greg mosser

jan, i think it’s just ‘cause they tried for a while to put ‘love’ and ‘heart’ in as many flower names as possible. it’s like saying ‘flower-in-a-mist’ to me. love-lies-bleeding (a weeping amaranth) is another favorite of mine.

is it important to know the variety name? i confess that while the garlic i grow started as three distinct varieties, i’ve treated it all that same and can’t tell a significant difference between any of them at this point. still grow and tastes great.

i suspect higher salt concentration in your brine will help fermented pickles stay good longer. some recipes for real old-school ‘full sours’ go all the way up to 10%salt, and you need to soak them in water for a bit to make them tolerable. do you know the concentration you usually go for?

Charlie Tioli wrote:What is greater than God
Meaner than the devil
Rich men want it
Poor men have it
And if you eat it, you'll die?

yep, classic. nothing.

agreed, normal butternut is shorter, but ‘tahitian’ butternut and others like it are longer. i’ve never grown the specific longer varieties myself, but squash that look like that (or like that, only green and spotted like a ‘long of naples’) regularly show up in my moschata landrace. got some pushing past 2 feet long right now.

did you plant mixta/cushaw? that first one looks more moschata/longneck butternut than cushaw to me.

yep, i think that’s them, mike.

the third season on a landrace like this seems to be the point where the magic really starts happening. not sure why.

i’m on…i think the sixth year for my moschata landrace, and there’s gonna be a lot of squash this year! steve, i wanted to recommend southeast asian pumpkin-shaped moschata squashes for an addition to your landrace, since i don’t think i’ve seen pics of them here. from what i’ve seen, they’re champs at shrugging off fungal diseases. they need a slightly longer season than some squash but a landrace is a great way to mix some of their genetics into shorter-season squash.

!!!

i even spelled it right?! the ol’ spark plugs are still firing all right, i guess.

grow report when you have one please!

you are most welcome.

i’ve researched it and tried a few crosses with no takes a few years ago. my vague recollection is that the tomatillo species (P. pennsylvanica and/or ixocarpa? memory is a little fuzzy) has a different chromosome count than other ground cherries, which makes cross-pollination really unlikely without chemical (or otherwise) gene-doubling techniques.

i do remember a european-bred tomatillo variety that ripens to yellow and is sweet at ripeness, that may be kind of like what a potential breeding between tomatillo and other ground cherries end point might be like…currently forgetting it’s name. maybe like ‘amarylla’ or similar. probably saw it in the baker creek catalog a handful of years ago.