One of my unstable basils mutated
It’s a Mrihani x Opalescent basil hybrid, I have about two dozen of these started with a variety of mutations. Most of them have mottled green (as well shown by the plant to the left) and all of them have a beautiful metallic purple shimmer to them. This gorgeous seedling is a beautiful example of a whorled phylotaxy, having four leaves per node instead of two.
I’m going to try to see if I can get this mutation somewhat stable, as it’s double your basil per basil, and who wouldn’t want that?
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I absolutely want double basil and you're doing awesome stuff. I will watch for more. What kind of turn around can you get on generations with your set up?
Having said that (and knowing plat breeding is older than civilization), my first reaction was - this sounds like the log book found in a post-apocalyptic world.
Hidden away in a Vault-Tec lab once you slash and burn your way through a tangle of carnivorous vines that consumed the bunker's former residents. Good basil though.
Vault-Tec scientist: *rips a fat dab* what if we dedicated an entire vault to making the perfect margherita pizza
Honestly I just moved to a new house and I have a decent ish growing space, a 16’x60’ (~5x18m) and 30’x35’ (9x9.5m) plot in my back yard and a 20’x25’ (6x7.5m) room in my basement I’m turning into a hydroponics and indoor farm setup. With the move I’ve changed growing zones a lot and am now on the border of Canada so I don’t know how the plants will react yet.
I was thinking a more Cave Johnson approach,but I’ll totally be the vault overseer doing agriculture experiments that decides the best way to get more harvest and save space is to double the plant per plant.
Neat
What does that process look like?
Basil is self pollinating so I’ll probably keep this one separate, maybe even indoors in a grow tent and probably take some clones from it. From that I’ll let a bunch of stalks or clones flower, collect the seeds, start a fresh batch and cull all the seedlings that do not exhibit the mutation.
Get some healthy plants from that seed stock, breed them back with the original non mutated line to keep it from getting too inbred, harvest seeds, and start and cull those again keeping the desired traits. Eventually you should be able to get ~50-80% of the seeds to grow with the mutation. That’s a completely made up range but you can get mutations and crosses pretty reliable usually.
The most difficult part is keeping them from crossing with other basils, but that’s just because they are very easy to breed and cross and bastardize. Which is how you get here in the first place, I suppose.
That's really cool, I'm looking forward to future updates :)
Basil would be a good name for a fictional character who obsessively whacks his weed.
@Keilik “Unstable Basil” sounds like the hero of a series of children’s books.
That's really interesting. How'd you end up with unstable basil in the first place?
The Experimental Farm Network store! Really cool stuff available there.
Their website has some interesting offerings. Thanks for the tip!