Since spring is coming soon, here's a quick summary of all my garden projects.
Blue carrots: I'm growing a patch of the two varieties that crossed to make the carrot pictured here. Next year, they'll cross, and then in the 2nd year, I'll have more of these roots.
Tomatoes: I'm growing out an F2 population derived from a cross between my white cherry tomato and my pink/yellow-striped beefsteak tomato.
The F1 was medium-sized and orange.
Tomatoes: I'll be setting up a cross between the GMO purple tomato and an elongated type with a SUN overexpression mutation as a first step towards a black heart tomato.
Tomatillos: The next generation of my purple storage tomatillos will be grown.
The goal for these is to be able to store them at room temperature in home conditions from one harvest until the next so that you can have the fresh fruit year-round (if you plant enough).
These are somewhat tricky. To properly select for such long-storage, I'd need to grow them in alternate years.
That said, almost all of my fruit have survived intact since harvest last fall, but I'll sacrifice a few for seeds to use this year.
Blue runner beans (Ayacotes Azul): I'll be growing out these cream-colored runner beans and some of my blue common beans together to get hybrids.
The goal is to introgress the blue trait into the larger bean type.
@thebiologistisn what do your blue beans look like cooked? when i was little my grandmother grew blue green beans and i was always so disappointed when they turned back to green during cooking 😂
@Satsuma Unfortunately, like all beans, they darken to shades of brown when cooked.
The commercial canning process has the potential to keep some of the blue color, just like canned red beans keep their red, but it'll be a while before I can find out.