Since spring is coming soon, here's a quick summary of all my garden projects.
Blue carrots: I'm growing a patch of the two varieties that crossed to make the carrot pictured here. Next year, they'll cross, and then in the 2nd year, I'll have more of these roots.
Tomatoes: I'm growing out an F2 population derived from a cross between my white cherry tomato and my pink/yellow-striped beefsteak tomato.
The F1 was medium-sized and orange.
Tomatillos: The next generation of my purple storage tomatillos will be grown.
The goal for these is to be able to store them at room temperature in home conditions from one harvest until the next so that you can have the fresh fruit year-round (if you plant enough).
These are somewhat tricky. To properly select for such long-storage, I'd need to grow them in alternate years.
That said, almost all of my fruit have survived intact since harvest last fall, but I'll sacrifice a few for seeds to use this year.
Blue runner beans (Ayacotes Azul): I'll be growing out these cream-colored runner beans and some of my blue common beans together to get hybrids.
The goal is to introgress the blue trait into the larger bean type.
A cross between runner and common beans only works one way, with runner pollen going to common beans. The cross should help me get to a blue runner.
I'll also be selecting for early blooming in the cream runner, which came from Mexican genetics, increasing the diversity of the crop available in MN.
Blue lima beans: I'm trying to cross these two magenta and yellow lima bean varieties to try and get me towards a blue type.
This is still years away.
Short-season corn: I'll be trying to grow two crops of my short growing corn this year.
I'll select the 1st population for blue flour kernels. I'm still deciding on the 2nd.
And by "short-season", I mean I'm going to try and grow two crops of corn in the same plot in my z5a MN garden. A first summer harvest, then replanting for a fall harvest.
It'll be close, but the last few years of growing these suggests to me that it'll work.
Daylilies: I have several seed-grown daylilies that should bloom for the first time this year.
I ordered this purple flowered variety to try and make some crosses with. I think my experience with blue beans might give me some hints towards making a blue daylily. Years to go.
Scarlet eggplant: I'll be growing out an F2 population of Pumpkin-on-a-stick crossed with my white fruited variety. The goal is to make a white-fruited Pumpkin-on-a-stick.
Along the way, I'll be fixing the excessive spinyness of Pumpkin-on-a-stick, making it easier to grow.
These will be useful for florists. Because of thay use, they might be the most likely of my plant breeding projects to produce a monetary return for me in a reasonable time frame.
Time will tell.
They're also perfectly edible as a vegetable for the home garden. A mix of beauty and utility is my garden ideal.
I'm also planting a batch of American Persimmon trees. ¼ of the last cohort survived their first winter, so most of the new seedlings will likely die.
But considering I'm planting them at 45°N, well outside their growing zone, any survivors is the goal.
I now have two local connections that I know are growing pawpaws up here. I'll be trying to get seeds from them to restart my MN-Pawpaw project.
The species is usually too cold-sensitive for this area, and seeds I've sourced from further south have repeatedly failed to survive our winters.
@abetterjulie The pink-fruited tree blooms/fruits a little later than the yellow-fruited one. I went to harvest them too late and almost missed the yellow fruit.
Fortunately, they're both great for making jelly and such.
@thebiologistisn Ingression from domestic plum varieties was a thought that had crossed my mind.
BTW, I have P. mexicana in my garden, which I ordered through the post from a nursery in Louisiana (with the tree itself originally grown at a nursery in Texas). Although central Ohio is outside the plant's natural range, it has, in fact, thrived in my urban yard. But the tree has never set fruit, though it is supposedly self-fertile. Beautiful flowers, but no fruit. The Dawes Arboretum, roughly 30 miles from where I live, also has a single P. mexicana specimen (wild collected) that also has never fruited.
@michaelmeckler We have a couple wild plums that we got from a local nursery (before I found the wild plum patches) that also haven't fruited yet.
They're a bit overshadowed by black cherry, so that might explain them not flowering.
@Hippie Last year, I grew 50 plants in each of three populations (high production, sweet, and high heat).
Each population was planted densely into about a square meter, so the plants that didn't grow aggressively would get overgrown.
@Satsuma Unfortunately, like all beans, they darken to shades of brown when cooked.
The commercial canning process has the potential to keep some of the blue color, just like canned red beans keep their red, but it'll be a while before I can find out.
Dr. Darren Abbey
JulieR
Michael Meckler
Shaula Evans
Hippie
Satsuma