Yabby in a shell - hermit crab style

My daughter has been asking for a pet for some time.  I keep trying to convince her that one of the chickens, or guinea pigs, or bees that we already have can be her pet, but she says no.  I tried hard to convince her that one of the daddy long legs spiders would make a fine pet, but she is far too discerning for such things.

Before Christmas we were walking by the river and something small in the water caught my eye.  It was a tiny baby yabbie, maybe 1cm long.  I caught it and we took it home and she fell in love with the little thing.  That little yabby is her pet.  

We have had a yabby as a pet a few times in the past.  Yabbies are simple to feed, cheap to feed, very hardy, forgiving of downright putrid conditions, shed their skin to grow, become relatively tame, are quiet, they live for years, and this one was free. They are a great pet for a child!

As well as watching it, and feeding it, talking to it, naming it, and cleaning out its tank, my daughter put an empty snail shell in there for decoration.  

The yabby has taken up residence in this empty shell.  It sleeps in there, and spends a large part of the day hanging out the front looking reminiscent of a hermit crab.  This is heaps of fun.

I tried to take some photos, they are a bit blurry, but you get the idea.

Yabby in a shell

Yabby living in the snail shell

Glass Gem corn

This year I grew the famous "Glass Gem Corn".  I am not sure how or when glass gem corn made its way to Australia, but there are a few people growing and selling it here now.

To prevent cross-pollination I only grew glass gem corn this year, and no other varieties of corn.  I am not sure if any of my neighbours grew any type of corn, but I doubt it.

Glass Gem corn is not a sweet corn, it is not a GM corn, it is not the same as the 'glass bead' corn that I used to grow.  Glass gem corn can be used to grind for flour, or to feed livestock, and it makes a reasonable pop corn if allowed to ripen and dry properly.  Above all else, glass gem corn is incredibly beautiful.

I have heard so much about glass gem corn that I figured this year I would grow it and see what I think.  I planted similar coloured seeds close together, this means some cobs were largely one colour, and other cobs were filled with mixed colours.  

To be honest I am not sure what I prefer, mixed colours are pretty, and so are cobs of largely one type of colour.

Some cobs of Glass Gem corn have mixed colours.  I like the look of these mixed glass gem cobs.

Glass Gem Corn

Glass Gem corn - mixed colours

Some cobs of Glass gem corn are mostly pink.  My daughters love the pink glass gem corn.

Glass Gem corn - pink

Some cobs of Glass Gem corn are mostly blues.  

Glass Gem corn - blue

Some glass gem corn cobs are mostly pale colours:

Some glass gem corn cobs have darker colours:

Glass Gem Corn

Glass Gem Corn

I was told that glass gem corn plants will produce up to 15 cobs per plant if given enough space, and far less cobs if planted closer.  Some online seed sellers claim they reliably produce 2 to 3 cobs per plant.

For me, under reasonably cramped conditions they produced anywhere from 1 to 10 cobs per plant.  Some plants tiller lots, some didn't tiller at all.  Some produced one or two decent cobs and a bunch of poorly filled out ones (presumably an issue with pollination from being planted too close), others produced a lot of cobs that were all completely filled out, and other plants produced one single cob.

I counted up all the cobs and averaged 4.5 cobs per plant.  This average includes cobs were poorly pollinated and did not have many seeds.

Glass gem corn tillering - this plant produced 10 cobs

Glass gem corn, I grow beans up the stalks and a ground cover of purslane

I am told glass gem corn grow up to 3 metres tall or more, most of mine were about half that size.  The glass gem corn plants averaged 1.5 to 1.8 metres tall for me, with a few shorter plants in the mix.  I have grown some really tall corn in the past, but this variety did not look anything like them.  I honestly doubt it could get very tall regardless of the space it is given or fertility of the soil.  This is good, shorter corn is better in small gardens.

The cobs themselves weren't overly long, for me they came in about 15 cm long, some a little longer and others slightly shorter.  Not a bad size cob for popcorn.

Glass Gem Corn cobs 15cm long

I like glass gem corn, and my daughters seem to love the pink popcorn even though it still pops white just like the store bought yellow stuff.  

I particularly like all of the different colours and shades glass gem corn comes in.

Glass Gem Corn comes in a myriad of colours

 

When saving the seed I will keep some of the colours separate and sell seeds from cobs that were mostly pink, or mostly blue, or mixed cobs.  While the pinks don't produce 100% pink cobs, they all carry pink genetics and unless pollinated by stray pollen they will mostly be pink similar to the cob in the photo.  Who knows, perhaps your daughter will want to grow pink popcorn too!

I think I will try to grow glass gem corn again, I like it.  As far as popcorn goes it is very pretty, and the yield seems pretty good.  I will probably also sell seeds through my for sale page. 

Solanum acroscopicum - wild potato relative

I have a few potatoes grown from true potato seed.  Tetraploid potatoes are ok, I really like some of my diploids because their taste is vastly superior to any tetraploid potato I have ever tasted and their colouration can be spectacular.

As well as domestic potatoes, I have a few wild relatives of potatoes, or crosses of domestic x wild potatoes.  Being wild plants they tend not to have the highest yields, but they do contain a lot of genes that are not found in domestic potatoes, so hold potential for breeding something spectacular.  Some species can be crossed with domestic potatoes, others cannot.

One wild potato that I am particularly fond of is Solanum acroscopicum.  I am not sure why, there is just something about this species that I like.

I grew some from seed planted August/September last year, and they started flowering mid February.  I have a few domestic diploids flowering near it, but this plant is reluctant to set seed for now.  Hopefully conditions are just right and it produces seed for me one day.  

The flowers tend to be large, unfortunately I didn't think to take any photos until most had dropped off and only the tired looking flowers were left.

Solanum acroscopicum

The tubers produced by my S acroscopicum are smallish, kind of round, have lovely smooth skin, white skin and white flesh.  It has short stolons so the potatoes form nice and close to the plant.  It has a short dormancy, so is not well suited to my winters, but hopefully I work out a system to keep it going.  This certainly isn't the only plant I grow that is not suited to my climate.

The taste is not particularly impressive, it tastes a little better than a store bought potato but really nothing spectacular.  I am told that (unlike modern domestic potatoes) you can eat partly green tubers safely, but haven't tried that myself.  The yield is not huge by any standards.  Like any seed grown potato, first year plants produce smaller yields and subsequent year plants produce larger yields.

Nothing really stands out as being spectacular.  Yet for some reason, I really like these little guys.

The leaves are noticeably different from domestic potato leaves, they are a bit more pointy shaped and are held more upright.  The flowers are usually pretty and often very large, probably not as pretty as the flowers on some of my diploids, and so far it has produced less flowers than my diploids, but they are still rather nice.  I really need to take a photo of the nicer looking flowers.

When grown from seed the plants show a lot of vigour early on, and the seedlings quickly surpassed my other seed grown potatoes.  Once the first year seedlings get more established the acroscopicum survives but didn't really take off.  I tried taking cuttings, but forgot about them and they died.

Solanum acroscopicum at top, tetraploid potato in middle, diploid potatoes lower left

Seedling potatoes and other seedlings

Seedling S acroscopicum on left is stout and sending out stolons, seedling tetraploid potato on right is spindly and weak

At this stage I don't really have any plans for my acroscopicum.  If any survive winter, next year I should try to cross with with various domestic potatoes to see what they can produce. 

I do have some micro tubers that I am willing to trade if someone has another potato that is interesting, or I sell tubers through my for sale page after I harvest them.

Seed Grown Dahlias

My daughter grew a dahlia from a seed a few years ago.  It bloomed in its first year, died down over winter, the following spring it grew larger and had far more flowers.  That thing is in its third summer now, and it covered in incredible yellow flowers.

For some reason I wasn't able to collect any seed from that plant.  I'm not sure why.

Last winter I bought a packet of mixed dahlia seed to grow with my daughters.  Much like the first dahlia, these seeds grew and have started to bloom in their first year.  My daughters have done well with the dahlias and I am proud of them.

As they are mixed seeds they display a lot of genetic diversity.  So far we have flowers that are yellow, or pink, or white, some have purple backs to yellow flowers, some have flowers with the occasional red stripe down one petal.  Some plants have green stems, others have red stems.  Most plants are short but some plants are three times as tall as the others.

Seed grown dahlias blooming in their first year

One thing I am enjoying about these dahlias is how they attract honey bees.  Each plant produces many flowers, each with ample pollen and nectar, and the flowers are produced late in summer when there is usually little else in bloom.  My bees are collecting a lot of pollen and raising a lot of brood.  This should mean they have strong hives going into winter.

Honey bees love dahlias

Some of the dahlias have very long stems, making them perfect as cut flowers.  Others have shorter stems and need a short vase if they are cut and brought into the house.  All of them look great in the garden, and every plant seems to have a long flowering period.

Being perennial means the dahlias should come back year after year if looked after properly. 

Dark pink dahlia

Large bright yellow dahlia

Pink dahlia

Yellow dahlia - the colours are washed out in my pictures

White dahlia

Yellow dahlia with mysterious red stripe

Dahlias make a good cut flower

Every time they start to fade, my kids pick more to replace them

I want to buy seeds for a few more types of dahlia and try to grow more of them next year.  My daughters want to grow a few to keep and a few to sell to make money for Christmas.  Dahlias are edible, and I would love to aim for better tasting tubers.  My plants started setting seed later in the season.  Collecting their seed is frustrating, but I now have many dahlia seeds to grow.

Dahlias are lovely flowers that are worth growing in my climate.

Butterflies are attracted to dahlia flowers

Next year we will likely have some small dahlia plants for sale, I plan to have both the simple ones like above, as well as pom pom dahlias.  If we do I will list them on my for sale page.

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.