that’s so CORNy April 14, 2013

I have 4 types of corn. 2 are heirloom varieties, “festivity” and “truckers favorite”. I would really like to save seed from the festivity because it is a fairly unique variety, having multicolored kernels at the stage when sweetcorn is picked and eaten. Most multicolored corns do not develop color until well past the eating stage. Corn can cross polinate with other varieties from miles away because the pollen is carried on the wind so having pure seed to save and growing other varieties at the same time poses a bit of a challenge. If I have other corn on my tiny property with pollen at the time my festivity corn is being pollenated I will have a hard time getting anything but hybrid seed. There are a couple of different ways to tackle this problem. One is to plant the corn at different times to make sure that the festivity corn is not being pollenated at the same time my other corn is producing pollen. The second way is to cover several ears with bags as they form and do the deed by hand and then recover those ears. I have never tried either method before so I don’t know which is best. When in doubt try everything, right? I am going to try planting just the festivity this week and wait a couple weeks to put in the other varieties. I will probably try hand pollenating a few ears anyway just to help ensure seed purity. Luckily I am not in an agricultural area so there is not as much pollen from outside sources to worry about. Wish me luck because I will not know if it worked for a year and a half! The other corn I bought seed for is hybrid. These 2 varieties are a silver queen hybrid and a peaches and cream hybrid. With hybrids it is nearly impossible to get any seed true to the parent plant but modern hybrids are usually far superior in flavor and production to heirlooms. Corn is one of the few things you will ever hear me say this about. I don’t mind buying some seed every year to have delicious, extra sweet, sweet corn. I am really hoping that my heirloom varieties do well here but planting a diversity seems better to me than just crossing my fingers.

Finally starting my tree tomatoes February 8, 2013

Ever since seeing a picture of a tomato plant trellised to look like a tree I have been excited to try one of them.  All it took was a quick search on e-bay and I was able to find “Giant Italian Tree Tomato” seeds from e-bay seller aprilshowers2010.  This was months ago so I do not know if there are more left or not.  You can try contacting the seller I got mine from or just do a search of your own and see what comes up.  The seller also sent along a couple of bonus seed packets, one labeled “Italian Heirloom” and the other “Roma” but I will not be planting the roma variety right now since I already have 6 pots with roma seeds from a different source.  I am going to start the Italian Heirloom and Giant Italian Tree tomatoes tonight. 
To be clear the “tree tomatoes” are not a tree.  They are simply an indeterminate variety of tomato that grows very large and can be trellised to look like a tree.  I am growing quite a variety of tomatoes already but this one still excites me.  The seller sent a sheet of “tomato basics” with tomato germinating, fertilizing, and pruning tips.
These will be getting a late start but there is still plenty of time left before spring.  I’m not sure how many more seedlings I can reasonably take care of in a travel trailer but hopefully at least 12 more since I plan on starting 6 pods each of the Italian Heirloom and Giant Italian Tree tomatoes.

Trying to make tomatoes happy January 26, 2013

This is the warm tray with the cucumbers and okra already moved into larger pots. The closest peat pods have peppers, which are just now germinating. The rest is tomatoes which for the most part germinated within a few days of being planted. The caro rich and marmande super were slower to germinate than the rest but are finally coming up now. The weather has been quite cool for the last week or so and my tomatoes have been stuck indoors. Even next to a window there is just not enough light for these full sun summer veggies so my little tomato stems were all turning purple. On older plants this could be a sign of lacking nutrients but since these do not have any true leafs yet I knew something else had to be stressing them out. After a little research I learned that lack of light or lack of warmth can cause the stems to turn purple. I decided to go back to using a heat mat and also to go buy a grow light.

I have had it for several days now and most of the purple has gone away. The new growth on the stems is green like it should be. I gave them some very diluted fish fertilizer as well, just to be sure. In addition to turning purple a lack of light can cause spindly plants with weak stems. For about the price of a few tomato plants at a nursery (about $12) I have helped all of these little tomatoes to thrive one more. It needs to be quite close to the plants so for now I am just setting the ends of the light on the edge of a taller tray and a tub of oxyclean. Nothing fancy here but it works and that is all I care about.

I ordered more seeds today too :D December 18, 2012

and I mean a bunch more….like a quarter million seeds 😀  http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150967290630  If you scroll down it tells you what all is in there.  I only have .3 of an acre so I don’t think I will be using all of these this year.  They are all heirloom so I can do some seed saving and never have to buy seeds again.  The seller has a great store with many heirloom varieties, including some I hadn’t seen before.  http://stores.ebay.com/Mozybeau-Auctions