Igloo tomatoes

One of my first attempts at breeding tomatoes is also one of my best.  This project began when I was in high school where I had limited access to germplasm and limited knowledge of genetics and breeding.  

I was aiming to breed a tasty, highly productive, early ripening tomato that did not need much water.  Igloo tomatoes tick all of these boxes and more.  

Igloo tomatoes produce red and round tomatoes, they are small salad size tomato, but large enough to be sliced onto sandwiches.  They are remarkably uniform in size, each weighing slightly under 50 grams.

Igloo tomatoes weight almost 50g each

Igloo tomato plants are stocky compact things only growing to around 1 foot tall, sometimes reaching under 2 feet tall.  Being smaller plants means the space can be used for other things, it also means they are not draining nutrients from the soil merely to produce length of stem.  They do require staking as the amount of fruit they produce is too much even for stout little trunks to hold without some support.  

Being small plants does not mean they are less productive, incredibly Igloo tomatoes are one of the most productive tomatoes I grow.  

Each truss has around 16 flowers, sometimes a few more or a few less.  Each plant produces several hundred red round fruit over the season, for me when crammed in too close to other tomato plants they usually around 12kg of ripe fruit.  This doesn't sound like a lot, but 12 kg of fruit produced on a plant that is only a foot tall and one foot wide is spectacular.  

Igloo tomatoes

For me they are always among the first tomatoes to ripen.  Last time I recorded days, it took 147 days from planting the seed until I picked the first ripe fruit.  This is incredibly quick.  They produce the bulk of fruit before other varieties (including most cherry tomatoes) even start to ripen.  

It is probably best described as semi-determinate.  It does produce a lot of fruit early in the season when no other tomatoes are ripe, and it produces fewer fruits towards the end of the season when many larger and later varieties are ripening.  Even though it is producing less towards the later end of the season, igloo tomatoes always keep producing up until a killing frost.  I have never tried to overwinter them, so don't know how long they can live if protected.

The fruit has a little elbow on the stem, making picking ripe fruit easy an fast.  I think they have the uniform ripening gene, which means the fruit are very evenly red.  I am not a huge fan of the uniform ripening gene, and much prefer fruit with green shoulders, but it was prevalent in the germplasm I had access to at the time I was developing this variety.  

Igloo tomato

Igloo tomatoes never crack or split even if watering is erratic.  I have never had any blossom end rot on these even when other varieties planted next to them are besotted in blossom end rot.  Never cracking, and never succumbing to blossom end rot, means there is not a lot of wasted fruit.

Not only are they among the first to ripen in my garden, they are also one of the few varieties that consistently provide large yields.  Some years the conditions are a bit harsh and other varieties don't really crop, igloo tomatoes always produce about 12 kg of ripe fruit for me.  

Igloo tomatoes produce large seeds, meaning that seed saving is simple.  Larger seeds also tend to remain viable for longer than small seeded varieties.  While seed is always best when relatively fresh, I have grown seed from this that was over 20 years old and had been stored dry in a cupboard.  

igloo tomatoes - not all are ripe enough

I find that these taste ok when not quite ripe enough, but taste great if left to ripen fully.  I tend to allow them to ripen on the plant, but they can be picked early and ripened on the bench.  Like every tomato, they taste best if not put in the fridge.  

I have no idea how well this variety copes with humid coastal conditions, all I know is it performs well for me and produces large amounts of food even with a short growing season.

I have donated seeds of Igloo tomato to a few different community seed saving groups (and encouraged them to distribute the seeds among their members) as it does have the potential to feed a lot of people using a small amount of space.  I hoped to get some feedback about how they perform under different conditions in people's backyards.  Unfortunately I have never heard anything from any of them, and don't know if they have even planted the seeds.  I hope that at least some of them shared the seeds among their members.  

While I am biased because I developed this variety, I think it is a great tomato.  It tastes good, looks nice, provides a huge crop on a small plant, never suffers diseases, ripens early, and is simple to save seeds from.  

If you are interested in buying seed for Igloo tomatoes I list them on my for sale page along with various other vegetable seeds, perennial vegetable plants, and edible herbs.  

Giant Broad Leaf Dandelion

I have been breeding dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) for a few years.  Not just deliberately growing them, but intentionally breeding with the aim of improving them.

Given that every part of this remarkable plant is edible and useful, I mostly focused on breeding for larger leaves.  I also grow pink dandelions (Taraxacum pseudoroseum), I have not done any breeding work with pink dandelions and given how difficult it is to work with them I like never will.  

Giant dandelion leaf 47cm long

Breeding dandelions is difficult, I find it far more difficult than other vegetables.  

The 'flower' on a dandelion plant is hundreds of tiny flowers crammed closely together.  Individual dandelion flowers are tiny.  All parts of the flowers are tiny and are very difficult to work with.  Emasculating flowers to prevent self pollination is difficult as they are tiny, and not always effective as they can produce seeds through apomixis without any pollination.  Due to apomixis, when cross pollinating I have no idea if the cross worked, or if the resultant seed will be a clone of the mother plant.  Adding selective pressure does not always cause genetic drift, again this is due to apomixis.  

Further complicating dandelion breeding is the fact that most dandelions are triploid, and most dandelions in Australia are usually sterile triploids that reproduce by obligate apomixis.  

Unfortunately, while I understand the theory of this, I don't have a good understanding of what this means in practice.  There has been some research into dandelion ploidy and breeding, which I found interesting.  This research indicates that while it should be theoretically impossible to breed using triploid dandelions, it is experimentally possible.  

While there was a concerted effort to breed dandelions, there is very little literature on how to breed dandelions.  Most of this was written by the Soviets, is poorly translated, and largely deals with Taraxacum koksaghyz and breeding it for rubber yield.  

I believe there were a few dandelion farms in Tasmania and Western Australia.  Like much of this country's past, this seems to have been largely forgotten and lost to history.  I wish I could get hold of T koksaghyz, perhaps some day I will track down someone who has seed that they are willing to share with me.  

For these reasons I gave dandelion breeding my best shot, hoped it would work, and figured nothing useful would come of it.  I am happy to say, my breeding efforts yielded impressive results (and at the same time was kind of pointless).

These dandelion leaves grow wide

When starting to breed dandelions I focused mostly on length of leaves as this is simple to measure.  Dandelions produce longer leaves in certain seasons, and under certain growing conditions, so I had to be careful to 'compare apples with apples'. 

Dandelion grow out - leaf comparison

I have a good line in which mature plants consistently produces leaves around 50cm long.  This was a good start.  I considered leaving it there, but my plants weren't as useful as I wanted them to be.  

I had a few plants that produced leaves that were not quite as long, but were wider at certain times of the year.  These are probably more useful as a vegetable.  More leafy and less stalk.  I wondered if I could work with these wider plants, and make them even more useful.  So I (somewhat begrudgingly) did some more breeding work with them.  

Giant dandelion on left, regular dandelion on right

After a lot of fiddly work, most of which yielded exact clones of the parent plant or no seed at all due to rough handling, I started to see some progress.  This encouraged me to do a little more work.  

Again my efforts were largely frustrated by either aborted seed or exact clones of the parent, but among them were some successes.  I am certainly no expert in this area, and my results were patchy at best.  After quite some time my giant edible dandelions are incredible.  

The leaves of my dandelions often measure 6 to 7 inches wide, and are usually a little under 50 cm long.  In winter the leaves are smaller, if they don't have enough water they are smaller, and if shaded they can grow a little larger.  

Dandelion leaf over 6 inches wide

These larger wider leaves are great.  They are far more useable in a salad, or easier to feed to animals.  While I haven't tried it, I assume they could be used to wrap food similar to grape leaves or mulberry leaf. 

I am not keen on how bitter raw dandelion leaves can be, these large broad leaves taste milder and much less bitter.  Dandelion leaves tend to be less bitter before flowering, and become increasingly bitter as the plant flowers.  These giant broad dandelion leaves are pretty mild even when in bloom.  I didn't select for this trait, it was just a nice surprise with the giant plants.  

These plants need more water than lawn weeds if they are to reach their potential.  Regular lawn dandelions don't cope in the dry, these giant broad leaf dandelions really don't cope being very dry.  They tend to survive being dry if they are well established, but the resultant plants are a mere fraction of the size of what they could have been.  

Being so large, these plants need room to grow.  When grown in a pot they are always stunted.  When grown in the garden their roots can penetrate deep in search of nutrients, and they grow far larger.  They survive surprisingly well with competition, but grow a lot larger and faster if you remove their competition.  

I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone that fertile soil is needed for them to grow large.  Poor soils result in much smaller plants.  

Dandelion leaf over 6 inches wide

These massive dandelions also seem to suffer from a leaf disease from time to time.  This disease produces spots on the leaves, it is possibly some form of leaf rust fungus.  I see this appear on regular dandelions from time to time, but it seems to affect the giant ones far more.  

Dandelion leaf spot

I am sure you could spray with something to control this.  I grow everything organically, so I am not sure how to prevent this disease, all I know is if I leave the infected leaf alone the disease will spread to other leaves.  When I see this disease I remove infected leaves and feed them to the guinea pigs or chickens, this seems to stop it spreading.  

I don't put the infected leaf in the compost for fear it will produce spores and spread, feeding it to an animal seems to destroy the pathogen.  The plant grows replacement leaves and is healthy once the spotty leaf has been removed.  This indicates that the disease is not systemic.  

Dandelion leaves over a foot and a half long

Growing dandelions from seed is simple.  They germinate best when fresh, and germination rates seem to decline quickly as seed ages.  I find light improves germination, so I plant dandelion seed much like lettuce seed.  I plant them in pots or trays of soil, and press seeds into the mix and water in.  From there I treat them the same as I treat lettuce.  

I tend to sow the seeds reasonably thick.  Dandelion seedlings start out small.  I let the seedlings grow a while before transplanting them somewhere in the garden.  Once transplanted, they need a lot of water to become established, other than that I treat them like any vegetable.  

Dandelion seedlings

Dandelion seedlings larger and ready for transplanting

After several years and an absurd amount of effort, I now have good lines of giant dandelions.  They are so large that when people see an individual leaf they often ask me what they are, and do not believe me when I explain they are dandelions.  

I do sell seed of these giant dandelions, as well as pink dandelions, through my for sale page.  The flowers were open pollinated, but there is a good chance they will produce plants that are clones of the mother.  If they were somehow pollinated by another plant, they will have 50% genes from the mother plant and should still grow huge.  If you are interested, everything I have for sale will be listed on my for sale page.  

Mulberry tree for food security

A mulberry tree is like a vegetable garden on a trunk.  

Mulberry trees are well known for producing delicious berries.  What many people do not realise is that mulberry trees also produce abundant and surprisingly nutritious leafy greens.  

I have cooked and eaten mulberry leaves, they taste nice and can be used like spinach or silverbeet.  I have only cooked eaten young leaves.  I imagine older leaves would be too fibrous and I can't imagine raw leaves to taste all that nice.   

Mulberry leaf as a vegetable

While there is little mention of them on the internet, mulberry leaves are eaten as a vegetable in several places such as Cuba and Latin America.    

Mulberry trees produce well with little (or no) irrigation, can thrive in many climates from frosty temperate areas to the tropics, thrive on many different soil types, they have few significant pests, and they produce well on many different soil types.  Mulberries are remarkable trees that are drastically underutilised for food security, they are excellent fodder for livestock, and are a great vegetable for people.  

The taste of cooked mulberry leaves is ok, not bitter or objectionable, but also not remarkable.  I have started to see people sharing recipes using mulberry leaves to wrap lamb or chicken or rice or tofu, similar to how people use grape leaves.  Given how nutritious and abundant they are I think mulberry leaves deserve to be eaten more commonly.

Stuffed mulberry leaves - image from https://maryamsculinarywonders.blogspot.com/2019/04/1234-freekeh-stuffed-mulberry-leaves.html 

Mulberry leaves typically contain more than triple the amount of protein found in many vegetables, and under normal circumstances mulberry trees can produce up to double the amount of protein per acre compared to soy.  

If you don't already have a mulberry tree, you should consider growing one.  Mulberry trees are one of the simplest fruit trees to grow, they grow very fast, and mulberry leaf is the easiest vegetable for beginners to grow and the most productive vegetable for beginners to grow.  

Cutting grown mulberry tree

A study was undertaken comparing the nutritional value of fresh leaves from six different genotypes of mulberry.  Even though there is a bit of a range of values between cultivars it demonstrates that mulberry leaves are far more nutritious than most vegetables we commonly eat.   

I have summarised their findings below:

• Moisture 71.13 to 76.68% 
• Protein 4.72 to 9.96% (most vegetables have about 2% or less) 
• Ash 4.26 to 5.32% (ash is the mineral content: calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, etc) 
• Neutral Detergent Fiber 8.15 to 11.32%  
• Fat 0.64 to 1.51% 
• Carbohydrates 8.01 to 13.42% 
• Energy 69 to 86 kcal/100 g 
• Vitamin C 160 to 280 mg/100 g (oranges have 50 mg)
• Beta-carotene 10,000 to 14,688 mcg/100 g (carrots have 8,729 mcg)
• Iron 4.70-10.36 mg/100 g (spinach has 2.6 mg)
• Zinc 0.22-1.12 mg/100 g 
• Calcium 380-786 mg/100 g (full fat cow milk has about 120 mg)

Recently a desktop review was conducted comparing several options for households producing all their own protein when there are future disruptions to supply chains.  Their conclusions were unrealistic at best, but they made me think about back yard food production.  

We have a good size vegetable garden, but it is nowhere near large enough to supply our household with all our protein requirements.  We also have a few egg laying chickens, and some fruit trees, including a white mulberry (Morus alba) and a white shahtoot mulberry.  

Following on from the growing protein study linked to above, and given how nutritious mulberry leaves are, I wondered how many mulberry trees I would need to produce all my protein for a year.  So, out of curiosity I crunched some numbers similar to the desktop review.  The results were interesting.  

Mulberry leaf stuffed with chicken - image from https://www.greenprophet.com/2013/05/stuffed-mulberry-leaves-recipe/

A lot of research has been conducted into mulberry tree leaves as they (mulberry leaves, not the berries) are commercially important due to silkworm farming.  I used this research to work out how much protein a mulberry tree can produce, and how many trees would be required for a year supply of protein.  

Often, about 9,600 mulberry trees are grown per hectare or almost 4,000 per acre, this works out to just under one per sqm.  Yields of fresh leaves range from 3.2–21 tons/acre/year (8–52 tons/hectare/year) with most in the 8–12 tons/acre/year (20–30 tons/hectare/year).  This means that on average, each year roughly 2.5kg of leaves are harvested per mulberry tree.  

The protein in mulberry leaves ranges from 15-35% dry weight, or 4.72-9.96% of the fresh weight.  I used 6.5% for the protein content of fresh leaves in my calculations, which is lower than the average.  That works out to 162.5 grams of protein per tree being produced from leaves alone, meaning a one year supply of protein for one person can be provided by the leaves harvested from approximately 112 mulberry trees.   

Mulberry leaves are abundant vegetables

To give this perspective, commercially potatoes yield about 4kg per sqm, providing about 80 grams of protein per sqm.  That’s about 228 sqm of growing area for potatoes per person if relying solely on potatoes to meet protein requirements.  Mulberry trees would only use about 53% of the total land that would be required to grow potatoes and produce the same amount of protein.  As I said earlier, a mulberry tree is like a vegetable garden on a trunk.  

Soy is a legume crop that is known for producing high amounts of protein per acre.  Soy is said to produce up to 513,066 grams of protein per acre.  

Around 4,000 mulberry trees are planted per acre, each yielding 2.5kg of leaves with 6.5% (or more) protein fresh weight.  This produces over 650,000 g protein per acre, which is significantly more protein per acre than soy.  

If growing a mulberry variety with 10% protein in fresh leaves it would produce double the amount of protein that soy can produce per acre.  Mulberry trees produce more protein per acre than soy.  

White mulberry tree outside my back fence 

Comparing the water requirements is a bit more difficult and far less accurate, so you have to take the following 'with a grain of salt'.  

Not surprisingly, I could not find any publications directly comparing the water requirements of mulberry and soy.  According to Agriculture Victoria (https://agriculture.vic.gov.au/crops-and-horticulture/grains-pulses-and-cereals/growing-grains-pulses-and-cereals/growing-soybean-in-victoria), soy requires an average of 2.6 Megaliters of water per acre.  According to the Rural Industries Research and Development (https://agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/publications/00-056.pdf) mulberry tree plantations require less than 1.3 Megaliters per acre.  

Using the above calculations it appears that mulberry trees could produce about double the amount of protein per acre compared to soy, while using half the irrigation.  Mulberry trees can produce good amounts of protein per acre in marginal areas where soy will not produce any crop because the climate and soils and climate are not right for soy.  

Who knew that mulberry leaves can produce that much much more protein per acre that soy!  

Mulberry cutting

Does all of this mean I am suggesting that people should grow 112 mulberry trees each to produce all their protein needs?  Absolutely not.  

Even though it would be really cool, replacing the lawn with an orchard of heavily coppiced mulberry trees isn’t something that people would want to do.  

While growing this many mulberry trees may be possible in some yards, and would take less time and effort to look after than the average lawn of the same size, I don’t think it is realistic, and I'm not planning on doing that.  

10cm tall to 6 feet tall in under 5 months

I can’t imagine what a miserable existence it would be having to eat about a kilogram of mulberry leaves each and every day to meet your protein requirements.  I don't know what you would do over winter while the deciduous trees are leafless.  

I am not suggesting you plant 2 or 3 mulberry trees, and eat nothing but mulberry leaves for a few weeks each year.  I am also not suggesting that you should grow a mulberry and regularly incorporate its leaves in your meals over the growing months. 

Mulberry leaf plantation. Image by Nahid Hossain, Creative Commons 4.0 license

What I am suggesting is growing a mulberry tree, or several mulberry trees, is a good idea if you have the space.  It will add to your food security even if you never eat the leaves.  

The estimated leaf yields above are based on coppiced trees that are regularly harvested for silkworm production.  When grown like this there are no berries, just leaves.  

Most backyard mulberry trees would not grow like this, most would be allowed to produce berries and develop into large trees with a single trunk or as a multi trunked tree.  As the trees grow larger, they produce increasing yields of both berries and leaves.  

The FAO mentions very old trees in China producing 400kg of berries and 225kg of fresh leaves in a year.  What an incredible sight they must be!  

My mulberry producing food from otherwise unused land

A mulberry tree would increase your food security.  Each year you can eat some berries (they are utterly delicious), or you can grow the tree in your chicken run and let your chickens eat them, if your chickens eat all the berries you will save a little money on chicken feed and help your chickens be a little healthier.  Or you can let the birds take care of them for you.  From time to time the leaves can be eaten, or made into tea, or just left alone to allow the tree to gain energy and grow larger.  

During times of financial hardship, you hear regular stories of vegetable gardens being raided and produce being stolen (and/or destroyed).  While people would probably take some berries, it is unlikely during an emergency that your neighbours would take any leaves from your mulberry tree as they would not recognise them as being edible or as being high in protein and vitamins.  This adds to your food security as you would have a tree full of leaves to cook if you ran low on everything else.  You could use the leaves like spinach, except mulberry leaves are far more nutritious.  

Fresh mulberry leaves can grow large

Chickens and other small animals enjoy eating mulberry leaves.  When hard times hit, you may be unable to buy food for chickens or other little animals .  You certainly don't want them to starve.  The mulberry tree can be used to reduce the amount of bought feed you are using, to get you through until you are able to buy animal feed again.  This also adds to your food security.  

Mulberry trees appear to be the ultimate perennial vegetable.  Most people who have eaten the leaves cooked enjoyed them, some felt neutral about them, so far I have never met anyone who has disliked them.  People tend not to eat mulberry leaves as a vegetable often due to the cultural taboo surrounding eating tree leaves.  For some reason we have been told to view tree leaves as a famine food rather than a sustainable and easy to grow perennial vegetable.  There is nothing wrong with eating healthy organic leaves from mulberry trees.  

Having a nice-looking shade tree in your yard, that is able to provide you with delicious berries in season, and a few handfuls of vegetable leaves if needed, seems like a sensible thing to do.  If you can get past the idea of tree leaves being famine food, all the better! 

Maidenhair fern comparison of varieties

I grow a few different maidenhair ferns, they are lovely ferns and I really like them.  Each type that I grow are noticeably different.  

I sell a few maidenhair ferns each year, and hope they the buyer looks after them.  Sadly, most people think of maidenhair ferns (or any potted plants) like a bunch of flowers: they look great when they buy it and they expect to throw it away after a time.  I am happy to say that these ferns will live for decades if cared for.  

Maidenhair ferns are relatively simple to grow.  I don't mist them or have them under grow lights or make any attempt to control humidity or have a terrarium or anything like that.  I grow some outside under shelter, some in my unheated greenhouse, and some on the bookshelf in the house.  I wrote a previous blog post describing how I grow maidenhair ferns.  

I really like my maiden hair ferns so thought I would make a blog post showing a comparison of the different types I currently grow.  Please note I am not a fern collector, there are many more varieties (as many other species) of maidenhair that exist.  

Variegated maidenhair pinnules are each unique 

Office fern: Adiantum raddianum.  Originally from South America, these are commonly sold in garden shops.  I call it my office fern because it lived on the deak at my office for the first four years that I had it.  People often complain that they had one but killed it because they treated it like a cactus instead of a fern.  It grows long, arching, delicate looking fronds on surprisingly thin black stems.  This fern can get rather dense and vibrant if looked after.  I have had the fern below for almost eight years and it is thriving.  The largest fronds usually reach a little over 50cm long, which is about as big as this one will grow in a pot this size.  

Maidenhair fern - almost eight years old

Chunky maidenhair: probably Adiantum raddianum, but I am not certain.  I was told this is 'Lady Moxon', after growing it for a few years I am pretty sure that it is not Lady Moxon.  It is quite different to my office fern and produces chunky and compact fronds.  The fronds are slightly contorted and twisted, and the pinnules are clumped much closer together than they typical maidenhair ferns.  The stem of each frond is much thicker than normal maidenhair ferns.  I have not grown this as many years as my office fern so it is not as large, and I don't yet know how large it can become.  While it is staying comparatively compact, it seems to be getting longer and chunkier fronds each year.  When I first got this, due to its shape it almost looked similar to a bonsai tree.  

Chunky maidenhair fern

Chunky maidenhair fern

Chunky maidenhair frond

Variegated maidenhair vs chunky 

Variegated maidenhair fern: Adiantum raddianum 'Variegata'.  The elusive and rare variegated maidenhair fern.  Fronds are green splashed with white and produced on thin black stems.  I think there are a few versions of this, but on mine the fronds tend to divide towards the tips.  This is never as large as my office fern, the largest fronds reaching about 40cm long.  My photos never do justice to this incredible fern, it is a delightful and graceful and captivates with its delicate fronds and striking variegation.  

Variegated Maidenhair Fern

Variegated maidenhair frond 

Native maidenhair fern: this is one of Australia's 8 native species, most likely Adiantum aethiopicum but it could be Adiantum capillus-veneris, I really need a fern expert to positively identify it for me one day.  This species is native to Australia, and native to my location.  The pinnules are a different shape to my office fern, and the sporangium are also a different shape.  It is hardier, and survives light frosts and drying out much better than the South American A raddianum.  This sends out runners under the soil, and survives a far wider range of conditions.  This species never gets as dense and full looking as the South American species.  

Australian native maidenhair fern

This is by no means an exhaustive list of maidenhair fern varieties, it is just the varieties I am currently growing.  There are a few other varieties I would like to get some day, but that may or may not ever happen.

I do sell maidenhair ferns from time to time.  When I have a few for sale I list them on my for sale page.  That page has my contact details, so if you are after one of my ferns send me an email and I will let you know if I have any for sale.  If you have any interesting varieties of maidenhair fern let me know, I would love to learn more.  

Grow water chestnuts in milk bottles

I have written a few blog posts on growing Chinese water chestnuts in buckets and flexitubs, it's easy and they are very productive when grown like that.  As well as this I also grow a few aquatic vegetables in milk bottles.  

Growing water chestnuts in a milk bottle is not ideal.  When grown like this the yield is low or even non-existent, but it keeps the plants alive.  They can survive by growing in a milk bottle like this for years.  

I cut the base off a plastic milk bottle, fill it three quarters with soil, plant a corm, and add water to the top.  From here, I just top up the water.  Simple.    

Chinese water chestnuts 

I first did this as a short term thing so I could sell duck potatoes or water chestnuts at a garage sale.  I told people to plant them into something larger if they wanted an edible size crop.  Someone asked me how long the plants can survive like this because their pond was not yet ready.  I didn't know, I told them to give it a try and if they died I would replace them.  I never heard back so assumed it went well.  

Out of curiosity I kept growing some Chinese Water chestnuts in milk bottles to see how long they can last like this.  I assumed they would last a few months with no problem.  It turns out they will live like this for several years!  

Below are duck potatoes and watercress growing in a milk bottle.  This is their third year.  The water cress drops seed and grows by itself.  The duck potatoes go dormant each winter.  They multiply, but only slowly due to the lack of space.  

Duck potatoes growing in a milk bottle

Below is another milk bottle, this has water chestnuts, duck potatoes, and watercress.  This one has azolla and duck weed growing on the surface of the water.  The azolla and duckweed die back over winter, and come in strong once the weather warms.  

This photo was taken at the start of spring when everything was just breaking dormancy.  Once the weather warms the duckweed and azolla will cover the water surface, and becomes a self mulching living fertiliser.   They also seem to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in the milk bottle.

Duck potato, water chestnuts, and water cress

What you can't see from my photos is the amount of life in the water.  It is incredible just how many tiny organisms are in there.  There are heaps of tiny things swimming around that can be seen even without a microscope.  

Putting a drop of this water on a slide and viewing under a microscope is something else.  My kids are fascinated by the sheer number of things teeming in the water.  It isn't the number of things that surprises me, it is their diversity.  There are a lot of things living in there, and there are plenty of different types of things.  It is a remarkably diverse little ecosystem.  

I can't tell you how these tiny critters got in there, but I can tell you that they are thriving.

Azolla and duck weed starting to come back

I also tried putting a small pot of soil in the cut off bottom of a milk bottle.  Below you can see a water chestnut emerging from dormancy.  Once it gets taller I will fill up the milk bottle with water.  If I want I can either plant it into a larger pot, or just leave it for another year.  

Again, if grown like this the yield will be very small.  They need more soil to grow properly.  They can and do survive like this for several years, so this can be a good way to keep them short term while you get something larger ready for them.  If life gets in the way, short term can push out to a few years.  

Water chestnut in small pot of soil

It can be difficult to buy Chinese water chestnuts or duck potatoes at certain times of year.  Many people want to buy them to put in a pond or a water feature, but need more time to plan and build the water feature.  Buying the plants when they are available, and growing them in the base of a milk bottle like this, solves the problem.  They easily survive like this as long as needed, and can be planted into the water feature when it is ready.  If it isn't ready until next year, that's fine.

I have a for sale page on this blog where I sell water chestnuts and duck potatoes and other perennial vegetables in Australia.  I update the page regularly, and it has my email address that you can use to contact me.  

Fragaria virginiana breeding larger berries

I grow a few different strawberries, some different species and some garden strawberries.  One of the species of wild strawberries I grow is Fragaria virginiana. 

Fragaria virginiana strawberries

F virginiana comes from North America.  This species was used as one of the two main parents to develop the garden strawberries that you can buy from the shops.  This was used as a parent due to its great taste, the other parent was used for its larger sized berries.

The taste of these berries is similar to a garden strawberry, but nicer, and more concentrated.  The original berries were too small for my liking, so I decided to do some breeding for larger berry size.  

Larger F virginiana strawberries

When I first got seeds of this plant they took a while to grow to maturity, the resultant berries were about the size of your finger nail.  The berries tasted great, but were too small.  Even the smallest berries in the photos are larger than the original berries.  I don't know what size berry is normal for this species, I know there are several cultivars overseas with larger berries.  I think the wild ones tend to be a lot smaller. 

I originally obtained seed that had been collected from the wild.  These tiny berries certainly had great taste.  They also had a lot of genetic diversity, which made this selective breeding project a lot simpler.  

I collected seed, grew out a lot of plants, culled the ones with the smaller berries, and grew seeds from the ones with the largest berries.  I did this for a few years.  

It takes time for these to go from seed to fruit, and these only flower once or twice per year in my garden, so this project took quite a while before I could see any progress.   

Saving seed from strawberries, and growing it out to maturity, is fiddly.  Luckily you get a lot of seed per berry, and a lot of genetic diversity combined with a lot of seed means there is a good chance of stumbling across the right plant.  Growing out large numbers helps your chances of getting the right genetic combination.  

Some are too small and will be culled

After a few generations it was clear that the berries are significantly larger than the original ones.  As you can see in my photos, some plants produce larger berries than others.  It takes the same space and effort to grow tiny berries as it does larger berries, so the smaller ones are culled.  

This is still the same species, it has not crossed with any other species, or messed around with ploidy levels.  I have selected for larger berries through growing many seedlings and culling hard.  Some of the smaller ones also don't look typical of this species, given they open pollinated they may have crossed, so I have also culled anything that appears to be an off type.  

I was worried that the taste might be diluted in the larger berries.  I am happy to say that this has not been the case.  The larger berries taste the same as the smaller berries.  When under ripe they are not great, but when ripe they taste incredible.  

These plants all produce runners in my garden.  This means I am able to cull the smaller ones and propagate the larger ones quickly and easily.  If they did not produce runners it would likely mean another 15 or so years of growing out seeds to produce a stable variety, so runners are great.  Runners also mean the plants spread to different parts of my garden, if we have another dry summer that kills off lots of things there is a chance one runner will be sitting somewhere protected and I will be able to us it to restart the patch.  

Realistically this is probably the largest berries that these plants can produce through selective breeding.  I think they have reached their genetic potential.  I will still try to grow seed from the largest ones and see if there are any further gains to be made, but I am not expecting much from here.  

If I were to induce polyploidy, or hybridise with another species I know the berries could become far larger, but I have no plans for attempting things like that.  

Further breeding work could be done with these to introduce day length neutrality, or more flower production.  I am not sure if my stock has the genes needed for this, and I probably can't source any Fragaria virginiana with the needed genetics, so it is unlikely I will breed towards this any time soon.  

I sell bare rooted plants of the largest ones through my for sale page.  The plants flower in spring and fruit spring/summer.  Sometimes they provide a second crop in autumn.  They produce many runners and can fill a garden bed relatively quickly.  Their productivity is low, but they make up for that in great taste and ease of growing.

Leaf Cuttings African Violet

A few years ago I bought an African violet.  For some reason I don't see many African violets around these days.  They are lovely little ornamental flowers with no particular use that I can gather beyond being nice to look at.  

I have always heard that African violets are difficult to grow.  My one has been easy to grow.  It lives in a little self watering pot on my kitchen windowsill.  Every few weeks I fill up the water reservoir, from time to time I remove dead flowers or dead leaves, and I rotate the pot occasionally to keep the growth reasonably even.  Other than that it takes care of itself.

Up until recently it bloomed for most of the year, only stopping over winter when it gets too cold.  My original one grows large ruffled blue flowers, it is rather pretty.  It needs repotting and/or fertilising if it is going to keep flowering well.  Using leachate from my worm farm seems to be good fertiliser for African violets. 

At that start of winter I saw an African violet that had dark red flowers.  I had heard how simple African violets are to propagate form leaf cuttings, so thought I would give it a try.  I removed a leaf, put it in my pocket, and brought it home.  When I got home I mixed potting soil with perlite, put this in a pot, watered it until damp, and planted my leaf cutting.  

African Violet leaf babies 

I have heard that the plantlets are produced from the cut part of the petiole, and to produce extra plantlets you cut the petiole on an angle with the cut section facing up.  I did this, I also nicked the petiole a little further up to see if it produced any extra plants for me.

Several months passed, the leaf looked fine, but nothing really happened.  It can be very cold in my house over winter, so it is not unexpected that it did not grow during this time.

One day in early spring the potting mix looked like it had been pushed up near the base of the leaf.  I looked closer and saw several tiny leaves.  It looks like my leaf cutting worked, and the leaf cutting is producing several baby African violets.  

Now the weather has warmed, the tiny plantlets have started to grow relatively quickly.  The leaf itself still looks healthy.

I am still not sure how many plants it produced as the leaves of the baby plants are all close together.  It looks like this leaf has produced three or four little plants.  I am happy with that number.  

I am told if you slit the end of the petiole about a centimeter or two that you should get a much larger number of plantlets, but they will be a bit smaller.  I have taken a leaf cutting from my blue flowered plant and am trying this.  

African Violet leaf babies

Look how cute leaf babies are!

I plan to let these grow a bit larger before I repot them into individual pots.  If I divide them too early I risk killing them, if I wait too long to divide I risk stunting them, so it is a bit of a guesswork balancing act.  

I think they are ready to be transplanted now, but am planning leaving them to grow just a little larger.  I really don't want to lose them.

Leaf babies ready for transplant 

The mother leaf itself still looks remarkably healthy.  If I cut it off just above where the plantlets are attached, I wonder if I could reuse the leaf as a cutting to produce even more plants.  I would hate to lose my little leaf babies, so perhaps I will attempt this with another leaf at another time.  

It is early summer here now.  After repotting I have no idea how long until they will be large enough to flower, I am guessing it won't be before late spring or early summer next year at the earliest.  From everything I have read it takes about 6 to 9 months to flower after being separated.  

Edit to add: this post was written December 2023, the leaf babies were flowering March 2024, they had not yet been divided or repotted.  The leaf cutting from my blue African violet has just started to grow baby plantlets.  Perhaps the 6 to 9 months includes 3 months for the leaf to produce baby plants, and then another 3 to 6 months before they are large enough to flower.  I have been told growing from seed takes a similar amount of time.

I would like to get a few more types of African violet.  I don't have a lot of places in my house where I think African violets will thrive, so I will never grow a large number of them and will need to be picky about what varieties I grow.  

Once my leaf babies are larger I will probably keep one and offer the others for sale or trade, or I may offer to sell leaf cuttings.  If I do this I will try to list them on my for sale page along with the perennial vegetables, herbs, and vegetable seeds and things that I sell.  I don't plan of selling them before they start to flower and I work out the best way to post them, so this won't be until some time from now.