Atomic Gardening and other News

Greetings, indoor and outdoor gardeners! With the season wrapping up outdoors I will mostly have indoor projects going on for now. The only thing left outdoors that is of interest is my ayocote bean. Here's the scoop on what's been going on with it.

With the impending danger of the first frost, I just decided to cut all the pods off (except for one just in case) and use them a shelling beans. You can eat them as green beans when they're young but this far into their development they start to contain a toxic protein called lectin. It can cause a really bad stomach ache but cooking them thoroughly will neutralize it.

Some were already starting to form small speckles. I don't have any speckled ones anymore, but when they mature they darken in color.

I cooked them the same way I did in a previous post where I made frijoles de la olla except they didn't need to be soaked since they were already tender.
The next order of business is my perennial fuzzy bean, which is native to my area. I acquired it from my job.

When I planted them at work, they had a very low germination rate (only about 15%) so it was a pleasant surprise that the single bean I took actually sprouted. It probably works have kept growing but I cut it at 2 ft. After that it immediately started to bloom. Hopefully after these pods mature it will bloom again so I can get some pictures.
I also planted one white bean from a subset of smaller ones that I had. This is from an old experiment I was doing to see how much I could miniaturize the plant.

For now or will serve as a control for my current experiment.

A new bean is planted under the dome in between the small white bean and my only pea plant, for which it is too late to be planted outside.

The new bean is also a white bean. It is part of an ongoing mutagenesis project I've been mentioning for some time. Allow me to explain.

When I dismantled our old ionization type smoke alarm, I found a sliver of the radioactive element Americium inside. It is Americium-241 to be exact and emits a weak alpha radiation.

The little shiny part innate the metal circle is the source or radioactive part. The alpha particles aren't strong enough to penetrate skin so it's mostly safe, just don't ingest it.
So I put some moist seeds in a tiny glass jar with the source on top so that the alpha particles could hopefully effect the cells in the growing and dividing roots. Those plants grew and I'm still in the process of growing subsequent generations. This is how it works:

M0- The parent beans subjected to a dose of radiation

M1- Chimeric plants. This is the first generation after mutagenesis

M2- Second generation after mutagenesis. Recessive mutant alleles are likely to come out, along with lethality and infertility. Also a possibility for non-mutagenized parent types to come out. Undesirables are screened out.

M3- Viable mutants. More screening for a trait of interest.

The screening is the most important part of the experiment. Ideally, there would be a trait to notice such as different flower color, high yield, or a leaf abnormality for example and those would be the seeds that move on to the next generation while other normal ones get weeded out (no pun intended).
Right now I'm in the M2 phase. Hopefully I will get some cool different traits. If not then I'll have to plant more or get a stronger (cobalt) source or both.

Well that covers the beans. But I've still got a few more updates.

One of my San Pedro cactus seeds sprouted! Hopefully more will sprout in the coming days. This cactus is native to South America and produces mescaline, a powerful hallucinogen.

I'm also growing potatoes in water just for fun.

This one came from work.

A tiny ornamental sweet potato and an avocado whose roots I've been pruning.

Now that the tops of these potatoes are dry, it's time to harvest them.

These were volunteer potatoes, remnants of some purple potatoes I found at the store and grew in years past. I replanted the biggest one.

I got a new air plant as a gift!

It kind of matches one of my other ones. It is now part of the family.

Since it's getting cooler I'm only misting them once a week as opposed to every day. I can't wait to see some more blooms in the future!

That concludes my garden update for October. Here is the original post for the contest:
https://peakd.com/gardening/@simplymike/hive-community-garden-journal-challenge-october

If you keep plants, indoors or out, feel free to join!