Posted on

Sun Scald and Blue Tomatoes

Like on the leaves above, from time to time I have problems with sun scald on tomato plants, both on the leaves and fruits.  This is especially true the last few years as the ozone layer has been thinning over Europe.

One of the things Tom Wagner mentioned when I visited him, was with the new blue tomatoes, the blue pigment reacts to sunlight not only to intensify the blue color, but also to protect the plant against sun scald!

The tomato here was close to the one above, but you can see instead of getting scalded, it’s acquiring blue pigment in the leaves.  This is one of Tom’s Helsing Junction Blues tomatoes.  The seeds he gave me were F2 or F3, so still very variable.  If you’re growing the same tomato, it might look different.  Also, I have a few others of the same variety, and they are also different.

To be honest, I hardly bother to grow tomatoes anymore.  There are just too many instantly fatal things that can happen with them, the most serious being the blight we get every year.  I was interested in trying a blue variety, and I’m also growing one of Tom’s blight resistant Skykomish tomatoes next to it, so the blue variety is sort of acting as a control plant.

Posted on

Asparagus Trials

I’ve been growing asparagus for a few years now, and we are finally getting a reasonably good harvest each year.

Anyway, I decided this year to do a big asparagus expansion, and trial a number of different kinds.  I purchased some seeds and crowns for different wild and purple asparaguses, and I also ordered 30 genebank accessions.  The later of which came the other day, just in time for planting.  I’ve tried to get ‘at least one of everything’.

A big thank you goes out to the people at GRIN-ARS at Cornell, who made it possible to get these seeds!  They’re really providing an important service.  On the customs declaration they modestly declared the combined value of the seeds as US$1, and indicated if the package was undeliverable it should be considered abandoned.  In a commercial sense it’s true, but they’re worth a lot more than that to me.

Now I have 30 last minute trays of numbered asparagus seeds waiting to germinate:

It’ll take a few years of course before they are mature enough to eat, but I think it’ll be interesting to explore the differences, and perhaps try to create my own variety out of the best of the varieties I’ve received.

One of the varieties I’ve purchased is a very modern one from a local commercial asparagus breeding company.  It’ll be interesting to see what they think are good traits.

Anyone else have experience asparagus breeding or collecting, maybe with varieties or experiences to trade?  I’m not in contact with anyone who has specific asparagus breeding experience.

Posted on

Rye Straw

Like I’ve posted about before, I’m working on Tim Peter’s perennial rye, making selections and trying to get improved seed.

With normal annual rye, it dies off at the end of the year so you don’t have to worry about killing it.  In my case, out of the 300 or so plants I started with, I selected about 20 for transplant to another place to save.  I had to kill the remaining plants, so I first cut them down to about 50cm high to make them easier to manage, then covered them with woven black plastic.  I did this last fall.

I’m busy preparing garden beds, so I just pulled the plastic back.  I was a little amazed at what I found.  The ground was covered with very good quality and clean straw.  If I had wanted to use it where it was, it would have been no problem to just plant right into.  In my case, I needed mulch for my garlic, and it was very easy to just rake up and move.  I sometimes use plant debris for mulch, but honestly I buy a lot of mulch (mostly straw from local farmers) because it’s just easier.  I’ve never grown any plant myself that made such good quality mulch in useful quantities.

In the picture you see a few weeds poking through.  This is mostly because I used overlapping pieces of black plastic and some weeds grew through the edges.

After I raked up the straw, I had another surprise.  My camera didn’t take a good picture, but underneath was very rich chocolate brown and crumbly dirt.  I’ve never seen anything like that in my garden before either.  My garden is on top of an old peat bog, hundreds of years old, mixed with a lot of clay.  The deep roots of the rye plants (these can get to about 2m deep) pulled up lots of great nutrients and even some of the color of the peat.  The dirt also had a great smell!  Don’t you just love the smell of rich dirt?!

Posted on

The Snail of Happiness

I came across this site a few days ago, and thought I’d mention it here.

I think it’s written by a she, who’s interested in permaculture, sustainable living and gardening.  In her most recent post she mentions she has a PhD in land reclamation:

…which involved studying the re-creation of vegetation systems on restored open cast coal sites. I am fascinated by looking at natural relationships and seeing how these can be applied to physical and social systems created by people. For me, the easiest way to think about this sort of design is in my garden, because I understand the value and function of things like soil structure, micro-organisms, micro-climate, water, pollinators, decomposers and vegetation. But I am increasingly intrigued about how I can apply systems-level thinking to other aspects of my life: starting a new business, working with other people, designing a course for adult learners…

Her blog is already bringing back memories of the first few years of this blog, and I think it’s going to be very interesting to follow as she goes along.