened.  It is reassuring to see things growing in ways that I thought they logically should.  It is also nice to be able to work out any problems on a small scale before doing this on a larger scale with edible fish.  Regardless, I now know how to make this work for me simply and cheaply.

I also have started to grow some watercress in one of the pots, hopefully it does well in a floating pot but it is too early to tell yet.  I also have some seeds of kang kong which have just started to germinate, but I think it is a bit cold for them at the moment.