Variegated tomato plants

I was given some seeds of a variegated tomato.  They spent a while in the post, under who-knows -what conditions, so lost some viability.

Only 1 seed germinated and I have no way to get any more, so am really trying hard to save a lot of seed from this one plant.

The variegated tomato seedling grew like any other seedling, maybe a little slower, but not noticeably slower.  When small they had very little variegation, as they got larger they got more variegated.

When my little seedling had a few true leaves I transplanted it into the vegetable garden.

Variegated tomato leaf

Variegated tomato plant

After transplanting this into the garden a bird came and stripped all its leaves as well as all the leaves from three nearby tomato plants of other varieties.  I had a lot of trouble with birds this year.  For some reason the birds wanted to defoliate all the plants at that end of my garden.

I caged the little tomato seedling stump, and for some time it did nothing.  Eventually it grew one leaf, then after a very long time it started to grow again.  As it grew I covered it and all my other tomato plants with bird netting to protect them.

After a while some tomatoes were getting too large and difficult to manage to keep under bird netting, so I removed the netting and hoped for the best.  It appears that my variegated plant was large enough at that point because the birds left it alone.

Variegated tomato - red and round fruits

Young plant starting to get variegation

Variegated tomatoes are some of the most ornamental of tomato plants, even the stems are striped and interesting looking.  I love ornamental looking vegetables because as well as looking attractive they also produce a crop of tomatoes.

The leaves are green, yellow, pink, and white.

Striped stems

Variegation starts yellow, then turns white

I have tried to do a little breeding to get the variegated trait into other tomatoes.  It is far too early to tell how much success I had, and lots of generations before any new lines are stable.

I found it interesting that my variegated tomato produced lower leaves that were mostly green, and upper leaves were mostly white.  

The tomatoes the variegated tomato plant produced are round and golf ball sized.  Most were completely red, while a few had interesting stripes and swirls.  Inside the tomatoes was mostly red with red/green pulp.

Variegated tomato - inside the fruit

The variegated tomatoes taste sweet and nice.  I don't know why, but I expected such an ornamental plant to have fruit that tasted sour or insipid, so the sweet taste was a nice surprise.  While not as good tasting as some of the other varieties I grow, they taste far better than anything I have bought from the market.  I think they are worth growing just for the tomatoes they produce, and the incredible variegated foliage is just a bonus.

I have started saving seed from these variegated tomatoes.  I don't have any photos of the ripe fruit on my tomato plant, I plan to save every seed I can so have been picking them a little early and ripening them on the bench prior to saving seed.

Heirloom Tomatoes 2021

I grow a lot of tomatoes each year, I really love tomato season.  Some varieties are far better than others.  

My kids help me grow the tomatoes, collect the fruit, eat some of the tomatoes, bag some flowers and save some seed for the future.  

I don't have enough space/water/time to grow every tomato I have every year.  I have two tomato varieties that I do grow every year because they taste incredible (Japanese Black Trifele, and Verde Claro), and the rest I grow on a rotation to refresh the seed every 3 years.  

On second thoughts, I also grow micro tomatoes every year, but they are more for novelty and for breeding rather than for feeding my family, plus they take next to no space, so I don't tend to mention them.

Various tomatoes I grew

Some of the tomatoes I grow are very old heirloom varieties, others are more modern, while others I am breeding myself.  This year I grew 14 or 15 varieties of regular tomatoes (dwarf, or determinate, or indeterminate), and a small handful of micro dwarf varieties.  The plants range from a few cm tall to about 2 metres tall depending on the variety.

I also grew some wild relatives of tomatoes and some wild x domestic cross tomatoes.  I really need to take some photos of them and save some seed before winter comes. 

I thought I would show off some of my tomatoes below.

Tomatoes: Tommy Toe, Unnamed, Reisetomate, Igloo, Japanese Black Trifele, Verde Claro, Snow White, and Black cherry

My absolute favourite tasting tomato is called 'Verde Claro'.  It is a green when ripe cherry tomato that tastes incredible.  They look similar in size/shape to a grape.  Whenever people try these they love them.  

Every time I let people try these along with any other variety they always say that verde claro is the best tomato they have ever eaten.  They aren't the perfect tomato, but their taste is absolutely divine.  There is good reason I grow them every year!

Verde Claro and a bunch of grapes

I love the red tomato called reisetomate.  The flowers and fruits are fasciated, the fruits are red and lobed and can be pulled apart into segments.  

Reisetomate tomatoes are very sour, a little salt brings a true depth of flavour that I really enjoy.  Each and every tomato has a unique shape.  

Reisetomate tomatoes

I have been working on developing an improved black tomato for a while now.  The unripe fruit is purple and beautiful, it almost looks like an egg plant.  The ripe tomatoes have greenish yellow under the black, and the flesh colour is green.  

The black comes from high levels of antioxidants, and only appears where the sun hits the fruit.  They are roughly ping pong ball sized fruits and possibly my second favourite in taste after verde claro.  The fruit are a bit too small, but still large enough to slice for sandwiches.

I need to name these and start distributing the seeds as they are an incredible tomato variety.  I would hate to lose them if anything were to happen to my stock.

One of the varieties that I am breeding

This colour in tomatoes was unimaginable a few years ago

Another I grew this year was a variegated tomato.  I grew them to do some breeding and a few other genetics experiments, but after talking to some other growers I don't think anyone else in the country has variegated tomatoes so I should probably try to distribute the seeds so this allele is not lost.  Like many variegated plants, these aren't quite as vigorous as all green plants.

These are truly beautiful variegated tomato plants.  The leaves and stems get variegation of green, yellow, white, and pink.  The fruit is mostly red and round (although some fruits are slightly variegated) and tastes nice and surprisingly sweet.  

They could happily live in a flower garden and are a stunning showpiece of a plant.

Variegated tomato foliage

Micro dwarf tomatoes are heaps of fun.  These Micro Tom plants are thriving yet not reaching 5cm tall!  I am doing some breeding with them and hope to have something incredible to show for my efforts next year or the year after.  

You won't feed your family with micro tomatoes, but they can grow in a cup of soil on a window sill.  Traditionally they can taste a little insipid so they need some work in improving their taste, which is why I am breeding new micro tomatoes.  Some of my newer lines taste better than others.

I grow everything organically and sometimes sell some tomato seeds through my for sale page.  If you see something you love and I don't sell them let me know because I may be able to get you in touch with someone who does.

Thornless dual cropping raspberry

I don't think it is any great surprise to anyone who knows me that I dabble in plant breeding.  I particularly like growing edible things.  One I have been working on for a while now is a raspberry.  

I had a few good lines, some I culled because they weren't great, some died off last year with the drought and smoke, I still have the best one.

It is a completely thornless red raspberry that is dual cropping (primocane).  The berries are sweet, reasonable size, fragrant, don't seem to crumble, and are produced abundantly in rather large clusters.  

Being a primocane variety it flowers and fruits twice a year, if the weather is odd it can sometimes sneak in a (small) third crop, once they even produced a tiny fourth crop in winter and didn't go dormant.  Pruning is simple, you can just cut it to the ground at the end of autumn, or you can tip prune, or you can leave it, no matter what you will get a crop.

Like most/all other varieties of red raspberry, this sends out underground rhizomes and divides rather well.  

Lacking any thorns means that it is not a hassle to work with, and even children can easily harvest the delicious berries.  

The berries are produced in large numbers, each cluster can have dozens of berries.  I counted 48 individual flowers in one cluster!  When some berries are ripe there will still be unopened flowers in that cluster, meaning you get a long time of berry harvest.

All in all this is a great raspberry variety for back yards.  No thorns, great taste, multiple large crops, easy to harvest, simple/no pruning, quick to divide, there are no down sides to this variety.

I really need to name these, I am quite proud of them.  Most years I sell bare rooted crowns in winter through my for sale page.

Carnivorous Plant Seedlings

I grow a few carnivorous plants from seed.  Some are fast from seed, others take a long time. It is important to keep different types separate as they are so small that drops of rain could potentially splash them into each other's pots (don't ask how I know).

Most people have never grown carnivorous plants from seed, and have no idea what to expect, so I thought I would show some of mine.

Drosera capillaris

I had some unknown sundew seeds hitch hike in with a venus flytrap I bought through the post.  They eventually germinated, started to grow, and appear to be Drosera capillaris.  I plan to grow them to maturity, identify them properly, and hopefully collect seed to grow some more.  

If you look closely at the tiny plant at the top left you will see it caught a mosquito that is over half the size as the plant!  I don't understand why, but my drosera always seem to catch a lot of mosquitoes. 

I have grown capillaris before, they are small plants that are simple to grow and I think they look nice.  If all goes well they should flower before winter.

Drosera capillaris - caught a mosquito at this tiny size

Drosera burmanii

I bought some seeds of Drosera burmanii.  This is a small rosette sundew that usually only lives for a year.  They are meant to drop a lot of seed over their short lives and be simple to grow.  I usually grow perennial sundews, so this tiny annual is something a bit different.

Drosera burmanii have snap tentacles, and are the second fastest moving tentacles of all Drosera species.  I can hardly wait to see what they are like when they reach maturity.  At this tiny size they are catching springtails.

Drosera burmanii - tiny seedlings

Sarracenia

A very generous person sent me three types of Sarracenia seed.  I cold wet stratified them, planted them, and they have started to germinate.  

Sarracenia cotyledons are like any other plant, they are not carnivorous at this stage.  The first true leaves on the other hand are carnivorous. The photo isn't great, but if you look closely you can see the first true leaves are tiny carnivorous pitchers.  I can't imagine any insect gets caught by the first carnivorous leaves, but the second set of carnivorous leaves should be large enough to catch tiny ants and gnats.

Unfortunately they got hit pretty badly by a recent storm and many of my seedlings were washed away.  I still have the largest seedlings and there are plenty more seeds in my fridge.  It takes a few good years before these plants will grow to a decent size.

Sarracenia rosea growing their first true leaves

Drosera capensis

I really like Drosera capensis.  They are simple to grow, look great, catch incredible numbers of insects, and reach a large size pretty quickly.  They can go from a tiny speck of a seed to flowering size in under a year, plus the plants are perennial and can live for many years if looked after.

I grow a few types of capensis and like them all.  Below these seedlings were sown thinly and are just starting to get their carnivorous leaves.  It doesn't take them long to grow reasonably large.

Drosera capensis seedlings

Utricularia bisquamata

Another hitch hiker seed was from a small terrestrial bladderwort called Utricularia bisquamata. For some time I didn't pay much attention to it because it is so small.  I thought it was some type of moss, and every time it put up a flower stalk I tore it off and threw it away thinking it was moss about to set a spore capsule.

After looking more closely I realised that this is a bladderwort, and had I left it alone it would have sent up many lovely little flowers.

Bladderworts have tiny bladders on the roots that they use to trap tiny animals.  The mechanism the traps use is fascinating, they literally suck in their prey.  Its trapping mechanism is one of the most intricate and complex in the plant world.  Unfortunately you don't get to see any of this happen as it all occurs under the soil.  The leaves sticking above ground are small, only a few mm long.  

Luckily bladderworts throw up a lot of pretty little flowers for much of the year.  I should write another post on this later and show off its flowers.  I tried to take photof of them, but the pots that look good are all blurry, and the only clear photo there is a lot of moss and hardly any U bisquamata.

Utricularia bisquamata seedlings among the moss starting to send up flower stalks

I have a few more carnivorous plant seedlings, most look like the ones above so there is not much to say about them.  

This year I didn't grow any venus flytraps from seed, for some reason my plants just did not produce seed this year even though I had several varieties flowering at the same time.  If you would like to see what venus flytrap seedlings look like I wrote a post on them earlier.  It takes venus flytraps a few good years to reach a decent size.

Sometimes I sell carnivorous plants and seeds through my for sale page.  I don't have a large range, I only really sell when I grow some extras.  While I really prefer people to pick up carnivorous plants, I can post seeds and plants through Australia.

Venus Flytrap non-carnivorous leaves

I have a few different venus flytraps, one of the names varieties I grow is "Low Giant".  It was a nice enough plant that had a low rosette of large colourful traps.  This variety divides well and never has upright growth.

The Low Giant venus flytrap produced a lot of leaves and looked healthy, then in spring it decided to flower.  Sometimes I allows the flytraps to flower, other times I remove the flower stalk.  This time I cut off the flower stalk so the plant could put more energy into getting larger and stronger.

Low Giant Venus flytrap producing non-carnivorous leaves

 

Sadly, after I removed the flower stalk the plant did not produce any new leaves for a very long time.  A few months passed before it grew any more leaves. 

I started to wonder what was happening to this little plant.  It was growing next to a few other venus flytraps that were all producing a lot of new leaves and some plants were getting rather large.

Low Giant vft, not long after I removed the flowering stalk

Now it has started to produce leaves again, it appears to have divided, and is starting to produce small leaves instead of the large colourful leaves that it used to produce. 

As well as the normal flytrap leaves some of the divisions are also producing some non-carnivorous leaves.  I imagine this is short term, and it will get back to producing carnivorous leaves soon enough.  Hopefully it has time to do this and be fed before winter.

If all goes well this plant will over winter and I should be able to divide it into several plants in the spring.

Venus flytrap with non-carnivorous leaves

Interestingly , many of my venus flytraps seem to have female redback spiders (Latrodectus hasselti) living around the base of their pot.  Initially I thought they were catching insects that were drawn to the water, but most of my other carnivorous plants don't seem to have the spiders, only my venus flytraps.  I can't think of any reason why this would be.

Redback spiders are rather dangerous little spiders with a rather toxic venom for such a little spider.  Usually they won't bite unless provoked by something, something like picking up the pot they are living under!  For some reason they keep living near my venus flytraps, but not near any of the other carnivorous plants.

These spiders make picking up the pot to look at my plants a little more dangerous than I would like, and it means I have to tell my kids to keep away from the carnivorous plants for now.  Sometimes it rains and the pots get flooded and the spiders get washed away.  It normally doesn't take too long before a new spider arrives to replace the previous one.

Red back spider living near venus flytrap

Black Raspberry Plants in Australia

I got some seeds of black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) a while ago.  I scarified and cold wet stratified the seeds, forgot about them for far too long, eventually planted them, and had a surprisingly good germination rates.

At this young age they look similar to red raspberry plants, but have rather vicious thorns.  

I am told black raspberries grow more like a blackberry, and have long arching canes that root at the tips when they touch the soil.  

Given how fact they have grown this large, there is a good chance they will flower next year!  I can hardly wait to see what they taste like (assuming I can get past those incredible thorns to taste the berries).

Seed grown black raspberry: 3 or 4 months old

Strangely enough, some seeds stayed in the soil and are only starting to germinate now.  So as well as those large plants you can see the pot also contains some tiny seedlings with their first true leaves.  

Those tiny seedlings may not survive summer, or may not be large enough to over winter.  Hopefully at least one of these plants fruits next spring/summer.

Black raspberry thorns are large

Red raspberry thorns are small and petite

At this stage they are growing in a pot of soil.  I should probably divide them so they can grow faster, but think I will keep them in a pot for now so I can move them around easily if needed.  

We haven't really had summer this year and I don't want them to be scorched by the sun if I can help it.  Or maybe the heat will not phase them at all, I don't know.  Time will tell if they grow well in this climate.  

Pinguicula sethos

This week I bought a lovely little butterwort, Pinguicula sethos (an intergeneric hybrid between P ehlersiae and P moranensis).  It is in a little pot in a glass self watering thingy.  The pot has a little wick that goes down into the water.  The whole thing is rather pretty.

There are four little plants in the pot, all of which look healthy.  I have always wanted to grow Pinguicula because I think they look nice, but have never grown one before.  So this is new for me.

The guy I bought it from was really knowledgeable.  He has been growing carnivorous plants for years and was clearly very passionate about them.  I would love to talk to him again and glean some of his knowledge. 

We got talking, and he generously also put in two leaf pullings.  One leaf pulling was from P kondoi, it has since started to look limp and may or may not survive. 

The other leaf pulling already started to produce a plantlet before I was given it.  I think this is P emarginata x weser but am not sure.

I only bought one, at the time I almost bought one of each species that he had on offer.  As I have never grown Pinguicula before I think starting with one and seeing how I go with them is probably wise.

Pinguicula x sethos

Pinguicula leaf pulling started to grow a plantlet

Pinguicula in glass self watering thingy

Mexican Pinguicula plants

UPDATE: after about six months of growth in the same pot my little Pinguicula plants are looking bigger and better than ever!  The leaf pullings both worked and are now healthy little plants.  Once spring comes I will try to separate these to give them some room to grow and try to take some leaf pullings to get a few more of these plants.

Pinguicula plants doign well

Huacatay - Targetes minuta

Huacatay (Tagetes minuta), is also called Peruvian Black Mint, is an annual herb commonly grown across the Peruvian Andes and less commonly in other areas.  I am not sure why, but very few people seem to grow huacatay in Australia.

Huacatay is not a type of mint (Mentha sp) or even related to mint.  It is not invasive like mint, nor is it perennial in my garden.  

Huacatay is a type of marigold, and is sometimes called 'southern cone marigold'. Huacatay is sometimes referred to as 'Peruvian Black Mint' because it smells a bit like mint.

Huacatay leaves

The internet says huacatay "leaves have a flavour reminiscent of mint and sweet pineapple but with an additional hint of bitterness and a strong scent of marigold flowers" or that huacatay has "minty, aniseed and citrusy aroma".   Sounds incredible!  

To me, huacatay tastes much like spear mint, but a little different and more complex, I can't really explain how.  Some people prefer huacatay to true mint, some prefer true mint, I like both in different ways.

Huacatay grows to about 6 feet tall, maybe a bit less depending on the soil and the climate.  It has dissected leaves that get a lot of comments as it looks like another plant...

I am told that huacatay can seed so prolifically that it may become a weed in some gardens.  I haven't grown it for long enough for this to be an issue.  I would grow more of it if I had more space, so would welcome it popping up as a weed from time to time.

Most often huacatay is either used as a way to flavour meat dishes, in things such as tortillas, and in the sauce called ocopa.

When brewed into herbal tea, huacatay is known to reduce cold symptoms and improve the health of the respiratory tract.  I have made herbal tea from huacatay a few times, to me it tastes a lot like speamint tea, I rather like it.

I found a recipe for ocopa huacatay sauce:

Huacatay Sauce 

Take a massive handful of this plant (pick the young tips), a clove of garlic, a couple of chillies (traditionally aji amarillo), a pinch of salt, juice of a lime and enough oil to make a sauce.
Blend them all together and adjust for taste.

That sounds simple enough.  Perhaps I should give that a try and see how it goes.

At this stage I don't sell huacatay plants or seeds.  Depending on how well it seeds for me I may try to sell seeds through my for sale page.

Banana Mint Plant

A few years ago I heard of a plant called banana mint.  It was said to be a mint plant (either a Mentha species, or hybrid of several Mentha species) and it is meant to smell strongly of banana.  This herb sounded intriguing.  

Banana mint plant

Strangely enough I only ever see banana mint mentioned by nurseries that sell it and no mention from home gardeners.  Other than a passing remark that it exists, I don’t see any home gardeners ever mention this plant, which I find rather odd.  Good or bad I would have thought that someone would have spoken about their experience growing and eating it.

I searched for a few years and only found this plant for sale overseas, then one day I found it listed in Australia.  It was sold out, so I emailed the nursery and asked when they would likely have it in stock again.  They replied and said it should be back in spring, so every few weeks I checked their site and once it was available I bought one.  The place I bought it from is run by some dedicated, knowledgeable, and really lovely people, I highly recommend buying from them.

The plant arrived healthy, bare rooted, and small.  Quite often smaller plants cope better with postage and grow faster than larger plants, so I was happy with this.  I planted it in a pot, but it didn’t do much growing.  From spring to autumn it really didn’t get any larger than it was when I bought it.  We were in the midst of one of the biggest droughts ever recorded in this region, and had week after week of thick smoke, so I didn’t give it as much water as it deserved.  I tried to pick part of a leaf every now and again to smell, but feared damaging the plant so never took more than quarter of a leaf and was never able to really smell much.

Then winter came and the plant died down to below soil level.  I wasn’t sure if it was dead or not and wasn’t going to check until spring.  I top dressed the soil to boost fertility and hoped for the best.  Some mints die back over my winters, others power through, I didn’t know what to expect.

Once spring hit my little plant got to work, it had divided into 4 or 5 larger plants and was even growing out of the draining hole in the bottom of the pot.  As summer hit it started to flower.  I often try to prevent mint from flowering because they drop seed everywhere and are difficult to control, but I am tempted to allow banana mint to seed and see what the seedlings are like.  Chances are they will be nothing like the parent, but there may be something nice in there.  

Banana Mint Flowers

The growth rate of banana mint is slower and far less aggressive than other mints.  I usually find mint difficult to control even when planted in a pot, so a less aggressive mint should be easier to grow long term.  The leaves are green and a little fuzzy, the flowers are a lavender colour and like any other mint seem to attract bees.  But it is the smell that matters with herbs like this.

I am told that banana mint smells “freshly minty with strong unmistakable undertones of banana”.  I don’t smell any mint in my plant.  To me this plant does smell strongly of bananas but not exactly like banana.  I really like banana mint.

Back when I was at university I remember working with an organic ester called isoamyl acetate (3-Methylbutyl ethanoate), this has a distinctive smell of bananas but not exactly like bananas.  Most people who smelled this liked it, it does smell like banana, but just a little different.  I think banana mint must be high in isoamyl acetate because that is what it smells like to me. 

I am told that banana mint can be used to flavour sweet meals such as cakes and things, I am told it goes well with chicken or salads, and I am told it goes well in fruit punch.  I am told that it holds its flavour well after cooking.  I haven’t tried any of that but it all sounds reasonable.  So far I have only eaten a leaf raw here and there with my kids, and I have made herbal tea with banana mint.  The herbal tea is nice, it does smell like bananas.  

Banana Mint Leaves

To make banana mint tea I put a few leaves in a mug, add some honey, pour on some hot water, and stir.  Really simple. 

I quite like banana mint and plan to keep growing it.  Even though it is less aggressive in its growth I won’t risk growing it directly in the garden and will always keep it restrained in a pot or some other container.  If I have a spare plant I may offer it on my for sale page, but it is unlikely I will ever have many of these because my kids can’t help but strip the leaves off and smell/eat them whenever they think I am not looking.