Bit of survivor bias at work there.
Last year the ONLY tomato plant growing and making fruit was the one my dog planted by pooping out some seeds in a flowerbed after eating some cherry tomatoes from the store. He’s the best gardener in the house
Steal his technique
That’s literally a planting technique, some plants don’t even germinate unless they’ve been digested.
They stick to their guns, plants
Better hope those weren’t Monsanto seeds! Lol
Just a matter of time until they design them to grow poison fruit after the third generation.
try covering the seeds in wet fertilizer then
Came with fertilizer!
Probably tons of seeds for the one on the right didn’t sprout. This one did in a favorable area and survived to this stage. This probably means that soil chemistry, light, and water are at good levels.
The one on the left was put there regardless of what it wanted and regardless of conditions. This means it’s going to need to have the soil chemistry, water, and sun exposure adjusted to its needs instead requiring work on the part of the human (if the task is even possible).
This is a 100% legit phenomenon. Volunteer plants are typically more robust because out of all the seeds that are scattered, few sprout plants that are robust enough to survive in adverse environments without care. I once saw a corn plant randomly growing in a parking lot outside a movie theater, and my thought was that someone tossed their popcorn onto the ground and one of the unpopped kernels hadn’t been killed by the heat. As a gardener, when I spot a volunteer plant I like to carefully dig it up if I can and plant it in my garden and give it ideal care. These are always my biggest and best producers.
Yep self selection bias / survivor bias.
I live close to a sweet corn field, and every off year there are corn stalks that pop up in my yard, I like to let them grow as much as possible. So far none have produced the stereotypical ears of corn, but this year is looking promising. Some stalks are already as tall as I am, like the corn fields around are.
I typically leave plants be, since I’m convinced I’ll kill them just trying to transplant them lol
Corn is much harder to get viable seeds. First off that are wind pollinated so it takes lots of get any diversity. They recommend you have at least 200 stalks before saving and seeds while they say you can save the seeds from your one pumpkin vine.
Also if it’s commercial corn it’s a hybrid from two inbred strains. So this hybrid won’t breed true. You will need an heirloom variety for that. (This is true for almost all commercial plants).
That being said you might get something good
I spent a bit of time as a commercial plant breeder. Most of the stuff you find online is inaccurate. Genetics and plant breeding is extremely complicated and species specific. It’s not something the average master gardener even has the fundamentals to understand.
For example the answer to your question about saving hybrid corn seed.
One plant of a F1 commercial contains the same heterogenity as a healthy 1,000 plant OP variety population. Commercial hybrids are created by crossing inbreds from separate genetic pools. This helps maintain the required genetic distance between the inbreds to maximize heterosis.
1,000 F2 plants from one F1 is enough to initiate a stable population. Saving less than 1,000 plants on the subsequent generations will create a bottleneck and the population will quickly suffer from inbred depression.
Similar to what I said but you need 1000 not a couple hundred. I wonder how stable it is for heirloom varieties.
“Heirloom” varieties that are sold are poorly maintained and extensively contaminated (often exceeding 50%). So not stable at all.
In order to properly maintain them you’d need closer to 1,000,000 plants with extensive but careful rogueing over over 30 generations with extensive genetic profiling to clean them up. They are all an absolute mess at this point.
Once you got them cleaned up the same 1,000 plants could maintain the population.
I guess when I said heirloom varieties I meant those that have been used by indigenous communities for generations.
I knew commercial operations use weird corn that didn’t grow right in small quantities, but didn’t know why. That’s interesting!
While this IS a large field, it’s privately owned by someone my parents go to church with, and they go on at length about how you can go straight from stalk to kitchen and save some for planting and blah blah blah. . I’ve always wanted to test that, but so far it’s been “doesn’t grow in small quantities” so I’m starting to think either the church friend is exaggerating, or my mother is filling in gaps that she thinks sound right.
There’s a patch of about 50-100 stalks on the edge of my yard, I’m guessing some spilled when they were harvesting since they drive through that corner to get the semis out.
I actually tried growing store bought seeds last year, but it was a dismal failure. We moved back to this house after a few years away and didn’t get around to setting up a real garden this spring, so it’s laundry-bin potatoes and (fingers crossed) yard corn lmao.
Your corn may need nitrogen to fully grow. Have you considered doing a “3 sisters” garden? The beans and pumpkins will feed the soil with nutrient the corn needs.
I have actually, a few years back. Things grew okay, I think. With my mother’s claim of a native great(x4) grandmother and growing up near a bunch of native American historical areas, I learned about planting methods pretty early, and I’ve tried a few different gardens over the years. I have pretty bad adhd though and it usually doesn’t go well… My longest lived plant was a dracaena marginata that I made the mistake of asking my parents to care for, and returned after 8 months to find out they didn’t water it a single time. I had that thing for over a decade…
There’s a TON of clover in my yard, since I don’t really mow often (if I could, I’d only mow up against the house to keep pests away and leave everything to grow with native plants) and clover seems to pop up everywhere I mow. The wildflowers near the clover all look amazing in spring.
Sorry for rambling a bit, I might be a little toasty.
If it’s a hybrid or commercial seed you can grow small quantities you just can’t get viable growing seeds from those corns. They get inbred and lose all of the good qualities from them.
Hopefully your yard corn grows well.
I wonder if you could get sued for planting patented seeds in this manner.
Based on news articles I’ve read in the past, yes.
I want to say it was Monsanto?
If I remember right, Basically they had some crop that was resistant to a specific type of plant killer, some guy killed a bunch of his own plants in order to cherry pick the commercial ones, then the next season he grew a ton of it, and they sued him for it. I think his initial defense was basically “well it was stuff that blew into MY field so it’s fair game” (which I 100% agree with, even if I DID think plants should be patentable)
Your love is toxic
New grower love, smothering it in fertiliser and drowning it in water.
blunt but true.
Get a greenhouse You can buy cheap plastic versions
Yep, a plastic tomato plant never withers.
Being able to grow plastic tomatoes would be revolutionary. Just harvest them and throw them in the ocean to sequester CO2. Or turn them into 3D printing filament.
One of my friends was impressed by my flourishing houseplants and said they were jealous because theirs kept dying. So I gave them my secret sauce: neglect, and a lot of it.
This is exactly what happens anytime somebody comes over lol, I have a garden outside as well and the answer is always that, just leave them alone.
I water my plants like once a month, they can handle being dry for a bit.
. this goes for SUCCULENTS too, especially if go into niche succulents like iceplant(stone plants)relatives.
The number 1 killer of houseplants is root rot from over watering. Plants that need water take much longer to die than ones that have too much. They still aren’t at peak health, but they will last.
orchids especially, people ends up making them unable to flower or kill them.
That’s why I prefer growing in coco/perlite mix instead of soil. Impossible to overwater (with the downside of having to water more frequently)
Thriving just to spite you
My theory on concrete and plants:
- Thats a LOT of dirt and material without any competition for the roots.
- Water/moisture is in the cracks/holes/etc… so it helps the plant with constant moisture control.
- Some plants know how to take care of rocks and paths are just big rocks.
- Random selection as this one seed is extremely good at surviving.
Just some thoughts. I have a fruit tree that LOVES it next to concrete. I get fruit every year from that thing.
I saw a comedian that said “plants die of cuddle, you gotta leave them to suffer a little to let them build character.”
Every time I see a fiddle leaf fig tree doing well I shake my head and wonder how they do it.
Right amount of light, combined with watering by dunking the pot in water long enough to actually saturate the soil (like an hour for me). Especially when you see a bud start to emerge, you need to dunk it. Otherwise the leaf will start to emerge, but stop growing, and you end up with tiny leaves.
Terra cotta spikes also help.
Lots of light, rotate it every now and then, and water deeply when it starts to get dry. I also mist it occasionally but that’s about it. That was actually a “rescue” plant a friend was going to throw out.
Ignore the photobombing pothos. I need to get it re-potted into a hanger. I propped it last year and it’s sprawling everywhere.
I have so much pothos and spider plants. They grow in anything I swear.
Yep. Every time I accidentally break off a vine on a pothos, it goes into a jar in the kitchen window and I end up with yet another pothos plant lol.
I used to set my garbage sack outside my apartment door before I would take it to the dumpster while cleaning.
Lo and behold a tomato plant started growing where I would set my garbage down. We ended up getting a bunch of tomatoes off of it.
Airplane.
But will it fruit?
No! It will vegetable
Tomato / tomato
Left is a dry, dry tomato plant. Water that bitch hard
i think you can “train” your tomatoes over multiple generations to be able to survive with nearly no additional water. they will build extremely long roots, and you don’t have to water them so often as you do with normal tomato plants.
but the seeds you buy are coming from tomatoes that where never short on water, so they need water and will not build long roots.
