Native, gorgeous, and very much under appreciated

Let's just start with  photo:

Meet Mentzelia decapetala! (EDIT: Panayoti says this is actually Mentzelia nuda, and I think he is right.) I've been growing this plant a couple years, and it is officially one of my top plant crushes. It is native to a big swath of the middle of the US, basically the plains states... Notably tolerant of harsh, dry conditions, I feared it would simply rot in cool, soggy Michigan (which has been even cooler and soggier than usual this year) but I couldn't have been more wrong:

It has settled right in and has been pumping out these gorgeous flowers since the beginning of July. There are only two things you should know about this plant before getting yourself one: First, it is an evening bloomer. For me, the flowers open around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Which I honestly rather like... there is something charming about the garden taking on a different character in the evening, and of course the pale blooms just glow in the evening light. The other thing is that, like many prairie plants, it is a bit floppy, probably especially so in my wet soil. That's easily solved, though, simply cut it back early in the season and it will grow into a nice bushy, compact, three-foot sphere of these amazing blooms.

Here is my other beloved and much under appreciated US native:

Salvia azurea. I LOVE THAT SHADE OF BLUE SO MUCH!!!!
Ahem. Sorry about that. Let me calm myself.
But you have to admit, that is a pretty darn dynamite shade of blue.

I always used to think that all the really pretty salvias weren't hardy. But this is the exception to that. S. azurea is native, again, mostly to the plains states, though the range comes further East, and it is an absolutely tough, hardy, and effortless to grow plant. It is a late summer/fall bloomer... and how about that luscious shade of blue with some good hardy mums? Can't be beat.

I love this plant so much that I have (of course...) started doing a little breeding with it. The plant pictured above is my very earliest flowering one, quite a few weeks earlier than most of the species. I'm also breeding for shorter plants that don't flop over, which the species is pretty prone to.

This is my best seedling for that trait -- a nice compact three feet tall. You can see the more usual loose, sprawly habit of the plants in the background... This one will be later blooming as you can see, but I'm very happy with that growth habit.

And then unexpected things pop up, as they do in breeding projects...

White flowers! I'm not sure how I feel about that exactly... I mean, the blue color is what I love so much about this plant. But the white IS kind of pretty too. What do you think? Would you ever grow the white one, or stick with the blue?

Accidental petunia gene theft.

I think I'm accidentally stealing patented genes. Of a petunia all things, too!

I always say that I hate petunias... it is a classic case of graduate school research induced loathing. Spend enough time doing research on them, and you'd hate them too. But I do have a few in my garden every year. Not the normal ones -- I grow a raggedy, sprawling mess, descended from hybrids between Petunia axillaris, P. exerta, with a wee bit of P. integrifolia for good measure.

They're nothing like the neat, tidy little moundy commercial varieties, but I like them, especially because they're powerfully fragrant. Every year I sniff them all, note the most fragrant ones, and save seed from them for the next year, along with some seeds of anything else that I like particularly well. This isn't a breeding project aimed at commercial release, just a pleasant side note in my garden.

But this year I'm afraid they've crossed into legally murky territory... Because of this:

This is one of my plants this year... and honestly, I kind of love it. The color is cool, but more importantly, it is by far the best and strongest scented petunia I've grown, even during the day (most petunias are most fragrant at night). But the problem? It looks to me a lot like the variety 'Dusty Rose'. Which the couple next door grew in my old neighborhood. I'm fairly confident that this color pattern popped up because a bee or moth carried pollen from their 'Dusty Rose' to my rambly, weedy, petunia patch.

Which normally wouldn't be a problem. But 'Dusty Rose' is protected by a utility patent.

Most patented plants have "Plant Variety Protection" -- which means you aren't allowed to clone the variety (cuttings, division, tissue culture) without permission of the patent holder. So you can't take cuttings of a 'Knock-Out' rose without permission of the breeder. But, you can collect seeds from your 'Knock-Out' and grow them and even, if you wanted to, get your own plant variety protection on the seedlings.

But increasingly new annuals like petunias are being protected with utility patents, which prohibit not just unauthorized cuttings of the plant, but any unauthorized breeding with the plant. So you can't save seeds, or pollinate another plant, or, you know, let the neighborhood bees slip some pollen into your population. This is famously the type of patent used on genetically engineered varieties of corn and soy beans, but is now increasingly being used for conventionally bred varieties of petunias, impatiens, even lettuce.

I'm pretty sure that the patent holder, (Ball Horticultural in this case, though all the big breeding companies are using these types of patents now) owns the rights to this petunia... To be sure, they almost certainly don't care as long as I don't try to make money off this seedling or any of its siblings. It wouldn't be worth their time or money (or bad PR) to sue me for a silly seedling in my garden.

But still... I kind of don't like feeling like a company has ownership over my very personal weedy, rambling, fragrant, petunia patch. I could yank out the individuals with the tell-tale yellow centers to the flowers, but that wouldn't actually guarantee that the patented genes aren't in other individuals in the population. And it IS kinda pretty. So I think I'll keep it. Hopefully I don't get sued.

Hardy artichokes!

Is it just me, or does "Hardy Artichokes!" sound like it should be a folksy expletive?  Hardy artichokes Batman! Well. Anyway.
Artichokes are delicious but rather annoying to grow. They're perennials, but not big fans of hot summers, and not very winter hardy either. Which is why 99% of the commercial production is in cool summer parts of California. You can also grow them as an annual, but that is sort of a pain, as you have to make sure you give the seedlings a dose of cold temperatures when they're young to ensure they flower. More work than I'm really willing to do, particularly in the already insanely busy period if early spring.
What the world needs (and by "the world" I mean, of course, me) is a fully zone 5 hardy artichoke you can just plant once and then harvest from every year.
So I decided to make one. It started several years ago when I requested seed from every variety of artichoke (and cardoon, which is the same plant, just selected for tasty leaf stalks instead of flower buds) I could get, and planted them in the warmest, most sheltered spot in my old garden, along the South wall of my very poorly insulated house.

Baby artichoke plant huddling for warmth by the south wall of my old house

As luck would have it, that first winter was incredibly mild, and though most of the plants died, a few -- the most cold hardy -- survived!

It's alive! Despite appearance to the contrary.

These artichoke plants look rather rough when they first emerged that spring, but they were alive, so I greeted them with joy, in all their mushy weird-looking glory.

If you don't eat the artichoke, it turns into this. 

They flowered that summer, and I let the bees cross pollinate all my toughest survivors, collected seeds, and sowed out another generation. The next winter came, and my little babies faced -17 degrees F (-27 C) and...

Two survived! Two! Yay! Then this past winter came, and apparently all the Pure Michigan ads trying to lure tourists to this fair state worked, because the polar vortex came for a couple week vacation, causing temperatures to drop to -24 F (-31 C), and for a full week temps barely got above 0 F (-17 C)... I figured for sure my "hardy" plants were goners.

But gone they most certainly aren't! BOTH of them pulled through, and there you have wee little artichokes just beginning to develop! Zone 5 hardy artichokes, baby!

Now, I must confess that the artichokes themselves are quite small. I've got quite a bit more work to do on these to get them as big and beefy as the regular tender 'chokes, but I'm still quite euphoric. I've cleared the biggest hurdle, the rest will be easy, if a bit time consuming.

In other seemingly good news, this spring I also had two plants from my project to try and breed zone 5 hardy perennial kale survive the winter as well!

Then the groundhogs found them. Grrr... Chicken wire fence is now in place. Hopefully they'll recover. Have I mentioned that I hate groundhogs? And deer? And rabbits? And squirrels? And... well, honestly, most herbivorous mammals?

Anyway, cold climate artichoke lovers, rejoice! Hardiness has arrived! Unless you live in zone 4. Or 3. In which case... sorry about your luck. I've gotten them to 5. You'll have to take it from here.

Oh no, Miss!

The title of this post doesn't make any sense... I know. But that is what I always think when I look at the flowers of one of my newest plant obsessions: Ononis.

Ononis is a European genus, going by the common name of rest harrow because the thick roots were strong enough to stop a plow going through the soil back when plows were powered by horses rather than diesel. These plants are, as that name implies, as tough as nails. They laugh at drought and have been equally at home this summer which has been insanely cool and rainy here in Michigan (In June we had almost TWICE the normal amount of rainfall). And, so far, despite a rash of obnoxious deer, rabbits, and (worst of all...) groundhogs, nothing nibbled on my plants in the garden.

And they are gorgeous. At least they are if you, like me, are obsessed with the unique form of flowers in the pea family.

This, the first of the genus I've grown, came from seed that was supposed to be Ononis rotundifolia, but I'm pretty sure it is actually Ononis repens. In any case, I think it is gorgeous. The delicate, intricate form of the flowers, a wonderful shade of clear pink, the veining on the petals... the flowers are, admittedly, a bit on the small side, but I can live with that.

New for me is Ononis natrix. I grew it from seed this year, and in just a few months it has formed a happy, sizable plant, has been pumping out these lovely yellow flowers since mid-June, and shows every sign of keeping it up the rest of the summer. The form isn't quite as nice as O. repens, but the flowers are significantly larger.

I'm also growing O. cenisia and O. spinosa... Neither have flowered yet. O. spinosa has, as the name implies, some pretty vicious spines, so I'm not in love with it so far, but we'll see if the flowers win me over. O. cenisia has been by far the slowest growing of the lot, but again, we'll see what I think when it blooms.

I have, of course, been cross pollinating them... hybrids between pink and yellow flowers usually give you all sorts of lovely oranges and scarlet, and I'll be breeding for bigger, more profuse flowers while I'm at it. If, of course, they consent to make babies together. Fingers crossed!

The latest version of a crazy project...

This is flowering in my garden right now...

What is it? Well... it started out like this:

Regular old Plantago major, aka plantain, aka, everyone's favorite weed.

Starting with some exisiting cool forms, I made this, which I call 'Purple Perversion' because it is purple and twisted, and you'd have to be a little perverted to grow it because it is, after all, a weed. Even if a purple frilly one.

Now... the latest edition! The flower spikes have been transformed into these crazy cool thingies that I REALLY like. Probably most people still wouldn't grow it because, you know, people have this whole thing about not wanting to plant weeds, but I think it is awesome. (And I bet they'd make awesome, long lived cut flowers.)

What say you? Would you grow it?

Playing with pelargoniums

I play with a lot of different breeding projects. Some of them are more-or-less sane, reasonable ideas that I think will be successful and valuable for gardens... And then there are the crazy things I try on the off chance they'll turn into something cool. I do a lot of those. Mostly because they are really fun, and because, well, why not? It takes hardly any time to splash a little pollen around and see what happens. If those initial forays turn out well, I can forward to try and breed something nice, and if not I'm not out much.

Currently, one of the odd-ball, probably-won't-work projects that I'm having fun with is breeding pelargonium. Not with zonal pelargoniums. They're kinda boring.

And no, not regals like these either, though they are gorgeous. I'd serious consider it, but the brilliant minds are Garden Genetics are already doing amazing things with them, (along with a lot of other cool stuff – you've gotta check out their blog where they post about all sorts of exciting projects) so I'll just wait (not very patiently) for their work to become commercially available.

No, I'm playing with a handful of rather obscure species that have caught my eye for various reasons.

P. caffrum has beautiful ferny leaves:

And, when it flowers (mine hasn't yet – but soon, I hope!) the flowers should by crazy fringed like this:

(photo from geraniaceae.com)

P. pulverulentum's flowers aren't nearly as exciting looking, but they do boast a really wonderful fragrance.

Both of these, along with a few others I'm growing, have tuberous roots and go dormant in the winter – which should be perfect! Winter dormant plants are easy to over winter in a garage or the like, unlike the bulk of the really cool species pelargoniums which go dormant in the summer, which isn't so easy to work into a climate like mine.

I'm also growing some odd-ball hybrids like this 'Arden' which... just love those colors on the flowers!

And of course I had to have P. sidoides, which has these amazing dark flowers over a neat mound of lovely silver leaves and is quite simply one of my most favorite plants of all time. This form is a more purpley-wine color than redder forms I've grown in the past, and seems to flower more heavily as well.

I ordered this rambling, irregular collection of plants from the wonderful nursery Geraniaceae (www.geraniaceae.com) (which you really MUST check out. Lovely, amazing stuff) and I thought, well, I'll just splash pollen around with a liberal hand and see what happens. I didn't really expect to get too much, figured the species would be too dissimilar to hybridize.

But, just the other day I noticed a few seed pods starting to develop! Happy dance!!!

So stay tuned... in a few years maybe I'll have crazy fringed fragrant flowers in a range of colors and... who knows what else! Or maybe none of the seed will germinate, and if they do the hybrids will be ugly and sterile. Or maybe something totally unexpected will happen. You can never really tell with plant breeding... and that's half the fun. Maybe more than half.  

Call me Joseph Appleseed

WARNING: I just read through this post before putting it up, and though it starts out calm and reasonable, I get increasingly over-excited as it goes on. So brace yourself.

My good friend, Rachel (http://cityscapesandgardengates.blogspot.com/) and I have known each other for 7 years now. And for nearly that long, we've been plotting to go to Geneva NY to visit the grape and apple germplasm center there. I would post a link to the page all about them, but it is a USDA funded project, and so defunded with the current government shutdown. But here is what you need to know: It is housed at Cornell's Agricultural experiment station, and their mission is to collect and preserve as much genetic diversity of apples and grapes as possible. In other words, visiting there is going to see an giant collection of all the possible awesome that apples can do. Aside from being so cool you can hardly stand it, it and the rest of the USDA germplasm system is incredibly important, preserving genetic diversity and making it available to breeders and researchers to create new varieties with better disease resistance or winter hardiness or just generally more awesomeness.

But the BEST thing about the germplasm center there? KAZAKHSTAN!

Um yeah. Let me explain. Apples come from Kazakhstan. Modern cultivated apples are descended from wild apples in Kazakhstan, possibly with a little hybridization with other species thrown in. Okay, so yeah, that is where the wild ancestors of apples live. What's the big deal? Apple FORESTS. Seriously, whole forests of wild apples. http://exhibits.mannlib.cornell.edu/apples/expeditions.htm

To be honest, I don't know logically why that excites me so much, but that concept just blows my mind and makes me very happy. Someday I'll get to Kazakhstan and dance euphorically through the apple forests, but in the mean time: Other people have gone there and collected seed, and planted HUNDREDS of them. In Geneva, NY.

That's right folks. A little slice of a wild Kazakh apple forest growing happily in upstate New York. And I got to walk around in it. And taste the apples. And TAKE SOME HOME!

Be still my beating heart. So crazy excited.

There weren't just Kazakh apples, there was a whole host of them, row upon row upon row of trees wth big fruits and little fruits and pretty ones and ugly ones and delicious ones and ones that tasted so gross you had to give it to someone else to taste too just so you could watch them be grossed out by it.

And I got to TAKE SOME HOME! Aren't they beautiful and amazing?

After I got them home, I spent a few hours extracting the seeds...

Apple forests sitting waiting to grow...

Of course, apples don't come true from seed, each of these seeds will produce something different from the parent tree I picked the fruit off of... which, you know, makes me crazy excited too. (I think I may be overusing the phrase "crazy excited...") The whole plant breeder thing in me... I've got a mix of seeds from all sorts of different apple trees, pollinated by who knows what gorgeous and interesting diversity of an entire germplasm collection... oh what marvels may grow from these seeds!

So, yeah... I'm going to plant all these seeds and grow my own little slice of Kazakhstan.

And if you ever get a chance to visit the germplasm center, DO IT. So much amazing. And that was just the apples! They have grapes too. (Oh. My. God. Grapes!!!)

Black corn bread

I was curious on the flavor of some of my crazy corn, so I decided to cook some up into corn bread and see what I got.

So I took some of my black corn, and plain yellow corn for comparison

Ground them up into corn meal

And made corn bread -- half yellow, half black.

Is it just me, or does the black corn one look like a brownie? It didn't taste like a brownie, but the flavor was different and delicious. The yellow corn bread tasted like what I'm used to, but the black one was... how to describe it? It had an earthy almost meaty flavor to it. The yellow one tasted like it would be lovely with honey and butter. The black one I wanted to eat with a warm, thick winter stew. I admit I was surprised at how different they tasted... I'm going to have to do more corn taste tests here and start breeding for flavor as much as for beautiful colors.

Corn breeding projects

I've been playing around with corn breeding for a few years now. I harvested this year's crop this morning, and have been very pleased with my progress!

This BLACK one was a surprise. I was breeding for other traits, but this popped up and I LIKE it. Glossy, and just about as close to black as you can get. I'm thinking of calling it 'Black Gleam'. One more year to grow it out and make sure there aren't off types in the seed, and this one might be done!

The husks are very dark red as well, and even the stems of the plants are black as you can see in my not-very-good picture. The stand of them looked better before the groundhogs got it into their tiny brains to start tearing the plants down. These black stems were actually my goal for this population, so I'm quite happy about that. And pleased that the beautiful dark kernels came along for the ride...

 On the OTHER extreme, I've been aiming towards this color mix for a while and just love it. I'm calling it 'Mother of Pearl' I really like the delicate pinks and blues and lavenders. Some of the plants have too much dark blue in them, but I think I'm getting close to my goal with this one.

 A total surprise... from a population of white popcorn, these ones have just a touch of pink at the top of each kernel. I really like it... I'm calling it 'Pink Blush' for now, but I keep thinking it needs a better name. Suggestions would be appreciated.

I really like the mix of colors from this population, LOVE the glossy kernels, and they also were really good growers, with big full attractive ears. Too much boring yellow in the mix, but I'm going to go through and pull out the best colors and sort them out into a series of different color strains.