Post by canadamike on Aug 23, 2011 19:54:55 GMT -5
I do not have a garden of my own this year: having moved 400 kilometers away from where I was, I did like many breeders do and found people ready to grow my stuff. In my case, it is mostly people that are vegetables producers and selling to markets in Montreal.I provide them with rare ( for them, not for us) seeds and they grow my stuff. They can sell it too, but I can save what I want.
Much better than having no garden...
Last year I grew 200 melon cultivars. LOts of compost and manure, but no disease, fungus or else, treatment. Do your stuff and survive or die. Only 10% or so survived the huge powdery mildew outbreak we had. I did not treat, although powdery mildew is kind of easy to get rid of.
The seeds from the best ones ( pictures where posted here) were grown by my friends Michel and Victoire, and since I was not around at pollinating time, the survivors became a huge mass cross pool of fertility.
The super neat thing is everything I saved seeds from resisted and produced ''well'' under PM, none were immune but 10% or so were resistant enough to give ample fruit.
Powdery mildew was followed by the wettest August month ever, 3 times the usual rainfall of this already rainy month. Some were nevertheless totally flavorful, like Gusto 45 and Gnadenfeld and others you can see pictures of in previous posts.
Anyway, the region has gone through a severe lack rainfall problem, quite the opposite of last year, and the mass crossed melons are doing darn fine.
Very very darn fine. Excindingly darn fine. Michel transpanted them for his ''second'' batch of melons ( he grows 80 acres of veggies) and they look way better than his regular stuff. Iwould have like him to put them in the first batch, but I cannot blame a man who needs to sell to eat to go with the reliables that he knows first.
But anyway, to all melon lovers, there is amazing genetics in this pool, it has gone through hell and provided us with heavenly fruits...
This bastard is so huge I tought it was an escaped watermelon...it probably is a son of GUSTO 45 fertilized by a bee. I am pleased to think that about 1000 feet of our highly bee touched melons are growing in Ste-Madeleine. A lot of unknowns and fun...all from PM resistant cultivars..
And this one is not about melon, but about some corn grown and created by Victor Kucyk, the ''Tom Wagner'' of field corn. I was alone and tried my best to make a good picture, I only wanted to show how breeding took old genetics to a new level. The corn you are looking at is a mix of Wapsie Valley, Gaspé flint and Roy Callais flint.
But it went through more than 10 years of severe selection, picking the best 1% in huge fields...
I just wanted toi put it here to show how selection is important, in all veggies...
Much better than having no garden...
Last year I grew 200 melon cultivars. LOts of compost and manure, but no disease, fungus or else, treatment. Do your stuff and survive or die. Only 10% or so survived the huge powdery mildew outbreak we had. I did not treat, although powdery mildew is kind of easy to get rid of.
The seeds from the best ones ( pictures where posted here) were grown by my friends Michel and Victoire, and since I was not around at pollinating time, the survivors became a huge mass cross pool of fertility.
The super neat thing is everything I saved seeds from resisted and produced ''well'' under PM, none were immune but 10% or so were resistant enough to give ample fruit.
Powdery mildew was followed by the wettest August month ever, 3 times the usual rainfall of this already rainy month. Some were nevertheless totally flavorful, like Gusto 45 and Gnadenfeld and others you can see pictures of in previous posts.
Anyway, the region has gone through a severe lack rainfall problem, quite the opposite of last year, and the mass crossed melons are doing darn fine.
Very very darn fine. Excindingly darn fine. Michel transpanted them for his ''second'' batch of melons ( he grows 80 acres of veggies) and they look way better than his regular stuff. Iwould have like him to put them in the first batch, but I cannot blame a man who needs to sell to eat to go with the reliables that he knows first.
But anyway, to all melon lovers, there is amazing genetics in this pool, it has gone through hell and provided us with heavenly fruits...
This bastard is so huge I tought it was an escaped watermelon...it probably is a son of GUSTO 45 fertilized by a bee. I am pleased to think that about 1000 feet of our highly bee touched melons are growing in Ste-Madeleine. A lot of unknowns and fun...all from PM resistant cultivars..
And this one is not about melon, but about some corn grown and created by Victor Kucyk, the ''Tom Wagner'' of field corn. I was alone and tried my best to make a good picture, I only wanted to show how breeding took old genetics to a new level. The corn you are looking at is a mix of Wapsie Valley, Gaspé flint and Roy Callais flint.
But it went through more than 10 years of severe selection, picking the best 1% in huge fields...
I just wanted toi put it here to show how selection is important, in all veggies...