Another corn update

This is a follow up from my previous corn post.  These are just some of the more unusual varieties I grew this year.  At this stage I dont know if I will be able to grow corn next year, but we will see what happens.  I will have the seeds to plant the following year so if I do end up missing a year or two it is not the end of the world.


Argent
The argent white corn ended up doing a lot better than I thought it would.  Very few of the super sweet corns cope with extreme heat, most died off completely.  I love this variety, it is the most delicious variety of corn I have ever eaten.  Most of the cobs were not completely filled out due to the heat and some of it was crossed with another variety of corn (this was deliberate, it is simple to tell which seeds are which) and I ended up with what looks like a good amount of pure seed.

I expected less seeds to form than I ended up getting so am pretty happy.  I have had a severe genetic bottleneck here by starting with so few parent plants so plan to grow out as many seeds as possible next time.  If possible I would love to track down someone who is also growing argent and swap some seeds.

I deliberately crossed the argent with another variety of corn.  The F1 seed is coloured and the pure seed is white so can easily be separated.  I would love to grow out the F1 seed and produce a stable strain, but I may not have time or space so we will have to wait and see what happens.  I may even ask for someone to do a growout of some of this seed.

Some of the poorly filled out Argent cobs, white seeds are pure and coloured seeds are deliberate crosses

Giant Incan White corn
Watching this corn grow was amazing, it was different from every variety I have ever seen.  From a distance it is easy to tell this apart from every other variety.  It grew huge, then the heat damaged a lot of the plants.  Most varieties of corn will not shed pollen if the tops are damaged (making F1 seed simple to produce) but this variety decides to sprout and grow new tassels.  It is very resilient.  Each plant grew a cob, then they grew half a dozen more cobs from the same point!  I have never seen this trait in any other variety of corn.  Unfortunately I got very few cobs with any seeds due to the weather and wildlife.  These cobs are drying at the moment, it looks like I will get a small amount of seed from these.

One cob, you can see more cobs starting to form underneath

Cobs forming 7 feet up the stalk, the leaves all have damage from the heat

The cob was just starting to produce silk

Giant Inca white corn next to mini blue popcorn

Glass Bead corn
What can I say, these guys know what they are doing.  Nothing particularly bothers glass bead corn.  It is now a good popcorn, in another year or two if things keep going the way they are going it will be a great popcorn variety.

Mini blue popcorn
This was damaged by the heat badly but still provided a decent yield.  The plants grew well, the cobs look great and are mostly well filled out and the seeds pop extremely well.  The plants had to compete with grass and had a small fruit tree close by with roots under them.  My kids think this popcorn is heaps of fun.  I wrote a separate post on this little guy.

Blue popcorn plants - growing well in less than ideal conditions

mini blue popcorn cobs - not too bad considering the growing conditions

Blue sweetcorn
This is actually a decent variety of corn, I dont know why I have not heard of it anywhere else.  I got a good number of cobs, most were poorly filled out due to the weather.  I like the look of blue corn so plan on growing this again.

Blue sweetcorn, poorly filled out cobs this year but it produced a good number of seed.

I am selling seeds of some corn varieties but not others.  At this stage I can not sell seeds from every variety, hopefully one day I will be able to do that.  Please visit my for sale page if you are interested.

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Growing leafless peas

Growing naturally leafless peas - Lacy Lady peas

I grow a few types of pea for a few different reasons.  I am having more and more difficulty seeing peas and beans so am having to think hard to find ways to help make harvesting easier.  One of my favorite types of pea is the Lacy Lady pea, they are a dwarf, green podded, shelling pea that is either considered semi leafless or leafless.  They are NOT genetically modified and due to their leafless growth habit they lend themselves well to organic or permaculture gardening.

My first Lacy Lady pea seeds were given to me by someone who had grown them for a number of years and was concerned that she had not seen them for sale anywhere for quite some time.  She was worried that if something happened to her stock that they were irreplaceable and she did not want to think about growing any other variety.  With a story like this I was interested in growing them to see what the fuss was about.  It is not often that someone is so taken with a single variety of something that they give seeds to a stranger in the hope of preserving and distributing it.  After growing Lacy Lady peas I can see why she was so taken by them, these are superior to many other types of pea.  Unlike many of my other vegetables I did not search for these, I was unaware that anything like this even existed until I was given them, but I am glad that I now have them.  Had I known how great they were I would have been searching for them, in fact if I ever lose this variety I will be doing my best to track them down again.

From what I can tell this is a reasonably recently bred cultivar, perhaps only dating as far back as the 1970s, perhaps a little older, but not what you would consider to be an heirloom yet.  It is one of either the leafless varieties of pea or the semi-leafless varieties of pea.  Before growing these I had very little knowledge of semi-leafless peas, since growing them I can see a lot of advantages for home gardeners.  I assume that many home gardeners have little knowledge of leafless peas and their benefits and disadvantages, so I thought I would write a blog post of them.

The leaf on the left is from a Lacy Lady pea, the leaf on the right is a typical pea leaf (from a yellow snow pea)

Semi-leafless peas in general are fantastic, yet at present there do not seem to be many (if any) varieties available to the home gardener.  Semi-leafless peas still have some leaves, but many of the leaves only grow as tendrils.  Older pea varieties all have compound leaves, each with many, small leaflets, and the terminal leaflet modified to form a single tendril.  The semi-leafless peas have more tendrils than leaflets.  The only flat recognisable leaf you will see on them is on the pea stalk itself.  These Lacy Lady peas have a recessive gene which produces a modification of the leaf morphology, this has not come about in a laboratory, or through any form of genetic manipulation, but simply through a random mutation that occurred in a field somewhere and has then been bred conventionally into this variety.  It is the same process that people used to create the first orange carrots, or the first red tomatoes, or many of the common fruit and vegetables that we enjoy today.

At first I was worried that by having less leaflets they would be less productive as they would have a lowered level of photosynthesis.  After growing them for a few seasons and researching them a bit I have found that this is not the case.  The tendrils contribute to photosynthesis in a similar way to normal flat leaves so the plants are just as vigorous as leafy types.  Having less flat leaves they are less likely to be damaged by severe weather.  They are also far less inviting to ducks who happen to fly into your vegetable patch, so far the ducks seem to be more content eating the grass and weeds and leaving the lacy looking pea plants alone.  Regular peas, however, tend to be one of the first things the ducks eat if they happen to get in.

One leaf from a regular pea - note the 6 flat leaflets and the tendril on the end

As large flat leaflets are replaced by wiry tendrils, the foliage surface area is reduced significantly.  One of the benefits is that the plant is far more water efficient and can withstand hotter, dryer conditions than leaf type peas.  As I currently live in an incredibly hot and dry climate this is very useful for me.  For those who live in cooler and wetter climates this trait is still useful as it means less time is spent watering, some people claim that they never water these peas and they perform wonderfully for them.  If I were not to water them I would be left with a barren vegetable garden with no weeds and only hard baked clay.

Another benefit is that with a lowered amount of foliage there comes a significant increase in ventilation, which means that less problems from things such as powdery mildew will be seen.  Where I live the ambient temperature is generally high and the humidity is low so we tend not to see many mildew issues, but for those in cooler damper climates this increased ventilation would be very beneficial.  I wish that I grew these when we lived in a cooler damper climate so that I could compare this from my own experiences.

Leafless peas produce a tangled mass of tendrils, that combined with the fact that they are very short plants means that most plants can support themselves without trellising.  As they are much shorter than most pea varieties, I generally grow these sorts of peas without much in the way of stakes or support, aside from a single post-and-string setup around the outside of the bed.  I dont even know if this is necessary, I mostly do it as a force of habit.

One leaf from a Lacy Lady pea plant - less water loss, better ventilation

I seem to have increasing difficulty in seeing green peas and beans in amongst green foliage.  For that reason I grow yellow snow peas and purple podded dry peas (which can also be used as regular peas, but in my opinion are better as a dry pea).  I have found that the lack of regular leaflets in the Lacy Lady peas has made it a lot easier to see the pea pods even though they are green.  The pods are fat while everything else is thin and wiry which makes the pods pretty easy for me to see.  Since the pods are easier to see due to the lack of leaves they are faster and easier for me to pick.  With more of the plants energy going into pod formation rather than growing large leaflets, they tend to have higher yields than many other varieties of pea.  This variety also tends to produce multiple flowers at each node, which again means a high yield.  Even though this is a short strain of pea the yield seems to compare or surpass the larger varieties that I have grown.

Aphids are more easily controlled by ladybird beetles and other predators on leafless pea plants.  Pea leaves are slippery whereas stems and tendrils provide a more secure footing.  Apparently ladybird beetles fall off normal varieties with flat leaves nearly twice as often as the leafless plants.  This makes them good for organic gardeners, permaculturalists, and for gardeners who control pests and diseases using Integrated Pest Management (IPM).  We tend not to use any poisons here, organic or synthetic, so I often try to find plants such as this with a natural defense against pests or diseases.

The only disadvantage that I have noticed is that being a dwarf pea at the end of the season when the plants are dead you are not left with much pea straw to use on the garden.  This is not a terribly bad thing when you consider how many benefits they have and that I can easily remedy this by also growing another variety of pea.  I grow a few types of pea, one shelling pea, one snow pea, and one dry pea, as well as a few crosses which I am making to try and improve upon other varieties.  Both the snow pea and the dry pea are not dwarf varieties, nor are most of the crosses, so I usually end up with plenty of pea straw from them.

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Potato onions are extremely old perennial heirloom onions.  They are an edible onion that is undemanding to grow and reasonably productive.  For a number of reasons they are quite rare in Australia at the moment and have been close to local extinction.  Hopefully they start to gain popularity again soon.

What are potato onions

Potato onions are a type of bulb onion, they have nothing to do with potatoes whatsoever.  They are called potato onions because they multiply under the ground, kind of like how a potato will multiply under the ground if it is planted.  Potato onions taste, look, and grow like regular onions.  I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the potato onion, I dont know why, I have just always liked them.

They do not often flower and these flowers rarely set viable seed, instead they reproduce by dividing the underground bulb.  If well looked after, each bulb can split into a nest of anywhere between 3 and 15 new bulbs in a season!  Apparently they were very commonly grown in the 1800s but like so many heirloom vegetables no one knows who bred them or exactly how ancient they are.  I have heard that there used to be many varieties and different colours of potato onions around, this number has unfortunately dwindled to about two varieties (one white, one brown) currently in Australia.  The brown potato onions are rare and difficult to find, but they are far more common than the white variety at the moment.  I dont understand why this is as the white ones look nice and seem to reproduce slightly faster than the brown.

Potato onions were fairly common when I was a child, at least in rural areas.  I never remember seeing any for sale anywhere back then, but everyone seemed to grow them at home.  Because the bulbs are relatively small for an onion and divide erratically producing inconsistent sized/shaped/numbers of bulbs they are not suited to mechanical harvest.  While this makes them unsuited to mechanical harvest or mass production, it is a trait that is very welcome to home gardeners, permaculturalists and people who are becoming increasingly self-sufficient. 

Being perennial and only reproducing by division means that you do not need to worry about maintaining pure lines, preventing cross pollination, growing enough to prevent inbreeding depression (a big problem in onions), rouging out undesirable plants, maintaining a seed bank (allium seed normally only lasts a year so needs to be replaced constantly), locking up land to grow out plants to produce seed, and so on.  It also means that you can easily work out how many you need to grow to always have a supply of onions as well as enough to replant the following year.


Where I got my potato onions

When I was a child everyone grew potato onions, I had thousands of them and never thought too much of it.  When I grew up and left home I left them behind and they were lost or eaten by animals or something.  After I got married and had a small vegetable plot I tried to track them down but nowhere sold them.  I asked the people who still live around where I grew up, apparently potato onions are nothing but a distant memory in those parts and the people who gave me my first ones have long since died. 

I eventually found that Diggers sold them and everywhere else was out of them.  Like a lot of other people I have had trouble with Diggers so did not want to buy from them.  For a few years I resisted the temptation to buy them and waited for another place to buy from but eventually, against my wifes sound advice, I went ahead and ordered some potato onions from Diggers.  When they arrived most of the bulbs were shriveled and dead, the few living bulbs were covered in mould.  I ended up only getting two plants to sprout.  Those two plants grew weakly throughout the year without dividing and then died.  I carefully dug one plant up to see if there was a bulb in the soil and there was nothing.  I left the other in the hope that something would sprout the following year, but nothing came of it.  Upon telling Diggers that the potato onions did not do well I was told that it must have been my fault for growing them wrong, and that the bulbs were end of season so not all were healthy and it was my fault as I should have expected that.  I have learned my lesson - I wont bother buying anything from Diggers again.

I eventually tracked down a private grower who had a handful of potato onion bulbs that he was growing and eating each year, he said that the previous season was harsh and he was not sure if they were still alive.  I appreciated his honesty and traded some things for these questionable bulbs, when they turned up many were shriveled and dead but some were still healthy and looked good.  Each of them grew well and divided the first year.  Each year after that all of the potato onions have fared very well for me except last summer when it was extremely hot and dry.  Even though last year was terrible they still did ok, they did not increase in number, they all grew small, and some did not survive, but I still have enough to grow on to build numbers up again.

How are potato onions used

The top green parts of potato onions are rather delicate and can be used instead of spring onions or chives.  They are never tough or fibrous, and generally look pretty nice.  Around here they never get overly tall, 10 to 20 cm is the tallest I have seen the tops.  If one was to grow an ornamental garden potato onions would not be out of place in the front border instead of something like mondo grass, plus they have the bonus of being edible.  They also have the added advantage of growing most of the year, but then dying back for harvest when times get too dry and hot, this makes them pretty water efficient.  Frosts do not seem to bother them in the slightest.

While the tops are eaten, the underground onion bulbs are the important crop here.  They can be used in any recipe just like regular onions.  They are smaller than many onions which means that you never have half an onion left over to work out what to do with.  They are said to store for well over 12 months, but I am pretty sure that depends on the climate and the way in which you store them.  The longer they are stored, the stronger they taste.  Being so strong a little onion often goes a long way.

How to grow potato onions

Potato onions seem to grow like pretty much any other onion, except instead of messing about with fiddly seedlings every year and keeping some to go to seed, you simply plant a small bulb.  Each bulb that you plant will grow into a nest of potato onions, the number will vary from 2 or 3 to well above 15.  In my climate they generally produce 5, but this does vary a lot for no apparent reason.

Tradition dictates that potato onions are planted on the shortest day of the year (around June 21) and harvested on the longest day (around December 21), to be honest I think this only matters in some climates.  I plant my potato onions in mid Autumn when things start to cool down and I have garden space available, I have also heard of people planting in Spring with good results.  Sometimes I do not dig them up at all and just let them grow whenever they feel the urge, or after digging them up I replant some then and there to let them do their thing when they feel the time is right.  They seem pretty adaptable to whatever I throw at them.

We normally plant potato onions about 10 or 15cm apart, larger distances between plants would possibly result in larger onions but we do not have enough space and water is scarce here so everything is planted closer than optimal.  Just like all of the Alliums, they prefer a slightly alkaline soil but will grow in a neutral soil.  The more fertile the soil the better result you will obtain from them, just be careful not to have too much nitrogen in the soil otherwise you will get a lot of top growth at the expense of the bulbs.

We harvest when the tops dry off, then it is quite simple to pull them out of the soil and put them somewhere safe in the garage to dry off a little more.  After a few weeks I brush off the soil and they are ready to be put wherever it is that you store your onions.  Just like any other type of onion you do not have to dry them unless you plan to store them, you can dig them up to use whenever they are needed.

I have read in old books that you always plant a mix of different sized bulbs.  They say that small bulbs will grow and divide into a few large bulbs, and a large bulb will grow and divide into a whole bunch of small bulbs.  I always keep a range of sized bulbs to replant.  I am not sure if it makes any difference anymore, I have a feeling that those days are gone.  I also keep two varieties of potato onions, one brown and one white, and I find that each variety will grow better in some years than the other.  If I ever find any other varieties of potato onion I would love to grow them too.  Interestingly the white potato onion has become locally extinct in most countries in the world and only a handful of people are keeping it in Australia.  I would hate for either variety to disappear from Australia which is all the more reason to grow them both.

Becoming more self sufficient

The important part about potato onions is not to eat them all.  Ever!  In this way you will have them producing food for you forever.

As long as you always keep some to plant after harvest you should have potato onions for the rest of your life.  There is nothing more self sufficient than to dig up a potato onion nest for dinner, take some for eating, some for storage to eat later, and replant one into the very same hole you just dug them all out from.  This can go on potentially for the rest of your life and you would never run out of potato onions or need to get new ones from anywhere.  This is a good lesson to teach the kids, even if you are not explicitly teaching them they will still notice the attitude of taking only what you need as well as preparing for the future.

Having a great storage ability means that you never have to worry about what to do with the excess.  You either store them somewhere dry for later, or you plant them which is essentially storing them in the soil for later.  There is no need to run out of onions anymore.  We grow our vegetables without the use of poisons both "organic" or synthetic, in this way we gain a little more control over what we are eating.


Comparing potato onions with other types of culinary onions

Regular bulb onions are larger than potato onions.  This sounds great but usually ends in wasted onion as they are too large for whatever meal they were intended for.  Potato onions are small, while this lack of size causes you to spend slightly longer in peeling it does mean that you always have just the right amount of onion for the dish.  If you need more onion for the meal, you simply use more onions.  Regular onions are grown from seed and are biennial, requiring a long time to produce seed.  Potato onions reproduce through division of the bulb, they will do this efficiently each year.  Potato onions also grow a bit smaller and can fit into small spaces in the garden easily  This means that potato onions are relatively easier to grow year after year and take up little space.

Spring onions grow a larger and tougher leaf compared to the delicate foliage of the potato onion.  I prefer to eat the foliage of the potato onion to the spring onions as they are thinner and less fibrous.  While I do have some spring onions growing we tend to use the Everlasting onions more as we have more of them and they are a bit nicer to eat.  Everlasting onions are a perennial onion that we use in place of spring onions.  They also divide underground and will grow a small bulb that is much the same as a French Shallot.  Potato onions tend to divide a bit differently than everlasting onions, and grow more delicate foliage.  The bulbs taste a bit different, the potato onions taste more like a regular bulb onion and the everlasting onions taste more like a French shallot.  Overall they can be substituted for each other in meals but will give a slightly different result. 

French shallots and potato onions are essentially different strains of the same thing.  They taste and look a bit different, but can be easily substituted for each other.  Keep in mind that a small yellow cherry tomato and a large red beefsteak slicing tomato are essentially two different strains of the same thing, or a pug dog and an irish wolf hound are different strains of the same thing.  They can all be used interchangeably, but the results will differ slightly.  The French shallots have a milder taste, they do not store anywhere near as well as potato onions, and they do not divide as much as potato onions, but they tend to be slightly larger than potato onions.  I do like French shallots, but again we tend to use the Everlasting onions in their place.

Tree onions and potato onions are similar in that each will grow a small underground bulb that divides each year.  Tree onions grow a bit larger, and their foliage is taller and lot more rough, and they tend to divide less than potato onions.  Tree onions will send up a flower stalk and will grow small onion bulbs on this stalk instead of seed or flowers.  Potato onions tend not to flower, and if they do generally nothing much comes of it.  From what we have seen the tree onions tend to be hardier than potato onions and yield a more consistent crop despite the harsh climate.

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Everlasting Onions

Everlasting onions (Allium cepa perutile) are a rare perennial onion which is extremely productive and undemanding.  They do not appear to suffer pests or diseases, frost does not bother them, and if it gets too hot and dry they die down to bulbs.  I do not know why but I do not know of anyone else who has everlasting onions for sale in Australia.  They are one of the easiest and most productive vegetables to grow, just like all perennial vegetables you plant once and harvest forever.

I first heard about everlasting onions from someone who lives overseas.  They told me how great they were and said that they were extremely rare for some reason.  Importing onion plants/bulbs is more trouble/expense than I can deal with.  Importing onion seed is less difficult but everlasting onions never really set seed so this was also out of the question.  I then started to search for them in Australia.  No one seemed to sell them, it took me years to track them down in Australia.  Eventually I found someone who sold me some small plants.  She had these plants for well over 30 years and said that they flowered each year but had never set seed.  This sounded right so was worth a try.

Everlasting onion bulbs sprouting - normally they are far larger than these

At first I was skeptical that I had in fact got the right thing.  They looked like any spring onion or young onion plant before it bulbs up, but the plants were extremely uniform in size.  I planted them somewhere safe and waited.  In a few weeks most had split in half so I dug them up and divided them.  A few weeks later the rest had split in half so I divided again.  In another month or so they all divided again at least once, some of them divided a few times.  By this stage they were no longer uniform in size and I grew tired of digging them up and dividing them.  I now had a few dozen plants and was convinced that they were better than regular spring onions. 

Once winter hit these plants were not at all bothered by frost.  The growth slowed somewhat but other than that they looked happy and continued to divide.  Spring was great, they grew faster, divided faster and began to flower.  The flowers did not look complete and they did not even try to set seed.  They looked like Allium cepa flowers rather than Allium fistulosum, so I was then convinced that they were not ordinary spring onions and were most likely true everlasting onions. 

When summer rolled around some kept growing but most I let dry down to see if they produced bulbs.  They ended up growing small purple bulbs, a bit larger than a french shallot.  Being new to everlasting onions I decided not to eat the bulbs, instead I replanted them.  Each bulb divided into a dozen or more plants when it resprouted!  Over the past few years I have let some die to bulbs each year, if they are crowded they produce small bulbs, if they are given space the bulbs are much larger.

How everlasting onions are used

Once you grow everlasting onions you will never need to buy spring onions or shallot bulbs ever again.

We eat the green tops year round in place of spring onions.  Unlike spring onions they never get too thick and fibrous.  I have some spring onions that I planted as seed when we moved here, they are large and thick and a bit too fibrous to eat.  I do not have the heart to kill them, but do not know how to make them small and delicate again.  Cutting them to the ground helps but it does not take them long to turn into monsters again.

If we keep watering the everlasting onions over summer they keep growing, if we dont water they die down to nice little bulbs.  The bulbs can be used as salad onions, they are good for this purpose.  The bulbs seem to store forever, I dont know how long but it is at least several months.  We have fried the onion bulbs, they are nice but become very crunchy.  I think they must be reasonably high in sugars as they caramelise rather quickly.  Everlasting onion bulbs can be used in any recipe that calls for onion bulbs or french shallots.

Everlasting onion bulbs - they can be larger or smaller than this

How to increase your stock

Everlasting onions know what they are doing as far as reproduction goes.  They split in half numerous times throughout the year.  If they are divided each division will also multiply.  Neither heat nor frost bothers them.  It does not take long for a few to become a decent patch.  Like any other onion, if you plan to eat the bulb you do not have to kill the plant.  If you cut off the roots with a few mm of the base of the bulb this can be sprouted and replanted.  I have only done this once as I now have enough plants that they quickly replace any that we eat.

Everlasting onions are hardy, I planted one under a tree when I got them.  I do not water or weed this one after it was established, I had actually forgotten all about it.  This summer it was so hot and dry that we had no grass and I saw that it has divided into a substantial clump and is still hanging in there.  They are not as large or numerous as the ones that are well watered and weeded, but they are surviving and reproducing.  Planting an extra plant in an out of the way like this is a great way to increase your stock as you tend to forget about them for a while and when you find them again they tend to be rather numerous and in need of digging up and dividing.

The lady who I got the everlasting onions from had them flower each year for 30 odd years and had never seen any seed produced ever, the first few years I had similar results.  This year after they flowered I had a small number of seeds produced.  From several hundred flower heads I ended up with about 30 seeds.  I planted some of them and have a few seedlings appear.  I have no idea what they will turn into, perhaps exactly like their parent or perhaps something entirely different.

I have heard of someone who grew potato onion seeds and ending up with something very similar to my everlasting onions.  That makes me wonder if everlasting onions are another type of potato onion that was seed grown many years ago.  If so the results from the seed grown plants should be extremely interesting.

Where to find everlasting onions in Australia

To the best of my knowledge no one else is selling these other than me.  I am happy to be wrong on this as they are a great vegetable and more people should grow them.  I have everlasting onions for sale all year, they are listed on my for sale page along with some other perennial vegetables and heirloom vegetable seeds.

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Potato Onion Seeds

I wrote a little about potato onions in a previous post.  They are an edible, perennial, heirloom onion that is near extinction in Australia and I have always been rather fond of them.

Potato onions rarely flower, when they do flower they rarely produce seeds, when they do produce seeds they are rarely viable.  From what I have heard the small number of viable seeds exhibit a tremendous degree of variability and tend to grow larger, better and more vigorously than their parents. 

White potato onions, not all that large but still great

After growing potato onions for many years in a few different climates I had never seen one flower until 2013.  Interestingly enough my everlasting onions flower every year and never set seed, but they have produced seed for the first time this year.  The lady who gave me the everlasting onions has had them for over 30 years, she has never had them produce seed, so it must be the year for rare onion seed.  I plan to plant this everlasting onion seed and see what comes of it, but that is a story for another post.

My brown potato onions had been stressed badly the previous year and had not divided well.  Many even began to die off.  This year was almost as harsh as last year, it is more dry but not quite as hot.  From the surviving brown potato onions I ended up with 5 flower stalks.  From those flower stalks 3 flowered and then only produced unviable shriveled dead seed.  Out of the two remaining flowers, one produced 6 good looking seeds and the other one is still ripening but looks as though it should produce a dozen or more seeds.  This is very exciting.  Hopefully at least a few seeds will grow for me.

Potato onion seed ripening - very exciting

 While the potato onions were flowering I also had regular bulb onions, tree onions, spring onions, and everlasting onions flowering.  I do not know what these potato onions seed will produce, they may be potato onions, or they may be a cross between potato onions and one of the other onions.  I will never be able to know for sure as potato onions grown from seed are highly variable.

White potato onion - these did not flower

I plan to attempt to grow these potato onion seeds, unfortunately I have no idea what to do with them.  I do not know when to plant them, or how to treat them, and there is really no one to ask.  Potato onions flower so rarely that experienced gardeners will argue with you that if they flower then they are not true potato onions.  At this stage I plan on hedging my bets by planting half in February or March, then the other half during winter or spring.  I plan to plant them in pots to begin with so that I can protect them a bit more than I would be able to if they were in the garden.  Fingers crossed that something truly remarkable comes out of these few seeds.

I have been told by people who have potato onions flowering overseas that seed grown potato onions are more likely to flower than their parents.  I have seen some amazing breeding work and the results after just 2 or 3 generations is nothing short of remarkable.

At this stage I will not be selling any potato onion seed, mostly because I do not have many seeds.  If I ever reach a point where I have extra seeds I will certainly try to distribute them as we need more varieties of potato onions in Australia.  I do sell potato onions occasionally, as well as some other perennial vegetables on my for sale page.

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Tree Onions

Tree Onions

Tree Onions are also known as Egyptian Walking Onions or Topset Onions.  They are an old heirloom vegetable dating from back to at least the 1850s but their exact history prior to that has apparently been lost.  Originally thought to be Allium cepa var proliferum but now we know that they are a interspecific hybrid between Allium cepa (the common onion) and Allium fistulosum (bunching onion).

Apparently tree onions used to grow in every backyard vegetable garden in the past, but recently they have fallen out of favor and have all but disappeared in Australia.  Not surprisingly they are not well suited to mass mechanical production, so it is unlikely that you will find them in the supermarket, but they are very well suited to the home grower.

Bulbils on a flower stalk which have sent up a stalk of their own

How to grow tree onions

 I have put some notes on how to grow them here.  Basically they grow the same as any other onion, but are a lot hardier and more forgiving if things do not go well.  They prefer a moist but well draining soil with plenty of nutrients and no competition from weeds, but will survive pretty much anywhere that is not too wet.  Raising the pH of the soil is helpful for any onion, this can be done by adding ash from the fireplace or buying some lime.  I have been told to harvest the bulbs when the stalks dry down, but this may or may not happen.  We harvest after flowering when the bulbs look larger, or whenever the bulb looks large enough to bother digging it up.  Sometimes in late summer I stop watering them so that they dry down for me, this seems to work.

Tree onions in less than ideal conditions

How to multiply tree onions

Tree onions reproduce vegetatively, do not  set viable seed and will not cross pollinate any other type of onion you may be growing.  As they reproduce vegetatively they are stable and will always grow true to type, as such they are one of the very few hybrids that I will bother growing.  Just like all the other perennial vegetables I grow, they just keep doing their thing year after year just as long as I do not eat all of them.

Tree onions are kind of like potato onions in that they are edible perennial onions that can divide underground.  The bulbs are a little larger than potato onions, and they do not divide as much underground, and the leaves are much larger than potato onions so they are easy to tell apart.  The underground bulbs of the tree onions normally grow to around the size of a ping pong ball.

They then grow small onion bulbs, called bulbils, on top of the flower stalk.  These small bulbils sometimes then send up a flower stalk of their own which grows more smaller bulbils.  This strain sometimes produces some real flowers as well, but they wither and drop quickly as all the energy is directed to the growing bulbils.

Unfortunately the flowers are only around briefly and only on a few flower stalks, I am always busy when they are around so I have not had a good look at them.  I would be curious to know if tree onions display cytoplasmic male sterility or if it would be possible to remove the bulbils and get the flowers to set viable seed.  If they could produce seed (even with a fair amount of intervention on my behalf) I would love to try and grow some out and see if I could produce some new varieties of tree onions.  But that is a project for Future Damo as I have a lot of other things going on that are more important at the moment.

The bulbils normally reach the size of a marble or a pea as the climate is so harsh here, I have seen them far larger when grown in more mild climates.  If the bulbils touch the soil they grow roots surprising fast.  When I have broken some of the bulbils off and planted them they always have roots by the following morning.  The roots of tree onions grow deep, far deeper than you would expect from such a small plant and certainly a lot deeper than any other onion I know of. 

Tree Onion bulbils just starting to grow

What Tree Onions are used for

The entire plant is edible, we use the bulbs in any recipe that calls for onion, if eaten straight away they can be a little insipid, if stored for a while they tend to taste a lot stronger.  The green parts can replace spring onions (we generally use the Everlasting onions for this though), and I am told that the bulbils are good pickled but am yet to try that myself.

The bulbils can be picked before they sprout and stored for many months, so far I dont bother doing this and just plant them when I find time, if I dont find time they plant themselves and I just transplant them when I get around to it.  The underground bulbs are meant to store for up to 18 months, I cant comment on this as I have not tried to store any because we just dig them up to eat as needed.  That is the beauty of perennial vegetables, many of them do not need to be stored and can simply be dug up, broken off, pulled out, or cut down and cooked when they are needed.

As well as being edible, tree onions are a garden curiosity that always attract comments from people who see them.  Children love to grow tree onions even if they have no desire to eat them.

Small tree onion bulbils, they grow far larger than this

Tree onions are very hardy!

Tree onions are very hardy little plants, they have survived drought, flood, severe heat, and hard frosts here and still gone on to produce a decent crop. They are pretty much impossible to kill by mistake.  Last year I lost most of my regular onions (as well as potato onions and a bunch of other things) to the drought and crazy heat, but the tree onions were happy, I put that down to their deep roots.  They can also be grown in pots, the roots seem to either go through the drainage hole into soil below, or the roots stop growing if the pot is off the ground and they they hit air.  If the pot is too small they tend to get very root bound and survive, but they do not often end up giving a large crop.  Even though they are very productive and hardy I dont think they pose a weed threat at all.  If you do not want any more it is simple to remove flower stalks, if you miss some and they happen to touch the soil and grow they are simply to pull up.  If any parts are left in the soil they do not tend to grow unless they have part of the base plate attached to a piece of bulb.

It is too dry for grass and weeds to survive, but tree onions go on strong

They are the cold hardiest of the onions and will survive in frozen ground for quite a long time.  As well as being productive little survivors they are unusual enough to be grown in a childrens garden.  I have taught children who do not like onions, or any vegetables, beg me to let them grow these purely as a fun oddity.  I see that as a great way to teach kids about growing food.  Tree onions are very forgiving and will survive and produce at least some food even in the most neglected childrens vegetable garden.

I first started growing tree onions when I was barely a teenager, I was fascinated by them, the thought of eating the underground bulb and replanting a small aerial bulb appealed to me.  Unfortunately I lost them when I left home, it took me a few years but I am glad that I was eventually able to track them down again.

I do sell tree onions from time to time on my For Sale page.

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Reisetomate tomatoes in Australia

A while ago I heard of an ancient Peruvian heirloom tomato that did not grow round or oblong like most tomatoes, but grew segments that one could separate like a mandarin or an orange.  This tomato could be eaten one segment at a time without the use for a knife.  This sounded intriguing, I wanted to see a tomato like this.

After some research I found that it was called "Reisetomate".  I saw some pictures of it and it did indeed have segments like an orange.  The fruit looked amazing but I was concerned it may be just a novelty tomato.  I have no time for novelty vegetables so I wanted to know more.

Reisetomate tomato with some segments removed

Apparently it is an incredibly rare and ancient heirloom variety.  This variety may actually predate the Spanish conquistadors going to South America.  There are unsubstantiated stories of this variety being used by the Incas when they were traveling and tearing off a segment at a time to eat.  The name Reisetomate is apparently German and means "traveler tomato" eluding to the fact that this variety is carried on trips to be eaten without the use of a knife.  I also hear that this is one of the varieties of tomato that the Amish grow, if this is true then this variety is a no-nonsense productive variety.  I became more curious and wanted to grow one.

I wanted to try this variety, but they are so rare that it is difficult to find anyone who has seeds.  Tomato seeds can not be imported into Australia without huge trouble and expense so I had to find somewhere local to purchase seed.  After searching I found only one place which had Reisetomate seeds for sale in Australia.  There were not even any dodgy ebay sellers which I had hoped to see as they can drive the price down a little.  The one company that sold them was demanding an outrageous price for a small number of seeds and was a company which I have had a lot of trouble with in the past.  I rarely buy seeds anymore so there is a chance that company has lifted its game.  I did not know if the risk was worth it and was about to give up on trying to grow Reisetomate tomatoes.  

Luckily a friend of mine kindly bought me the seeds as he knew how excited I was about this variety.  I waited for weeks and the seeds never arrived.  Several weeks later my friend contacted the company and they then sent out the seeds.  I planted some seeds and kept some in case things went wrong.  Tomatoes are simple to grow from cuttings so I figured planting a small number of seeds would be ok as I could still get a large number of plants by taking cuttings.

The plants were growing well and were about to flower, then the heat of summer hit.  The flowers are not like an ordinary tomato flower, they an odd and multiply fasciated flower, some with exposed stamens and pistils.  Like many heirloom tomatoes this variety will cross pollinate with other tomatoes.  Apparently this variety is notorious for cross pollinating with other tomatoes so I was careful to plant it in a separate vegetable garden to my yellow pear tomatoes.  This is one of the positives to having two vegetable gardens spaced so far apart.

Reisetomate flowers

The plants all flowered and grew well, but the temperature was too high and the flowers withered and died.  Apparently temperatures in the mid 40s denatures tomato pollen and prevents fruit set.  Cooler nights may have helped overcome this, but the nights dont always cool down out here over summer.

The plants grew about 5 or 6 feet tall and probably would have grown a lot taller if they had more water, protection from the heat, and better soil.  Many of the stems are covered in small roots searching for soil and anywhere the stems touched the ground they firmly rooted.  After a little over 9 weeks of daytime temps in the 40s the weather cooled down (to the high 30s) and the plants started setting a lot of fruit.  The tiny green fruits looked very odd, kind of like weird little green brains, and gave me a good idea of what the fruit would look like when it ripened.

Unripe Reisetomate tomatoes - very productive plants

More unripe Reisetomate tomatoes

When the first fruits began to ripen I was perplexed.  Each fruit is like a cluster of small tomatoes fused together with many odd lobes.  The first set had one or two lobes on each fruit that looked like it was rotten so I did not know what to do.  After picking them I found out that the rotten looking lobes had been infected by fruit fly.  It was simple to remove and discard the infected lobes, then the rest of the fruit was unharmed and fine to eat.  After the first few I got on top of the fruit fly and all of the tomatoes were fine after that.

Ripe Reisetomate tomatoes

These tomatoes have provided large yields, far larger than any other variety I have grown.  I can not imagine how productive they would be in a more mild climate.  I have read some seed sellers claim they produce 1.1kg per plant and others claim over 25kg per plant, mine produced somewhere in the middle.  They are the highest yielding variety of tomato I have ever grown.  Perhaps next year I will weigh all the fruit from one plant to find out for sure.  They seem to survive through some light frosts with no issues but I am guessing the heavy frosts will kill them.  I am told in climates without frost they can be a short lived perennial which survive and produce for half a dozen years.  I am also told that without frost the stems can get as thick as your wrist after a few years and can only be cut down with a chainsaw.  After growing these under difficult circumstances and seeing how strong and determined they are I believe this is entirely possible. 

Reisetomate tomato, simple to pull apart segments

After tasting these tomatoes I want to grow them each year from here on.  The taste is amazing, they are by far the best tasting tomato I have ever eaten.  They have a deep and strong taste, they are not sweet or insipid like some cherry tomatoes. Sometimes they can be a bit too sour, a little salt reduces that and brings out their full flavour.  I love their intensity, just thinking about it makes my mouth water... 

We use these tomatoes fresh pulled apart in segments.  I love them like this and it is my favourite way to eat them.  We also use them cooked in any dish that requires tomato, they seem well suited to this and bring a depth of flavour and complexity to a dish that many tomatoes lack.  We slice them for sandwiches and the like, they taste amazing but their odd shape makes them less than ideal for this purpose.  They can be pulled apart and put into salads like a cherry tomato.  Being so intense and full of flavour I assume that they would make a decent sauce or paste but I have not tried this myself so cant be certain.

The question I keep asking myself is why these are so rare.  Many things are rare because they are not worth having or are too new.  Reisetomate tomatoes are older than any other variety of domesticated tomato that I know of, they taste amazing, yield tremendously high, apparently have disease resistance (I do not have tomato diseases so can only go off what I have read), and look great.  I can only assume their rarity is due to being unfit for mechanical harvest.

These plants show a lot of diversity of their fruit.  On one branch of a plant you will have some fruit that split into perfect segments as well as some fruit which does not split as perfectly.  Apparently this is mostly due to growing conditions rather than genetics.  I only save seed from the plants which have most of its fruit which splits cleanly and evenly into segments, I only save seed from the best fruits from those plants, I figure this is worth doing even though I dont know how heritable this trait is.

I do sell Reisetomate tomato seeds, I have them listed on my for sale page.

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