The blue gradient seen on these kernels is nice. It'll be interesting to see how they look when fully dried.

It also looks like there may be some red genes in the mix.

Most of my corn patch this year ended up growing to about 6 feet tall. Selecting for larger cobs last year overwhelmed the shorter stature genetics I started with. That said, the cobs are still maturing much earlier than my neighbor's conventional corns.

Some peppers out in the garden.

If the mature petals show only blue pigment, this tells me the version of the red pigment gene in this species isn't expressed in the flowers. Thus, the magenta hybrid with runner bean (P. coccineus) would be heterozygous for red and heterozygous for blue pigment expression in the flowers.

One remaining question is about how the red and blue alleles from my common bean (P. vulgaris) line works. This photo tells me the blue pigment is expressed in the flowers, but maybe also the red.

This seedling has an unexpected variegation. There are several varieties around with this sort of pattern, but maybe the flower here will be a new color for the group.

I planted all the remaining seeds from that cross this spring, yielding another dozen plants.

That next spring, I planted a bunch of seeds, yielding 11 plants.

A few years back, I crossed these two bearded irises. At left is "Hello Darkness". At right is "Thornbird".

These are what remains of a tomatillo longevity experiment. These were harvested at the end of last fall and have been sitting un-refridgerated since then (~8.5 months).

Both of these flowers were produced by hybrids between Phaseolus coccineus and P. vulgaris, produced from the same cross.

This is a variety called "Painted Lady". www.marysheirloomseeds.com/products/pai... It has the red pigment turned off both in the seed coat and in the lower petals. I suspect the genetics here would let me produce a bright magenta and blue flower.

The red pigment is important in the stress response of plants, so simply turning off the gene isn't going to work. I have a variety that has the red & blue pigments turned off in the seed-coat, but red is still active in the flowers. This is likely due to a promoter mutation.

My project to make a blue seeded version of Phaseolus coccineus has developed into a project to make a blue-flowered version, too. The typical runner bean has both red and blue pigments in the seed coat, but only red is expressed in the flowers.

My Phaseolus coccineus (runner bean, or ayacote) project started with two varieties from Mexico. Those started blooming on Sept 6, 2023. The F1 bloomed on Aug ~6, 2024. The F2s started blooming on July 1, 2025. The F3s started blooming on June 20, 2026.

These two old roses were on the property when we moved here. The first was heavily overgrown and struggling. The second was invisibly small in the grass.

These Siberian irises volunteered here. They've never gotten any care (aside from not being mowed), and the only water they get is from rain. They will probably have purple flowers, eventually.

I also culled any plants that were developing spines. This trait also wasn't obvious on the seedlings previously.

After cutting out the entirely green seedlings (leaving the smaller ones that had still been shaded), it became clearer that there are two different pigment intensity groups. This is what I was expecting, with homozygous plants being darker and heterozygous being lighter.

It turns out that the pigment only really shows up when the seedlings get exposed to ultraviolet light. The glass of the greenhouse blocks most UV, and the crowded pots blocked even more. It was only when they were spaced better outside that the color appeared.

When I started these eggplants, I thought I had messed up and used the previous year's seeds because pigmented stems were very uncommon when I was expecting ¾ to have the trait.

And that next cohort has just germinated!

The typical range of American Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) is far south of me (smiley face). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diospyr...

I'm down to three trees from a cohort of 16 seedlings of my American Persimmon project. These three have survived two winters that killed 13 of their siblings.

One of my longer running projects is to adapt Siberian irises to our sandy soils. I planted about 30 seedlings, and then over the years, I culled those that didn't thrive without supplemental water in my sandy soil.

There were some unusual and unexpected traits. Like the spotting pattern on these pods. The plant wasn't very productive, so those seeds didn't contribute to this year's population.

The largest pod last year from my superhot population weighed in at 2⅝ oz. That's not in the range of the heaviest peppers, but it makes for a pretty huge jalapeño type pepper. The stem showed splitting from the aggressive pod growth.

Flowers on a couple of plants last year had distinctly bi-toned flowers.petals.

Regarding last year's crop... Pods from each plant went into individual bags. The pods in each were weighed, then arranged into a histogram. The left column ranges from 10 to 19 grams. The right most bag is 293 g. Most plants fell in the range of 40 to 79 g.