Long time no see to start with. I figured this would be a topic you guys understood more given your backgrounds as actual gardening professionals. I have been thinking of transferring to FL in the next few years so don’t want to get too invested. I have made a project to get rid of the soil in all my empty grow bags and combine them. When I started doing that I have expanded my garden for a larger section for plants. I am planning to plant some cinderlla pumpkins (maxima) and above it plant zucchini. Reading online it does not seem like my maxima would cross with the zucchini but was wondering your opinions on the matter. Another thing I was wondering is about the ability to carry over ARB rosemary overwinter. While our zone has changed to zone 6 I am curious on the best ways to overwinter it outside in the winter. I did place stones around it and intend to place my row cover over it all winter. Is there anything else I should consider?
I tried keeping Arp rosemary over the winter in Spokane. One Seattle-style winter it lived. The others, well…I went through several until buying a small pot-worthy Irene rosemary. That has lived in -house 4 years now and is due to be re-potted.
I would definitely take a cutting of Arp right now & get it rooted as a back-up. It will get pretty tall if it lives, but you can put it in ground next year if the mother plant dies of cold.
Sounds like you already have some good ideas for getting Arp thru winter. Hope you can.
As for the cross-pollination of pumpkins and zucchini, all I can say is seed catalogs have a surprising array of crosses among those relations, so I’d keep them separated if at all possible. Or hand pollinate them to offset the likelihood. Your experience will teach you far more than I can advise - I, the sort of guy who could not be persuaded to grow zucchini.
I’ve never had a crookneck cross with a pumpkin. I think you are correct that the two are different enough. but I have planted seed from candy roasters that was planted by triamble, tromboncino, and other winter varieties and they all created one big monster squash hybrid when I replanted. I’m keeping some back for next year to see what it makes
crookneck and patty pan have crossed for me and made very strangely shaped guys that tasted like summer squash, they were fine. I think even if they crossed you’d just be making a land race. taste a tiny bit before you eat a lot, or cook, to make sure it’s not bitter.
arp won’t stay alive for me here, though I haven’t protected it as well as I maybe could. I keep it in a pot these days. same with tarragon, and thyme. (thyme occasionally survived a winter)
are you moving to Florida from CO? I think you’re maybe going to have an experience with humidity lol.
Zucchini is C. pepo which does not cross with C. maxima. Basically, there are 5 species of pumpkin/squash cultivated. All are exclusive only crossing within their group. It can be done in a lab using embryo rescue and has been used to move traits from one species to another. As an example, several pumpkins in the C. pepo group are currently available with genes moved from C. moschata.
C. moschata = butternut as an example
C. maxima = lots of pumpkin and winter squash types
C. pepo = summer squash and a lot of winter storage pumpkins, most diverse group
C. argyrosperma = cushaw types
C. ficifolia = black seed squash
But sometimes argyrosperma will cross with moschata, correct?
I’m at the limit of my experience with squash/pumpkins. That said, nothing is impossible. A cross between species could be as simple as mixed pollen applied to flowers where one pollen grain produces the endosperm and the other produces the embryo. It is rare, but not impossible for this type hybrid to occur. Said another way, one of the most common blocks to inter-species crosses is the failure of the endosperm to develop. If the endosperm develops from a same species pollen grain and the embryo develops from a cross-species pollen grain, then the cross can be successful. I read years ago where a very difficult cross between tomato species was successfully made using this approach. It took a few thousand attempts, but it worked.
I’m in Z6b (Western PA). I absolutely love rosemary and have tried for 7 years to get Arp to overwinter. I’ve tried a slew of approaches but have not been successful yet.
Here’s a squash that I’m pretty confident is a cushaw butternut hybrid. Saved the seeds from a butternut that was interplanted with pumpkins, cushaw, and a few mini gourds.
Here are some more from whatever got crossed.
So I had an arp rosemary in Maryland that was planted in full sun with a brick wall behind it and it always did completely fine during the winter. The thing got pretty huge too. I ripped it out last fall to plant a bush cherry in its place.
I also have BBQ rosemary and it’s been fine, except this winter it did get some frost damage on about 5 inches of all the tips (the bush is as tall as me) it’s pretty sheltered against my house.
Both of mine are in ground
Hmmm funny your thyme did not survive a winter. My thyme survived my winter and I consolidated it to try to move only a few pots to FL come a few years. The thyme took off and is going out of control in that pot. I have been to FL 7 times so FL is nothing new to me. Now gardening in FL will be new to me. Either way I am in the early stages of it. Year one was last year which was start saving as much as possible. Part 2 was this year which was consolidate and start to sell the planters. Year 3 will be sell the remaining plastic planter. The years after that will be save up leading to year 8 and around year 8 request a transfer. In trying to save all I can I have saved from 20k to around 80k in 1.5 years so making good progress towards my goal. The plants I have planned to bring are saturn donut peach, red fuji, one of the supposed self fertile pecans from Stark Brothers (tag missing now), Toka plum, pluots, purple passion asparagus, herbs and nadia cherry plum. Planning so bring the seeds of the heirloom cultivars of these squash. The humidity will certainly be a new things for me with gardening
Fusion_power,
“That said, nothing is impossible.”
Even plants in a different genus might cross, as in Fatshedera , a rare accidental cross when Fatsia japonica was in a greenhouse with Hedera helix.
I have wintered Arp over in zone 5 . It was laid in a shallow trench , covered with plastic, and mulched with hay. Not as elegant as planted in the ground, but it was too big to bring inside.
A piece of often unknown trivia is that almost all of our cultivated plants result from a cross of two different species. The cross may involve very different chromosome lengths, different genes, etc. However, one of the most common types of inter-species cross is where both full genomes combine in a single plant. This is called an amphidiploid. Some examples of common amphidiploids include rutabaga, okra, and even corn (maize). Rutabaga is a relatively recent cross basically of a turnip and a cabbage probably occurring within the last 2000 years. Okra dates back a lot further but can still be proven as an amphidiploid by comparing the chromosomes. Corn is much further back, perhaps as far back as 40 to 50 million years but still shows the effects in the genome. At one point, it was speculated that tripsacum was one of the parents, but recent genetic tests disprove that theory.
It is also common for plants to double their own chromosomes such that the offspring has a higher ploidy levely. Persimmon is a very good example with ploidy levels from diploid, to tetraploid, hexaploid, and even octoploid. Clover is another good example where kura clover has 6 sets of chromosomes where close relative common white clover is still a diploid. Morus (mulberry) has extreme examples with diploid still being common but the black mulberry has so many doubling events it is insane. I have trouble remembering “tetratetracontaploidy” which means 44 sets of chromosomes with a total count of 308.
Why make this comment? Virtually every plant you can name has experienced chromosome doubling at some point and very very many more are amphidiploids.