PERMABREED

 Medlar (mespilus germanica). Growing medlar from seed is tricky. It is said to need a very long period of cold stratification followed by warm stratification and then again cold. I put my medlar seeds in sand in the fridge. They stayed there for 3 months. I then found a comment by a french guy on the internet who said he scarifies his seeds and soaks them in water for 8 to 10 days, regularly changing the water and then he sows them and they end up germinating. So i took half of my seeds out and scarified them and put them in water for a few days and afterwards into moist tissue at room temperature but nothing happened. I then thought of cracking them open with pliers. I did that and found only 8 kernels in 48 seeds. So i am thinking now that medlar seeds may often not be viable. Also they all sink to the bottom in a glass of water no matter if they are viable or not. The seeds themselves look a bit like raisins or a mix between a peach and an apple seed. The kernels of the seeds l...

 Potato onions. I bought a really large salad onion from an organic shop and planted it in my polytunnel. I planted six potato onions around it to try and cross them. The idea is that if i cross the two, i might be able to grow the seeds and obtain a new potato onion variety that makes larger onions. For doing this, according to Carol Deppe and her excellent "Breed your own vegetable varieties" book, it would be a good idea to pollinate the potato onion with the salad onion pollen. The reason for this is that the female parent that makes the seeds should be the variety that has the important genetic traits. If both make seed i will try and grow all of the seeds to see the difference.

 Feijoa (acca sellowiana). I ordered 5 different varieties of feijoa sellowiana to try and grow them here outdoors. I am keeping them in pots until they are a bit bigger. This ensures that the plants have a bigger root system and is generally helpful to increase your chances of success when planting a borderline plant outdoors. Borderline because they come from Brazil and even if they have a surprisingly high frost tolerance, growing here in cool, rainy brittany is entirely different to the climate they are accustomed to. There is one additional advantage to feijoa, however, and this is that even if they never manage to fruit well here, the flowers they make are absolutely delicious and edible. So if nothing else we will get really nice tasting flowers from these plants.

 Potato onions. I sowed the potato onion seeds in polysyrene boxes that i can pick up for free at the fishmonger. I don't really like them because it's a toxic material, i think, but they are free and they insulate really well. Also the supermarket who uses them just disposes of them anyway and they are then burnt at the incinerator so i am giving them a second life before i get rid of them then. Kelly Winterton told me to sow the seeds in february to get a good head start on the growing season. I sowed them on the 25th of january. Nothing has come up yet. I also decided to buy an indoor growing lamp to be able to give them a good start in life until i put them in my tunnel in mid march.

 Lychee. I am growing lychees from seed for fun now since my son loves to eat them. I was wondering whether you could grow them in my climate and a quick search made me realize that it is probably impossible. The only chance at growing a lychee that will fruit, here where i live, is to grow it in my polytunnel and to prune it to keep it small. Nothing much will probably ever come out of this, but it's fun to grow them from seed. The seeds don't need any stratification. You just keep them moist and sow them once they crack open. Lychee seeds germinating

 Avocado frost damage. Now as more days and weeks have passed the true damage is much more visible. I built a structure out of sheep fence and metal hoops that i placed over the tree to be ready to put a protective vlies over it should we get more frost again this winter. I hope that the tree will recover and grow again this year. Most leaves are really brown and burnt now. There is a bit of green left and i can see tiny green shoots. If i can manage to protect it from the next frost, i reckon it should grow back again in spring.

 Avocado frost damage! My mexicola avocado got quite heavily damaged by frost as it has been very cold here recently. I decided to put some frost vlies over it. I hope it will survive this winter and grow again next year. I am trying to find out when young mexicola seedlings might start to flower and if there is any techniques to speed up flowering and fruit production. mexicola tree damaged by frost. The young tree is about 1.2 meters high. a close up of the top of the tree