Philip Heinemeyer

We had two days of harder frost recently, down to minus 7 in some places. I did decide to only protect the fantastic seedling during the two days and not the mexicola seedling, that freezes down to it's roots every winter, because the fantastic seedling is the first one i ever had to grow back from the stem outdoors after a winter outside with little to no protection.
Pictures of burnt mexicola, fantastic seedling that was protected and two closeups of where it grew back from the stem which for me in itself is a tiny victory.

I spoke to a friend who grew this variety "Shanne" this year and he told me they harvested over 50 kilos of good ripe tomatoes from 14 plants outdoors in the wind and rain..
They gave more than the ones in the tunnel that had to be watered so they practically stopped growing tomatoes in the tunnel.
Seeds have all been given away freely. I earned exactly nothing by doing this, but i don't mind.

The three varieties are:
1) Shanne - medium sized tomatoes, most prolific.
2) Christophe - large tomato, heavy,sturdy support needed. Gives a lot, too.
3)Phil - large flesh tomato with rather few seeds, my selection.

3 stable varieties have now been selected that all perform very well.
The idea is to release them under the OSSI pledge.
The 2 pictures are of the medium sized variety "Shanne"

Fantastic Greg, well done! The "lemon" fruits look really cool and if they have a nice lemon flavour you succeeded in breeding a new interesting variety.
Try and layer branches in pots to multiply your variety. That way it can spread and others can evaluate it.

I tried rooting avocado cuttings and it didn't work. Now i am trying to layer my avocado. Since i already did this before with other plants i am quite optimistic that this will work.
I need to keep the soil moist for about a year and since the plant is in my polytunnel that's harder than if it was outside.
The soil mix is one third washed sand, one third perlites and one third peat moss.
It retains moisture quite well and you can't really overwater it cause it drains really well.
The avocado seedling is a fantastic seedling that has a strong anis leaf smell.
I didn't have rooting powder this time.
Wedging a piece of matchstick into the cut is important as you want the wound to stay open.

Yes Nancy i am just after preparing the fruits now. I put them in the freezer and tomorrow I'll add the sugar.
We in europe are quite lucky because we can quite easily buy fruiting forms like cido over here.
It might be a little bit harder in america to get the baltic fruiting types.
Most chaenomeles sold is for ornamental purposes and doesn't necessarily make fruit.

Once i roasted fish in the oven with leeks cream and dill.
We ate rice with that and i put some chaenomeles fruit on top cut in very thin slices.
It was absolutely delicious! Like crispy roasted lemon chips.
It was a great addition to the meal.
I am sure there is plenty of different uses possible with this plant.

I can confirm that layering does work well with chaenomeles.
I did it two years ago.
I wrote an article on layering gevuina avellana on my blog.
The method is exactly the same.
But you could also just bury low lying branches with earth and not do it in pots.
Half-cutting the branch and using root hormon powder practically guarantees success from one winter to the next.

For those of you interested in the way i do layering:
permabreed.blogspot.com   (click on labels in top left corner and choose gevuina to find the article on layering)

I would like to share this great video here for those of you that would like to try this someday.
I know this is fantastic because i have actually tasted the candied fruit when a friend from lithuania sent me chaenomeles seeds.
He had included some candied fruit in the parcel.
They taste really good.
This plant can grow very far up north.
It's actually a plant that will grow very well in the most coldest parts of north america.

You can make great candied fruit, syrup, jam and many other things.
You can use it in all recipies that call for lemon juice as a substitute.
So you can, for example, bake really nice lemon cake, without buying lemons from the supermarket but by using these fruits from your garden.

   

Both of my avocadoes growing outdoors died back to the ground but are sprouting back from the roots. It wasn't even that cold last winter.
I didn't protect them.
One of them is a mexicola seedling that must be at least 4 years old now.

The other one is a fantastic seedling that i planted out last year. It also is growing back from the roots, while my third one that is also a fantastic seedling that i planted into my polytunnel is growing ok and didn't die back.

This makes me think that checking for cold tolerance and finding that some mexican avocadoes can survive minus 10 Celsius does not mean at all that your tree won't die when it's minus 3 next winter. There is many other factors that are important. I thought before that trees must be somewhat older and already have bark before they can resist frost.
There may be some truth to that but i think humidity and heat units in summer are also really important.

Imagine yourself wearing dry clothes in an open field in texas by minus 10 degrees Celsius in winter.
You would be less cold than wearing soaking wet clothes in an open, windy field in Oregon by minus 2 degrees Celsius.

The temperature alone does not count. Why else would my seedling in the polytunnel survive the winter no problem?
The polytunnel does not have a higher temperature at night in winter, but it's drier and the moisture doesn't come down and cristallize on the leaves as happens outdoors.
I have not yet tried to plant seed grown 3 to 4 year old bigger plants outdoors, but for now it's not working.
Avocadoes, up to now, won't grow outdoors in a northern european climate.

Try and get mexican avocado seeds and grow plants in polytunnels, pruning them back regularly. When they give fruit you'll have plenty of seeds to try growing outdoors.

I have a small mexicola seedling that i totally neglected and despite having suffered some good freezes it is still alive. I didn't look after it because i kind of lost interest in mexicola as a variety. They are just not cold-hardy enough for where i live.
My mexicola growing outside froze back to the ground last winter but it grew back from the roots. It's quite amazing how much it grew last year but now it's really very damaged again. So i don't think it will ever fruit if it always dies back down every 2 to 3 years.
Compared to that the fantastic seedling, although much younger seems to show a higher cold tolerance.
And the one in the pot in my tunnel is now bigger than the one outside and is looking really good.
I will probably plant it out this year.

In summary the only realistic chance that i have is to try and continue with seeds of the most cold hardy varieties i can find.