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Sunscald

sunscald

In the past I’ve noticed occasional sunscald on my tomatoes.  I don’t have a good picture of this right now, but you can see the parts of the fruit exposed to the sun get a little discolored, but usually not so badly it can’t be cut off before eating.

This year was really something else!  The fruit of most tomatoes grown in a very sunny spot got sun scald, and I also noticed it on the leaves of my plants.  I guess in past years I’ve seen it on my plants too, but I didn’t really realize what it was, and it was never too serious.  This year sunscald has been killing some of my tomatoes.

The picture above you can see a particularly bad case, with the leaves turning a purplish color with exposed veins, and the leaves dying on the edges.

Plants in partial shade are less affected, but of course are maturing more slowly with less light.

Is this just a result of our deteriorating ozone layer?  Was this particularly bad over northern Europe this year?  Did anyone else notice this?

What about solutions?  I remember seeing Mike on PlanBe blog in SA mention he has this problem as uses 10% shade cloth.  I don’t particularly know where to buy this, or have any experiences with it.  Does anyone have an opinion on this?

I asked Lieven, in Belgium, if he had noticed anything this year.  He said his greenhouse glass is partly opaqued, and therfore the light is dispersed so he never has this problem.  Does anyone have any experiences with this in a greenhouse?

In the meantime, with blight outbreaks in the eastern US, as well as neighboring countries here, there’s no sign of blight on my plants…  I hope some of them survive to get blight!

I should add the sun seemed brighter than usual this year, and I had to limit time in the garden because of it’s strength.

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Painted Hills Sweet Corn

painted_hills2

This was one of my most anticipated harvests of the season, my Painted Hills Sweet corn.  There is a well known variety of starch corn called Painted Mountain, a genepool mix of a number of different colored heirloom varieties.  This was a cross between that variety and Luther Hills Sweet Corn.  The seed for this came from Peace Seedlings, the seed company belonging to the daughter of Alan Kapuler, who was the breeder of this variety.

Watching the plants grow was a blast!  All different colors; stalks, silk, ears and of course the kernels.  It was like a fantasy land crop, almost too colorful to believe it was real.  You can see a lot of the colors in the picture above.

painted_hills1

With all the excitement came some disappointments too.  First I had damping off problems when starting the seeds indoors and lost more than half my seedlings.  Okay, damping off problems were probably my fault for not keeping things clean enough, but I did try to keep things clean and didn’t have any damping off problems with any other seeds.

Then when I put them out in the garden, a number of them were too weak to survive.  Again, this could be partly my fault, and perhaps I could have let them get bigger before setting them out or maybe I could have waited for the soil to warm up a little more.

Then there was a lot of variability in the remaining plants, and it’s clear the genetics were not completely there for my climate.  Really, they didn’t grow well at all.  I struggled to get a decent harvest, and it’s mostly what you see in the picture above (starting with 125 seeds).  I might get a few more ears in a few weeks time.  I had a hard time telling when it was mature enough to harvest, because the ears were small and underdeveloped so I kept thinking I should give it more time.

The taste?

I had high expectations.  I had very, very high expectations, and they simply weren’t met.  I ate it about an hour after harvest, so it was very fresh, but it was not at all sweet.  I understand heirloom sweet corn is not as sweet as commercial varieties, but still this didn’t even have any hint of sweetness.  Mostly it was starchy and bland.  It was however very edible in it’s own way.

Was I disappointed?

Well, a little.  Like I said, I expected so much more.  At the same time, wow!  Multi-colored sweet corn!  Can you believe it?  A variation of the famous Painted Mountain corn!  Perfectly edible.  Truly a visual delight, if not a tasty one.  It’s clear it needs some breeding and selection work to make it suitable for my climate and to stabilize it, something I don’t have the space, isolation, expertise or time for right now.  If this is an early peek at the future of sweet corn, it’s exciting!  It needs some work, but this really has the potential to turn into a very interesting variety!

Will I Grow it Again?

Not anytime soon.  I’ve seen it and done it, and will look for something else next year.  Trying it was a great experience.

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Oxford 2009 Updates

A lot of things changed since I sent out and posted the recent announcement and schedule for Oxford 2009, so I thought I should bring everyone up to date.

Everyone is Welcome

Lots of people ask about this.

The event is open to anyone who wants to come.  It’s not an invitation only affair.  You are welcome to bring guests.  I only ask you let me know in advance who’s coming, and be aware we may run out of spaces and have to turn people away near the end.

For the moment, it looks like we have space for everyone.

Around 30 people have at least expressed some interest, but several have not confirmed, and we have space for 40 people.

Half Hour Earlier

Until now the plan has been to start the presentations at 10am, but I think enough people are giving presentations it’s best if we start a half hour earlier.  This will give us more flexibility to take a few breaks in the middle.  Please try to arrive between 9:00-9:30, but I understand a number of you have to travel a long distance and it may not be possible to make it on time.

No Visit to Elder Stubbs Allotments

I mentioned this first as a confirmed part of the event, then later announcements said it was a possibility, but now we are no longer planning to do this.

There was some confusion on my part about where the event would take place.  Julieanne, who is helping me organize things, mentioned Restore where we have the room booked is related to the allotments.  She then told me we would have access to the gardens.  I incorrectly assumed the gardens and allotments were the same, when in fact the allotments are some distance away.  While arranging a visit to the allotments would be possible, it would take more time than we have.  It’s looking like a busy day.

We’ll still have access to the Restore gardens.

Email Announcements

Last year it seemed like the whole world was starting their own garden blog, and what was being organized was primarily a blogging event.  It’s true most of us have blogs, but it’s clear lots of other people involved or attending do not have or are particularly interested in reading blogs.

For this reason, while I will still post announcements on my blog, but the primary way of communicating will be email so we don’t leave anyone out.  If there is any reason you don’t want to get emails from me, let me know, and I’ll count on you to follow my blog instead.

Sunday Breeding Workshop

For anyone who is interested, a second day has now been planned.  The purpose of this day will be to spend time with Tom Wagner for an intensive potato and tomato breeding workshop.  Ben of Real Seeds will attend this as a participant, but he is also an accomplished plant breeder himself and will likely have insight to offer.  There will be extra costs for this, which will depend on how many people attend, probably about 20-30 pounds each.  Please let me know if you’re interested.

We don’t have a room booked for this yet.  If there is anyone in the area who could help with this (maybe offer us living room or kitchen space in your home?), please let me know.  If closer to the time we still haven’t found anything, we’ll probably go to a pub or restaurant.

At a guess, I’m expecting a maximum of 6 people to attend this workshop, so it will be small and cosy.

Looking for AV Equipment

While we have some options in this regard, it includes carrying electronics from Amsterdam and having to sort out a UK power adapter.

We are currently looking for something like a projector or large screen TV. Ideally we are also a device with a remote control that would play media files directly on a TV, without having to boot Windows first and select everything with a mouse.

If you can help with any of this, please let me know.

Speakers and Scheduling

There has been some confusion and concern about this, so let me try to clarify things.  I understand some of you making presentations don’t have public speaking experience and/or are nervous about the amount of time allocated to you.

There needs to be a little planning in advance, or we will all arrive Saturday morning and not have any idea what’s going on.  Everyone should consider the planning to be more of an ordered list of who is going to speak first, rather than a strict time line.  The entire day will not be booked, so we will just move things around on the schedule as we need to when the time comes.

It’s not the intention to put any of the speakers under time pressure, and everyone is welcome to talk for as short or long as they want, provided it’s within reason.  We’re a friendly bunch, so don’ t worry about upsetting anyone.

It was probably a mistake on my part to publish a schedule with times on it, I will try to figure out a way to change the schedule to reflect this.

If you do plan to talk for 30 minutes or more, please make sure I know this, as we will take a little more care scheduling this in.

The day is looking full, so I’m not actively looking for more speakers, but will try to fit in anyone else who might still be interested.

So far, the following speakers are scheduled (let me know if I’ve forgotten you):

Emma Cooper (Fluffius Muppetus Blog/Alternative Kitchen Garden Podcast)

VP (Veg Plotting Blog)

Julieanne Porter (International Network for the Availability of
Scientific Publications/World Development Movement)

Vicki Cooke (Heritage Seed Library)

Dr. Simon J. Platten ( http://www.kent.ac.uk/anthropology/department/research/environmental/homegardens.html )

Tom Wagner (Potato and Tomato Breeder)

Small Updates

Violating all good blogging practices, I will try to keep the original announcement post up to date.

While major updates and announcements will be made by email, please check back often at the original post for smaller updates.

Above all don’t be afraid to get in touch if you have questions, comments or notice I missed something here!

Participants

Please help me out here everyone.   Have a look for your own name on this list, and make sure everything is right.  Let me know if there are any corrections.  A * means you are tentative.  A number next to your name means there’s more than one of you coming.  For links, see the bottom of this post.

Robert Brenchley (This and That)

Julieanne Porter (Oxford World Development Movement Group)

John Curtin (*) (Spadework)

Simon Kirby (*) (The Plot Thickens)

missfuggles (A Blog Called Fuggles)

Soilman (Soilman’s Allotment)

Ben (1 + 1*) (Real Seeds)

VP (Veg Plotting)

Emma (Alternative Kitchen Garden)

Jane Perrone (Horticulture, Guardian Gardening Blog)

Liz (Organic Allotment)

Matron (*) (Down on the Allotment)

Cat (2) (Manor Stables Vegetable Plot)

Emma Townshend (The Independent – Baklava Shed Coalition)

Pat ‘n Steph (2) (Bifurcated Carrots)

MissHathorn (2) (Mustardplaster)

Vicki Cooke (Heritage Seed Library)

Dr. Simon J. Platten (University of Kent)

Tom Wagner (Tater-Mater)

Allotment Blogger (*) (Allotment Blog)

Isabel (*)  (Fennel and Fern)