four corners seed

the fruits i have harvested from the four corners potates have begun to soften...

so i picked out a couple of the mid-sized ones to see what i would find ( beyond the obious seeds ) in terms of numbers...

using the sharpest knife i own i cut them open...

and squeezed out the pulp...something like a tomato...which is no coincidence since they are both from the nightshade family...they are full of solanine and that always makes my hands itch...it si also toxic ( although not in the small dose one would recieve from a couple of fruits ) so it's always a good idea to wash your hands and owrk surfaces thoroughly when finished...if nothing else than to control the itiching...

these are small seeds...

about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter and exceptionally flat...

those two fuits ( and i have a dozen more to do ) yielded one hundred seeds...

which i set out on a paper towel to dry...the solanine will pretty much weld them to the toweling when it dries...no worries about lost little seeds...now to acquire some gibberellic acid and break domeancy...i grew spuds from seed a few years ago from fruits on more standard potatoes ( red pontiacs i think ) over the winter...a basement project yet again...starting in 2024 i think to time out any tuber production for summer planting...

and, while seeds are the matter at hand, it is october and teosinte seed is starting to come in...we are pleased.

four corners

over the past three months the four corners potatoes i planted on the last day of june have flowered...

and produced fruits...

fourteen of which i have retrieved as they dropped off the plants...so we may have viable seed...

today when i got home from work i noticed that two of the four plants had pretty much finished up...two are still green and one still has a fruit attached...so i decided to harvest the two that were finished...

one thing that immediately became apparent was the need for larger containers in the future...i suspect there would have been more tuber production if there had been a bit more room...

still two plants produced thirty-seven tubers...

that weighed in at a full ounce and a half...

which i do not find to shabby given the size...i will, i believe replant some of these and let them winter over outside to see what spring brings...the rest i will store in the basement and, if this past season is any sort of index, be planting again in next june.

solanum walk

at least one of the four corners buds has bloomed which led me to look around the yard and through the photo archives for family resemblances...

tomatoes are nightshades...

and, redundantly, so is bittersweet nightshade...

as is black nightshade...

and any of the other thousands of varieties of spuds you'd care to mane...

the stubbornly invasive caroline horse nettle is solanum as well...you'll have to dig up representations of eggplant blooms on your own.

nearing the end of july out back

my back yard recieved a touch over two inches of rain in about two hours yesterday evening...no complaints about that...

there was no hail, however the rain was heavy at times and it caused some of the teosinte to lean...

no worries though...it is a maize ancestor, and like its progeny you can simply stand it back up...i buttressed them with some garden soil and no harm done...

recent rains have induced new irruptions of dryad's saddles on the dead elm...

a bit of left handed scale...

the jerusalem artichokes have topped six feet and under that netting to the left are a wealth of seedless grapes which the camera seems unable to focus on...i have some stunning shots of the netting however...

i could get some clear photos of the concord grapes in the fir tree however...these will be netted soon enough as well...

the mooseberry bush, which looked like a dead stick to me a couple of springs ago, has topped the cage with new growth...we will be turning him loose soon...theey can reach twelve feet in height i am told...the jerusalem artichokes have a challenger for the verticality crown...

the everbearing strawberries are bearing...

the four corners potatoes are looking robust...

and the largest is signaling an attempt to bloom...these are new to me, however i would presume if the blooms hold there may be four corners potato fruits in the offing...i will keep my expectations in check...potatoes produce fruits rarely ( around here at any rate...cool, wet weather seems to be a requirement )..and these are of the same family...more news as it occurs...

there are tomatoes...

and the hopi blue maize is looking sturdy, if short.