English Telegraph Experiment – One More!

Everyone, including myself, will inevitably makes some mistakes. The mistake that I happened to make with my recent English Telegraph experiment was that I left seed of one seed supplier out. The seed supplier in question was Stokes Seed, from Canada. Unfortunately, Stokes seed is unwilling to sell to anyone outside of Canada, so I had to work with some Canadian friends of mine to acquire the variety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the greenhouse was full, I started a few more seeds in some soil blocks and transplanted them into a friend’s plot that I refer to as “the fertile garden”. The plants did alright, but struggled for most of the season due to overhead watering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was finally able to harvest the mature fruit, they were seedless. It looks like finding an English Telegraph cucumber variety that will work for me will take quite a while.

English Telegraph Cucumber Experiment

One extremely popular cucumber that is very difficult to find is called the English Telegraph or sometimes also called the “Telegraph Improved”. Some of the drawbacks of this variety as a grower include the fact that it does not care much for hot weather and is extremely parthenocarpic. Because the female flowers set fruit without pollination, this makes the English Telegraph very difficult for saving seed. When I say difficult, I mean that some fruit will go from blossom to maturity without the flower opening up. This makes pollination practically impossible. Even with those flowers that do blossom, 20 seeds per fruit is an extremely high count and average counts for this variety average about 5 seeds per fruit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With such an abysmal outlook on the harvest, why would anyone want to try saving seeds of this variety? Because it can be grown in a greenhouse, has nice long cucumbers and, once established, is generally easy to care for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over time I have had difficulty sourcing seed for this variety, so I decided to try growing some seed for myself. In my greenhouse, I began by trying to grow some seed from three different sources including the GRIN government repository, Some from Seed Savers Exchange and few leftover seeds from the old Sustainable Seed Company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The GRIN repository variety did alright, but over time it became very apparent that the variety was not true-to-type. The cucumbers did grow, but they were a bit warty and short – nothing like the regular English Telegraph. However, they were parthenocarpic – producing fruit without pollination. After a little while, I tossed the plants. This variety failed the true-to-type requirement of my experiment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Old Sustainable Seed Company seed produced great looking straight cucumbers that – more often than not – looked just like the English Telegraph cucumber should. However, the problem was that once harvested the fruit had no seed in them. To add insult to injury, I had absolutely no seed left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the Seed Savers Exchange English Telegraph was true-to-type, a little curved, slightly bitter and produced some seed – but none was viable. At least with the Seed Savers variety, I had a jumping off point for future grow-outs. Finally, I have the opportunity to try growing more English Telegraph cucumbers in the future.

2020-2021 Winter Potato Experiment

Over the winter between 2020 and 2021 I conducted a winter potato experiment. I found that Yukon Gold potatoes could be grown in Zone 9b over the winter, howbeit they don’t enjoy it much. That being said they did a lot better than I would have thought. The main concern that would take place is that the health of the foliage would decline over January and February. This is likely because of the minimal amount of light at that time of year.

 

 

 

For anyone who resides in a moderate climate where the yearly low hovers around freezing (between 30 and 32), I decided to try growing potatoes over the winter of 2020. I'm in Northern California Bay Area 9b. I began with organically-grown disease-free potatoes. For context, I planted into 3 different plots in different locations. I mainly grew Yukon Gold. So this is what I learned:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1: Potatoes can grow over the mild winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 2: As soon as they are damaged by a light frost, the above-ground growth will stop, but the below ground growth will continue. On a related note, once frost damage has occurred, the potato tubers do not send out additional growth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3: Squirrels leave the potatoes alone! (=

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 4: If you have a sheltered area with lots of radiant heat in the evenings, you may be able to grow potatoes without any concerns. Though a few potato plants in my raised bed garden received a little damage, the majority are still growing. (The other two plots did freeze, but not a hard frost).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5: As a summer gardener, I plan to start my next potatoes in September/October instead of November/December.

 

 

 

 

 

I hope this helps those of you who live in areas where you would like to grow potatoes, but have summers that are too hot to grow them.