Hi everyone, I’ve been away from the forum for a while, sorry for not responding to anyone over that time! And nearly caught up on notifications now… So, what have I been up to? Well, eager to landrace, I didn’t want to waste my winter. And knowing how important the F2 generation is, I thought I would try to get there a bit faster, with some indoor growing, hoping to bring them all to flower and then cross, and with luck have F2 seeds before the year’s end.
So, here’s my living room!
I’ve been growing 6 varieties of rice, and yuzu in front of it. Diverse yuzu seeds so I won’t be needing to make crosses in a hurry and anyway that will take years, but, raising them now to speed things up. The rice I need to cross.
Some of the yuzu now have beautiful little spikes There should also be some sudachi among them. There are some more smaller ones in other containers to the right of my setup that won’t be visible…
8 or so varieties of soybeans (2 or 3 more coming)… with some tomato seedlings in front of them (mostly wild species):
Soybeans from above - this photo I have left entirely unaltered so the colour is clear - they are hungry for something, some leaves with brown spots and curling, some with lighter spots and/or patches, probably two kinds of mineral deficiency I would think. (One of them on the bottom right has very white spots, don’t worry about that, that’s burns from touching the LEDs before I raised them).
I gave some of them some pee, waiting to see if that makes them better, it might be already… but I really have to work out how to grow soybeans quickly indoors while meeting their needs. Everything here is simply planted in leaf mould, with a tiny bit of perlite added. I did mix in a little compost to the first ones I did, like the rice and yuzu, but gave up adding that for the rest. I recently start to think I should add sand and clay to the leaf mould. I know one place I could get a little sand but don’t know of any accessible clay deposits around here. And carrying a sack of clay on my back on my bicycle from the countryside where I know there’s loads of it, might be challenging! So, I ended up buying a bag of topsoil yesterday, and will mix some of that in with the leaf mould for the ones coming up, unless anyone has some better ideas?
I think for the soybeans, which will soon be re-homed in slightly larger vessels, but still pretty small, I need something that will work. If they can live on leaf mould and pee alone that would be marvellous, though I have found people rarely respond to pee questions, strangely. So that makes it difficult to learn about, and I am worried about salt levels for them. But I am also open to other ideas of how to feed them.
And, tomatoes!
If anyone has tips on minimum pot sizes for indoor breeding - I’m thinking maybe 3 litre pots for individuals and somewhere between 10~20 litre buckets for growing several of one species together? Like for example, for pennellii, peruvianum, or habrochaites, how small do you reckon I could make their homes for 5 individuals? And 10 individuals? (And would it be much different depending on which of those species?) I’d also love advice on pruning for the different tomato species. Any special tips?
Here are the species I will be growing - most have started, some yet to arrive:
- S. pennellii
- S. habrochaites
- S. peruvianum
- S. corneliomulleri
- S. arcanum - so far, F2 hybrid with domestic though some pure might be on it’s way…
- S. chmielewskii
- S. pimpinellifolium
- S. cheesmaniae
- S. galapagense
I want to try to make some wild X wild hybrids, but also of course cross them with eating tomatoes. Especially with some of Joseph’s lines, and also with some others that may have a good chance of doing well specifically in the UK outdoor climate. So I have several mothers-to-be, some just started, some yet to start. I think the wilds will take a while to make flowers anyway so, not too much rush I guess.
My aim with tomatoes is obviously not large production, but just to get enough flowers to be making crosses. And with the self incompatible species, I want to grow enough of them to have several different pollen donors, both for making multiple crosses, and also to increase seed stock of the species itself - I can let the insects do their dance on the flowers I don’t use for crossing.
So, that’s what I’ve been up to! I hope you have all been having a lovely winter