Winter 2024-2025

[Yak54]

The next 3-4 days here in N.E. Ohio the day time HIGH temps are predicted to be 11-12 degrees with -4 deg. for night time lows.
Wish I was flying to Kahului or Lihue

[Mark_Thompson]

I feel ya. We just had a weak cold front roll through, a nipply 62 this morning brrrrrr

[Yak54]

Wow that’s cold for Maui

[Mark_Thompson]

Harvesting some real lettuce from the garden, some baby lettuce from the planters. Also setting up for summer, opening up a fresh plot in hopes of dodging my bacterial diseases, not easy but broadforked it all today. Lots of old plastic mulch paper, so used to be in pineapple back in the day like most of my property.

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[MissS]

@Mark_Thompson what kind of critters do you have there that requires barbed wire on the fence?

[Mark_Thompson]

@MissS Half of the property started as pasture for a few years, so the barbed wire was for a steer. Mostly we had goats which wouldn’t have required it though.

Eventually we got rid of the goats, they weren’t keeping up with the weed control, so filled the pasture with hardwood trees and now mow it.

[rdback]

...Eventually we got rid of the goats, they weren’t keeping up with the weed control, so filled the pasture with hardwood trees and now mow it.

Shoot, I think I would have bought more goats!

[Mark_Thompson]

Finally got some real fruits going on, this site ain’t called Lettuce Junction!

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[Mark_Thompson]

Got some potential big fruits coming, also some medium fruits and small fruits (my own cross) and working on some more crosses. Being super extra paranoid to mulch thick and keep leaves not even close to the ground for diseasy reasons.

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[MissS]

You have some nice thick stems on those plants this year.

[Mark_Thompson]

Couple recent pictures including my S. habrochaites pollen donor, except I’ve already done my crosses, so I guess kill that big beautiful stinky plant today. And also why I can’t grow giant fruit, all my fused blossoms and funny fruit die. That one was under cover in as controlled conditions as I can possibly get. Oh well, time to focus my efforts on winning the ugly tomato contest instead of the giant one.

Oh and the Roulette peppers are still a-comin’!

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[MissS]

Wow your garden still looks great. It looks like you are getting some sort of fungal crud on your fused blossoms. I wonder if using some sort of fungicide or even a bleach spray would help you. Gosh that was a nice fruit there too. RIP little giant.

[bower]

I think the giant fruit goal is ugly by definition... beautifully ugly, of course

Last year I tried a garlic soak of my seeds before germination, as a way to cut back on any seedborne disease getting a toehold while they're still young, and I think it made a difference but want to try a longer soak next time.
It was 10 g of fresh garlic to 100 ml of water. finely rasped then filtered. Only soaked for a minute.
At least this is one way to separate seedborne issues from environmental things you can't control, when there are issues that repeat season after season in one line.

[Wildcat82]

Couple recent pictures including my S. habrochaites pollen donor, except I’ve already done my crosses, so I guess kill that big beautiful stinky plant today. And also why I can’t grow giant fruit, all my fused blossoms and funny fruit die. That one was under cover in as controlled conditions as I can possibly get. Oh well, time to focus my efforts on winning the ugly tomato contest instead of the giant one.

Oh and the Roulette peppers are still a-comin’!


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I've spent a lot of time over the past few months researching S. Habrochaites crosses. Of about 30 varieties I've managed to research, one variety with substantial S. Habrochaites genetics, Scheherazade, is claimed to have 6-8 oz fruit. All the other S. Habrochaites crosses are in the 1-4 oz range so it looks like it's really difficult to get slicers from that cross.

[Mark_Thompson]

@bower Is there a reason you do garlic instead of say bleach? That’s the treatment I was hitting some of my hard to germinate seeds with using the TGRC at UC Davis method.

The giant rot issue isn’t in one line unfortunately, been hitting many of my megablooms independent of where the seeds are from.

All that being said, I have a handful of plants that are looking super healthy and outrunning their foliar diseases including Sister Keyes that I recently received from @Acer Rubrum

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[bower]

@Mark_Thompson just looking for alternatives.
The bleach that I had doesn't give a concentration, so I wasn't sure how to dilute that correctly. And it's a hassle to handle it especially trying to measure and mix small amounts. I would rarely use it, just because it is a broad spectrum sterilant and takes away your good microbiome along with the bad.
Garlic otoh has some specific antimicrobial actions, especially the pathogenic fungi.
I read the research on using it as a seed treatment for organic production, and tried it because it looked promising.

[Mark_Thompson]

Just about a year ago @Cornelius_Gotchberg selflessly sent one of his babies to me, knowing that it would have a much better (and much longer) life down in the tropics (with all due respect to America's Dairyland). This happy little tree is turning a year old soon, so I gave it a big prune back. I fertilized it, mulched it with a bunch of corn husks. Here's to another year or two! My wife told me yesterday, "Ugh, I'm so sick of eating peppers" This little cutback will give her some time to recover her enthusiasm hopefully, and if not I've got plenty of friends who always want free food.

Also picked some Baby corn that I bought from Nichols. I let a few go too long, but lesson learned.

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[MissS]

Wowza. Look at that monster pepper! I can't believe that such a tree came from Wisconsin. You have enough peppers for the whole neighborhood from that plant. The corn looks fabulous too. What a great season you are having.