I don’t know if it was just me, but it felt a long time for the silks to come out after tassel were already fully open and giving pollen. Almost a week since first was giving pollen and that plant doesn’t even have silks yet. Might be that they are crosses with fast and slow genetics and they are really messed up on how the timing should go 
. A little bit of recombinations and selecting should do the trick. They are still at least a week faster than painted mountain. Some are a bit later, but at the same time faster varieties and their crosses are coming to flower making futher crossing possible. Should get a lot of seeds with extra fast genetics in them as well as the diversity of painted mountain.
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No it’s not just me being impatient. This one from atomic orange or it’s crosses is making silks even before tassel is fully open. This might be even a little too early if it’s the first one, but goes to show how much variance there could be. This might need to be eliminated at some point. I’ll follow how it develops just out of interest. Next year might be more of a selection year for mature plant traits.
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Habrochaites crosses have outgrown habrochaites, which are somewhere in the front, and are now as big as habrochaites at the end of last years growing season. Talk about hybrid vigour. Some fruits also among the mess, but F1s still very much like habrochaites in yield. They are also too thight for this kind of growth. Still there will be plenty of seeds for the next year. How I’ll grow them next year is still under planning. This kinda growth needs to be eliminated and gotta find those more domestic growth traits together with the taste.
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It was going so well with the s.melongena x s.aethiopicum cross, but I noticed very soon that the flowers weren’t pollinating. Not even if I pollinated them with pollen from the eggplants. I was already reserved to the fact that they aren’t going to make fruits and only possibly can continue with the cross as pollen donor. Then today I noticed a single fruit in one of the crosses that had clearly started to grow. Better not count my chickens before they hatch, but it’s still a positive sign. I don’t know why they have such a hard time to pollinate. African eggplant had trouble with the wet weather last year and these crosses have also been loosing leaves after it started raining more. Maybe that’s the reason? They did seem to produce pollen when I looked and I’m hopeful that some of the eggplants have been pollinated with the interspecific crosses. I have done pollinating occasionally and bumblebees very frequently. Otherwise the crop is coming along nicely. First fruits are already quite big and main flowering is just now. Couple of weeks forward the bushes should have good amount of fruits and lots of diverse seeds for next seasons trial.
The only one, so far.
Unknown cross that has a pretty colour, which is interesting because I haven’t had anything like that growing. Just goes to show the hidden possibilities even the more normal looking varieties might hold. This is going to be quite a massive fruit. It’s maybe only just over 2 weeks from pollination and will continue growing at least another 2 weeks.
This one looks suspiciously like it’s female parent variety. Maybe the cross didn’t work, but nevermind. Bumblebees seem to do such a good work that eventually it will happen.
If I remember correctly, this one had some patio baby F1 in it making it certainly unstaple.
Also had the first ripe fruits in my groundcherry crosses. I have made some more crosses, both between the crosses to increase diversity, but also trying to get some angulata crossed into them. So far most of those have dropped, but there is at least one that is possibly growing. Several of the crosses between crosses are successful. Those crosses will be the base for my landrace and the other fruits I’ll collect possible to share all or some way use part to incorporate with the others. Have to look and see how those crosses I made turn out.
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Had the first ripe tomato on my F1 crosses. Excactly 100days from sowing. Could have been faster if it wasn’t so dry after planting and had more time to water after water pump broke down. From flowering to ripe fruit it could not have been much faster. Only took 47 days and it has not even been the warmest summer (not complaining though). Not surprising that the fastest was from pimpinellifolium cross. Different pimpinellifolium cross is also turning colour same as a cheesmaniea cross. Domestic crosses don’t look to have colour turning quite yet, but they can’t be too far away. LB is still under control, but there are more infected leaves. I have cut off infected leaves and some of the lower leaves to reduce the number of spores and make air flow better in the foliage. Still need to hang on a bit longer. Some of the last crosses I made 20.7 and they would need a few more weeks to ripen seeds. There are quite a lot of crosses. Did not count, but there might be more than 200 and they look like high percentage have taken.
Cheesmaniea cross. I expect it to turn red as it seems the dominant colour.
Some of the domestic crosses.
One volunteer I had with yacon. Probably some cross as I have not grown anything that grows like that. It was like a tomato bouquet. It got over run by volunteer tomatillo came with another yacon and also was so badly affected by LB that I colected the fruits. One was already turning colour making it fairly fast at least.
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This year has been quite successful with peppers. Slightly uneven results because of early season drought and letting them fruit before they were fully established. Also making crosses did not go to plan. Out of a few hundred crosses to domestic peppers only some 10% were successful. That’s quite a lot of potential fruits lost or at least delayed, but still it’s going to be a great harvest of peppers and seeds. It does bother a little that I lost hours of work and I don’t even know why they failed. Luckily the crosses to half wilds worked a lot better. It looks like very few actually failed and there are several dozen of those, possibly even over a hundred. I didn’t make a lot of known crosses to baccatum, but for a few weeks I went through the flowers like a bumblebee every few days and used other pollen from the other plants to pollinate flowers. Should be a good mix now for the next year.
Some of the baccatum hybrids are starting to be loaded with fruits and possibly a month to grow them more.
Probably my most productive annuum outdoors. One of my own hybrids. Below are some more that are doing fairly well.
Chilitepin hybrids have a lot of variety. Growth has a lot of resemblance to chilitepin and fruits are usually the one that gives the cross away. Some fruits are more like their mother than others.
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Collected some of the first trusses from my F1s in hope to save them from LB. Many of the tomato plants don’t look so hot, yet not so many damaged fruits. That might change soon. Not many plants seem to tolerate LB, but there are some that look to be doing better. Don’t want to rush to conclusions thought. Ida gold also free of LB and if it stays this year also I could consider it to be LB tolerant.
One had a nice truss with some 14-15 medium sized fruits.
Habrochaites crosses are starting were starting to get out of control and as none of farthers trusses are going to have a chance to ripen fruits, I cut them back to give more space to other plants. While doing so quite a few fruits dropped fairly easily. There should be plenty remaining. LB is affecting the lower leaves, but not a lot of signs of it affecting fruits. First flowered on the first days of july and might start to have ripe seeds, but I think I’ll see how it goes and maybe later this month take them down to collect fruits.
One self seeded hare interplanted with habrochaites crosses 
. This one had a broken paw and was delivered to a wildlife shelter.
I was cleaning lower and sick looking leaves from eggplants and noticed that s.melongena x s.aethiopicum cross is starting to make now more fruits. Just when it starts so late that they need a little help to mature seeds. They are now about 3 weeks behind the lone big fruit so there is a change if they have good enough weather. At least I’ll get that one fruit, which hopefully has some viable seeds. Can’t be certain after how much trouble it had making fruits. Growing F1s might be better for longer season and possibly drier climate.
Interesting how this cross (also) highly resembles the other parent, in this case the african eggplant. Flowering and fruits looked the same as in african eggplant. Also general looks resembled african eggplant except the crosses had more branching as well as leaves and flowers had purple purple/pink colour.
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The first pepper crosses are starting to ripen. I pick them right after they start to turn to save them from possible rodents or other unwanted visitors. It’s been a really good year for peppers. Not very hot, but steady warm weather with highs of 20-25C (68-77F) and lows of 10-15C (50-59F). Not a lot of hotter days and only short periods of cooler in june and some in july. Still looks like weather is going to be mostly in the same range at least this month which is more than I could hope for this time of the year.
Probably the best producing annuum had around dozen fully grown peppers and about half a dozen of smaller fruits. Not sure if it will have the energy to develop those smaller ones, but even this is a perfect result for a single plant.
Accidentally stepped on a pepper. It was a crunchy one 
Baccatum crosses also have a good amount of fruits. Still takes a bit longer to ripen, but first are already fully developed and will at least have ripe seeds so it will be a success no matter how many actually have time to fully ripen the fruit.
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Made the first picking of dry bush beans. Selected only the ones that had dried or were about to dry, except some plants were most were already dry I took all. Trying to skew the population towards faster. @polarca beans had the most dry pods so far. Total yield is going to be more than I have ever have grown, but also never had as many plants. Hopefully there are some warm sunny days next week also because I don’t really have any good plan to dry as much as there are, especially if they aren’t already starting to dry. Ideal would be that they dried up like some of the fastest have by this time, preferably earlier when sun is still stronger and moist nights and mornings aren’t common.
@polarca beans in the front, @WojciechG at the back mostly out of picture. Latter weren’t as fast as other. Productive for sure, but only a few had dry beans that were added to the fastest population. Still any addition is more possilities.
@Joseph_Lofthouse Beans had quite a good amount of dry pods, although only couple types seemed to repeat. Didn’t have as many types to start with after separating vining types. For some reason this year there was no sign of bad germination or other growth problems. Maybe there were just some immature seeds mixed in last year?
After opening the driest pods some types seem to repeat alot, but there is still a lot of varience with several types that aren’t as numerous. Can’t say if I can see any that are atypical. There were too many types to start with and chances are that many crosses don’t stand out. Have to update a picture once the beans are well dried and colours have settled.
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First grain corn I harvested a week or so ago. Paintad mountain that had quite clearly crossed with atomic orange as intented as it was so much faster. Some cobs also show colour typical to atomic orange.
Quite like these darker colourful with somewhat uniform shade rather than those that that have a huge mix of bright kernels that stand out. Suppose it’s good either way for the diversity.
Final harvest couple days ago when more started to dry, there was rain in the forecast and some redent had already decimated couple of cobs. The bucket has some F2 generation atomic orange x painted mountain grown together with atomic orange. Top right is last years crosses and bottom is atomic orange (with the yellow variation also). Atomic oranges probably mainly pick out the odd looking kernels and mix them with the best of the others. All gonna go to survivor plot next year.
This reminded me of some kind of a candy.
I don’t think I have had this much pink before as the one on the left. One on the right is funny because it had a fully purple husk and also the cob inside is purple, but grains are light coloured.
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First to dry bush beans. These clearly had more light coloured ones than the ones I picked later.
Unusually warm and dry weather allowed me to dry the last beans on the fence. Apart from just a small portion all got dry enough to collect the beans in the field which made things a lot easier. I could probably do the same thing in most augusts, but only a few of those picked early would have been ready that early. Still some work to do. Next year is probably survivor plot, atleast the bulk of it, and based on this year I might not have to worry about getting a huge harvest.
Last harvest. Still need to go through to pick out all the different types for next years seed. Probably will have all different types sown again like this year on the main plot and those that I have more of go to survivor plot. Hopefully that way possible new crosses stand out.
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What do you mean with survivor plot next year? Some kind of STUN?
The same plot as this year where plants go to die, or possible going rough on the field next to it. Enough seeds to go a bit crazy.
Had a good harvest of eggplants from my crosses. Some plants had over 3kg of fruits and biggest fruit was 1,3kg. Accidentally getting close to finnish record that is 1,7kg and this all outdoors. Lots of seeds for next year direct sowing. Plan is to use same tactic that worked well in this years trial, but have some 15m2 which could be 50-60 plants.
The plant below had already some harvested earlier. Having couple of extra weeks at the end helped, but it was making a huge harvest nonetheless.
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Good harvest of lycopersicum x habrochaites crosses as well. Some also ripening to whitish or light yellow/orange. Some had very pleasant taste. Definetely something unique even it’s mostly tomato like. Did not tolerate frost, but pushed through LB unlike habrochaites even if many fruits were damaged by LB. Now the question for next year is how to make direct sowing. These took just a little more than domestic tomato to flower which is enough to push ripening close to first possible frost. Will the domestic come through enough to make a leap in flowering? Also how to avoid contamination from volunteer domestic tomatoes. The place where they were this year is probably good candinate to use as there weren’t that many domestic tomatoes close by. Still if I’m making selection based on domestic traits, some random volunteer might get selected more easily. Probably will clean all that come too early to be from the sowing and then eliminate all that come later than day after the first from the sowing. Also might eliminate if there are plants with fruits that are too similar to domestic. As I understand, next generation should still have very heavy habrochaites influence. We’ll see what happens next year. Sure hope some are more like domestic as this years plants were all a big mess.
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Thank you for sharing 
It is amazing to see all these beautiful eggplants I was able to get one accidental cross between 2 plants but those fruits were rather small. So I want to continue with eggplants in my no-input approach.
Plants of eggplant seeds I got from you were doing great for me when the weather was cooler in spring, but then they stagnated during summer, and again showed some enthusiasm when temperatures dropped end of August. So please keep some seeds for me because I know now that I can plant your eggplants much earlier comparing to those that are from the south, and give them earlier start and then select those early varieties before high summer temperatures kick in
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So amazing ! 
I don’t understand this photo your eggplant is so high that you are below or you have the whole plant in your hand?
Have you already started a selection or do you keep all the seeds?
It was the best way to show it’s whole glory
Might be possible that to breed cool tolerant varieties it’s not as necesssary to have them tolerate heat and drought, although I would say mine did well with drought last year. Those were still mostly F1s so not much diversity. Next year I hope to pick out more aggressively rooting plants like have got with tomatoes and peppers. I still haven’t got to the main bulk of my seed saving from eggplants as they store so well. Only problem is that some have sprouted inside the fruit, but there should be still plenty of seeds to share.
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