We had a wonderful growing season in 2024, with warm dry weather extending well into October. The peppers were especially sweet and the flowers were glorious and healthy. We took part in the 10th Annual Culinary Breeder’s Variety Showcase in Portland in September, along with 30 other breeders, each paired with a chef to prepare a dish that features an original new variety. Chef DaMenga Weaver (Gado Gado Restaurant) prepared our ‘Early Long Orange Bell’ pepper in 3 different ways (fresh, fermented, and dry-ground) to create a pepper blini topped with corn and pepper relish dusted with pepper powder. It was an amazing dish, and the event is amazing as well. It was started by our friend Lane Selman, who credits a pepper tasting event at a Portland restaurant in 2014 (in which she featured our ‘Stocky Red Roaster’) with inspiring the idea of pairing chefs with breeders to bring attention to the culinary importance of plant breeding. Lane founded the Culinary Breeders Network to pursue this work.

-FHM

Karen and I in an unruly corner of our wild garden. It was another good year.

'Freedom Mix' lettuce alongside 'Winter Bloomsdale' spinach in flower.

'Black Peony' poppies raising their heads to bloom.

Victor harvesting peppers.

'Paradoxa Yellow' echinacea, Karen's favorite.

Agrostemma 'Ocean Pearl.' So many flowers!

Looking into 'Lava Lamp' lettuce.

Essential worker.

Purple echinacea.

Every pollen grain is a free-living plant in the gamete stage of life.

'Jim Bagget's Choice' zinnia

Ladybird vs Black Aphis in the great balancing act.

A favorite Bagget's zinnia, bagged for hand pollination.

'UV Bee' zinnia, a bumble bee favorite.

Red clover, our favorite cover crop for making a nutritive mulch, nearly ready to mow.

Red clover is a favorite food for bumble bees.

Blue flax (and phacelia) are good companions to Red clover in a cover crop mix.

'Chim Chiminee' rudbeckia, one of the most diverse.

Honeybees prefer the disc flowers of zinnia, while people marvel at the ray flowers ("petals").

Echinacea world.

The genetic complexity of pigments and their placements (in scabiosa).

The living soil; nightcrawler burrows create verticle channels for roots reaching deep into the subsoil.

The twelve stages of being a Chocolate Flower, from bud to seed.

John Navazio's sunflowers, a final gift from my friend and mentor.

'Tickle Pink' cosmos.

A picotee breeding project in scabiosa.

A train of amaranth harvest sliding to the drying shed.

'Gatherer's Gold' in yield-per-plant collections.

'Stocky Red Roaster' on the left; on the right, ('Stocky Red' X 'Cayenne') X 'Stocky Red.' This is called a backcross, creating a breeding line that is 75% sweet, thick-walled 'Stocky Red' and 25% long slim 'Cayenne.'

A lettuce seedhead "defluffed" by rain, revealing black seeds still held tightly in their cups. This a result of breeding. A wild lettuce has cups that shatter open to release their seeds. Selection against seed shatter is the first stage in crop domestication.

When rain threatens drying seed, we make a Morton's jelly roll to cover and wait out the weather.