Radishrain

Here's the first Navajo Winter watermelon that I've eaten, this year. It has a very thick rind (so it's probably a cross). Nevertheless, most of the rind is sweet and approximately the same texture as the inner fruit. It still has winter watermelon skin (in toughness). It tasted great! It was quite sweet and good. I definitely want to grow the seeds. The seeds were a pearlescent black (shinier than other black seeds I've saved before).



Notice how much of the rind I ate (what's left is the harder, non-sweet part of the rind):

Although the Endless Summer tomato (a genetically engineered one from a really long time ago) doesn't appear to have had success in grocery stores, it appears that Burpee has an Endless Summer tomato that remarkably has a similar shelf-life description (except it lasts even longer!) It's said to be available at the Home Depot (but not shipped to your house).

Are these the same tomato? Are they related? I don't know, but I think we need need some additional labeling here if it is, or a different tomato name if not.

Here's a thread I started on another forum, off-site, asking if anyone knew about it.

Well, at least any patents on it are likely to have expired. So, if GMO tomatoes contaminate other tomatoes at least they won't make the new hybrids illegal. Plus, it should be easy to tell if your tomato has the modified trait, since they might not ripen. But yeah, some people won't want to grow tomatoes descended from GMO tomatoes even if they lack the gene of their ancestor (I'm not excited about the prospect, myself).

This thread is a continuation of a thread on the old forum, which I thought had a lot more information about what I've done in it (maybe I posted that on other forums).

Today, I transplanted the rest of my seed-grown domestic strawberries, just south of where I transplanted Tresca earlier. I didn't split up any plants. I want to focus more on saving seeds for another generation from the first fruits, since the plants are diseased. I can try zapping the fruits next year to see if that removes the disease from the seeds. I can try zapping Reine des Vallees's fruits this year, though (it has some already); yes, it caught the disease, too. Anyway, the Quinault parent plant seems the most disease-resistant out of all my strawberries.

If up is east, and down is west, here's the order they're in:

* Tresca (previously transplanted)
* Fresca
* Ozark Beauty
* Quinault

Of course, Ozark Beauty and Quinault shouldn't be true-to-type, since they're seed-grown here, and they're octoploids. So, I'm very curious how they'll perform.

I don't know how Tresca and Fresca are supposed to be true-to-type domestoc strawberries, since they're supposed to be octoploids, too, as far as anyone seems to know. Stabilizing a tetraploid is no small task (if it even happens), let alone an octoploid!

Okay, so tomatoes, which are easily bred, are diploids. That means they have two sets of chromosomes. So, they have genes with two alleles per gene. So, for their leaf type, there are regular leaf alleles and potato leaf alleles, among others. Potato leaf is recessive to regular leaf. In order to stabilize that one tomato trait (there are many other traits to stabilize), if you want a regular leaf plant, you need to do some serious breeding to ensure that there are no potato leaf alleles. If you want pitato leaf plants, you just need to find a child plant with potato leaf leaves (since both alleles have to be potato leaf in order to be expressed).

Anyway, with domestic strawberries they have eight alleles per gene. Imagine how much harder it's going to be to get all eight alleles to be the same, especially for dominant traits. Fortunately, you can grow genetically identical strawberries without stabilizing them. Just grow the runners, if you want then to be the same.

This is my first time transplanting strawberries after it's already been freezing. So, I'm excited to see what happens and how well they weather the winter. I figure they need the vigor that overwintering often provides, and they're cold hardy. So, why not transplant in the cold, too. Hopefully the winter will kill the disease.

If you're wondering what happened to my Tristar strawberry seeds that I planted, they were next to heavily diseased plants (the runners that I rooted indoors). So, I threw them out before they sprouted. I thought I posted about Tristar on the old site, but I don't see anything of the kind there.

Anyway, to avoid disease indoors, I should have done this, I suppose:
* Zapped all the fruits before I planted them
* Not brought strawberry runners indoors
* Not misted my plants

For the outdoor plants, I oughtn't to have planted tomatoes near the strawberries either, let alone in the middle of the strawberry patch. I also shouldn't have accepted the Ozark Beauty strawberries that I was gifted (but rather just some fruits, and have zapped them; although I didn't know the need to do that then). The soil was also likely too salty (my hypothesis for the reason is cats using it as a litter box) and potentially too compact.

Anyway, even if strawberries have this disease, I can probably still grow out more generations, and probably still get fruit.

Well, this is a chance to work on breeding disease-resistant strawberries! I'm guessing if zapping removes the diseases, then repeated grow-outs from exposed generations of plants may eventually help future generations to gain immunity through acclimatization.

I'm also tempted to zap some plants (in water) to see if it removes the disease.

Some people think wonderberries are black nightshade, such as is seen on one of the posts in the following thread on another forum: https://www.homesteadingtoday.com/threads/anyone-ever-grow-wonderberry-plants.298177/

However, I've never found any evidence that they are black nightshade, other than a similar appearance. Chichiquelite is also similar to black nightshade (but it's another species, too). Otricoli Orange Berry is black nightshade (but it's an orange kind of it). Wonderberries are listed as a separate species (and I think they're a hybrid species). I've grown all three. Wonderberries slip more easily from their calyxes, and in my opinion taste better. The others tasted toxic to me, however; see these posts I made about them:
* http://vegetables.boards.net/thread/136/ripe-chichiquelite
* http://vegetables.boards.net/thread/135/ripe-otricoli-orange-berries

Whatever the case, having eaten wonderberries, I can say with confidence that they the ripe ones are quite edible.

Also note that people in that thread say wonderberry leaves are edible. Huh? From what I've read elsewhere you definitely don't want to eat them for food. I wouldn't eat them, even though some people eat the leaves of edible black nightshades. They're a different species.

Wonderberry = Solanum retroflexum
Black Nightshade and Otricoli Orange Berry = Solanum nigrum
Chichiquelite and Garden Huckleberry = Solanum melanocerasum

Nevertheless some people think they're the same still. I doubt it, however.

Wonderberries are the easiest of those species to grow in my garden by far.

Note that my wonderberries are never particularly shiny pre-harvest. Chichiquelite is shiny, though.

* Drosophila suzukii (worms in berries)

So, I was curious what kind of worms we have in our blackberries when they get extra ripe. I found this article. I'm not sure if they're the same worms, but I wouldn't be surprised. I found one of the blackberry worms (or so it appeared) in a wonderberry, too.

https://www.kuow.org/stories/there-are-worms-blackberries-you-just-picked

The article talks about a fruit fly that deposits eggs in berries (especially blackberries) and how it recently colonized all of North America. The worms are said to be edible, but I don't know of any scientific studies supporting it. I'm sure I've eaten them unknowingly and survived, though.

EDIT: After looking at the pictures of the worms and photos, I don't think these are the same things I've seen in our blackberries. The ones in our berries seemed to have been larger, whiter, and were always wet with the berry juice (I never saw them on the outside).

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* Garden Cleanup, 2019

On-site:
* See wonderberry tag.

Off-site (see here, too, if you read any of these threads):
* https://www.homesteadingtoday.com/threads/anyone-ever-grow-wonderberry-plants.298177/
* https://permies.com/t/38606/wonderberry-aka-sunberry-solanum-burbankii (These people have obviously never tried them on pizza or in frittatas; the picture there doesn't look like a wonderberry plant to me! Maybe it's chichiquelite, black nightshade, or a hybrid with a wonderberry. Get your wonderberries from Trade Winds Fruit if you want ones like mine. Or just ask me for some seeds!)
* https://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/threads/growing-luther-burbanks-wonderberry-bush-from-seed.58548/ (Mine don't have an 'eggplant-ish flavor', but Otricoli Orange Berry and chichiquelite maybe had one. They were first named wonderberries, not sunberries as stated; sunberry was the rebranding.)
* https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2153604/contemplating-a-wonderberry
* http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=35175
* http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=22383

The northwest side of the house is cleaned up, as of now (wonderberries, West India burr gherkins, squash, the Kikinda Competition Strain edible gourd, and Morelle De Balbis). The Morelle De Balbis was still alive, though, but we needed to make room for wood for the winter. I put wonderberry fruits in all the planting spots so they'll volunteer next year (although we likely won't keep them in every single spot). I pulled up the Early Girl F1 tomato, two out of three of the squash, and most of the West India burr gherkins a while ago, though.

We still have the tomatoes, peppers, muskmelons, watermelons, and other stuff in the backyard to pull up.

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The Navajo Red watermelon is a winter watermelon (meaning it might keep in storage for up to three or four months or so). It has a unique rind appearance. It has reddish seeds. They're not quite as red as Red-seeded Citron (but look similar in color to brown seeds like those of Santo Domingo Brown Seeded).

I grew it in 2017, and it was productive, but there wasn't much taste.

I decided to give it another chance in 2019. I figured it might taste better with warmer soil (with black plastic). I used seeds I saved from 2017. One plant was an obvious cross (I grew three plants in the same spot), but the others looked the same as before.

Anyway, I ate the largest one yesterday. It still looked the same inside and out, seeds and all. However, it tasted amazing! The flavor is kind of like that of Tom Watson (but not quite as finely and intensely sweet to my tongue). The flesh was dense with good texture. It seemed to be a strong diuretic. I'm definitely glad I gave it a second chance! Definitely a favorite for flavor. Of course, I grew about 70 kinds of watermelons in 2017; so, it might be a cross, even though it doesn't look like one (however, I could be wrong, but I think red seeds are recessive to other types). I would rank the flavor above that of Santo Domingo Brown Seeded (another favorite; ranking above it means it's very awesome). I set aside the seeds to zap and save later. It should be noted that my plant this year was in partial shade (so, it's even more impressive that it tasted awesome).

I also ate the obvious cross, which had white seeds, and wasn't fully ripe. It tasted like it was starting to ferment. I didn't save seeds.