It was years later that I did the investigation. My parents had moved away years before my brain randomly connected the memories leading me to look into it.

bsky.app/profile/theb...

After several years, there was only one unaccounted for, and he was much taller than the depression would indicate.

Thus, that one was a dog or such. I may go dig it up sometime, to be sure.

There was one rectangular depression I found in edge of the woods behind my parent's house. This paired with them reporting a year of horrible stench from those woods that they couldn't identify the source of... led me to investigate the missing persons from the area.

The usual cause of suspicious depressions in a yard in my area is the location of a tree stump that has passed from memory.

That won't increase the availability of nitrogen, but might lead to better grass growth due to improved fungal action in the soil.

It would depend on the history of lawn care in that spot, too. Spraying for broadleaf weeds would have impaired the usual succession patterns. The extra nitrogen would then lead to taller, darker green grass.

I just realized I missed a key part. I wasn't just growing random things continuously. I was looking for reduced fungal disease on the plants and then growing from those seeds at each step.

Now, I routinely grow a small set of locally adapted varieties that aren't bothered by the fungal diseases.

I bet you could solve your powdery mildew problem over a few years.

I used to have a lot of difficulty with Septoria leaf spot up here. After several years of growing random hybrids and the resulting F2 populations, I no longer have any fungal diseases on my tomatoes.

Even the occasional late blight isn't really a problem.

Mexico has a similar full name, "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" (United States of Mexico). Strangely, people don't refer to them as EUs or USians...

That trait, paired with a mutation that interferes with the plants' normal breakdown of fruit tissue to release the seeds, would lead to a very long storing tomato.

Here's an article talking about how storage tomatoes have very thick skin. www.foodgardenlife.com/learn/winter...

The commercial types for shipping have a mutation called rin that interferes with the ripening process. Those fruit are later induced to ripen using ethylene gas, the normal ripening hormone.

The storage tomatoes ripen fully, but then don't spoil. How they work isn't known exactly.

There are people working on similar storing varieties of tomatoes.

I might end up trying to get some of those genetics into my projects.

It could have lasted longer, but I needed the seeds within it.

The fruit weren't exactly in eating condition at that point, having lost moisture slowly over time, but definitely had not spoiled.