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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 7, 2010 18:33:24 GMT -5
Here is what my largest cantaloupe breeding patch looked like this week. (There is another small patch where I put the best of last years cantaloupes so that I could take better care of them.)  There are 4-5 plants that already have multiple melons weighing several pounds. Many of the others are barely starting to bloom. Some of the farms in the next valley over (2 weeks ahead of us) are already picking ripe melons. I have harvested seed to incorporate into my program next year. There are other places in my fields where cantaloupes volunteered after overwintering in the ground. They have been staked and flagged so that hopefully my helpers don't weed them out. Seed that germinates after spending months in the ground is very attractive to me. It would mean that I could plant as early in the spring as the soil could be worked and the plant would come up on the first possible day that it was warm enough to grow. Regards, Joseph |
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Post by grunt on Aug 7, 2010 22:42:44 GMT -5
Joseph: I've pondered over the way volunteers manage to make it through to spring and come up when the time is right, without rotting from the cold wet soil, when seed planted just a bit too early rots rather than sprouts. I have a feeling that it is related more to the over winter conditioning, than the genes in the seeds. I do hope you can prove me wrong next spring. I had watermelon and beans volunteer for me this year, a first for both. I've never been able to early plant beans, except for favas.
I think I will try fall planting a few different things, if I have the beds ready early enough to do so this fall. Just have to remember to peel back the mulch at the appropriate time.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 7, 2010 23:23:19 GMT -5
The area where the overwintered cantaloupe seeds germinated is where I piled many bushels worth of immature fruits the night before our first hard frost last year... Most of them never did mature enough to taste good and were tilled under, so the odds could be that only one seed in tens of thousands germinated. (The area was tilled at least 5 times after the seed went into the ground: 2 fall tillings and 3 spring tillings)
Weeds are one of my biggest problems when contemplating fall plantings. Though last year I planted spinach and lettuce in November and they did great in the spring.
So this summer I am solarizing a patch of ground to attempt a good kill on the weed seeds. On about september 1st I am intending to plant around 10,000 corn seeds and another 10,000 after the weather turns wintery. My intention being to see if I can discover a corn that is winter-hardy, or perhaps to discover seeds that are not bothered by cold soils.
Regards,
Joseph
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Post by wildseed57 on Aug 11, 2010 22:21:42 GMT -5
Joseph that is one big patch, i wish i had that kind of room to grow melons in, Next year I may have to move to the next town over which will put me closer to where my sister lives and the raised bed garden we share, My cousin's son is trying his hand at growing a few things and has a large garden area that I could use also. Its about a 1/4 acer and i would have plenty of room to grow what ever I want, the only thing is there is no close water source. What seems to be the best melon that you are growing this year? I have a couple LuneVille Melons and the Montreal melon which surprised me with its size. The luneville melon is smaller at least mine is. I haven't tried either yet, although I have one Montreal melon that is pretty close to being ripe. I read the story on this melon and am intrigued by it. The same goes for the Luneville melon, one thing I haven't heard is whether these melons slip from the stem when ripe or if they need to be cut. I guess i could ask Canadian Mike or Dan about them. If I do get the extra garden space I want to try and grow Ginger's Pride, its quite a large melon up to 22 pounds. From what I read about the Montreal melon it too can get pretty large also. I like a melon that will fill me up and not leave me wanting more like the smaller ones do, although some of the larger ones are rather bland and tasteless, not so from what I understand about the Montreal melon, I haven't heard just how good the LuneVille melon is, but I know that the parents of it are two very good tasting melons.
George W.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 12, 2010 0:22:27 GMT -5
My best growing cantaloupe this year is a local melon from my breeding program. The seed came from my farm or from one of the 5 neighboring farms that contributed seed (I don't know which because I blended the seeds together before planting). So far, the best two plants have produced more (not-yet-ripe) fruit (by weight) than all the rest of the patch combined. In addition to the local melons, I planted about 40 other varieties but many of them are only starting to bloom. (I don't mark the rows by variety... I just save the seed from whatever grows well... And trial some new varieties each year.)
I planted a few melons advertised as 20 pounders, but none of them have set fruit yet, and we are so close to our first frost that I don't expect any of them to ripen fruit.
It looks like one of the plants is going to produce little 8 ounce melons and they might be the first to ripen. I am excited about that one too. I think it is from the Long Island Seed Project.
I didn't get all of my space planted this spring. Too many infrastructure things to take care of in my new field. I planted gobs of squash to at least make an attempt at using most of the space.
1/4 acre can grow a heck of a lot of food for a family.
I sure don't like bland cantaloupes...
Regards,
Joseph
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Post by happyskunk on Aug 12, 2010 1:55:33 GMT -5
Love reading about and seeing the pics of your plots Joseph.
My garden is about a 1/4 acre and this time of year there is plenty for friends, family, neighbors, the market, and my belly. Tomatoes and strawberries are the most wanted at the market. I already gave up trying to hand pollinate melons. I guess I'll have a mass cross mix of melons to go with my mass cross mix of corn.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 12, 2010 3:39:46 GMT -5
I already gave up trying to hand pollinate melons. I guess I'll have a mass cross mix of melons to go with my mass cross mix of corn. Can you tell me more about your corn? I sure would like to grow my own seeds for: crookneck, zucchini, pan-squash, etc... But it seems like so much work to try and hand pollinate enough of them to keep a diverse gene pool healthy. My father has maintained his own Charleston Grey Watermelon sub-variety for years in my town, so that's what I plant since it is so well adapted. I planted blacktail mountain watermelon in my other field. I was badmouthing it the other day, but I looked closer at it today and it has some nice looking fruits that might get ripe a few weeks before our first frost... |
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Post by wildseed57 on Aug 12, 2010 9:27:15 GMT -5
When My Aunt was alive I was able to plant out the whole quarter acre it took 350ft in hoses to get to everything, what a hassle that was and the water bill during the summer was very high, but we had everything we wanted to grow and then some. I don't think I will go through that again, way to much work for one person. Missouri has just a long enough season to produce just about all the larger melons that is if they can survive the squash Bugs and mildew. I will have to look into finding a variety that is resistant to mildew and insect attack, being disabled makes it hard on me to do big grow outs, so I have scaled back and try and grow enough to produce about 8 melons for the season. There has been seasons that I have had good luck with them, low humidity and few bugs while others i was lucky to get one lousy melon for all the work I put into them. I need to go through the list of melons the USDA Grin has and see is I can find someone that is growing them. I think though that I may already have two very good melons as they have withstood just about everything that has been thrown at them. I think if I had just a little more room so that the vines to get the right amount of air flow around them I would have had better luck. Time will tell just how good they are.
George.
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Post by happyskunk on Aug 12, 2010 23:51:05 GMT -5
I hope to post a update about my corn on my blog this weekend and maybe post a few pics here. Basically I plan on growing a diverse mix of varieties each year and just letting stuff cross pollinate. Each year I will grow the mixes from past years plus new stuff. I learned this year that I need to make my circle/ovals a little bigger and not to plant so much squash near the corn because squash eats corn. The squash plants will climb ten feet to the top of the corn and drag it down. I really like the tall corn. I think next year I will focus on corn that is ten feet or taller. So far this year I have harvested and eaten some of the sweet corn (Pickaninny, Simonet, and now Buhl). I like the tenderness of Pickaninny. I also picked some Painted Mountain and Bear Island that looked pretty dry. Love looking at all the different colors. Many other varieties are looking good. Almost everything has tasseled except for what I think is Maize Morado. Maize Morado appears to have some good stalk strength, ten feet tall with no support. I had to support many others like Giant Silo which is tasseling now and over ten feet tall even though it is mostly shaded by a large tree. I have some silver queen that should tassel soon but I planted it June 20th. Also planted some Maple Sugar June 20th that the bees are going nuts on and the silks are starting to show. I really like growing a variety of types. Love growing corn! I wonder what the tallest corn I can get to mature from seed planted directly in the ground is?
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Post by grunt on Aug 13, 2010 8:06:35 GMT -5
Happy, I can give you some Mexican June that I grew by direct seeding here last year = it hit about 12' for me, and I don't think I fed it enough. If you want some, remind me when the seed list comes out this fall.
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Post by happyskunk on Aug 14, 2010 0:28:40 GMT -5
Thank you grunt,
I will definitely remind you. Mexican June corn is exactly what I would like to grow. I would like to grow some of your other favorite varieties of vegetables as well since are gardens have similar climates. I do not think I'm doing a very good job of saving seed this year but you will be welcome to take some of whatever I am able to save.
I got some organic chicken manure to till in this fall for that Mexican June corn. I also bury lots of fish heads and guts. Its too bad I don't have a neighbor that likes trout though. And hopefully I can start catching steelhead soon. How tall will steelhead fed corn grow?
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Post by happyskunk on Aug 14, 2010 9:21:19 GMT -5
Hi Joseph, I just read your page on adaptivar landraces -> garden.lofthouse.com/adaptivar-landrace.phtml. Very nice article! Looks like I'm starting to do almost exactly what you describe. I'm still somewhat confused on the difference between landraces, grexes, genepools, and mass crosses. First time I have heard of "adaptivar" landrace. Looks like I have around 20 different melons this year. Not all of them are producing fruit but all of them have flowers. I guess all of them are contributing to the mix. |
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Post by DarJones on Aug 14, 2010 13:55:55 GMT -5
Joseph,
Your breeding objectives state that you want to develop an adapted variety that will maintain high levels of disease and pest tolerance because of diversity. You use the 1970's corn crop failure as an example because a single highly inbred corn variety with cytoplasmic male sterility was used as the base for most of the corn crop. Your strategy will protect against such an event. What it won't protect against is development of a new disease pathogen for which a crop has absolutely no tolerance to start with. This scenario is what destroyed the American Chestnut tree in the early 1900's.
You can breed for adaptation to a local climate and diseases and pests presuming genes for this exist but ONLY if the genes are present in the foundation stock or can be introgressed over time. My point is simply that it is impossible to do selection unless you have genetics that convey a desirable trait and sometimes an entire species lacks such traits.
Here is an example. Septoria tolerance in tomato would be highly desirable. It decimates my tomatoes every year. A good evaluation of domestic tomato stocks shows very little tolerance available. I have exactly 2 varieties out of roughly 500 that are moderately tolerant. But among wild species of tomato, there is significant tolerance to septoria. This gives the possibility of moving the tolerance genes from the wild species into the cultivated variety.
DarJones
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 16, 2010 1:29:58 GMT -5
Septoria tolerance in tomato would be highly desirable. It decimates my tomatoes every year. I am immensely delighted to be gardening in a super arid desert: Fungus problems are so rare that they might as well be non-existent. I had one variety of cucumber one year that had a powdery mildew problem. I just stopped growing that variety. Regards, Joseph |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 16, 2010 8:04:16 GMT -5
'[Raoul Robinson Ph.D] contrasts most current resistance breeding programs that are based on single gene, or vertical resistance, to programs that are based on a quantitative multi-gene horizontal resistance. [...] He suggested that plant breeders, farmers, amateur breeders and environmentalists should seriously consider making use of horizontal resistance through what he calls "plant breeding clubs."' www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/newsltr/v10n2/sa-6.htmAnd from his book: 'They spoke of “first finding a genetic source of resistance”. It will become apparent later that this belief became a shibboleth, a myth, that has both dominated and plagued the whole of twentieth century crop science.' www.sharebooks.ca/system/files/Return-to-Resistance.pdf |
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