Kishu Mandarin Update

The Kishu Mandarin tree that I planted last November (see this blog entry) is growing really well.

The tree contains a lot of little green fruit.

I expect to have a lot of fruit ready to eat in a few months.

Clone, Cut back or Seed?

What is better?

To Cut back an existing Cherry Tomato Plant, to Clone a plant from another plant, or to start a new plant from seed?

The picture above shows 4 Cherry Tomato plants in my garden.

The two to the left were started from seed about 2 months ago ( see this blog entry)

The one that is third from the left was cloned (see this blog entry) from another Sun Gold Cherry Tomato plant also about 2 months ago.

The one that is at the right was a Sun Gold Cherry Tomato plant that I cut back (i.e. pruned heavily) (see this blog entry) to remove all of the dead branches about a month ago.

The Clone Cherry Tomato plant is doing the best. It is a foot taller than the Cherry Tomato plants that were started from seed. This is the advantage you get by cloning.

The two Cherry Tomato plants that were started from seed are also doing well.

However, the Sun Gold Cherry Tomato plant that I had cut back is not doing well. I think the plant got damaged when I pruned it so much. Next time, I will just remove the plant instead of trying to prolong it's life by pruning.

First Okinawan Sweet Potato

Today, I found my first Okinawan Sweet Potato.

I started the Okinawan Sweet Potatoes from cuttings about 3 months ago ( see this blog entry).

The cuttings took and produced a lot of leaves.

I was curious as to whether all those leaves produced any Sweet Potatoes.

So, today, I started digging.

I dug and dug.

Finally, at about 8 inches down, I found this Okinawan Sweet Potato.

You can see the purple flesh that is characteristic of the Okinawan Sweet Potato at the bottom right corner of the picture.

You can see the Sweet Potato is starting to produece a shoot (see the green part coming out of one of the roots).

The Sweet Potato is still a little bit small for my taste.

I put the Sweet Potato back in the ground.

I'll check again in another month or two.

10/11/09 Update: See this blog entry