Iraqi Sunflower

   Along with the arugula and garden cress, the local workers at Contingency Operating Base Basrah gave me some sunflower seeds in exchange for some snap pea seeds I gave them. I planted this variety in 2010 and attempted to save seeds. Unfortunately, weevils got to most of the flower and I was only able to salvage a few viable seeds. I planted the four or five seeds I had saved this year. Two came up and a rabbit ate one seedling. Below is my sole plant this year. A groundhog ended up snapping the flower off before maturity but I luckily found about 5 or 6 more of the original seeds I was given in 2010.
   It is a smallish plant as far as sunflowers go, about 3 feet tall. If the weevils groundhogs don't get to the flower this year (they did), I am going to distribute a small number of seeds. I cant help but find symbolism in coincidence. Sunflowers face east when they mature, towards the rising sun. In the last days of the American military involvement in Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom became Operation New Dawn. This flower looks east both to its home 7,000 miles away and the new dawn.

Garden Goggie

Lucy aka Goose/Gooser/Goosamax loves being around me and occasionally volunteers her services in excavating the garden. For this, she gets scolded and has come to associate certain plots with incidents where she killed one of my goddamn plants aerated the soil. The background here is such a crime scene, hence her look of sheepish happiness. Being with master (good)/being scolded (bad). Her face says it all.

Mexican Queen

     This is the F2 of Mexican Queen. The F1 generation was regular leafed. My sole planting for this year turned out to be potato leafed so subsequent generations should retain this foliage.
   German Queen is a large pink potato-leafed beefsteak tomato with a mild but rich taste and a lot of flesh in comparison to the gel. The plant is fairly large and fairly resistant to disease and environmental stress. Like Marianna's Peace, which it reminds me a lot of, German Queen is a modest producer.
     Mexico Midget is a wild variety from Mexico that puts out a profusion of small, currant sized packs of flavor. Rather than the generic sweetness of most cherries, Mexico Midget has an amazingly full flavor. It also almost never splits from rainfall and is a heavy producer once it gets going. The plant itself is slow to germinate, wispy, and grows very long vines.
     Mexican Queen has a fair amount of gel and the dominant flavor is more MM than GQ. More productive than GQ but less than MM. Overall this variety seems to split the difference between the two. A fun little tomato from two great parents. Bred in the USA from Mexican and German parents.

Gimli

     This is the F3 of my cross between Large Red Cherry and Hillbilly Potato Leaf. Go here for an overview of gene segregation in tomatoes subsequent to hybridization: http://kdcomm.net/~tomato/gene/genes2.html
     My growouts were limited to a few plants per generation and so far only one plant at F3 showed any variation. Hillbilly Potato Leaf is, unsurprisingly, potato-leafed and Large Red Cherry has regular foliage. Gimli is regular-leafed and like both parents, produces a very large plant. In 2011, this was by far my largest plant, nearly twice as tall as the next largest plants. The fruit split the difference between both parents. HBL is yellow shot with orange and red. LRC is red. Gimli is a fairly uniform orange. Gimli is a very small beefsteak with a mild sweet taste that is slightly more acidic than HPL. Below is a pic of the fruit from my one variation along with some Yellow Pear tomatoes. This plant bore heavily ribbed fruits that were more acidic and had more gel. Bred in the USA.