Or a very cool one 
. Havenât had one of those in a while. 2017 was the last one and from 2012-2017 summers were cooler or about same as this year is likely to be. Coolest was 2-3C cooler than this summer is likely to be. 2018-2022 were warm to hot and this might just get there if there is some heatwave, but likely to be just little warmer than average because of fairly warm june. Cool isnât too bad for breading purposes, but would hope itâs not a sudden drop before I have made some progress.
Yesterday had my first tomatillos. For some reason I did not expect them to fall to the ground like their cousins even though that would make most sense. They did seem to ripen faster than expected and their fall might have been helped by heavy winds yesterday. Not sure how ripe they are in terms of actual ripeness. I know they are used before peak ripeness which is good for short season, but now Iâm thinking just the seeds. They did seem fully formed, but hard to make distinction on small seeds. So far this was just one variety, zluta, but there are some others with quite full looking fruits. Lotâs more that are just big empty shells, but they should fill up before frosts. Plants could stop growing already. Thatâs really the only negative trait I need to eliminate. First taste test was lemony sorrel as raw and kiwifruit/gooseberry without that much sweetness or sourness when cooked. Could definetely see some use for it, but have to research more about the uses. Maybe even more waiting for queen of malinalco and breeding yellow trait into more wider genetic base.
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First big tomatoes are starting to ripen with wilding panamorous being first. Those have flowered 17.6 at earliest so it will be just over 50 days for ripe fruits from flowering, well under 60 that usually is expected. Some other bigs are also showing little signs of ripening, but others have mainly few big fruits and rest are just small starts. Maybe with the exception of big hill and exserted orange that have fairly heavy crop already, but now signs of ripening yet. Canât be too far though. I picked one malformed fruit from wilding panamorous that was heavily squeezed between stalks. Also couple more ripe from gold nugget and first ripe from s.pimpinellifolium.
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Wow thatâs interesting!
Basil are in full flower, besides maybe one variety. 14 varieties/landraces/hybrid swarms/species alltogether. Landraces/hybrid swarm are clearly genetically diverse, rest I have to hunt for crosses if I get seed. Some clearly will make in time, but flowering has really started within last week or so which doesnât leave that much time for seeds to develop. Should cover them soon to maybe speed up the process and have it there to protect from first frost. If I get seed itâs interesting to see what kinda portion is crosses. Bumblebees have really liked them and based on my observation flower seems fairly good for cross pollination.
Brassicas havenât been big succes this year. First itâs been really dry and second Plasmodiophora brassicae is big problem here. After some time I have just forgot about them when I had other things to do and they are overgrown with weeds. One of my broccoli had started to flower so I took cover and weeds off. I could see before that 2 varieties had made it, but after weeding I could see 2 more. Purple sprouting is doing best, but itâs only just starting to make head. Green sprouting is flowering and might flower before others get there. Two other varieties might be F1 hybrids, but Iâm not sure anymore. I suppose I collect seeds if Iget them and see what happens. Might not mix them quite yet. Another no so great success is spinach. I collected seeds or what I think might be seeds. They did not grow very strong and stalks seemed to dry in advance. At the same time they were covered by weeds. There seems to be seeds in what I collected, but are they viable is another matter. Will see what happens next year.
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Itâs been quite good weather so far this august. Only few hot days (thatâs over 25C/76F here), but pleasantly warm most days. Likely to be little warmer than average in total, but not by much. At this time days get about 5 minutes shorter every day and season is coming to close sooner or later. Still have little PTSD from last to years when season had very sudden end. 2 years ago season was effectively finished at this time. At the moment it doesnât look like itâs gonna finish just yet. Temperatures are more seasonal and it might not even get to 20C (68F) many times this year, but getâs close to it. With weaker sun, short days and long night thatâs way less total heat than same high a month ago. Itâs still something and if I can get 2-3 weeks of that it would help. There is still slight change that there is warm/hot period in first half of september, but beyond that days just get too short to keep air warm.
Melons and watermelons are now mostly atleast month from pollination, first even 40 days. Here it usually takes around 45 days to ripen depending on weather so they are quite save to ripen within our season. Wet period at the turn of july to august damaged some fruits so that they spoiled later, one watermelon just few days ago when it was just about ready to be picked. It did have ripe seeds and I collected those because it was one of the fastest to start fruiting and I had pollinated it with one of the new varieties this year. In coming years I will be harsher with selection, but at this point speed is number one selection criterion. In general it seems like I was little too pessimistic when I made estimate on fruit sizes. Watermelon now looks to be more on 2-3kg range with some bigger and smaller and melons little over/under 1kg with some 0.5kg fruits and some that are over 1,5kg.
This about 2 metre long piece of bed has around 20 melons. Slighly on the smaller size compared to average, but still should be well over 10kg in total.
Best melon plant has now 7 melons, 3 smaller terminated as it clearly has enough with just 7. Size isnât that small either; 4 look clearly over 1kg and rest not that much under. It would be crazy if whole field was like this, but still some work to be done to get them consitant.
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Biggest melon is closer to 2kg if not over. Likely to be my personal best with biggest so far being 1,7kg. Itâs one of the new F1 I have this year and just single fruit. These have been single stemmed because of lack of space.
Another big, maybe around 1,5kg fruit in other new F1. This has 2 fruits about this size in single stem. This is the one with huge flowers.
Biggest watermelon of this season. Looks like gonna be over 4kg, maybe closer to 5kg. From my own seed and I think this is from last years biggest fruit (6,7kg). This time itâs in mostly single stem for lack of space, last year it had more room to grow. Itâs not so much about size but to get seeds.
Some other good producers with 2 good size fruits just few leave nodes apart.
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Squash have really taken over. Moschata in front, maxima at the back and summer squash at left side. First 3 fruits are candy roaster hybrid at F2 and fourth fruit is blue hubbart (with my finger photobombing) that has done fairly well. Those fruits are close to or maybe even over 10kg. New varieties were just little slower than candy roaster hybrid and got over run by those, but all of them are making fruits. Some had to cross fence to have their own space.
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Moschata has grown fairly well, but they are still little out of their range. First started to make female flowers at the and of july, but so far they have taken quite poorly. Might be because they were quite tightly packed and itâs been fairly dry. There are still atleast some fruits and if it remains above freezing long even those that are now small have change to make viable seeds. I really donât need that many fruits. Drought selection or whatever makes the fruits fail is good selection pressure. Bumble bees have been so yellow from pollen at times that there have been losts of cross pollination. Only regret I have that I didnât pamper new varieties more. Not sure if many of them have made fruits and there havenât been that many male flowers either. I did try to use them early when manually pollinating, but since many of those flowers failed Iâm not sure how much they contributed. Certainly some, but next time I try to have a better plan. Besides that, there seems to be some variety within fruits I have. Some of them are certainly from my seeds, but have shapes and colour that there werenât before. Some just have different compination. I think only one that is in first picture is copy from last year.
This is really surprising shape for moschata.
This might be one of the new varieties, but no way to be sure as itâs a mess out there.
New pattern of colour, but looks little like green striped cushaw with darker green.
Big acorn shape like last year, but light colour instead of dark green. Dark green seems to be getting more rare.
I was looking at the pictures and trying to see if there are some traits from green striped cushaw that I think is one of the parent varieties since last year i had one fruit that looked just like it with little fainter colour. So googled it to get pictures to remind myself what it looks like and realized itâs c.argyrosperma. So it looks like my accidental start to moschata landrace was also accidental cross species landrace. Maybe some of the shapes and colours come from there.
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Cleaned some of the lower leaves and extra brances from eggplants for better airflow and also to see fruits better. Was surprised how much they had grown in short while I havenât been able check then that carefully. I knew they would just appear suddenly once they started to grow, but this season they are just little bit late compared to last year which makes me little anxious for progress. Also fairly big portion of those fruits are crosses I made so they need that extra time to make seeds as well. Covered them now with cloth to have little extra warmth.
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Some more eggplants.
Some tomatornogarphy from first to ripen. Besides those I have had ripe fruits from siberian early x gold nugget F1 and all pimpinellifolium accesions. A few of the first crosses have ripened also.
First queen of malinalco to change colour. Itâs really curious tasting fruit and Iâm not sure what it reminds of if any. Quite sweet, but maybe wouldnât eat as just fruit. Or maybe I will, especially if I can make improvements on next generations. These seem to crack before ripening so I canât wait for them to sweeten more. For cooking it seems perfectas is.
Yukon chief sweet corn for seeds. These would have been perfect to eat 2-3 weeks ago which is earlier than usually people get from transplants. Even cobs arenât that small when compared how small plants were. Unfortunately I wasnât able to mach timing for cross pollination, but atleast I got plenty of seeds for next year.
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Interesting cross species potential
Today I smelled melon when I went to my plot. I wasnât expecting that in few more days, but there it was. It had turned colour from greenish to yellow in few days and came off with slight touch. It was surprising because expected 45 ripening period would have started at 8.7 and these definetely didnât flower then. Might not be many days less, but any day less is important. This was also super sweet and flavourful. Flesh is little more orange than in picture, but quite light orange in any case. Skin/not sweet part close to skin is quite thick, but having protective layer to elements is good I think. Size is also quite good. There are still 7 same size or little smaller in the same plant. Only negative thing is that most seeds were just empty shells. Not sure why that is, but have seen it before. Maybe they had some stress event that made them abort those seeds and thus also ripen faster. There were still some seeds that looked fully formed and darker in colour so I should be able to move it forward. Although if there are just very little seeds in other fruits also I might consider using tiny transplants just to get them going. Right now just waiting others to ripen. Once they start to ripen there will be some everyday.
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Picked some watermelons yesterday after they had 45 days from pollination. One had damage that came at the turn of the month when it was rainy, the other I just wanted to see how ripe it would be at 45 days. That should be well enough to atleast have viable seeds so only loss would be in culinary use. Damaged watermelon had unfortunately spoiled all the way through, but atleast it had ripe seeds. Thatâs only ripe fruit that I know of from seed exchange from Spain so was going to save seeds in any case. I did have other plants that atleast contributed pollen to the mix. The other fruit looked quite underripe when I first opened it, but closer inspection (=eating) made me re-evaluate. Flesh was pale red, but notes tell me it had some yellow fleshed in it so it might be just genetic. Seeds werenât all fully developed, but mainly white seeds were empty shell that had aborted. Still those that had started to develop werenât all fully uniform colour, but most had final colour or very close to it. I would say would have needed week more. Makes me wonder if it was slow to ripen or if it was one of those that had hiatus before fruit started to grow after pollination. I have noticed that some fruits start to grow immediately and are tennisball size week from pollination whereas others are just big enough to suggest that they have been pollinated, but start growing only after week or so. There were some cold nights right at the time when it was pollinated so it might have affected early growth. Whether itâs slow ripening or hiatus after pollination it will need to be eventually eliminated. This didnât contribute that many seeds that I might just as well use them. Atleast it was one of the fastest to start flowering/fruiting. Did not like how thick rind was compared to itâs size and that I will eliminate in future generations. Bigger storing fruits that might be useful? Hopefully next year I can get bigger sample size so that I can make some more selection than early growth. With most seeds next year coming from direct seeded plants competition should be lot more tough next year. Weâll see. Also had one small, about 0.5kg, melon ripe. This one was white inside and a bit overly sweet. Maybe not with as complex flavour as the other, but still good sweet melon to save seeds from.
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Collected grain corn that came from atomic orange (brownish orange) last year and from yellow/white cob that came from atomic orange couple years back. Latter I think was cross with painted mountain, but canât be certain. Now I let these cross pollinate with each other and painted mountain. Painted mountain was so late that it can only show at very latest kernels, yet there are some off types even lower down. Makes me think itâs the painted mountain cross from couple years ago that is starting to pop up. I still have some off types from that yellow/white that were later than these, but earlier than painted mountain. Possibly some earlier crosses also. Now plan is to save any off types separetely and use them a bit more sparingly and any common types use more freely. Then next year sow off types with painted mountain first and others a bit later to have silking more aligned. Sweet corn is going to other plot far away so no need to worry about them crossing. Bytheway, itâs quite interesting how white some of the cobs are and yellow is almost gone.
Best plant had 3 fairly big cobs. Iâm not sure if I have had a plant this succesful before.
Collected some of the first dry bush beans that are starting to have trouble with moisture. Vining types can still wait. Also had couple more ripe melons.
One of 3 bush bean varieties I have been growing for a few years. No sign they have crossed. Some of my later manual crosses look like they worked, but they were just too late to develop properly.
Blooming prairie was really productive and has little vining habit that helps with climate. Slightly later than some of the others I have grown.
Speedy alpine grex also did well although also bit later to start. It has some of Josephs genetics in it. These were fully vining.
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Couple more melons ripe and one watermelon that had itâs plant pretty much dead. It was 44 days from pollination, but not completely ripe and sweet. Might be because itâs plant wasnât too healthy looking since rains at the turn of this month. There are more plants that are showing signs of season to come. Still fairly good temps for this time of year, but nights are long and days take time to warm up. On top of that itâs been cloudy and rainy that does keep nights warmer, but otherwise isnât that helpful for melons and watermelons. If they could hang on just a little while longer. Fastest melon to ripen had itâs second melon to ripen and 4 out of 5 remaining melons look like they take few more days to ripen. It would be quite a feat to have a plant ripen almost all of itâs fruits by end of august or around 100 days from sowing. Others should join the party very soon. Bigger of the melons was just over 1kg and the other wasnât that much under, but much bigger are still to ripen.
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Harvested main harvest of watermelons yesterday with some melons that had ripened and some more couple days before. There are still closer to same amount of watermelons as harvest yesterday to harvest, but those flowered a bit later and might not fully ripen all. Yesterdays harvest was mainly 47-48 days from pollination with some day or two less that had their plant almost dead. Melons main harvest is still to come and it does look like there are signs lots of them will ripen soon. Few plants have already given all or most fruits.
Biggest watermelon at 4,5kg this year and most of main harvest 2,5-3,5kg range with some smaller that I picked earlier. Might be partially because they were so packed and next year I plan to give them more space so that they would perform closer to what they are capable of.
One interesting watermelon to try was one that came from watermelon that I accidentally picked little early at 44 days from pollination. That was maybe even little over ripe or at least at the peak ripeness and really overly sweet. Itâs offspring I picked at 45 days and it wasnât quite at peak ripeness basen on itâs seeds, but it was very sweet and had mostly uniform colour seeds. Last year was somewhet more favourable so results arenât fully comparable. Still having watermelon that I can savely pick at 45 days and still have both seeds and flesh fits right on my timetable. Beyond that I would need them to flower earlier or be really fortunate with weather later. Probably need to push that to even 40 days (small fruits even 30-35days) as I canât really count on having that long of a ripening period if I want to direct seed them with as little help as possible.
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Fist clear signs of late blight I have had. Not sure if i have had it in previous years, not as clearly as this atleast. Maybe itâs been so dry that it has kept it under control or has had lower infection rate. So far it seems to have affected some tomato plants within just few days. Potatoes grown for harvest already died for other reasons some time ago same as some from tps. Tps mostly has early blight and some other diseases with drought stress symptoms, not as much from late blight so far. Not planning to do anything with it and might be late to do anything in any case. Just seeing how it affects different plants and if there are some that can handle it. Might have to wait week or so to see how it spreads. Maybe I clean up just so much that fruits in unaffected plants donât get moldy just because of dead leaves on them. Itâs interesting and terrifying at the same time to see what happens.
What was the weather like in the days where the late blight spread?
Beautiful melons and garden!