Maybe biggest positive surprise so far has been how well tomatillos grow here. They are not traditionally grown here at all so I didn’t have oher experience than one small failed attempt few years back. I knew about tomatillos even less then than today and have gained general growing experience that helped trouple shoot my earlier mistakes. They apparently aren’t very good for growing transplants, especially big transplants. Not sure why, but that really doesn’t matter. In climate suitability scale they seem to be about as suited to my climate as ground cherries, or somewhere between ground cherries and tomatoes (tomatoes being less suited). They are starting to have lot’s of small husks and some bigger that are still mostly air, but they have still time to develop. From their close relatives I expect them to have full size fruits that can ripen indoors 4-5 weeks from flower and full ripeness 2 months from flowering. Heavy flowering started early this month so many might fully ripen outdoor and rest I can ripen indoors. Based on this years experience I will direct seed next year with help of cloth. It may not be ideal in terms of getting them ripen in time, but it saves trouble with transplant growing and they can start adapting. Would need them to ripen faster and have more determinant growth so that there isn’t waste from last fruits that don’t have time to fully develop to be usable. Still I have never tried tomatillo so I hope I like them also. Really looking forward to queen of malinalco as yellows should be fruity and maybe closer ground cherries in taste (?). I think that’s the only yellow I have so I might loose it in the next generation and have to segregate it back.
Exciting progress on the tomatoes mr. Ilonen!
First ripe tomato on gold nugget at 3 months and one day. I did give this extra light to have earlier crop, but then I dropped big transplants upside down on the ground from 1 meter which must have set them back a bit. I would expect this to crop clearly under 3 months in good conditions. It has slightly unusual trait; it is kinda half parthenocarpic and first few weeks fruits don’t have seeds. That makes them ripen about one week faster than the ones that come later. Other varieties are still quite far from ripe fruit. Fruits are starting to form, but they are behind from what they have been in the past years. Atleast partially because somewhat later start, but also think dry weather might have had effect too. Would not want to water that much, but it seems even these more unstaple weather periods rains go past my area. Most look still good, but some varieties are showing definete signs.
Have been making lots of crosses over the recent weeks. Closer to 200 tries and so far it seems like quite good portion have taken. I did go trough all labels I could see and removed those that failed. Although I would like to see all work, failed crosses make me think that I’m also doing something right. Would be very suspicious if all worked. Now I think it might be closer to 50/50. Maybe it goes down on later crosses. Atleast last year I noticed later flowers were likelier to fail. Mostly crosses have been between domestic, part wilds like wilding panamarous and several accesions wild s.pimpinellifolium. S.habrochaites was quite late to flower and s.cheesmaniea had earlier problem with rodents that set them back. Have been making some crosses with them, but have to do more next year. Have been making couple dozen cross tries to direct sown tomatoes also to get some more variety and use them as base for direct sown population now that they already have one year of adaption to direct sowing.
S.habrochaites just recently started flowering and I think there are some fruits starting to form. Can’t wait to have a taste 
. Leaves do have very fresh smell that reminds something between cat piss and vomit. Made some crosses to domestic tomato varieties.
Wilding panamarous. Have got several crosses in them and used it quite a lot as pollinating variety.
Yantarnuy. This year I managed to get one succesfull cross in yantarnuy. There might be some that have worked as pollinator also. One of the fastest to ripen and not as dense foliage as in some dwarfs.
Antho pink panther dwarf. Surprisingly fast for dark a variety and seems somewhat productive for it’s size. Have got atleast some succesfull crosses with it.
Squash, pumpkins and sweetcorn are finally starting to produce. Yukon chief sweetcorn actually could almost have ripe cobs just over 2 months from sowing, but they are quite small same as the plants. Hopefully can get them crossed with others next year and have one line of fast producing small plants that hopefully have little bigger cobs than those. Moschata has first open female flower. There was one before that did not open and withered. This time I also had first male flowers open on few plants about same time as female. Last year from transplant I had first female open 14.7, but males opened about the same time as this year. So it seems males might be opening little earlier relative to females which is trait I’m hoping for as there is no time to waste. Maxima started flowering about 10 days ago and fruits are growing nicely. My own F2 between standard yellow pumpkin and most likely candy roaster was fastest with one new variety I have for this year. Others been little slower or haven’t started to make fruits yet. Possible because everything got run down by my cross. Have been quite careful to make sure that flowers cross pollinate with something other. Mostly between cross and staple variety to have more diverse mix of unstaple crosses. All varieties I have for this year are present even if they are late to make or don’t make fruit. Also on summer squash I have been making crosses and almost all varieties/F1s have atleast one fruit growing for seeds. Own F1 crosses have so far been most productive. Many varieties tend to make huge fruit when left to grow for seed and I hope to breed that out since those don’t really produce much more than that.
3 plants of my own cross and two distinct phenos. Yellows look same in two plants, but maybe there is some small difference. Green pheno is interesting because it’s not like either parents. Ofcourse can’t be sure candy roaster was pollen donor, but it looks like the most likely based on how F1 looked and what I had. Interesting to see how it turns out and if next years banana shape will pop up again.
Jesse, where are you located? I’m suspecting far more South than myself if you can grow melons. Corn too.
61 north in Lahti, Finland. Melons and watermelons are bit of a stretch with direct sowing. Black plastic and cloth is still necessary. Corn is easier. Based on average temperatures Luleå isn’t that much cooler than latitude would suggest. Lower highs but little warmer nights. Corn should be possible with right variety like yukon chief. Melons and watermelons would need more trouble. It’s not only the need for heat, but it’s also easy stress them other ways and set them back. Based on my experience they start to get happy with highs around +18C if it’s sunny (and ground has warmed up) when using black plastic. Anything over +20C is really good. Still could find pollen with highs of 16-17C, but at that point there were very few male flowers and even less with pollen. Watermelons are slightly more tolerant than melons. Also needs good seed source. Standard varieties would not do as well. Ofcourse there is always that really cold summer that might be really challenging, but some ot the hotter summers they might do better when other common crops fail. They are really good for drought conditions.
Although now that I look at it, you also have colder spring on average that definely delays start of summer. I still think corn should be possible. And maybe melons and watermelons aren’t impossible either although would need lots of trouble and care, and still coldest summers might be too much. But you can’t always win no matter what you plant.
Some more potato flowers. I expected purple leafed to have more colourful flower. Now that I read about it more, those purple anthers should mean purple flesh which wouldn’t surprise a bit.
While taking picture I didn’t pay attention to anther colour, but it looks like it has some red in it too. Maybe some red skin and flesh?
Purple skinned with yellow/white flesh maybe?
First to flower has lost most of the white stripes on later flowers. Now it’s starting to look like a rose bush.
GTS and some other colourful interplanted with variety of plants. They have lot more variance in how they have grown. Some are still struggling, possible because of drought, some are lot bigger than finnish mix that are more similar and moderate in size. Most likely because they are early to mid early season potatoes. They also have less colourful flowers, light pink or white. Hopefully those other bigger aren’t too late season or daylenght sensitive like one last year likely was.
Finnish mix
Some of the strongest from colourful mix.
And some of the unhealthy looking and weak. Likely not planting the very weakest that seem susceptible to disease. Would have to have something really special in tubers.
Some are also more moderate in size and have closer to ground growth happit. If they remain healthy looking I’m likely to plant them.
Direct sown tomatoes, peppers and eggplants 72 days from sowing. First peppers (annuum) have opened flowers, possibly yesterday. Not quite as fast as I hoped, but about what I expected especially after cold start. Once they got going growth has been really good as I would expect from direct sown and they don’t seem to be bothered about more typical finnish summer weather. With this late flowering they need little luck with late season weather to have viable seeds. I will date some of the first flowers to check for viability. Next year I can use clear plastic early season to have headstart and with genetically diverse seeds I should be able to improve flowering atleast closer to mid july to have better change at having viable seeds no matter what weather is like late season.
First tomatoes are about the size of an egg. Fastest are starting main flowering. These have clearly bigger growth type than I hope for, but so did most of the parent varieties. I do wonder how to make selection early season without selecting for big growth. Most likely will leave more to grow until first open flower and hopefully there is correlation between that and eventual size. Will see how it goes next year when I have lot more growing. I did make some crosses to these with varieties that are fast and more moderate in size.
Beautiful
Potatoes have such beautiful variation in flower color.
With cucumbers I was a bit anxious if I would even get crosses or how to identify them since I could only give them little space. Target was to leave one per hole that would leave 2-3 changes per variety to find crosses. I changed that when I realised I would only need first fruits to see and had 3-5 best per hole. Unfortunately that was bit too many plants which with dry weather slowed fruit formation. Small fruits were mostly inconclusive. At first it looked like there wasn’t crosses, but then I could see smooth long green cucumber had only one that looked like original and others were little spiny. White cucumber was little harder to see from small fruit, but once they grew they had green half and little diffrent shape. No original looking fruits. Green spiny is still hard to make judgement as all fruits seem spiny, but possible that not as spiny as original. Since there aren’t many options for different crosses I cut extra plants so that some plants could grow better. Last year that green spiny was in the middle of other two so that’s probably why it has crossed with both, but the 2 apparently have not with each other. In any case either they outcross effectively and/or hybrid vigour makes them outcompete others. I sowed about 50 seeds per hole so there might have been lots of pure variety that were just little too slow. This year I had 4 more varieties one of which looks to be partenocarpic (google translate france gets you onlyy so far) and one seems like too slow to flower even if it has grown quite well. They need to start producing quite small to work in our short season.
From white
From smooth
From spiny green
Might have been wrong about there being two phenos in my pumpkin cross. Instead it looks like there are to phenos of green, other turns little yellow quite early and other stays green so far. Hard to say which comes from which plant anymore as the crosses are in middle. There seem to by so many more of green types than yellow that would also suggest there being too plants producing those. It’s interesting how all are different. It must mean that there are many options for colour just from 2 parent varieties. Next year it’s going up to 9 (parent) varieties as I had 6 more and could pollinate some with what my neighboring plot was growing. She had some unknown dwarf (growth) type maxima that would be useful trait as mine are little too aggressive in their spread.
Cleared lower foliage from wilding panamorous for better airflow and also to see fruits better. They are cropping quite nicely as is exserted orange (last picture) and big hill that I didn’t have time to trim yet. Wilding panamarous seems quite uniform. Some of the plants had pig tail leaves and trusses that is little annoying. Not sure if it’s climate related or some genetic trait. Has not affected growth or cropping other than having some fruit trusses too crowded. Will see if it comes next year and eliminate it then. Otherwise fruits and growth seems quite uniform except for maybe one plant that seems to have more smaller round fruits rather than small beefstake type. Interesting to see if there are different colours. They are now 45 days from flowering so they aren’t that far off.
July ended about the same way it started; good amounts of rain with cool days. Temperature wise it was quite excatly at the 30 year average. Highs and lows were quite suprisingly constant without big swings. Highs just over 20C (68F) and lows 10-15C (50-59F). Compared to more contemporary climate it was somewhat cool; after 2000 there has been only 4 julys that were significantly cooler than this. So it’s been quite good test for more heat loving crops. And it seems like it’s not going to get any easier with forecast highs around 20C. One day temps are supposed to jump up to scorching 30C (86F) and then come right back which is weird. Looks like quite unstaple weather for coming weeks with rain often. That might be bad for my melons and watermelons which already have signs of rot in their stems where stems have touched wet hay mulch. Suppose that’s something I have to breed them to tolerate as late season is rarely very dry here. Otherwise there are enough plants that look healthy and weather should be good enough atleast mid august. Late august can easily be very unfavourable weather for melons and watermelons, and often goes from bad to worse. At the moment long term forecast is that it should be slightly warmer than average at the end of the month. It might mean that temps stay as they are now which would be a win.
First fruits in watermelons and melons are now about 3 weeks from pollination so halfway there or little less. Some are little too late and need luck with the weather to have more than viable seeds. In watermelon I counted just under 30 fruits that stated around mid july latest and about same that started after. I cut off couple days ago anything that didn’t have any fruits and trimmed some of the vines to have more space for the ones that have some. Melons are bit harder to count, but atleast same amounts. Probably some more. One melon plant had 10 fruits growing. Watermelons look to stay fairly small on average. They were quite crammed and dry weather must have affected the growth. Probably mostly 1-2kg fruits with some smaller and bigger. Only one looks to be clearly bigger and might get over 5kg. Melons look to be farly good size with most getting to 0.5-1kg with some over 1kg, maybe up to 1.5kg.
Biggest watermelon is from seeds I got via this group from Spain. Not many of the seeds made it to fruiting, but couple are happy enough with conditions and few more that contributed pollen. As comparison what heirlooms I had from transplant only one seems to make fruit and fairly late even though they grew fairly well. Those also made pollen contribution. I tried to make sure that as many different plants contributed to seeds and insects did their part.
Quite a few fruits have webbing that reminds of siberian sweet, with otherwise darker skin.
More of the fastest fruits.
From last years fruit that I accidentally cut off little early and was really sweet. Seems like it has kept some of the yellow in the skin.
Fruit with some golden midget heritage, but this time it seems like it’s fully yellow before maturity. It has also stayed tiny because it was in a very crowded spot. Atleast it will make some seeds. Have to separate small fruits in to own landrace next year.
These seem to have some early moonbeam heritage, just not as white background (yet?). There are also some plants that were taken from early moonbeam looking plants, but now are completely different.
Best melon plant with atleast 10 fruits.
Emir F1 seems to best from new F1s and fairly close to best plants from my own seed. All F1s have made some fruit and in fairly good time. Heirlooms seem like they don’t make even though they were transplanted and some of them have grown fairly well. Fruits just don’t start to grow after pollination. I left them just in case some of the last start to grow. I did try to use them to pollinate some others so hopefully something has made it in to next generation.
One other F1 with good size fruit.
Fucking ace. Well done Jessel. Imagine a hot year next year!