Thom Bri

Post corn harvest. Still lots of beans and tomatoes.

Beans climbing

Picking and shelling lots of beans the last few days. It's been a very good year for beans. Some years September is very wet and humid, and lots of beans rot in the pods. Not this year.

But I got to thinking about the logic of the 3 sisters. Beans don't need to climb to make lots of beans; they grow perfectly well running along the ground. But, beans growing along the ground tend to get damp and rot easily. So the purpose of growing climbing beans with corn isn't to give the beans a place to grow. It's to prevent losses before harvest. Plus, harvesting beans at head height is a lot easier than bending down and picking them off the ground.

My corn has some!
https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1541-4337.12249

Timothy Norton wrote:I am pretty good at getting volunteer tomatoes to grow in my raised garden beds year after year. The one thing that I lament is that they tend to be cherry tomatoes instead of nice big slicers. It is easier to clean up any tomato drops when they are big, but the small ones can slip by and their genetics get passed on.

My new 'policy' is that I will start slicers/plums indoors to plant outside and I will pass up on cherry tomatoes. Without a doubt, I still will be flush with cherry tomatoes at the end of the season because the volunteers that will sprout. I will thin them out so they are not too crowded when they pop up. I even will pluck them out of the ground and place them in a better spot with success. I'm not gentle and they still thrive.

Pretty much what I do. It's been years since I bought a tomato plant. I like my tough volunteers. But you are right about the bigger tomatoes gradually disappearing.

This year has been the first poor year for volunteers. It was so dry not many sprouted, then they grew very slowly. Just now starting to get a few. I may have to buy plants next year!

Or let them assume you plan to build and then just don't.

Deedee Dezso wrote:
Having recently moved to western West Virginia from Southern California has been an eye-opener.  We are located at the top of the hills here, and it seems its all clay just below the surface up top. I've asked a few farmers in the hollars (bottoms) if they are on clay.

Try planting in hills rather than rows. Use a hoe to scrape the top inch of the surrounding soil for a few feet around each hill, then plant 4-5 seeds in each hill, hills 3-5 feet apart. Corn does pretty well in clay if given half a chance.

A surprise win! I wasn't expecting much from this cantaloupe. Most of the smooth, green ones have very pale, sweet flesh like a honeydew, but this one is excellent. The flesh is firm but not too hard, with good taste and sweetness. The rind is very thin.

For years I have been saving seeds and growing a very good cantaloupe that is rugby-ball-shaped, with smooth skin and not much netting. This is an extreme version. Definitely saving seeds!

Getting to seed saving season. So far have several varieties of muskmelon, squash, a couple varieties of beans and corn.

Below is a pic of my saved sweet corn seed. This is a mix of my flint corn plus many different varieties of sweet corn seed I have bought over the years. Last year and this year I did not add any commercial sweet corn seed to the mix. I ate most main and the secondary ears. Saved seeds are from the tiny nubbin ears that were left. This is far more seeds than I will need.

Sweetness genes in sweet corn are recessive.
https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/sweet-corn-production.html

That means that if I see a few sweet corn seeds in an otherwise normal ear, that ear's parent plant was carrying (at least) one sweetness gene and one normal gene. All the seeds on that ear, even if they appear normal, have a 50/50 chance of carrying a sweetness gene.

So since I am trying to eliminate the sweet trait from my flint corn, I should not use any ear for seed that has even one sweet seed on it. This explains why I am having trouble getting rid of sweet trait. Lots of my ears have some sweet seeds, including many of the very best ears. For many years I planted the two types of corn side by side, and they thoroughly crossed.