Here is another happy surprise. The cross of PI120256 X Danko is already setting and growing fruit.
PI 120256 was very vigorous but very late to fruit last year, in spite of many small flower clusters along the main stem which were all dropped. It had flower clusters of 4-6 later in the season but never set more than 2-3 for me in a cluster. Danko was a complete contrast to this, a very sparsely foliated and weakly suckering plant with large flower clusters that set with no drops, although the fruit were not grown all at once; some of the first cluster fruit were merrily grown to a good size late in the season. I thought Danko would benefit from some of that vegetative vigour as well as the cold tolerance trait in PI 120256, but I expected the F1 grow to be a tedious wait and a taxing use of space.
The F1 plant has decent clusters of about 7 flowers each, and the first cluster has behaved more like the Danko parent, with at least one fruit well under way and no sign of dropping the other, less than pea sized set. The plant is sturdy and vigorous and should have enough leaf area to be more productive.... high hopes!
