My kids are stronger than you

I have always been skinny.  Sometimes I was skinny and strong, other times I was skinny fat.  Skinny fat sounds like an oxymoron, but it is a real thing.  Most people who put on weight gain subcutaneous fat, which is fat under the skin.  As this is very common in this society it is what we think of when we hear the term 'fat'.  'Skinny fat' is where I had little muscle and too much visceral fat - fat around my organs.  Skinny fat is far less common in our society of extravagant lavish excess.  

I am getting older, so any form of exercise is more difficult.  I also have a job, and have kids, so I have little time for exercise.  I've had a few accidents over the years and have been told by specialists that my body will degrade to the point where I will have to retire by the age of 50 due to pain.  Retiring early due to pain sounds like a dreadful existence, so I decided that I needed to do something about it.  

I figured getting strong should help slow this degradation, and getting strong while I am young(er) should be a whole lot easier than waiting until I am older and in more pain before trying to build strength.  Hopefully getting stronger now will help me stay more able for longer, there is only one way to find out, and that is by getting in and trying.  

A few years ago I started a form of strength training known as prochnost.  Prochnost is a Slavic word meaning something along the lines of strength, durability, toughness, stability, hardness, solidity etc.  It is pronounced proach-nests, and in Cyrillic is written прочность.  This type of training uses mostly body weight exercises, often training several muscle groups (or whole body) at the same time, and focusses on training for strength and ability rather than size.

Since beginning prochnost training a few years ago I have become vastly stronger, I am stronger now than I have been in the past decade, and am possibly almost as strong as I have ever been.  That's not too shabby considering my age and how little time I put into training.  I am also in less pain now than I was before prochnost training, so if nothing else it has been worth it to be in less pain.  

I have started a fitness blog to record my progress, as well as the progress of my kids.  I plan to keep this blog going, but they are about very different things so I figured they would be better as separate blogs.  If you are interested in having a look, the new blog can be found here:  https://skinny-fat-fitness.blogspot.com/  

I wanted to call the new blog Old Man Strength, but there is a company with that name, and that company does 'fitness' things very differently than I do, in some ways it is almost the opposite.  So I needed to think of another name.  I am skinny, I have been skinny fat, and the blog is about fitness.  Skinny fat people must train differently to achieve results, which is what the skinny-fat-fitness blog is about.

My kids also do a little prochnost training with me as they think it is fun, they are skinny and incredibly strong.  Body weight exercises are safer for kids to train rather than using free weights.  Some of these exercises also look rather impressive.  

When I take my kids for a walk they tend to do a little training, often young fit men see this, and give it a go themselves, and they usually fail.  There is something about watching a fit man in his mid 20's being out done by a ten year old that puts a smile on my face.

My twelve year old is stronger than you.

Bent arm planche

Elbow lever off a park bench

Elbow lever off a rock

My ten year old is stronger than you

Elbow lever off a bench

Playgrounds are great for strength training

It is simply incredible just how strong my kids are.  They are stronger and more capable than most adults in this country.  The best part of this is my kids assume that everyone can do this.

To be very clear, this isn't about losing weight, or bulking up to look pretty, or competing against someone else -  for my kids all of this is for fun.  This is not serious training, if they want to stop and go play then that's fine.  They stop and go play something else.  If they want to come join me train then that's fine too.  I want strength training to be fun for my kids.

Being fit and strong have been normalised for my kids as they don't know any other way.  As they grow older they will think that being healthy is normal, and for them being unhealthy will be abnormal.  My kids have eaten a wide range of healthy foods over their entire lives.  That is a great start to life!

So far the skinny fat fitness blog is still new and only has half a dozen or so posts, but I am adding to it and it is growing over time.  If you are interested you should have a look.  Perhaps it will inspire you to do a personal 30 day exercise challenge, or train to do the human flag, or even aim to do 1,000 push ups per day for an entire week.  

Growing Sarracenia from seed

Growing Sarracenia pitcher plants from seed is a little more difficult than growing something like a tomato from seed.  Sarracenia seeds need to be cold wet stratified prior to germination.  It also takes time to get a good looking plant. 

Below are some examples of Sarracenia that I have grown from seed.  They don't have perfect conditions, and could almost certainly grow faster than this, but it is how they grow for me in my yard so may give people an idea of what to expect if they try to grow pitcher plants from seed. 

Sarracenia rosea

Sarracenia rosea are truly an amazing pitcher plant.  Fat pitchers, curly lids, burgundy coloration, faint veining, and is low growing.  Flowers are pink in color, look like an upside down umbrella, and bloom in late spring.  A real show stopper.  It takes about three or four years to get a flowering plant from seed.

The first year seedlings are down below, they are tiny.  If I grow them cramped together like this or if I divide them into individual pots they always seem to stay this size in their first year.  While they are clearly pitcher plants, they look little like their adult form.

The plants directly below are in their second year.  They will likely be large enough to flower in their third of fourth year.  They have genetic diversity, some produce fat pitchers, while others produce skinny pitchers.  

Sarracenia rosea second year plants

Unfortunately a caterpillar got in and ate the plant with the fat pitchers, but the plant will survive this and grow larger.

The colours of the pitchers are lovely.  They range from light pink in low light, to dark red in higher light.  

These are very cold hardy so have no issues with the winters here.

First year the seedlings look like pitcher plants, but don't look like rosea.  To be honest, I don't know if I could tell them apart from seedlings of any of the taller sarracenia species.

Believe it or not, these are first year plants of Sarracenia rosea

Sarracenia flava

Sarracenia flava, also known as the 'yellow pitcher plant' produce lovely tall pitchers.  Most of the seeds were lost in a storm last year.  This year I have plenty of first year seedlings.

You can see the plant below is dark part way up the pitchers, this is from all the tiny insects it is trapping.  These are insect killing machines!  

This is a second year plant, It grew larger over summer than it is in this photo and will likely be large enough to flower in its third or fourth year.

Sarracenia flava second year plant

The first year plants are below.  These look a little more like the parent plant.  It's difficult to tell the difference between species at this size so I make sure they are labelled.

Once again I don't find that keeping them crowded in their first year stunts their growth.  The plant above was in its own pot in its first year and looked much the same as the plants below.

Sarracenia flava first year plants in the foreground

If you plan to grow Sarracenia from seed, keep in mind that it does take some time before you get a decent sized plant.  This is largely why they are often more expensive than sundews which can grow from a seed to flowering size within a year.

I sell some different types of carnivorous plants though my for sale page.  I don't currently sell pitcher plant seeds, but may do so in the future.  I do sell sundew seeds of some of the easier to grow species.  If you are interested they are listed on my for sale page.

Growing ferns from spores at home

Years ago, back when I was in high school, I used to grow ferns from spores.  I am not really sure what varieties I grew as most I collected the spores from the bush when I was out collecting fire wood and grew them in my house as houseplants. 

Back then I found growing ferns from spores easy.  They just worked.  I think I accidentally stumbled on their preferred conditions back then.  

Bird nest fern sori contains millions of spores

Since then I have tried to grow fern spores a few times with mixed results.  Mostly I ran into issues either with spores never germinating, or contaminants overgrowing and killing the prothallus.

This year I am trying to grow ferns from spores again.  I have bird nest fern, maidenhair fern, and variegated maidenhair fern spores that I have collected from my plants.  

When I get a chance I plan to collect some tree fern spores and maybe a few other types of ferns to give them a try too.  If anyone wants to send me some fern spores, particularly from a stag horn fern, I would love to try to grow them.

Variegated maidenhair fern sori containing spores

I collected my spores on different days to prevent accidental contamination with the wrong spores.  I left the spores in paper somewhere dry and safe for a week.  

During this time I got everything ready.  

I used glass jars.  Why jars you ask, it is because I have them.  Containers with larger opening would be easier to get the young ferns out of.  While glass jars are not ideal I didn't have anything else on hand.

I poured boiling water in the jars and closed the lids, then left the to cool.  The boiling water sterilised the jars, and may have been an unnecessary step.  Sterilising the jars before putting in anything else doesn't hurt, so that's what I do.

Jars with peat moss, perlite, and fern spores

 

Once cool, I tipped out the water from the jar, put in a layer of perlite, added some damp peatmoss on top, and tipped in more boiling water.  I put the lids on and left them to cool overnight.  The boiling water sterilised everything in the jars.  

The next day (or a few days) later when everything was cool I removed a lid from a jar, sprinkled fern spores over the peatmoss, and put the lid back on tightly.  Fern spores are tiny and dust like so you can't plant them like seeds, you have to sprinkle them carefully.  I did one type of spore per jar, and did different jars on different days to reduce the risk of the wrong type of spore from floating in.

Spores need light to germinate, but direct sunlight will kill them.  It also takes anywhere from a few weeks to a several months for them to germinate.  I placed the fern spore jars in my greenhouse on a low shelf where they would receive bright indirect light.  

The jars were placed in a plastic ice cream container that had a bit of water in the bottom.  This step wasn't really needed, but the temperatures in my greenhouse fluctuate too rapidly for my liking.  The jars are sealed so no water can get in or out, which means the only thing the water in the ice cream container did was to help the temperatures remain a bit more stable.  

From here it is just a waiting game.  

It can take weeks to months for fern spores to germinate, so each jar was labelled to help me remember what is in each one.  There should be enough free water in the jars for the spores to germinate and do their thing. 

I also tried growing fern spores just using damp potting mix.  That seemed to work well, but it did have a lot more issues with moss, fungi, and other contaminates as you can see below.

Fern prothallus 

Sending up the first fronds

I plan to grow them all where they are for now.  Over winter their growth will go pretty slow.  In spring I will try to divide the survivors into their own little pots.  

I want to keep some of the baby ferns, and give some as gifts, any extra ferns will be listed on my for sale page.

Elusive white borage

Back in 2016 or 2017 I got some borage (Borago officinalis) seeds and grew out some borage plants.  I allowed my plants to self seed and it popped up in a lot of places around the garden.  I like the blue flowers, so never thought to get a white flowered variety.

Borage is an annual or biennial herb that has a lot of used in the permaculture garden.  It it is a  medicinal plant with edible leaves and edible flowers.  Borage is adored by honey bees and other pollinator insects, and its leaves are great in the compost.  Borage leaves smell and taste a little like cucumber, which is fun.  Poultry and livestock gladly eat borage leaves.

Each year my borage flowers profusely with lovely blue flowers.  As the flowers age they sometimes turn pink, this is an environmental thing.  After flowering they self seed, and when the time is ready it grows wherever the seeds happened to land.  I don't water it or weed it, sometimes I mow it if it is in the wrong place.  Other than that borage just does its thing with no work from me.  My honeybees like the flowers, and my chickens like to eat the leaves.  Borage is meant to be good at smothering weeds, and it is excellent in the compost.

I was selecting for larger plants, but gave up on that after a while because it isn't needed.  Some borage plants grow massive, others remain tiny.  With my narrow gene pool, growing conditions and environment appear to play a larger role in determining the size of the plants than genetics.

This year one of the self seeded plants has white flowers! 

White Flowered Borage

I've never grown white borage before

I have never seen a white flowered borage in this population before.  One of three things has happened here:

1. Perhaps this has arisen from a mutation that occurred spontaneously in my population.  
2. Maybe blue is dominant, and my population has always had hidden recessive genes for white that have never been displayed before this.  This seems unlikely (but not impossible) given the number of generations this population has grown here with no whites.
3. Maybe someone nearby has white borage and insects brought the pollen in last season (or a few seasons ago).  

I will never know for sure, but like to think that this may be a spontaneous mutation.  It isn't uncommon for one gene to get broken and produce something novel like this.

I have never grown white borage before, and have not been able to find out if blue or white is dominant.  I hope to save some seed from my open pollinated white borage and see what its progeny do.  Update: it appears that blue borage flowers is dominant and white is recessive.

Regardless of the outcome, I think having one white flowered plant appear like this is kind of fun.

Regular blue borage flowers taste like cucumber

Blue borage flowers fade to pink

Even on cold days there are often bees on borage flowers

Bees and other pollinators love borage

Blue borage growing among the lawn weeds

I hope to be able to save some seed of the white borage to see what colour flowers their progeny has.  I dare say it will drop some seed as well as me collecting some seed, and this will become part of the borage gene bank in my yard.  

Growing pygmy sundews from gemmae

Last year I got some pygmy sundew gemmae.  Gemmae is sort of like a cutting that the plants made themselves.  I find it fascinating that a flowering plant can make gemmae like this.

I got a mix of two species, they look very different so I could tell them apart pretty easily as soon as they grew large enough.  

Gemmae tend to grow much like seed, but a lot faster.  Unlike seed grown plants, all gemmae are genetically identical to the parent plant.  

In a few months the gemmae went from tiny green dots to mature, flowering pygmy sundews.

Drosera pulchella

Sadly when the gemmae were available I did not have any spare pots, and had issues buying peat moss.  I grew them in plastic cups with holes punched in the base, and the peat moss had been sitting out in the open for some time.  For this reason there was a lot of moss and things growing around my pygmy sundews.

Drosera pulchella and Drosera pygmaea

Pygmy sundews

These flowers should produce very tiny seed.  Seed grown plants should have a little genetic diversity.  D pulchella and D pygmaea do not hybridise, so I can grow them next to each other and not worry about hybrid seed.  

Some species of pygmy sundews can hybridise, and several of the hybrids are sterile.  Gemmae are always exact replicas of the parent.  Which means that hybrids or even sterile hybrids can be easily propagated using gemmae.

Pygmy sundews produce from 1 to several hundred gemmae per plant.  This means in the wild they can colonise areas of soil quite effectively.  It also means that in cultivation it does not take too long to be able to grow a nice pot filled with these tiny carnivorous plants.

The weather is turning, so I hope some of my plants produce some gemmae.  If they do I should be able to grow a few more of them and hopefully will be able to have a few extras to trade at some stage.  If I ever do have extra of these they will be listed through my for sale page.

Vft Schuppensteil - Upright Red Traps

I got some unnamed Venus flytraps a year or two ago.  These were cheap as it was a mix of varieties and the names had been lost.  There was a lot of genetic diversity among them.  Most of them I sold to make a little pocket money to spend on more plants.

One of them impressed me, so I kept it and called it 'upright red traps'.  This plant grew tall upright leaves over summer, and the trap interior got very red in strong light.  Over winter they die back to almost nothing.  This isn't a bad thing in itself. 

I took some cuttings, and divided the mature plant, and was pretty happy with this plant.  

More mature plants started to develop leaf scaling and I think it may be Schuppensteil, but I am not certain.  Below are some photos of the scaling that started to develop on plants that were coming out of dormancy.  They got a lot more red inside the traps as the season progressed.

Much like the descriptions I have read of Schuppensteil, the scaling on the petioles is a trait that is acquired with maturity and only in summer; younger plants and plants early in the grow season will often not express this until later.  That sounds a lot like what my plants did.

The scaling got a lot more prominent than can be seen in these photos, but I don't have any pictures of that because the plants were damaged in a storm and reverted to smooth petioles for the rest of the season.  

The traps on this variety got rather large and the trap interiors becomes very dark red in strong sunlight.  The traps were certainly nowhere near as large as 'Big Vigorous' or 'DCXL', but they were still impressive.

Upright Red Traps is a vigorous grower for me.  It produces tall growth and intense red colour inside the traps.  It seems to grow pretty easily from leaf pullings and flower stalk cuttings.  

Over winter, while dormant, the thing basically disappears.  That is nothing to be afraid of, it just means that if there is hail or something the plant will not sustain any damage.  

For me they seem to produce a few natural divisions per year, which means I can increase their numbers with no real extra effort on my behalf. 

As I am not certain of the variety I will continue to call these 'Upright Red Traps'.  I will sell/swap some in the warmer months along with other carnivorous plants and perennial vegetables I have for sale.  If you are interested they will be listed on my for sale page. 

Zea diploperennis - perennial corn ancestor

There are a few wild ancestors of modern corn (Zea mays) that are still around.  Most don't look hugely like the corn that we are used to, but you can see how they were bred into what we use today.  Most are annuals, just like domesticated corn.  Most can be crossed with domestic corn if they can be induced to flower at the same time.  

There are a smaller number of species of perennial ancestors of corn.  Most of the perennial ones are on the brink of extinction in the wild, or already extinct on the wild.  I think there may be a few wild species that are growing in such small areas that they have yet to be described.  

Recently someone sent me some seeds of a hybrid between modern corn and the perennial Zea diploperennis.  From memory this contains ~15% mays genes.  I was very excited to grow this as I am not sure how much perennial corn is in Australia.

I planted the seed and ended up with a small number of plants.  I put each plant in a pot of soil and moved this into the garden over the growing season.  Growing in pots means I can move them around and hopefully protect them over winter.

I am told that diploperennis can be used similar to popcorn, but with smaller ears and few kernels in each ear.  If this was crossed with regular popcorn it should be possible to create a perennial popcorn.  As many wild plants contain genes for disease resistance or pest resistance that are not present in their domestic counterparts, a perennial popcorn that uses diploperennis as one of the parents could be very useful to grow in low input permaculture farming or backyard gardens like mine who don't like to spray anything.

Zea diploperennis in pots next to popcorn, pumpkin, and beans

Zea diploperennis tillering a little

Zea diploperennis flowering in my garden

As it has some modern corn genes, it should flower under my climate without having to manipulate daylength, and it should flower roughly at the same time as domestic corn.  It should be able to cross with regular corn.  There is a lot of "should" and very little that I know for certain about this plant.

I had hoped to cross this with pop corn, with the hopes of eventually producing a perennial popcorn.  To give it the greatest chance of working I grew it next to some genetically diverse multi-coloured popcorn.

Unfortunately the weather was odd this summer, and many of my vegetables flowered really late or not at all.  My diploperennis didn't start to flower until the popcorn was already harvested.  Some diploperennis appear to be producing cobs, but I am not sure if any of them contain seed or if they will all be empty.  As the diploperennis are flowering so late I am not sure if they even could produce any seed prior to winter.  

Some of the diploperennis plants tillered a little, others did not tiller at all.  None of them got more than a foot and a half tall and they all had stems almost as thick as a pencil.  This was likely due to the soil I grew them in combined with the cooler than usual summer.  Then again, perhaps they are always scrawny plants.

I can't imagine that these would be perennial in my climate as they are not adapted to frosts.  I planted my diploperennis in pots of soil so I can move them into an unheated greenhouse over winter to protect them from frosts.  Hopefully they can survive over winter, but I won't really know until spring.

I don't have enough seeds or plants to share any at the moment.  I grow and sell a lot of interesting plants through my for sale page, but it is unlikely that I will have diploperennis available any time soon.  I don't even know if this can survive winter in my climate in an unheated greenhouse.  Fingers crossed I can over winter these plants and eventually have enough to share around a little.  

Giant dandelions - the supervegetable

A few years ago I started trying to breed a larger variety of dandelion (Taraxacum officionale).  I can't quite remember why.  It was a lot more difficult that I had imagined, but the results were pretty spectacular.  I wrote an earlier blog post on my giant edible dandelions.  I do a lot of vegetable breeding, and have produced some spectacular new varieties of plants.     

Dandelions are tremendously useful plants.  They are edible and far more nutritious than almost every vegetable I can think of.  All parts are edible and incredibly nutritious.  Livestock and poultry love to eat them, bees and many other beneficial insects adore the flowers.  The roots are deep and bring minerals up from the subsoil.  A nice coffee substitute can be made from the roots, or the roots can be roasted and eaten as an interesting vegetable.  People make coloured dye, syrup, or even wine from the flowers.  The flowers are pretty, and kids (and adults like me) like to blow their seed heads.  

Here are some leaves of my giant dandelions.  While it does change throughout the seasons, leaves over 50cm long are not uncommon.  Even the smaller leaves are very large and easily big enough to be useful in a salad.

Giant edible dandelion

Giant edible dandelion leaf

I find the leaves of regular lawn dandelions to be too small and too bitter to be useful in salads.  Leaves of these giant dandelions are far larger than regular dandelions, the pictures above show them on my hand for scale.  Being massive they seem to be less bitter.  Some people like bitter leaves, but I don't.

I find that bitterness changes in all dandelions.  They become more bitter when they flower.  They are less bitter when given a lot of water when growing fast.  I find new leaves from fast growing plants prior to flowering to be the most tender and least bitter.

Giant dandelion leaves, 30cm ruler

Leaves around 50cm long are not uncommon

I have grown a number of seedlings from my giant edible dandelion plants and they are spectacularly large.   

My giant dandelions seem to need more water than the regular lawn kind, so I figured they would never survive in the lawn as volunteer seedlings.  This summer was wet and cool, and a small number of my giant plants have started to grow in my lawn.  I am happy with this.  I also think next summer they will likely die off.  Time will tell on this one.

Giant edible dandelion leaves

Even the small leaves are large enough for salads

As you can see, leaves of dandelions vary a bit in shape and size on each plant.  I really should grow one giant dandelion in a pot and grow a regular dandelion in a pot as a comparison to show just how impressively massive these larger plants are.

I sell seeds and plants of my giant edible dandelions.  I also grow pink flowered dandelions, which grow to a normal dandelion size but the flowers are fairytale pink, and sometimes sell seeds of those.  If you are interested they are listed on my for sale page with some other perennial vegetables and other seeds and plants.

Drosera capensis Hercules

I was given a small plant of Drosera capensis 'Hercules' by an extremely generous person.  As far as I know there are very few of these in Australia.

At first this plant grew well for me, then it died back somewhat.  It grew larger, then died back again.  It kept doing this and each time it died back to a larger plant and grew larger than the previous time.  

Drosera capensis 'Hercules' foreground, 'typical' and 'alba' in background

Drosera capensis Hercules

I originally had it growing in a pot with Drosera capensis 'True Giant'.  The capensis true giant is an interesting clone, but that is a story for another time.  I should have had them both in their own pots from the start, but I had issues buying peat moss.

I had it growing inside my house next to some typical and alba capensis, so figured the position was not too bad.  It turns out that my capensis Hercules did not like this position, its leaves got stretched out and is started to lose colour.  I don't think it had enough sunlight there.

Capensis Hercules Petioles are about 4mm to 5mm wide

I moved it outside, where it grew a little but was really not happy.  I moved it back inside again and expected a better result.  I tried a few different positions and eventually moved it to my greenhouse, and put it in its own pot, where it has really started to grow.  

I am not sure if it is the location, or having its own pot, or the incredible number of insects it catches, but it is now growing well.  To be honest, I can't imagine having a greenhouse without a few carnivorous plants to control the insects.

Drosera capensis 'Hercules' catching a lot of insects

This year my Hercules sent up a flower scape.  It grew many, many flowers and the scape grew incredibly long.  

The flowers on capensis Hercules are absolutely huge, far larger than any capensis flower I have seen.  

The seeds have just started to ripen.  I plan to plant a few and see what the seedlings are like.

Drosera capensis Hercules flower

This plant was originally registered as an interspecific hybrid between Drosera capensis 'alba' and Drosera aliciae.   The current belief is that this is a wide leaf variant of Drosera capensis.  

From what I have been told, capensis Hercules grows reasonably true from seed, which indicates that it may be pure capensis rather than a hybrid.  My first seedlings are still tiny, so it is too early for me to know how true to type they will grow for me.

The leaves on capensis Hercules are rather wide.  Which is similar to, but distinct from other wide forms of capensis.  The leaves grow reasonably long.  

The leaves and flowers have the same colouration as typical capensis.  The young leaves seem a little hairy before they have unfurled.

Capensis Hercules is a really nice looking plant.  Strangely enough I don't have any nice photos of my capensis Hercules plant.  The leaves never look picturesque and dewy because each leaf catches so many tiny insects.  This is a good thing, it means my plant is well fed and (more importantly) it means that there are far fewer tiny insects flying around in my greenhouse.

Drosera capensis Hercules on left, capensis True Giant on the right

The capensis Hercules flowers are truly massive.  They are the same colour as typical capensis flowers.  The scape grew very long, and had a lot of flowers.  Much like typical capensis, the first flowers to open drop seed while the last flowers are still buds.

From what I have seen they set seed and appear to be highly self fertile.  Again this tends to indicate that they may not be an interspecific hybrid.

capensis Hercules flowers are HUGE

Young plants of capensis Hercules and True Giant 

The capensis Hercules plant I am growing was taken as a cutting from a clone, meaning it is the true Hercules.  Seed grown plants may be slightly different and should never be labelled as Hercules.

I sell some carnivorous plants through my for sale page.  If I sell or trade any seed grown plants I will make sure that they are labelled Hercules x self or something to indicate that they are not the true Hercules clone.  If I ever trade the true Hercules clones I will also make sure to label this to distinguish between them and its seedlings.