You Grow Girl™

Well, boy howdy how the summer has flown by. A reader, Chris let me know that my Brandywine tomato was suffering from blossom drop because Davis is too darn hot for the poor thing. I could have covered it with shade cloth and gotten more fruit off of it but I have been very lazy. I have had three tomatoesoff the plant and they have been fabulous. I have been treating them like gold - they are so rare! The biggest one yet is still ripening now and I have been watching it with anticipation.

My sungold cherry tomatohas been prolific and I have had lots and lots of yummy fruit off it this summer. I noticed yesterday that several of my strawberry plants have put out successful runners.

I have been busy with lab work this summer. I took on a half time job helping my advisor's post-doc with some research on a weedy grass. This grass is a relative of wheat and is a hybrid of two ancestral species that occur in Europe. Either of the two ancestral species can be the maternal parent in this hybrid. The weedy grass here in California is known as goatgrass. It is starting to invade areas of serpentine soil - a soil so inhospitable that it has mostly remained uninvaded by European grasses. My job this summer is to look at the chloroplast DNA from weedy goatgrass plants to try to determine if they are from a single maternal ancestral species or both. The overarching question is what kind of plants become invaders? Is it a specialized subset or just any plant that happens to be in the right place at the right time?

We have moved to another place, mostly. I am thinking of the rent we are still paying at the old place as tomato rent. (It's worth it!) I haven't moved any of my perennial grasses from the ground of the old place into the new place - I'm waiting to see how much energy I have before deciding whether to do it or not. We have housemates at our new place. One of them, SuperC, has a huge container garden that she moved from their old place, including at least four tomato plants. SuperC is a container plant goddess in my book. I look forward to watching her in action.