Radishrain

I just wanted to permalink to this description of the Karma tomatoes that Marsha Eisenerg and Karen Olivier are working on: http://tomatoville.com/showpost.php?p=746921&postcount=1609

They sound like great early potato leaf tomatoes. Some are even bicolors (it's hard to find an early bicolor).

other_tomato

This is from Kirkman melon seeds, but it seems to have been crossed with Torpeda, by some of its qualities. I wonder why it's not striped, though. I guess Kirkman's rind must be dominant, except for Torpeda's netting seems dominant.

Anyway, it wasn't as sweet as its parents. It was firm (not soft and juicy like Kirkman). The texture was like Torpeda, but the flesh color was like Kirkman.

I had four Wintermelon watermelons and took the seeds out to zap and save on Monday or so. I ate three of them; the other one was going bad. The seeds are black and smaller than most hlack-seeded winter watermelon seeds. The taste was good, and the texture was excellent. I have a feeling that both the taste and smell of larger fruits would be better. I know the smell can be, anyway.

Here's a picture of the first one I ate:

I found my first worm in a wonderberry (in all the three years I've grown it). It was late in the season. It appeared to be the same as the worms that get in over-ripe blackberries.

I saw a bee dangling from a wonderberry flower (by its hands) for a really long time. I thought maybe it was pollinating it, but I waited, and waited, and it was still there. So, I attempted to help it out, and as soon as it saw me get close, it stopped and flew off. So, it wasn't stuck, it seems. Perhaps the flower was just small; so, it required the bee to stretch and dangle. Anyway, I put a label under that flower in hopes that it'll make a fruit that ripens (for seed-saving purposes) before the frost. I removed the other blossoms/fruits on the truss. If the flower was that interesting to a honeybee, then it might be worth trying to breed wonderberries where all the flowers are attractive to them. Plus, the resulting fruits might taste better.

Well, I harvested most of the tomatoes, ripe and unripe, with the exception of the damaged ones (there were lots of those). Usually we seem to have loads of tomatoes at the end, but we got lots throughout the season, and less at the end, this time. I thought the first freeze was going to be on Wednesday morning, but we've had light frosts before and after then, and no 32-° F. temperatures on the weather.

Unripe misc. tomatoes:

The ones in the following picture are unripe Sheboygan tomatoes:

Ripe and obviously ripening tomatoes:

The following article lists diseases that tomato seeds can carry: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4265074/

Take a look at this article that shows a considerable lot of research has been done on Cucumis anguria: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0717345815000688

This is a helpful article, if you weren't aware of such facts as that brown sugar is acidic (and so can help baking soda to make things rise):

Cookie Science: The Real Differences Between Brown and White Sugars, by Stella Parks:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/12/faq-difference-brown-white-granulated-sugar-baking-cookies.html

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This recipe is from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, p. 48 (Hamburger Dills).

Ingredients:
* 4lbs 4" cucumbers (sliced) (we would probably use West India burr gherkins)
* 6 tablespoons canning salt
* 4½ cups water
* 4 cups vinegar
* 14 heads fresh dill
* 3½ teaspoons musard seed
* 14 peppercorns (2 per each of the 7 pint jars)

See book for directions. 15-minutes in a water-bath canner. It has you boil most of the seasons, sans the dill, and drizzle them over the top of the packed cucumbers.

I haven't tried it, yet, but it looks like one of the better and simpler dill pickle recipes I've seen. It has no sugar added.

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