The Garden of Woz...

[Whwoz]

The Dahlias are in full bloom, first up is "First Prize", this one is the most exposed to wind of all 4 and has lost several stems as a result. And yes the bed badly needs weeding.

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Second is "Hillier Tanunda", needs to be dead-headed.

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Third is "Lime Glow"

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Last one is "Fire and Ice"

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[Whwoz]

Over at the dam today, saw a lot of Dragonflies zipping around the weed in the shallows, was able catch a few images that are half decent and noted that, if colour is one identifying trait, we probably have two species about 50 to 60 mm long about, I know that there is also a larger one around 80 mm about. Do not know a lot about them, other than they are in their mating flight and one would be depositing eggs in the water

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[Whwoz]

The reason why I went over to the dam was to check out some sweet potato slips that I put into it a few days ago. All are sitting up nicely,

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I put these in the dam to see if being in the water would encourage them to put out flowers as I am part of a small group trying to locally adept some sweets to our area here through breeding. Hoping to see flowers form and for seeds to develop, but not to worried if I do not get any, sort of a preliminary experiment for next year. Checking for seed will be a pain due to water depth and bank steepness. Float under pallet is 90mm PVC glued together into a square and terracotta pots keep the lot balanced with about 1 inch of the pots in the water.

[Whwoz]

The main SP bed is growing nicely, need to weed path and lift runners to disturb roots going down at nodes. Trellis is working well, allowing me to keep runners out of the tomatoes as long as I lift them weekly.

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[Whwoz]

These photos have not worked as well as I had hoped, but they are of the dwarf that I am calling Bowerbird Yellow, which will be OSSI pledged when I release it properly. One or two are making inquiries about it now so I thought I would post some picks. Starting to get cool of a night here, down to 5C/40F some night and a few leaves are showing affects of that and humidity, do not normally prune, but may do one plant to show crop better.

One branch about 750mm/30 inches long that I missed tying up

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and a plant, hiding most of its fruit, about 4 foot high with 7 or so stems

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[Whwoz]

Midnight Sun for KarenO,

A photo showing one side of both plants, in between Captain Lucky on the left and Mat-Su Express on the right with some Blush fruit in the foreground. Plants are showing affects of humdity and 5C/40F nights on older growth, but new growth is beautifully clean. Our 11 year old sons favorite tomato, so definitely returning next year. Once again I need to prune off a few lower leaves to show fruit load proprely

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[PlainJane]

Wow, your tomatoes are really loaded up. Nice!

[Whwoz]

Yes, must agree PJ, but then again we have not had the sun and warmth that we normally would have had by now to ripen them. March so far has consistently been our sunniest and warmest month of the year so far. Everything was a four to five weeks slow in ripening, should have had our own tomatoes for Christmas, but never picked the first until mid January. Mum and Dad live about 800 feet higher in elevation and it was only 2 weeks ago that they picked a bucket full off their plants in one go, had been getting the odd handful up until then and that's off 30 plants! They should have been getting that volume by mid January at the latest.

[Whwoz]

Mat-Su Express

have picked a few of these off the two plants I have growing. Most have been from megablooms up until now, but starting to get some from single flowers now

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Wife and Daughter loved it, Son and myself not so much

[Whwoz]

While in Tasmania last year, picked up some Thai Pink Eggs that were quite a bit larger than the strain I have grown here previously. Saved seed and grew one this year, definitely different to TPE. Green shouldered ones are nice enough for me to consider following them up one day.

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[Whwoz]

Some more Ivory Pears show variation in size. Tepals on this variety are always much longer than on most others I have grown. Chopping board they are on is made up of (approximately) 70 x 35mm pieces

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[Whwoz]

Trout Cods,

The 7 plants of these are turning out to be reasonably consistent in fruit characteristics, light yellow striping over a GWR center. Flavour is very mild, not worth following to any great extent. Will keep some seed from TC 1, which is a plant no more than 500mm high with half a dozen fruit around 70 to 80 mm diameter, may give the another go next year to see if flavour has skipped a generation, otherwise seed will be available for those involved in the Micro project if they want. Will post on Tomato-talk.com

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[PlainJane]

Nice looking fruit; too bad the taste isn’t there.

[Whwoz]

Starting to get serious about expanding garden, saw neighbor had rotary hoe on back of his tractor....swapped him a bag of tomatoes and a couple of cucmbers. two by 6 cubic meters of sand delivered also so far, plus I have about half the sleepers I need to frame it out with

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[GoDawgs]

Gotta love swap outs!

[Whwoz]

A better photo or two of Sikkim cucumber, green is still immature, reddish brown mature. These are typical size, about 8 inches long

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[Whwoz]

Sweet Potatoes are something we have a very limited selection of varieties available to us here in Vic and as a result a small group of us has gotten together to try and breed some that are better adapted to our local environment. First you need the flowers, something that has been hard to come by for myself anyway, relying on the few clones that were available locally, mainly Beauregard, Northern Star and Murasaki. One of the other gents was able to pass around some slips off other varieties he had gotten hold off, one of which is an ornamental. This ornamental flowered first for me and I thought it was probably the only one to flower when Beauregard flowered for me this year. An even bigger surprise was waiting for me when I walked out with camera to take photos, several different bees were about, one very thin bodied one, a couple of honey bees which kept on flying and another one who was happily crawling around inside one of the flowers for a couple of minutes, before emerging covered in pollen and going straight to the next flower. I just hope Beauregard is self compatible, something that is not always with sweets apparently.

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After I took this photo I was expecting the bee to fly away, but hoping it would crawl to the flower next to the one it was on and never got around to taking one as it moved across

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I was always half expecting suitable pollinators to be about as the Kang Kong flowers are routinely pollinated, presumably by a bee like the above

The biggest draw back that we have in our attempts is that we do not know exactly what triggers flowering in SP's. From what we have read and discussed with people in NZ and the USA, triggers maybe multiple and vary with effect across different clones. One other thing that has worked for one grower in the USA was to leave a plant in a small pond so that it was unable to form a storage root, this one flowered very well. What I have done only recently was to sake some cuttings of my plants, place them in pots and float them in the dam

SP in Dam (1).JPG

It is to early to see flowers yet, but they are doing very well with new roots and growth. As I harvest the plants in a couple of weeks time, I will set up some more of this type of thing with a frame over it as a support for a frost cover and see if I can overwinter them floating ion the dam

[PlainJane]

Great trade!

[Whwoz]

Great trade indeed, might drop him over some more tomatoes next time I see him. Got the rest of the sleepers so I can start building the bed at the weekend

[bower]

Lovely bees and sweet potatoes! So nice to see you getting a machine to do some work for you. I dream of being so lucky... then again, still dreaming of seeing the ground.
Your place is looking great Whwoz, and your projects are so interesting and seem to be having a good year with those. Even the Trout Cods are so pretty.. I do think it's worth growing a few to see if it was just a bad year or as you say, generation skip. Or try more of the last generation seeds, if you have em?