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First Tomato of the Year

Here’s my first tomato of the year:

F2 Cross

I got this tomato from my friend Lieven in Belgium. It is an F2 generation (so genetically unstable) cross between Ida Gold and Whippersnapper. Ida Gold is a golden color, while Whippersnapper is a red tomato. The tomato on the left is fully ripe, and notice how they turn from gold to red as they ripen, and how the ripe tomato isn’t completely red! This is going to be an interesting tomato. I haven’t tasted it yet, I’m going to wait for the other tomatoes in the bunch to ripen so I can have them together.

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Asian parasite killing Western bees

Spanish scientists claim to have found a very important clue behind Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the mysterious problem beekeepers in many countries have been having.

According to this article in Reuters Spanish scientists have discovered a parasite common in Asian bees is now infecting bees in large parts of Europe and the Americas. Asian bees apparently have a high degree of natural resistance to this microscopic parasite, so it’s not normally a problem there.

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Interesting Blog — Junkfood Science

I recently came across an interesting blog called Junkfood Science.

This blog written by Sandy Szwarc is not a ‘normal’ blog in that you can’t leave comments and it’s clearly not run by an amateur. Sandy appears to be a well established journalist. This blog is also very North American (mostly United States) in flavor, and may not be of great interest to people not living there or who otherwise don’t have roots in the area. This blog also has very little to do with gardening.

What I find interesting about this blog is that while written mostly from the perspective of a health professional and nutritional specialist, it has a very similar tone and point of view as this blog has to biodiversity, gardening, agriculture and processed food. Most of the topics she addresses on her blog have a direct counter part with something discussed over here.

I think it’s a very interesting blog to read along side this one!

Also, if you are interested in learning more about the US health care system, I recommend Michael Moore’s latest film Sicko.

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Second Podcast

The second podcast segment I recorded for the Alternative Kitchen Garden on heirloom gardening is available for download.

This week’s podcast also included a segment done by Rebsie of Daughter of the Soil about historical beetroot varieties.  A really facinating segment, and very well done!  For me this is also my first time hearing the voice behind the blog I’ve been reading for years now.

Also featured was Madeleine who talked about preserving herbs, also a really interesting segment!

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Pfälzer Dinkel

I posted previously on this spelt I’m growing, here and here.

Here are some of the heads after harvest:

Spelt Seed Heads

The plants were quite productive. A rough estimate would be I planted 20g of seeds and ended up with a harvest of about 1Kg, or a 50-fold increase.

This is something of an ongoing experiment. Spelt is an old wheat variety, and is known for having a difficult to remove husk. I am going to try building a hulling machine, and see how it goes. This year I don’t have enough to make harvest or threshing difficult to do by hand, but in the long run I will have to see if this is a good variety for this. This particular variety of spelt was used originally for making German pretzels.