The joy of Winter crops

I like Winter, there are a lot of crops that are never seen in the shops so by growing them myself they are available seasonally and can only be eaten over Winter.  We have just started to harvest a few of them so I thought I should write a post about them.

Skirret - first year plants

Skirret (Sium sisarum)
Now here is one of the greatest, most under appreciated, under utilised and practically forgotten crops ever.  I wrote a post about how I was growing skirret plants from seed earlier.  I should probably write a separate post on them later.  Now it is time to harvest the and eat the skirret.

It has been a long time since I have eaten skirret, I forgot how great it is.  I grew some plants from seed, I over crowded them in a pot which I watered each day by submerging it in a bucket of water, and today I dug up, divided and harvested the skirret.  Normally first year plants have a woody core, none of mine did.  I can not imagine that I happened to chance upon an improved variety, I think this total lack of woody core was due to the huge amount of water they received.

The skirret did not grow a large crop this year, considering the growing conditions that is not unexpected.  However, I was still able to eat a few of the larger roots.  I scrubbed them, chopped them and ate them raw.  They taste a little like carrot but super super sweet.  This is sweeter than anything else I grow, so sweet that I am considering digging up the plants and nibbling on the tiny roots that I initially left on them because they were too small to be worth harvesting.  Truly magnificent.

I have some issues with sugar, I am probably on the edge of diabetes and I often find that fruit juice can tip me over the edge as it is too high in sugar.  I wonder if skirret will cause me any problems here or if the sugars are ok for me.  I guess only time will tell as I only got to eat a tiny amount of skirret today.

Someone in Australia needs to take on skirret as a breeding project and develop a variety with thicker roots.  An improved skirret with thicker roots would be an excellent plant for people to grow in home gardens.  As skirret is not particularly well suited to growing in my climate I do not think that person should be me right now.  If you grow improved skirret let me know, I would love to buy some plants from you.

Skirret offsets divided and  ready to be planted

Dahlias (possibly Dahlia pinnata but more likely to be some crazy un-nameable complex hybrid)
Dahlias were grown as a major food crop by the Aztecs, after Spanish conquest the dahlia was taken to Europe in the hopes that it could be a food crop.  For a few years it was apparently grown as a minor food crop, then the flowers caught peoples eye and they were grown and bred as a dual purpose plant for a little while.  It did not take long for this valuable food plant to be grown purely as an ornamental and lost its use as food.  These days most people do not recognise dahlias as being edible at all, it is too bad.  Some people are breeding edibility back into the dahlia, but not many unfortunately.

Over the warmer months I nibbled on the flower petals, they taste like weird celery, not all that special but not bad either.  Over winter the tubers were traditionally dug and eaten.  They look a lot like yacon, so it makes sense to eat it like yacon so I dug a tuber, skinned it, sliced it thinly and shared it with the kids.  It wasnt bad, but hundreds of years of selective breeding for the looks of the flowers has certainly detracted from its edible qualities.  It tasted like a bland celery, or a tasteless carrot with no sugars, or a yacon that got lazy and forgot to taste like anything, it was also a bit stringy.  It wasnt bad, but it also was not great.  It was also a dwarf variety that was grown in a pot so not surprisingly the tuber was a bit on the small side.  I dare say that they would go well in a stew to bulk it out and take on the taste of whatever it is in with as it did not have much of a taste by itself.

I would love to track down an edible variety and see what they taste like as I think it has a lot of potential.  Perhaps one day someone will breed some tastier dahlias and they can be grown once again as a dual purpose plant.  If you grow any tastier dahlias we should talk.

Yacon tubers ready to be eaten

Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius formerly Polymnia sonchifolia)
Yacon is not really suited to my climate, it grew amazingly well near Canberra but it is too hot and dry here for it to flourish greatly.  That being said, yacon is a survivor, it will grow and crop pretty much anywhere.  The crops are larger under some conditions and smaller under others.

This year we got high yields from the yacon, I grew it under a foot of straw and watered it with a green soaker hose that was under the straw.  Apparently it was rather happy growing like that and the plants grew taller than me and even started to flower before the frosts came.  Each plant seems to have produced a lot of large delicious tubers, I like digging yacon in Winter as the smell is unmistakeably like yacon.

I love yacon, I think more people should grow it.  I have yacon growing in three separate parts of the vegetable gardens and I harvested a tiny bit of the corner of one plot.  It gets sweeter if left for a week or so after harvesting before we eat it.  Today I shared one yacon tuber with the kids, they love it even more than I do.

Chinese artichoke tuber

Chinese artichokes (Stachys affinis)
These fun little guys are crunchy, mildly sweet, and look like white grubs.  Unfortunately they did not really produce any crop for me this year, I think they may not have got enough sun during the growing season.  It was also a bit dry where I grew them this year.  As I can not buy them from the shops, this means that I do not get to eat any Chinese artichokes this year...sigh.

Duck potatoes

Duck potatoes (Sagittaria sp) and Chinese Water Chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis)
These guys both take no effort to grow, crop like crazy and are used in much the same way, I cant believe how rarely people grow them.  I grew them in buckets again this year and they were a bit too crowded so they produced numerous small corms.  I am told that 3 corms in a path tub full of soil/manure/water is the easiest way to grow them large but unfortunately I lack the space to grow them like that so am sticking to small buckets for now.

I probably wont eat many of these as they are a bit small this year, I will feed some to the animals and keep some to plant next year.  Being small this year is not an issue as they are genetically identical to the large ones, planting smaller corms will most likely result in fewer but larger corms being harvested next year.

Jerusalem artichoke flower

Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus)
Some people love them, some hate them, some are indifferent.  I am indifferent, they crop well so I grow them each year.  I cant really taste them and find them too bland, but Tracey finds them a bit over powering.  They are used like a potato, we have even used them as mash mixed in with potato.  They do not store well when dug so are best left in the soil until they are needed for a meal.

I think they are a great survival food as they are not bothered by diseases, are very prolific, and have many uses.  Our alpacas, sheep, poultry etc seem to enjoy eating the leaves and tubers.  The leaves are apparently very allelopathic so can be used as mulch around perennials to prevent weed germination.

Jerusalem artichoked growing in dappled shade

I am sure there are a few other things ready at the moment that I have not mentioned (such as perennial leeks).  If you are interested I do sell many of these vegetables on my for sale page.

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Saving Micro Tom from extinction

Micro Tom is a miniature dwarf variety of determinate tomato plant, it is the smallest recognised variety of tomato plant in the world.  

Micro Tom does not grow the smallest tomatoes, that record goes to some larger tomato plants, Micro Tom grows the smallest tomato plant.  From everything I have read it grows a reasonable number of good sized cherry tomatoes on a tiny plant that grows to 6 inches tall at most.  Many growers claim that Micro Tom never exceeds 2 inches (about 5cm) tall for them.

Micro Tom tomato starting to flower

Such a tiny plant sounds great to use for childrens gardens, or being grown by balcony farmers as well as people who would like to grow some produce on the kitchen window.  Many elderly people who can no longer garden would still be able to tend to micro tomatoes in a window box or similar.  Being so small means that Micro Tom can be grown in a cup of soil on a window and still produce an edible harvest, people who are renting tiny apartments will still be able to grow these beauties.  Even though one will never feed their entire family from micro tomatoes, I think they are still extremely useful.

Having such a unique set of genes also lends itself well to breeding small varieties of tomato or even using as a dwarfing rootstock on which to graft larger varieties.  The days of having a lot of space to allow plants to sprawl are over unfortunately, we need to breed great tasting smaller vegetable plants or graft onto dwarfing rootstock.  Many of the better tasting dwarf tomatoes still reach 4 to 5 feet tall and are simply too large for balconies.  This is where Micro Tom and other micro tomatoes will become increasingly important.

A few years ago, probably about 10 years, tomato seeds stopped being legal to import into Australia due to quarantine restrictions.  This means that whatever varieties we have now (or anything we can breed from them) are the only varieties that we will ever have.  This also means that people may have some old packets of tomato seed in their cupboards that they imported years ago which may be the only seeds of that particular variety in Australia.  It is important that these varieties are not allowed to go extinct in Australia because if they do we will lose them and their unique genes forever.

Micro Tom seedling

I searched for Micro Tom seeds or plants in Australia.  Overseas many seed sellers carry them but nowhere in Australia had them.  I spoke to some seed savers and they had never heard of them.  I started to think perhaps Micro Tom was not here.  After some of the conversations I had with experienced seed savers it started to seem likely that no micro tomatoes were in Australia.

Eventually I found a very generous grower who said he grew them about 10 years ago and could send me the old seeds, but he could not guarantee they would grow.  He used to sell tomato seedlings at markets and would give away Micro Tom plants to kids whose parents bought plants from him.  What a great idea!  They were so small that they can produce fruit even if grown in a plastic cup of soil with drainage holes.  That very generous person actually sent me the entire remains of the seed packet that he had imported years earlier, we can work out how long he has owned the seeds but have no way of knowing how old they were before the seed company sold them to him.

The old Micro Tom seed packet only had about 9 seeds, given the age of the seeds and probable low (or no) germination rates this means I had to make every seed count.  Being so old I did not want to wait another 9 months until Spring while the seeds age even further to sow them in fear that they would then be too old to germinate.  Being the end of Summer it was not the right time to plant tomatoes so I did not want to waste my only chance by sowing them then and having the plant flower when it is too cold to set fruit.

Having such a low number of seeds meant I had to make a difficult decision.  I wanted to ensure my best chances of growing these and bringing them back from the brink of extinction in Australia, so I decided to plant 3 of these precious seeds straight away on January 31 and hope to get them to produce fruit in time, save the rest of the seeds to plant the following Spring and hope they are not too old to grow.  That seems like the most likely way I can have a positive outcome from this endeavor.

I read about growing old seeds and did a few things to help them, out of the 3 old seeds planted 1 germinated about a week later.  I gave them plenty of time (several months) but the other 2 seeds never germinated, but that one seed germinating so fast gives me hope that I may be able to get some of the others to grow in Spring. 

Micro Tom ready for transplant

This one tiny seedling did not grow very fast, but it looked healthy.  I grow everything organically here, but due to the tight time constraints here I decided to buy a small container of fertiliser and have used it on this one plant.  When the seedling got a little larger I planted it into a pot so that I could move it and protect it as best I could.  Then we had some cool nights down to about 2 degrees and I feared an early frost.  Early frost will not kill the plant as it would be under shelter over night, but it may stop flowers from forming fruit and if it does not produce viable seed then there is trouble.

I have read that Micro Tom takes around 50 days to maturity.  Unfortunately this means nothing to me.  The stated days to maturity for tomatoes are generally days from a 30cm tall plant being transplanted until maturity.  Micro Tom never reaches 30cm tall, I transplanted mine at around 1cm or 2cm tall.  An overseas breeder tells me that Micro Tom takes around 120 days to picking the first fruit from planting the seed.  This means if all goes well the first fruit would be ripe around the end of May.  Given the cooler nights and lowering day time temperatures this may be pushed back further.

Micro Tom 3cm tall and starting to flower

I had started to move Micro Tom into the sun during the day and put it under the verandah next to the warmer mud brick for protection at night.  As the days were cooling I think the plant will grow slower, so I left it in sunlight during the day and moved it into the laundry at night.

The laundry is slightly warmer than the verandah and it has access to electricity.  I have a grow light hooked up and this shines on the Micro Tom plant over night which hopefully will help it grow a little faster as it will be getting more light each day.  People often complain about cheap grow lights not having the right spectrum light, but as it is still getting some natural sunlight most days and the grow light were merely supplemental light this should not be too much of an issue.  The grow light emits some heat as well as light, so the plant and its roots should stay slightly warmer over night.

Micro Tom, such a tiny plant with such massive potential

This tiny Micro Tom plant started to flower at around 2cm to 3cm tall, assuming that any of the flowers work and set fruit I plan to save every seed that this plant produces so that I can do a larger grow out in Spring and get enough seed to distribute.  In Spring I also plan on sowing the remaining few seeds in the old packet, hopefully I end up with a decent number of plants and a good number of fresh seeds.

I doubt Micro Tom will grow a great deal taller than this

I dont grow novelty vegetables or ornamental plants very much, I usually prefer productive edible plants.  Some of my favourite plants (such as perennial leeks or yacon) provide massive yields of food throughout the year.  Somehow Micro Tom has captured my heart, I find it to be a delightful little plant and hope that I can bring it back to popularity in Australia.  I grew the plant in the photos using a 7cm pot of soil.

 I also have great breeding plans (once I have saved enough seed that I am not worried about losing this variety) of using it to create new varieties of micro tomatoes that are higher yielding as well as perhaps creating some different coloured micro tomatoes or some with higher sugar contents etc.

I have plans of incorporating the multiflora gene into any new variety of micro tomato, that way balcony farmers should be able to grow exponentially more tomatoes from the same tiny space.  I have a good tasting dwarf multiflora tomato that I want to use as the other parent in this cross.  Incorporating the multiflora gene into micro tomatoes, in my mind, will be the ultimate goal for every micro tomato breeding venture as it will maximise the use of limited space ensuring the largest possible crop from each plant.

I would be keen in the future to breed some parthenocarpic micro tomatoes which will set fruit in cold weather even if the flowers are not pollinated.  I would love to use Micro Tom as a rootstock for a large fruiting tomato such as Giant Siberian Pink and see if I can grow a very small plant with huge tomatoes. Only time will tell if I get around to these projects though.

Micro Tom, getting slightly larger and flowering well

There are many useful possibilities that simply would never happen if we have no micro tomato breeding stock in Australia.  If you have any old packets of vegetable seeds that you have not seen around in a few years please grow them and save seeds as you may be the last in our country to have them.  If this is not possible then please consider donating them to someone else who will grow them and save their seeds.  We dont want to lose too many more vegetable varieties in Australia!

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The effects of static magnetic fields on seed germination and plant growth

I have heard anecdotal evidence from people who claim exposing seeds to a static magnetic field increases germination rates and makes seeds germinate a lot faster.  I have heard other people claim that exposing seedlings to a magnetic field increases health of young seedlings.  To be honest I had no idea if this was accurate or not.  If this is true then I want to use magnets in germinating some seeds.

I did some research on the internet and found various papers that have been written on the subject, they appear to have conflicting results and many of the tests were often run is sub optimal conditions (often funded by companies that have a conflict of interest) with far too many variables often in completely non-scientific ways that can not be used to provide unbiased results.  Most (ie all) of the people who I know of that have tried this have not included a control, which in my mind is a waste of time.  I often read statements such as "try this and you will be amazed by the results", so I decided to try it.

To find out for myself if there is truth in this my children and I decided to run a small experiment.  If static magnets do increase the germination rates of seeds (which would be great for old seeds with low germination rates), or decrease the amount of time it takes for seeds to germinate (which would stop weaker seeds from rotting), or increases the vigor of young seedlings (which can die in the first few days while they are tiny) they could be extremely useful for me in germinating difficult seeds or very old seeds of rare varieties.  Lets face it, if this works I have a lot to gain and nothing to lose.

The three pots, unfortunately one was a different colour

The Experiment
I will probably try to write this up properly some time in the future, include some graphs of the results and try to submit it to some journal for peer review, but I dont have time right now.  For now I will write it up very simply so that you can see what happened and possibly repeat it with your own kids.

This experiment was conducted to determine if a static magnetic field would affect seed germination or the early growth of seedlings.

This study divided wheat (Triticum spp) seeds into three groups.  Each group was comprised of 100 wheat seeds randomly chosen from a sack of feed wheat.  The first group was to germinate in the presence of a strong static magnet field delivered from a Neodymium magnet (approximately 0.6751 tesla).  The second group was to germinate in the presence of a weak static magnet field delivered from a small refrigerator magnet of unknown strength.  The third grew was to germinate in the absence of any added magnetic field to act as a control. 

Several growth parameters were observed throughout the experiment including the germination rate, leaf length, and root length.  In addition the health status of seedlings was measured through observation of leaf color, spots, visual presence of disease, stem curvature, and seedling mortality.  Plant growth was observed continuously for the duration of the experiment.

Three square 10cm plastic pots were filled with potting soil from the same bag to the same depth.  The three pots were watered by submerging the pots in water until the soil was thoroughly soaked.  Each pot was then surface sowed with 100 wheat seeds.  For the duration of the experiment each pot was watered from below once a week so as not to disturb the magnets or the emerging seedlings.  Each magnet was wrapped in a single sheet or 3 ply toilet paper inside a small plastic zip lock bag and placed on top of the seeds.  This was done to protect the magnets from corrosion as well as obscure which magnet was in which group.  To reduce the presence of any variables the control had a small non magnetic stone of similar weight to the magnets, wrapped in toilet paper inside a small plastic zip lock bag.  The three bags were then shuffled and chosen at random to be placed on the seeded pots of soil to ensure a blind test.

The magnets were placed on their side so that some seeds would be close to the North pole, some close to the South pole and others along the edge.  This was intended to show if either pole had a positive or negative effect on germination of the seeds.

After 5 days seeds in all three pots began to germinate.  It appeared as if seeds from all parts of all pots were germinating at the same rate.  It appeared that all three pots had similar germination in terms of the number of seeds germinating, progression of root growth, progression of leaf growth, as well as angle of root or leaf growth.

After 14 days seedlings from all three pots were counted and measured.  Seedlings from all three groups had similar height, similar health as indicated by colour, lack of spots, and visual stem curvature.  All three groups had no seedling mortality throughout the duration of the experiment.

The high magnetic group had 98% germination.

The low magnetic group had 100% germination.

The control group had 99% germination.
The time to germination from all three pots was identical which indicates that magnets have no noticeable effect on germination time.

In addition to the germination rates being similar (98% to 100%), the leaf length, root length and health of seedlings from each batch appeared to be identical.  I had planned on weighing the seedlings from each group to determine fresh biomass but discovered that separating the roots from the potting mix was not possible.

A blind test, I didnt know which pot has the magnet or stone

The results from this small experiment indicate that there is no noticeable effect on the germination of seeds in terms of germination time or germination rate due to either strong or weak static magnetic fields.  It appears that a static magnetic field has no noticeable effect on the vigor/health of young seedlings.  The pots with magnets had similar looking seedlings growing on all areas of the pot which indicates that the polarity of the magnet also had no noticeable effect on germination or early growth.

This was a blind test and it was not until after the seedlings were counted and measured that I opened the little zip lock bags to discover which pot had which magnet.  I figure if this was worth doing it was worth doing properly.


My thoughts
While I was kind of disappointed by this result in hindsight it is not overly surprising.  If any positive difference would be seen then seed magnetisation would be used by commercial farmers.  Farmers have tight profit margins and often grow in hostile environments, they are willing to do whatever it takes to make their crops thrive and magnetisation would be reasonably cheap and simple to apply.  The fact that seed magnetisers are only seen being sold by a few sketchy online sellers and are not seen in rural stores or used by many commercial farmers hints that it may not be all that useful.  It was still worth testing to see for myself.

I have already started to run a similar experiment again and changed some of the parameters, the use of sand instead of soil will allow me to weigh the fresh or dry biomass and see if there is any difference there.  An extra 100 seeds in each group is only going to make the data better.

I am using seeds from a dicot instead of a monocot to see if that makes any noticeable difference.  Doing this experiment using seeds with naturally high germination rates as I did possibly obscures the results as germination rates could not really get any higher.  The seeds in the second test are older and have lower germination rates so I should be able to see if the magnets make any noticeable difference on germination rates that are not close to 100%.

I am also planning to grow seedlings for a longer time to see if any noticeable difference is made as they get larger, in the future I may even grow them to maturity to determine if any difference is made to overall yield or time to maturity (Micro Tom tomatoes seem like a great choice for this).  There are also a few other things that I may considering trying in the future that may make the experiment a little more robust.

Micro Tom tomatoes, tiny plants with a short lifecycle makes them ideal for experiments

When I conclude this second experiment I plan to post the results (or a link to the results) here.

If you also try this little experiment please ensure you are removing as many variables as possible and do it as a blind test with a control so that the results are accurate.  Feel free to let me know your results.

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I repeated the experiment using some old cress (Lepidium sativum) seeds that would have a lower percentage of germination and I grew them out for a bit longer.  Again I used 100 seeds per group but this time all of the pots were exactly the same.  

The time to germination was identical in all groups.  The plants in all groups looked similar in terms of height, number of leaves, colour, angle of leaf growth etc.  The motality rate was identical in all three groups (4 seedlings germinated then died in each group).  I did not weigh the seedlings as I assume they would weigh less than 1 gram collectively and my scales are not accurate enough to record any differences.  Due to less than ideal conditions all 3 groups then started to grow mould which infected all seedlings similarly and all plants are succumbing at a similar rate.  I am going to let this continue to see if there is any noticeable difference in the groups but at this stage that looks unlikely.

The percentage germination was the only area where I could see even a slight difference.  The control group had 24 seeds germinate, the strong magnet had 22 seeds germinate and the weak magnet had 30 seeds germinate.  

This is certainly not the miracle difference in growth and/or germination that I had hoped for, it is not going to be the magic bullet to help germinate tricky or weak seeds.  The difference between 24% germination of the control and 30% germination for the weak magnet is not enough for me to think that the magnets are creating a difference of any kind.

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If it is worth doing it is worth doing right. 

Some people have asked me why I only have 100 seeds in each group.  The answer is because if I have any more seeds they are too far from the magnet to experience the magnetic field.  I agree this test would be more valid with larger numbers, to help overcome this I have run the experiment several times using several different species to see if I obtain any significant difference.

I repeated this again with some older garlic chive (Allium tuberosum) seeds that I had left in a paper bag.  As the seeds were aging I had expected germination rates to be low. 

I used 100 randomly chosen seeds in each pot and used three identical pots filled with sand.  Again I used the strong magnet, the weak magnet and the non magnetic stone as a control.  As before I did not know which group was which until after I had counted the seedlings.

The time to germination was identical in each pot, the health and size of seedlings in each pot was also identical.  The early growth rates of the seedlings was identical.  I tried to weigh the seedlings after the experiment but my scales were not accurate enough to record any differences.

The control group had 64 seeds germinate, the weak magnet had 61 seeds germinate and the strong magnet had 65 seeds germinate.

Just like the previous experiments I am far from amazed by these results.  Their seems to be little to no effect of a static magnetic field, either strong or weak, on seed germination and early plant growth.

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From here I want to run this little experiment again using the Micro tomatoes from planting the seeds until maturity so I can count and weigh the fruit to see if there is any improvement in crop yield.  I will probably only be able to grow 3 seeds of each in this experiment as I do not have enough magnets to grow larger numbers. 

Due to moving etc I may not get around to this for some time though, if I do I plan to post the results here or if the results are interesting I may write another post and link to it from here.

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