Have I sold 16 people a pig in a poke?

[PiggyPokkyFool]

Name changed as this is very outing.
The facts: Saw YouTube video about growing tomatoes from a slice of tomato, had some v tasty cherry ones from supermarket so planted 3 slices with low expectations. 3 weeks later, 54 seedlings, transferred to larger pots expecting to lose half, 52 survived - nearly all grew looking super healthy - had 49 tomato plants. Couldn't possibly use all so planted some, gave away some and had 28 tomato plants left. Got the bright idea of selling them on our local group for 50p each - sold all bar 3 which I offered some to my much older, much wiser chum and he said " Oh, no thanks as they are probably F1s so won't produce anything". Have I sold 16 people a pig in a poke? Never mind friends who think I am a great grower

I do Bob but they need to be a decent grape size to taste really nice I think - I look for size and a decent pattern on the outside to be sure it is ready.
Timing is everything. The friend who was looking after darling cat and watering if necessary didn't pick enough much it seems and I came back to runner beans the length of my forearm - whereas I like them the length and half the thickness of my index finger.
I'm a fussy bugger!

My butternut squashes keep setting fruit which looks lovely for a couple of weeks and then shrivels up Are you sure they're getting pollinated? If this might be a problem, at the end of the day, take a male flower from another plant, and up-end it into the female flower so the pollen comes into contact with the stigma of the female plants and leave it there.

I have to hand-pollinate my courgettes because I grow them in tubs in the greenhouse to avoid slugs. Next year I'm going for one of the parthogenetic varieties.

I had them in sacks, at first they grew a nice lot of leaves and as per internet advice I dutifully covered leaves with more soil. It looked at first like they were pushing the soil up and about to break through, but then they just stopped. I don't think you're supposed to cover all the leaves, I always leave the top 6 inches clear. Putting a load of soil on top is quite a good weed suppression technique (it's the basis of double digging for example), so it might be the earthing up rather than the soil that killed them.

I used to grow potatoes reasonably successfully down at the bottom of my clay garden in an area which becomes a 6 inch deep puddle for several houses after heavy rain.

Earthing up isn't vital, and never seems to work as well as they say.

How do you tell male from female flowers? The female flowers have an embryonic squash just behind the flower, the males don't. Internally, the females have a sticky stigma ready to cling on to pollen brought in by a bee, the males have a superficially similar structure, but it releases the pollen, so after about midday it has yellow powdery pollen all over it. And of course it's not sticky because its purposes is to make sure that the bee gets covered in the pollen.

Both male and female flowers have nectar to attract the bees, which has a side effect of making the flowers sweet and delicious - if you have too many male flowers, you can dip them in batter and fry, or shred them into salad. One way to deal with a courgette glut is to remove some of the courgettes before they've been pollinated, while they still have the flowers attached, and fry the whole thing in batter. I've never had enough to try!

Wrt the F1 question ^thread, surely the bees do the business so you have no idea what they are 'hybridising' with, or what the resultant toms will be?

Wanting to fry battered courgettes and flowers for my lunch now after reading this! sounds so yum.

Bob That sounds about right! The purpose of sexual reproduction in flowers is to get a genetic mix in the offspring, so that if conditions change, even though the parents may day, one of the offspring may have the characterisitics to survive. Whereas if the offspring are genetically identical to the parents, a change in conditions can wipe out the lot. So courgettes and squashes start by producing male flowers, that way they get their pollen scattered to pollinate flowers of other plants. Then they produce female flowers (with only the occasional male), so that their own flowers are pollinated with pollen from other plants and not by their own pollen. Fine when there's lots of plants around, but makes life difficult when you have only one or two plants. Yes, that bigger squash is looking hopeful, the fact that it's grown along with the fact it's still looking shiny and fresh.

Wrt the F1 question ^thread, surely the bees do the business so you have no idea what they are 'hybridising' with, or what the resultant toms will be? The tomato fruits are part of the parent plant so aren't affected by hybridising, but as you say, the bees will ensure a good mixing of pollen.

The point about the F1 generation is that it's the offspring of two strains of very low variability, so for all intents and purposes the F1 generation can be regarded as uniform. Genetically, you can think of it as one parent having two copies of the A gene and the other having two copies of the B gene, so the offspring all inherit an A from one parent and a B from the other, so are all AB.

If you exclude bees, or the only plants around are your F1 hybrids with their AB genetic makeup, what happens in the F2 generation is that each parent can pass on either their A gene or their B gene. So the resulting offspring can have an A gene from both (AA), and A from one and a B from the other (AB) or a B from both (BB). So about half the plants will have the same AB make-up as the F1 generation, and the rest will be either AA or BB. This is what they mean when they say that the F1 generation doesn't breed true.

Multiply this up by all the different genes, and you can see that the F2 generation can be very mixed indeed. Sorry if someone's said all this already, I ducked out of the thread for a while in the middle and may not have caught up with everything.

@MereDintofPandiculation - a truly fabulous clear explanation there.
So much knowledge on this thread I want to keep it going forever. Tomatoes are ripening at pace now and we have whole vines where all bar the last one or two are ripe - I think they could be the best tomatoes I have ever grown.
Cucumbers and cucamelons are especially prolific this year and we have some beautiful purple french beans which, sadly, lose their colour when cooked but look amazing in the garden.
@BobTheDuvet - your tomatoes look amazing and I now want to grow squash too. Keep the pictures coming.

we have some beautiful purple french beans which, sadly, lose their colour when cooked but look amazing in the garden. yes, I grow those too. I've tried red-flowered broad beans, which also looked amazing, but sadly their yields weren't good for me.

At the other extreme, I once grew some yellow alpine strawberries. Far from being the bright golden yellow I envisaged, they were a pale greeny yellow almost indistinguishable from unripe fruit ... slowed picking down no end. Never again!

And another colour venture that didn't work for me - a dark purple potato almost invisible against the black-brown of my much enriched soil.

@MereDintofPandiculation - that reminds me of the pineberries - had to best their ripeness by waggling the fruit - not ideal at all!
Well I can most definitely say that the tomatoes are divine - so so sweet and tasty. Yum yum.
How is everyone else doing - many many pics required.

Looking great bob!

No pics here, I ate the subjects .

Oh @BobTheDuvet - that's amazing. I will post some up to date ones tomorrow.

PiggyPokkyFool.. just catching up after a long time away. The cucamelons look fab and they sound great for lunch boxes! I have tiny cucumbers just coming on a plant which was the baby of a late starter which died in the heat wave a few months back. I hope they get to a good enough size to eat but not too hopeful.

BobTheDuvet.. what beautiful butternuts!

My tomatoes are ripening nicely and pumpkins too in time for Halloween. Pic to follow tomorrow

Hello everyone. Just running out the door so here's a quick pic of this morning's harvest.