Gardening for Old Folks (Adaptative)

[sharron]

I am going to have 1 garden which is roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, mini bell peppers, thai hot peppers, carrots, leaf lettuce, beets, basil.

Another which will be summer squash (yellow crookneck and zucchini).

Then an experiment I want to try, I have seen conflicting information about using sunflower plants to grow beans up. Some people say it works great, some say the sunflowers produce something that keeps the beans from producing. So, I am going to make 2 identical small gardens modeled off of a 3 sisters garden but leaving off the squash and the only difference being one will have popcorn and beans and the other will have sunflowers and beans. I will harvest them into different containers and try to keep a running tally of how each method works and see if there is any significant difference.


Tomatoes are EASY to clone. Look at the stem of a tomato plant, all of those little hairs and bumps on the sides of the stem are potential roots, all they need is to touch soil and it will sprout roots where it touches. You can simply wait to remove your suckers until they are 6 inches or so and then cut them off and put them in moist soil to root, or, you could try air layering which involves putting a ball of moist media (usually sphagnum moss) around the stem and wrapping it with cling wrap with a loose twist tie at top and bottom, you check it every so often to make sure it stays moist (if it dries out just open the top and add water) and when you can see roots growing and bumping into the cling wrap you can cut it off right below the root ball and plant it.

wow, now thats a garden and when you get the results, i would be interested in them.
the tomatoes, before i take out and transplant, i check for suckers, and sometimes i break a limb off by accident, i put anything in a glass of water and they usually start and i fill out the holes in the garden with them, are those clones?

 

[TooCheep]

Yes. They are clones of the parent plant because they have the exact same genetics.

 

[Kusanar]

the tomatoes, before i take out and transplant, i check for suckers, and sometimes i break a limb off by accident, i put anything in a glass of water and they usually start and i fill out the holes in the garden with them, are those clones?

Yep, there are 2 forms of reproduction.
Sexual reproduction is where the plants flower and produce pollen and then seeds, the children are genetically similar but different from the parents and each other.
Asexual reproduction is where you remove a piece of the plant to produce a new plant like with cuttings and I believe with splitting bulbing plants (for sure if you break a rhysome in half and plant both pieces like daylillies) these are clones and are genetically identical to the parent plant as well as each other.

If you want to keep a hybrid plant for longer than it's natural life, such as if you want to keep a hybrid tomato for multiple years, you can save the seeds, but most hybrids do not breed true and you could get a good result or you could get something totally different, so the safer way is to do cuttings and keep the cuttings "fresh" so take a "new" part of the plant, so a new shoot or sucker and root that, then the entire new plant is young again.

Apparently though, tomatoes "know" how old they are and won't fruit until they are old enough as well as needing to be a certain size with enough roots. That is why you can sometimes have a huge plant that hasn't set fruit yet, it's not actually old enough. But apparently tomato cuttings "remember" how old they are so if the plant was fruiting when you took the cutting, as soon as the cutting is big enough and has a big enough root system to support the fruit it will start fruiting because it is already old enough.

 

[jvls1942]

our growing season is not long enough to start cloned plants.. They will start OK, but they won't mature. btdt.
...jiminwisc...

 

[jvls1942]

Merry Christmas Eve.
we are just hunkering down and staying warm.
Had a nice supper of roast beef tenderloin and baked potato.
I bottled up 2 1/2 gallons of wine today.
I gave one gallon to Randy's daughter..
Randy is our resident in our group home ..
....jiminwisc......

 

[cavemanrich]

Christmas greetings to all readers here.

 

[rjohns39]

Merry Christmas to one and all

 

[sharron]

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

 

[wyoDreamer]

Merry Christmas everyone!

I ordered some strawberry plnats, a blueberry plant and a few packets of seeds to replace what I planted this year. It's finally winter and I am already thinking spring. Lol

 

[sharron]

Merry Christmas everyone!

I ordered some strawberry plnats, a blueberry plant and a few packets of seeds to replace what I planted this year. It's finally winter and I am already thinking spring. Lol

x2