The Tropical Fruit Forum

My Vana Tulsi (Ocimum gratissimum) has a strong clove scent.

Janet

Bele is perennial.  My soil at home is heavy clay and when we get extended rain and cold combined like last month they can rot.  The variegated one survived, but my green one which was 8 feet tall rotted at the base.  Good to know that they are closely related to okra for grafting.

If you like Yod Fah, Purple Hon Tsai Tai is also one of my favorites and it has beautiful purple stems.

My favorite mustard green is Ho-Mi-Z, mature leaves are beautiful with dark purple and green and it's the best tasting that I have tried.  It's spicy but also has a sweet aftertaste.  One year when I was cutting back the large flowering stalks, I noticed the inside of the stalk looked tender so peeled the outer layer and found it to be one of the best tasting vegetables for stir fry and also good raw.

Best tasting collard green is an heirloom variety from North Carolina named Yellow Cabbage Collard.  Cascade Glaze collard is a unique collard green with shiny waxy coating.

My top heat tolerant lettuces:  Italienischer, Cougar Batavian, and 2 Frank Morten varieties, Jester and Icy Oak. 

With all my lettuce trials I found that I prefer growing open head lettuces that I can harvest from over a long season.  Some of the heading lettuce tasted good but it was hard to control slugs hiding inside and all that time to harvest one head wasn't worth it for me in my small home garden.  With the open head lettuce varieties, instead of just harvesting the outer leaves for salad, I harvest from the young center leaves.  As the plant matures the center leaves continue to have crisp texture and good taste even when the leaves are small and the larger outer leaves keep feeding the plant.  I also found when the lettuce starts to go to seed they will grow several feet tall and the leaves can still be harvested as good cooking greens.  They are excellent green for soups and stews. A can harvest for several months from a single lettuce plant.

Sea kale, Crambe maritima, make gourmet greens easier than belgian endive.  This is effortless to grow.  I grow them in pots, they go dormant in winter.  Before spring growth I cover the top of the pot with a black fabric pot to exclude light.  The new growth is tender white with beautiful pinkish purple leaves.  Makes a fine dining restaurant quality salad.  The leaves during the regular season that get sunlight can be used as a cooking green.

I also have greens that are my own breeding selections that I've worked on for around 15 years from crosses of my favorite brassicas.

Janet

I have so much to share on this thread! 

I feel like I’ve trialed all the edible greens and most annual vegetables offered by Baker Creek, Kitazawa, Seed Savers exchange and many other regional catalogs and independent specialty growers.  I trialed all the root crops offered by Cultivariable before he stopped selling most of his offerings and most vegetables bred by Dr. Alan Kapuler (Peace Seeds).  Sand Hill Preservation Center is also a great source of heirloom seeds, root crops, and heritage poultry breeds.

I finally have narrowed down my garlic to 2 varieties after trialing over 50, including specialty varieties from all over the world, in the last decade.  I needed a variety that could produce in my cool coastal climate over a short season and have good keeping qualities. 

I have many of my own breeding projects and selections as well.  I lost my phone and a lot of photos, need to go back and see which ones were saved on my computer.

Galatians522, Gai Lan is one of my favorites and I consider Bele to be one of the best perennial greens.  I removed longevity spinach because I didn’t eat it after I started growing Bele.  Peace Seedlings (Dr Alan Alan Kapuler’s daughter’s seed company) is a great source for peas in many colors, some hypertendril.  They’ve done a lot of breeding and selection for edible podded peas.

Bele in my garden, one has burgundy new leaves and beautiful variegation, it gets some grasshopper damage.  The other has dark green mature leaves with beautiful red stems.











Janet

I prefer Saijo over Hachiya but they are similar.  Hachiya is earlier than Saijo by 3-4 weeks and produces larger fruit.  I have both trees and they fruit well with my average summer highs mostly in the 70's.

Janet

Hi Ethan,

Maybe post in the main Tropical Fruit Discussion section or to one of the existing passion fruit discussion threads for higher visibility like this one https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=59903.75

Beautiful flower!  I hope you are able to find someone who is growing it.

Janet

NickD will be last on the list for Sweet Taiwanese Purple.  If you're an active member you can still be added for Qinmi No 9 seeds.

Janet

My free holiday gift offer is for active members of this community. 

For the newbies that have commented here, I hope you will continue to participate on the forum to qualify for future offerings.

Janet

My free holiday gift offer is for active members of this community. 

For the newbies that have commented here, I hope you will continue to participate on the forum to qualify for future offerings.

Janet

I'm getting requests messaged to me.  Please just reply to this thread.  I am using this thread as my list to make it easy to manage. 

I have also received requests for scions and fruit and members willing to come pick up from my house.  I value my privacy and have a lot of rare plants and breeding projects going on right now, so I will just be mailing seeds.  Maybe, I will consider offering scions and fruits in the future but not at this time.

Sorry, but my free offer is for U.S. mailing addresses only.  I do not want to violate any agricultural restrictions or deal with international mailing.

Janet

My holiday gift for active forum members.  Free seeds of Taiwanese Purple and Qinmi No. 9 passion fruit seeds.  Seeds are fresh so they should have good germination rates. 

Qinmi No 9 fruits are still hanging on my vine and I will harvest the seeds as they ripen.  I should have enough for everyone that wants them.  Taiwanese Purple seeds are from fruits I got from Michelle and they are more limited so depending on how many members want them I will divide up what I have and try to get at least a few to everyone.

Please see page 3 of the following thread for my pictures and discussion of my plants and fruits.
https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=59903.msg571088#new
I do not know how true to type these seeds will be.  I also show on the thread some variations in seedlings.

Important:  I will go in order of the responses on this post as I clean and harvest seeds.  Please do not message me directly for requests.  I want to make it easy on myself by using this post as a waiting list, and I will message you for your address when I am ready to send you seeds. 

Janet

Pics of fruits from the Qimni no 9 vine I’m growing and Taiwanese Purple fruits from Michelle, the source of my Taiwanese Purple vine.

I went to the lecture given by Professor Ochoa of LBCC, he's a nice guy. I don't agree with everything he says, but is interesting to listen to. We had a good debate on some issues he talked about. Our CRFG setup this seminar for our club to go to LBCC and hear his lecture, then he gave us the tour of his passion fruit plants he collected.

The Professor's Big Red is named after him, since he gave my fruit friend Dennis (Big Yellow pf) a small plant of the big red passion fruit. The professor likes to go everywhere to hunt for passion fruits. He likes to say there is no name on some varieties since it could be a seedling that someone is selling as the original plant. Even the Professor Big Red he wouldn't tell us where it came from or the name of the parent plant.

So, to sum it up, he doesn't commit to any named varieties he has. Just says it's a red fruit or yellow fruit. It tastes good or it doesn't taste good. He's a fun guy to listen to. After his lecture, he gave all of us about 3 different varieties of passion fruits he collected. Two were red, and one was yellow fruits. I have most of the seeds since I shared it with people that couldn't make the lecture, and I didn't plant the seeds I still have.

Professor Ochoa has a list of named passion fruit cultivars in HortScience journal volume 45, Register of New Fruit and Cultivars List. 

In the presentation he simply stated if he had the fruit in hand he could confirm if it was a true cultivar and from what he's seen most are seedlings being sold under the same original names.  Can a grower or seller just definitively state they have a true cultivar instead of a seedling from an original without knowing exactly the sources of their plant and method of propagation?

I suspect my Frederick is the original and most of the ones others are growing are seedlings because I bought my vine in 2000 and Patrick Worley introduced the variety in 1993.  It matches the descriptions and has really large fruit and flowers compared to others and has a balanced sweet and tart flavor, but I would not definitively state that I know for sure I have the original.  ScottR mentioned in another thread that nurseries stopped selling the true Frederick years ago.  Professor mentioned 99 percent of Fredericks are not the real one.

Qinmi No. 9 was jointly developed by Guangxi Qinci Agricultural Technology Co and Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, selected and planted in 2020 and seedlings were distributed to promote it.  An article stated there was a challenge with variety protection rights because it takes 2 years for registration and counterfeit seedlings have shown up. 

From posts on the forum, sounds like a few of us are growing out seedlings.  The point I was trying to make before was that many seedlings will start to be sold under the cultivar name and maybe the original source for the genetics in the US for Qinmi No. 9  is a seedling as well. 

Janet