Spring has been warm here, by our standards. That means few days over 20C and average for the month so far just over 10C. That combined with the extremely dry last 2 months, (total 20mm of rain for march and april) my plots were tilled early and with the weather permitting I could also start sowing early. First in mind were ofcourse peppers and eggplants that I would protect with cloth anyway and those I sowed 14-15.5, almost week earlier than previous years. Because the forecast looks fairly good for the rest of the month I also sowed tomatoes, tomatillos and ground cherries, even if they are going to be unprotected. There is still a change that there could be frost at the end of month when they have emerged, but generally frosts at the turn of the month are quite rare and with the current forecast it would need quite a turnaround for it to get cold enough for frosts. I still expect that there will be ground level temperatures in the 0-2C range if it cools as expected. I still rather take risk with the frost as this might be my change to sow them when ground is still cool and thus get some separation in emergence. Plus possible volunteers don’t get any advantage this way.
Tomatillos and ground cherries. There are about 10 meters of bed for tomatillos and 15 meters for ground cherries. Couple meters of tomatillos is new varieties that I also sowed directly because I hate to grow them to transplat and had the change direct sow them early. I have no idea if they would need longer season, but if this isn’t enough then I might not want them anyway. All varieties are sweet, same as those sown from my own seed. Ground cherries I have about 15-20 from transplants that I will transplant later once the ground is warmer. There are few new varieties that I managed to acquire and some from 3 lobed fruit.
Peppers. This year I direct sowed less because I have quite a few from transplant to make seed increase from new crosses and I needed to prioritize. Still some 20 meters of bed. Half are at least partially wilds and I will gradually phase out pure domestic lines. They will live on through crosses. No baccatums direct sown this year.
Also tomatoes there are less of because I have many transplants from more advanced lines to make a seed increase. Still some 17 meters of bed direct sown, of which most are half wilds. Similarly with peppers the plan is to phese out pure domestic lines.
Also eggplants I don’t have as much as last year (about 7-8 meters of bed direct sown), but at the same time selection will be harder as I’m not using clear plastic to start with. Last years small trial the same way had some success so I’m quite confident now that I could start a little earlier, even if doesn’t speed up the process more than few days. Would have to be quite bad summer for no plant to produce something.
Do the Tomatillos have enough time to ripen until the first frost in your climate? If so I might try this next year in mine(In my climate the last frost is usually early-mid May and first frost in early October)
Yes, the fastest do ripen even direct sown. Although I don’t have that many years to compare to. I have direct sown this way only 2024 which was rather warm year. Then first ripened at the end of august and there was one plant that ripened it’s whole crop within couple weeks. That was something like 20-30 fruits between 50-100g so not too shabby. That year I also sowed considerably later, must have been around 24.5 when realistically I could sow around week earlier and avoid frosts if there isn’t sudden change in weather in the forecast. I would say it needs just slightly more time compared to fastest tomatoes. So probably might be quite tight some years in terms of getting ripe fruit, but I expect to get some to ripen most years and can work from there. Maybe couple of years to condense the current fastest traits into one population and then can work to make new ground. I would think that in your climate they have a good change of making ripe fruits even direct sown every year. If you’d like I can send you plenty to trial? If I post it on monday in express, it might be there later next week.
Thanks for doing this work. I have my own direct sown tomato patch (lots of seeds, planning to thin to maybe 20 or 30 plants), as well as a small direct sown TPS patch (maybe 700 seeds, expecting low success).
This is my 3rd year of direct sown tomatoes. I was feeling adventurous and had extra seeds so I also threw some seeds in improbable spots in my garden. We’ll see what happens.
Really interesting to hear you’re transitioning into growing eggplants and other solanaceae without the tarp. The growing conditions will start til be more similar to mine - or most normal gardeners
Not really, peppers and eggplants still with the black film and cloth. Not really realistic to go without either as it’s been really close every time. I can take cloth off earlier if it looks like it get’s warm enough in the long term. Tomatoes and tomatillos have gone without before and also ground cherries this year as they are so fast. I did sow 1m2 of peppers and eggplants without just to see what happens, how much they would need, or in the unlikely case, how warm it would have to be for them to be early enough. I’m thinking whether I should make some crazy mass sowing without anything and then see if I find some 1 in a million plant that I could overwinter indoors. That has the problem with weeds. I don’t think I could manage that much weeding and thinning in timily manner. Gotta practise weed management before going there. With eggplants there might be some prospects with african eggplant cross. At least the year I grew the cross (the one made the wrong way) it was way more vigourous than any of the other F1s I had at the time so maybe there is something there.
Yesterday had the first tomatoes and tomatillos up, but some must have been already the day before. So about 1 week to emerge, which was quite expected with reasonable weather. After sowing there were some nights of frost, but last week it’s been around 10C at night and around 20C during day. Not as lucky with next weeks weather, although based on recent forecast frosts are quite unlikely. Still no more than around 5c at night and 15C during day before going little up the week after. Fairly good forecast for making selection and don’t have to hurry with thinning/weeding that much.
Ground cherries emerged at the turn of the month, which was little later than expected, but not surprising as they can be little sporadic. Good thing about is that I know noe that I can sow them as early as I can without that big change of running into a frost. They are still in good pace compared to last year. It’s been little warmer this year that compensates for not having black mulch. Still not especially warm so can direct sow like this without worries in the future also.
Did some culling/weeding in tomatoes, but there wasn’t that big need to make a lot of selection. That I had done by pretty much culling all that took more than 2 days longer than the fastest to germinate. There is still plenty of extras, but they have enough space untill they start to form flowers/open flowers. Those that flower first make it. They are about the same pace as 2024 when it was a lot warmer, but when I also sowed over week later. Most of the time lost compared to 2024 came in germination. Based on that it looks like early july flowering. Right now the conditions are quite perfect for tomatoes. After really dry spring we have gotten 70mm of rain over last 2 weeks. The plants are just in the phase were they start to grow fast and hence need to moisture.
As a little trial I sowed a row of favas between tomato rows. Idea is to have some support in the middle where tomatoes are only supported by themselves.
I’m not sure how to best calculate this. Normally I would probably have F2 as the first generation “grown in here” with the intentional crosses as there is so little variation and F1 are grown for seed with no real opportunity for selection. There was some natural selection when growing the stable varieties to make F1 so not all made it forward, but I would say F2 is where it all starts. Maybe with the exception of tomatillos that are pretty much mandatory out crossing and hence made naturally wide enough selection of F1.
Calculating from there Tomatillos would be 2 generation as last year at the survivor plot failed to grow. Ground cherries are F3 so also would consider 2 generation. Eggplants have some F4s from natural crosses, but mostly F3s. All second generation of direct sowing in mass scale. Tomatoes and chilies I must have had the first F1s 2021, but real mass grow out of F1s/F2s I had 2023. That was a really hot year by our standards do ot that much selection because of climate, but there were some slower that did not make it to F1s. Most of the selection was done by selecting varieties based on their discribtion. Tomatoes I had smaller (compared to last 3 years) direct seeding 4 years ago and peppers I have direct sown in bigger scale 3 years now.
Yes, I had few varieties I crossed to start with. There is a little variation in the fruit colour, but ground cherries in general are so similar that it’s hard to say for sure most of the time if it’s genetic or just conditions related. I did have one F1 that kept fruits greenish even when ripe (not very sweet though), but that seemed to have disappeared in the F2. My experience is that growth habbit can be affected so much by conditions, spacing and fertilization that it’s quite pointless to try to determine if some looks different because of genetics or something other. My main interest is the size of the fruit, which also can be affected by conditions, but nothing you can do about that. I just use precision scale to weight the biggest fruits and save seeds from fruits over X grams. Also save some seeds from first to ripen, but as I make such hard selection based on early vigour, ripening should be fairly similar. Over time I’ll increase the size treshold for fruits and that should improve the size over long time. This year I added some more varieties that I will cross to the population and will also try some interspecific crosses if they work.
Does removing the calyx during emasculation(Physalis) affect fruit set in any way? I’m asking because I have a species (Physalis Virginiana) that begins to shed pollen just when the flower opens so I have to emasculate it before it opens(and remove the calyx). I don’t have this problem with other species because Tomatillos and Physalis Peruviana shed pollen only 1 day after opening
Not all set fruit when making crosses, but it seems to be the same case as with tomatoes or peppers. A little hit and miss so just have to make enough to make sure. I usually emasculate around day before flower opens and pollinate 2 days later. Could do pollination over many days, but the window to make crosses here is so small (even smaller with direct sowing) that it would be hard to keep up if I had to mark/remember which needed second round. Already miss pollination of some flowers that I have emasculated because I don’t find all the labels. Not too many, but I’m sure it would be more if I had to mark more with different labels.
Fastest tomatoes are close to flowering. One of the fastest plants had little misformed leaves for some reason. Otherwise would remove that kinda plants, but because it is one of the fastest I’ll leave it, at least for now. Made some cullings were it was easy to see which are slower than others, but mostly not high need for culling right now. Will do more harsh culling once the first start to flower.
Eggplants really starting to get going. difference between first 2 pictures is only 8 days. It’s been quite warm, but not like in other parts of Europe. High for the last month just over 26C.
Eggplants on bare ground not doing as well, which is to be expected. Interested to see how they will grow now. Others were same size only little over 2 weeks ago so maybe they will start to size up if they just have enough heat.
Seems around 2 months like with it’s relatives. Hard to say with the green ones, but this year I’m only sowing yellow/purple sweets. 2024 I had the first flower at the same time and one had already ripened most late august/early september. So it seems there is good potential for direct sown to ripen the whole crop most years even here.
