The following seeds will be available in June. Please PM me if you would like any of them. As fruits dry down and I am able to process them I will add them to the list. Feel free to add your own offerings in this post.
Updated 28th April 2023
Melon (Cucumis melo) - six different melons were grown together, some already crosses from previous years. One was white fleshed. I’m not a fan so no seeds were saved but it would have contributed some pollen no doubt. Ancestry includes Charentais, Lunéville and Sweet Freckles among others. There is also a bush melon (compact habit) in there somewhere so this form may pop up.
Pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima) - varieties grown together included Anna Swartz, Australian Butter, Baby Blue, Bylinka, Golden Nugget, Jarrahdale, Lakota, Strawberry Crown, Uncle Davids Dakota Dessert. Not all produced fruit but all flowered and the bees were active so I would expect plenty of cross pollination. Some fruits were not as described on the packet so I think these were either ring-ins or were already crossed up.
Watermelon(Citrullus lanatus) - The mix this season consisted of Orangeglo, Golden Honey, Golden Midget (didn’t set fruit) and Peewee (a tomato seeded variety with pink/red flesh). I want mostly orange or yellow flesh hence the first two. I also like the golden skin of Golden Midget and the tiny seeds of Peewee but I won’t try too hard with these last two. Frost forced early harvest. The fruits were kept indoors for two weeks then seed recovered. Despite the premature harvest the flavour and texture of each was quite respectable.
Hi Ray, happy to make a few more contributions if you are willing to collate them - a mass crossed sweetcorn, a C.moschata butternut which could probably do with a bit more diversity, and a reallly broad broadbean (V.faba) mass cross F2/F3.
Do you guys want to set up an Australian seed train? If so, and you don’t want to maintain a thread about it, I’d be happy to maintain the thread. I’m US-based, so I couldn’t contribute seeds to it, but I would love for there to be an Australian seed train for you guys.
Thanks @UnicornEmily. I’m not sure how many Aussies there are in total and what they might be interested in so for the moment we’ll leave it as is. I’ll keep the idea in mind though for future use.
Thanks Gregg (@gregg_muller). I’m happy to collate the seeds and organise to send them out. I think all three of your offerings will be of interest. No need to send anything just now though as others have yet to chime in. Once we know what people are interested in we can think about collating seeds. I only know of one other Aussie anyway, another Victorian, so if it ends up just we three we might as well keep it very low key.
Hello fellow Aussies. I have to pick my brain to figure out the most interesting offerings. I am guessing grexes are what people are mostly looking for here?
Allium fistulosum- large blue strain selected from a dozen varieties for direct sowing and drought tolerance/short lived perennial.
Carrot- Old seed from my annual strain which I planted in autumn to flower in spring. Mix of orange and purple. Should be enough to get it going again despite being a few years old. I gave up growing carrots on my concrete like clay.
Snake bean bush- compact plants produce all through summer into autumn. Mix of three original lines starting to naturally cross.
Lablab- mix of six original asian vegetable strains. Replaced snowpeas as my winter fresh legume.
Sword bean- hand crossed three species this summer. Should be able to spare some seed if you want to try out performance in temperate zone. C. ensiformis crosses might suit you best since it matures fastest and makes the best fresh pod legume.
Sweet potato- I have some spare seed of a strain with restored fertility, originally from Reed in the USA. Not sure if I can do much with it on my compact clay.
Maize- Parrot resistant white. Bred from DPI seedbank strains (favoured to those with some initial parrot resistanct). Large white cobs with a tinge of pink/yellow. Mixed in a little of a red strain. Also have silvermine, another white maize, which did well but the parrots didnt notice it.
Seminole pumpkin- pure form plus a population mixed with a diverse pumpkin variety trial (mostly lakota which did OK). Seminole is by far the best producer for me.
Watermelon- have a few types of citron, plus a separate grex from a sweet watermelon variety trial now biased toward Janosik which showed incredibly vigor under suboptimal conditions.
Lima beans- I have about half a dozen unusual strains (mostly sourced from a woman whose family has lived here and grown these lines since settler days). Plan to hand cross these next season too.
Rosella- a mix of two distinct strains, not sure if they need hand crossing to mix. Amazing summer leaf vegetable.
Celosia- lagos spinach. Finally got the true vegetable form, but also have a purple leaf form that I need to hand cross soon. Have a contact who might be able to get me more diversity from Africa.
Canna edulis- still have some F2 seed from my Queensland arrowroot x C. altensteinii population. Plenty of F1 plants in the test field which I can select good looking tubers from to share if you cover postage.
Brassica carinata- two distinct strains, will hand cross if they don’t do it spontaneously.
Spigarello- Tastier kale equivalent. Perennial. Mix of a few strains. Not growing these anymore since B. carinata does a better job.
Chia- mix of a few strains with different seed colours
Amaranth- Hartman Giant and Oscar Blanco best varieties from bigger variety trials. Few other strains in storage. Not much sign of spontaneous crossing.
Huauzontle- subtropical quinoa relative. Might be useful for breeding.
Tomato- True Principe Borghese- bush form with incredible vigor, not always labeled correctly in trade, seems to be from basal selections of tomato diversity. Chile bronze- indeterminate, large brown fruit, tasty, vigorous, probably from “chilensis” though records got muddled. Fruit fly resistant. Got a little promiscuous seed to share too. Naturalised Capsicum frutescens and superior Eggplant ping tung seed too from variety trial.
Tulbaghia- a little hand crossed seed from violacea x simmleri spare.
Nearly forgot I have a few types of astringent persimmon seed in storage as well- mix of wild and grafted types all possibly cross pollinated.
Doesn’t appear to be much interest in Australia yet. Probably just too few of us. I’ll just put here what I have to offer. Anyone interested can pm me via this forum.
Beta vulgaris
(Cicla Group)
A mix of silverbeet with red, white and yellow stems from two years ago.
Cucurbita maxima
A mix of seeds from last year’s pumpkin patch which had Anna Swartz (no seed recovered), Australian Butter, Baby Blue, Bylinka, Golden Nugget, Jarrahdale, Uncle David’s Dakota Dessert (very few seeds recovered) and an unknown which came labelled as Strawberry Crown but wasn’t. All these plants flowered so even if seed wasn’t produced pollen would have been spread around.
Separately, we grew Nelson F1 to check for CMS. Plenty of seed produced so these are in the mix too.
Phaseolus vulgaris
No hybrids here but I have a couple of soup beans to share: Lingua di fuoco (climber), Vermont Cranberry (bush)
Potato onion seeds 2024
This season just gone I bought and planted a few potato onions. Some had red skins, some brown. All produced seeds. I suspect this was due to our very dry spring stressing the plants. I sowed a large pinch to check viability and got good germination.
PM me on this forum if interested.
Broad Bean seed 2024
Plenty of last season’s hyper diverse megamix available from ~50 accessions from the Australian Grains Gene Bank plus every domestic variety I could find. F3 - F4, low input survivors.
PM me here if interested.