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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 8, 2014 4:32:16 GMT -5
I live near the edge of the ecological range of many warm weather crops. It's very common for me to have 75% to 99.8% failure rates when trying to grow crops that are commonly grown less than 50 miles away. Mixta squash and runner beans failed 4-5 years in a row before I finally got a successful harvest. That is the primary reason that I started making grex-type plantings. I figure that if I play the genetic lottery often enough, that eventually something might take. Then once I can reliably grow a crop, I can start selecting for secondary traits like flavor. The ability to reproduce is always the primary selection criteria in my garden. I can see your point given your situation. Basically, whether the produce would have been of gourmet quality is beside the point when there isn't any.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 8, 2014 4:03:06 GMT -5
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 7, 2014 22:47:33 GMT -5
Carol: Thanks for your input! I am planning on starting a maxima landrace project next year, so it's interesting to hear that I might actually do better to start with a limited number of varieties. I'm surprised to hear that you think Sweet Mama was not that sweet or dry though, I trialled it this year and it must have been one of the sweetest winter squash I've eaten (which of course might reflect that maybe I haven't tried all that many yet). What would you (or anyone else of course) say are some of the best and driest kabocha-types that I could start with? I'm looking for high dry matter and full, complex flavour but not necessarily maximum sweetness. So far I'm thinking in the direction of Blue Ballet, Marina di Chioggia and Sweet Mama. Haven't tried Sweet Meat yet, but that's on the list. I tried a buttercup but I'm unsure if it was Burgess, it was good but didn't immediately blow me away. Those would be workable choices. What size are you after? If you like Sweet Mama, I'd suggest crossing it to a number of things and looking at the F1 hybrids, then choosing which to go on with dependent on how good they are. (And yes, in most cases I would go on with just one of the crosses, not mix a lot of varieties together.) If you cross a somewhat less sweet variety like Sweet Mama F1 to sweeter types it will be easy to develop things that are like the less sweet of the parents. Sometimes when you cross two good varieties the F1 is good quality, and that usually means everything that you develop as you breed is going to be tasty. But sometimes the F1 will be poor quality. The genes for good quality are still in there, but if you start with that situation you'll have to use big numbers of F2 plants and beyond to recover good food types, and you spend lots of time growing stuff you don't want to eat for the first few generations of the project. (If you throw a lot of varieties into a pool, you'll usually have at least some combinations that give you poor culinary type, so end up with a project full of unthrilling stuff to eat that it may take years to clean up, if it's possible at all. I started several such projects and never recovered anything very much worth eating.) So since you like Sweet Mama F1, I'd suggest using it as one parent and crossing it to lots of different varieties and tasting the fruits from the resulting plants, then choosing to go on with the cross that produced the fruits you liked best. You can use that to inbreed, or just start growing it and let it open pollinate and turn into a landrace. Sweet Meat--Oregon Homestead would be a good source of size, dryness, long keeping, and thick flesh. However, it is much later than Sweet Mama. And it's big, up to 25 lbs. Most in the 15-18 range. If you want something more like Sweet Mama in size that will be easiest to get with a cross to something similar in size. Katy SToke's Sugar Meat (Nichols has the seed) is about 12 lbs, colored like a sweet meat, but much earlier and more resilient to drought or poor conditions. What color do you want? I wish someone would cross something like Sweet Mama to Dutch White Boer, the only white max I know that has great culinary quality, and develop something white but drier. And Boer has a distinctive different flavor unlike any of the blue or green maxes. Maybe you want a landrace with multiple colors. In that case you could cross your Sweet Mama to Sunshine F1. The progeny of that should be mottled green and orange. If they taste good, you can just plant 'em for a few generations and let them turn into a landrace with red, green, and mottled fruits. Both Sunshine F1 and Sweet Mama F1 are heterozygous for bush. I'm a big fan of vines. So if it were me, I would probably discard all the bush genes in the first generation. However, it sounds like you don't like squash quite as sweet as I do, so you might prefer bush. If you are doing a landrace you might even let it vary for bush/vine type. One advantage to bush or semi-bush (heterozygous) type is that they are often earlier, and they are often capable of cranking out fruit just like a summer squash if kept picked. And the maxima summer squash are often very richly flavored compared with most pepos. In addition at least some make delicious dried squash when dried at the summer squash stage. If you cut Sunshine F1 fruits that are about fist-sized into 1/8" slices and dry them, you end up with a very delicious sweet chip. And Sunshine F1 will just crank those fruits out if it is treated like a summer squash and kept picked. (Vine types don't usually do that.) So you might decide you want a triple treat variety of landrace that can give you summer squash, dry squash, and winter squash all from one planting. There are lots of possibilities. Most varieties have a fair amount of variability for fruit quality, especially thickness of flesh, so when I do crosses I always label each parent in the field, keep track of the pollen as well as female parent, then evaluate the fruits of each plant. Then I continue the project with the cross or crosses that represent the best individuals of one variety crossed to the best individuals of the other.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 7, 2014 21:38:26 GMT -5
I think that I am excited enough about the possibilities of [Moschata X Mixta] crosses to closely interplant them in an isolated field. Don't want to be the farm on them until or unless they prove worthwhile. The reason that I revisited this thread is to follow up on the maxima squash that I marked because they had unusual leaves (compared to the rest of the patch). I collected a fruit from a silver leaved maxima, and from a mottled-leaved maxima, and from two maximas with a jagged leaf margin. I opened the two small green fruits today. The one labeled "jagged" had plenty of seeds. The other small green fruit didn't have any viable looking seeds. The fruit appeared immature. Let's see if I've got it down as to how to do this quoting thing. Baby steps here. As I recall, the Mixta X Moschata takes much more readily in one direction than the other. Don't remember which, and it wouldn't matter to you. And in most of these interspecific crosses which are possible but there are some barriers, sometimes certain varieties or even individuals may cross and others don't at all. But if you just interplant your moschata landrace with a bunch of different mixtas I'll bet you'll have no problems getting the crosses. You might stack the deck even more by removing all the male flowers off the moschata for a few days, then off the mixta for a few days, and mark any fruits that start during that period. And maybe keep the fruits picked off any plants with fruits for a few additional days to give the crosses a good start with no competition. For interspecific crosses, I think it helps a lot to do them under conditions when the temperature is moderate and their is plenty of moisture. I think that's because interspecific crosses do experience some genetic barriers to pollenation, and this can be of the form that the "wrong" pollen takes longer to germinate and/or grow down the style than the "right" pollen. Also, the "wrong" pollen may not recognize the signals from the ovary, so instead of the pollen tubes aiming like an arrow for the right spot to achieve fertilization, they may sort or wander around, which also costs time. So if the style dries up fast, there is less of a chance that the wide cross will succeed. I'm speculating here. Here in maritime Oregon we have very mild conditions and moist air in spring, and we get all kinds of crosses that are supposed to be difficult. I think it's because both the pollen and the styles live much longer under such conditions. If I'm right, you can use those ideas to pick the best weather for doing any forced crosses. Also, hand pollinations of all sorts generally work best on the first female flower of each vine than on subsequent ones. And they work best if their are no other fruits already set on the vine. As for what's going on with your immature appearing squash with no seeds. It reminds me of one time that I grew a small row of maxes next to a huge planting of moschatas. Because of flowering patterns, in addition there were lots of moschata flowers and relatively few max flowers. Every one of the maxes developed fruits that were smallish and had a mix of hard tissue where there should have been seeds and only aborted tiny seeds or empty seeds with no meat inside. I think what was going on is that usually a female squash flower has to receive a good amount of pollen of the same species in order to set the fruit. But, I speculate, with huge generous amounts of moschata pollen, the ovaries on the maxes decided that was good enough and went ahead and set fruit. But the fruit didn't grow to full size. And the seeds were not viable enough to even develop. Sometimes if there aren't enough pollinators around, a delicata type will have no seeds and be undersized at one end. That suggests to me that seed development is required for the fruit to become full size. So I think your max with no seeds might have been overwhelmed with moschata pollen, and erroneously set the fruit, then could not mature the fruit because the seed didn't develop. Was that max right next to a whole lot of moschata?
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 7, 2014 15:10:14 GMT -5
jondear, I hope to have the Fertile Valley Seeds catalog out by early December, but won't start shipping seed until Feb 1. I'll also be at the (Eugene Oregon) Good Earth Home and Garden Show all day Saturday, giving talks, answering questions, and selling seeds and signing books.
I've got lots of Magic Manna this year, so will be able to sell pounds as well as little packets. I'll also be introducing 'Pancake White Manna' and 'Brown Gravy Manna', sister lines to Magic that are half to 2/3 of the indicated color, and the rest all the rest of the colors of 'Magic'. 'Pancake White' is for people who best like the white ears for making pancakes, sweet breads, cakes, cookies, and biscuits. 'Brown Gravy' is for people who especially like using MM for gravy, savory (nonsweet) cornbread, and a different flavor of biscuit. (Of course I'm also working on a 'Parching Red Manna', but that is taking longer.) I plant the different lines all in one field in adjacent blocks, and just eat one row from the edge of each block. The idea is to deliberately allow a certain amount of gene flow between the lines to help keep numbers and genetic heterogeneity up, but not so much that the ear color frequencies merge back into those of 'Magic'. I'll also be introducing 'White Candle Gaucho', a sister line to 'Gaucho' I developed from a mutant that showed up in 'Gaucho'. It's white with a candle pattern on the hilem. So you can plant 'Gaucho' and 'White Candle' in the same row or field, just eat the area where the varieties come together, and save seed from the rest.
The idea behind sister varieties is that they are basically identical in genetic background except for just a gene or two, but that gene totally changes the flavor or use pattern so gives you a different food. But occasional crosses between the sister varieties is just no big deal. My idea is to build ease of seed saving right into the genetics of the varieties.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 7, 2014 14:39:09 GMT -5
[anybody got a line on some orange endosperm maize?][/quote]
'Byron Flint' has a lovely orange flint color. That's one reason I used it (along with Abenaki/Roy's Calais) as a parent in 'Cascade Ruby-Gold Flint'. 'Abenaki' has a pale yellow endosperm. This means that in the yellow ears, you get pale unattractive yellow. So I worked hard to incorporate the endosperm color from 'Byron'. CRG isn't pure for the orange endosperm, though. But there is enough of it so that there are plenty of rich yellow instead of pale yellow ears. And the cornmeal is a deeper orange color with red flecks than is Abenaki. I got 'Byron' from the Seed Saver's Exchange. (Will Bonsall/Scatterseed Project).
'Longfellow' flint also has a nice orange endosperm color. Bakers Creek sells the seed.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 7, 2014 12:34:27 GMT -5
Could someone tell me how to quote specific parts of someone else's post I'm responding to?
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 7, 2014 12:32:59 GMT -5
littleminnie--Actually, the Seed Savers Exchange article is generally right that the contaminating genes will increase a lot in the next few generations in the heirloom they were trying to grow, though they were wrong to use the word "exponential." The problem is, most pure op or heirloom varieties are not as vigorous as the hybrid you get when you outcross them to pretty much anything. So for simplicity, let's imagine that I had 1% contaminating outcrosses in my seed. Now I plant them, usually 3 or 4 times as much seed as plants I want, let's say 4. Now, those plants germinate faster and grow much better than my op or heirloom. So none of them get thinned out. So now my contaminating plants are up to 4 percent. Such hybrids usually produce much more grain and much much more pollen than the heirloom. Let's say they produce 4X as much pollen and grain. So the next generation is 16% being a result of the contamination. The next generation, the seed resulting from the cross of the F1 hybrid and the rest of the field probably won't be quite so dramatically much more vigorous than the heirloom, but will still have a good bit of vigor-enhancing heterogeneity. Let's say that they get enriched only 3X during the thinning phase this year instead of 4X. So what is left after thinning is now up to 48% of the plants being grandchildren of the contaminants. And let's suppose that this generation they only produce twice as much pollen and seed as the pure heirloom. Now we're at 96% of our seed being great grandchildren of the 1% contaminated seed. At this point nearly every seed we plant is derived from the contaminants, and we probably eliminate approximately all of the remaining pure plants by thinning them out the next generation. Of course, with each generation, only half the offspring would get the GM gene (in the absence of selection specifically for it). But that still leaves us with a whole lot of GM genes in there. This is a worse case situation. But it's closer to reality than the supposition that the GM gene is not selected for. It is highly selected for even in the absence of using roundup because it is accompanied by the hybrid vigor also introduced in the outcross. (This kind of situation is called a "genetic sweep." ie, a gene that is not being selected for itself has its frequency greatly increased in the population because the gene came along with something else that was being selected for.)
If your variety is a very vigorous landrace or op variety, though, the bets are off. The outcross to the GM variety might not outperform the plants in the pure variety. Then you wouldn't be accidentally selecting for the outcross in thinning, and it might not make more pollen or seed than your home variety. The outcross might actually perform more poorly and get culled out right away.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 6, 2014 23:27:48 GMT -5
The reason for not starting your selecting in the F1 is that the F1 plants express only dominant genes. As an example, suppose you had an determinate red-fruit tomato variety and an indeterminate pink tomato variety that you really loved, and crossed them because you wanted a determinate pink-fruited variety. The F1 plants would all be indeterminate and red-fruited simply because those variants are dominant forms of the genes. So if you started selecting in the F1 generation you would discard every single plant and just give up. However, all the genes you need to get the type you want are in the F1 as hidden recessives. If you go to the F2, 1/16 of the plants should express the two recessives together.
Usually when we do a cross we are interested in many different characteristics, and recessive genes will be involved in some of them. So we don't start selecting until the F2 or later, because the F2 is the earliest possible chance for us to see traits associated with recessives. In fact, since genes can also be linked, it can take longer than one generation for crossing over to separate or combine linked genes and generate all possible combinations. So new phenotypes caused by new genetic combinations can keep showing up in further generations after a cross, as long as you didn't discard all those genes first before they had a chance.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 6, 2014 22:44:44 GMT -5
jondear--The outermost skin of the kernel, the pericarp, is synthesized by the mother plant, so it's her genes that determine what the color will be, and it will be one color for all the kernels in a ear. So if the mother is into red pericarp, every kernel on every ear will have a red pericarp. (I'll mention some fudge factors later.) The aleurone layer is determined by the genetics of the seed, and different seeds on an ear can have different genes for aleurone color.
So if a corn planting has genetic variability for the aleurone pigment genes but uniform for pericarp genes, you will have different colors of kernels on each ear. If a corn planting has variability for pericarp colors but is uniform for aleurone colors, you will get different solid-colored ears from the planting. If the corn planting is variable for both aleurone and pericarp colors, you'll see both patterns. You might see a solid pericarp-pink ear but be able to see the various different kernel colors underneath, for example. If the pericarp is dark red it might hide all the underlying kernel variability giving an ear that looks solid red. And so on.
There are two fudge factors. First, the pericarp colors have, in genetics-speak, variable penetrance and variable expressivity. That is, even when the gene is present it doesn't express uniformly. So an ear may be deeper pink/red at one end than the other for example. And when the gene is present it may express so little you just get a light pink tinge or maybe the ear even looks white. The second fudge factor is jumping genes. Controlling elements can jump from one spot to another in the genome, and if they land in or vacate a region that controls how much pigment is made you can have sections of an ear where all the kernels have much more or much less pigment than their neighbors.
'Magic Manna' flour corn has solid colored ears because it is uniform for aleurone color (clear) and endosperm (white) but varies for pericarp color which is red/pink, orange-brown/tan, or clear.
Abenaki flint (aka Roy's Calais) is uniform for yellow flint and clear aleurone, but varies for pericarp color, which is red or clear.
Cascade Ruby-Gold flint is uniform for yellow-orange flint and clear aleurone, but varies for pericarp color, which is red, orange-brown, or clear.
So all three of those varieties give solid-colored ears of different colors that can be sorted to produce cornbread with different flavors.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 6, 2014 22:00:33 GMT -5
blueadzuki--I call the aleurone color "black" because it looks black in the varieties that have "black" in the name. But as you say, this "black" is just the result of there being lots of purple or blue pigment. The aleurone pigments are anthocyanins. There a number of chemical variants of the anthocyanins that can give you kernel colors from brown/red/pink/lavender through purple to blue depending upon exactly which anthocyanin or mix of anthocyanins you end up with after all the genes have had their say. There are various genes that cause more or less anthocyanin to be made and yet other genes that produce proteins that cause reactions that change the chemistry of the anthocyanin from one variant to another.
Then there are also ears that look black but actually have very deep red pericarp. I call those "deep red" though many people would probably call them black. With the pericarp, it's easy to peel off a little and see it is actually red, not black. Also, black caused by red pericarp tastes so different from black caused by aleurone genes that I am loath to call them both black.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 6, 2014 14:16:49 GMT -5
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 6, 2014 14:06:43 GMT -5
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 6, 2014 13:51:33 GMT -5
Reed, yes, you've nailed it. The floury part is white. The flint part may be yellow or white, with some yellows being more intensely colored and more like orange. Where the aleurone is black there can be a bleeding over of the pigment into the flint. This variety is not quite a flour corn, but it is leaning that way.
As for telling what color of flint you have when you have aleurone or pericarp colors on top that hide it, I use a nail file and file off a tiny spot on a dozen or so kernels near the base of the ear. I file just deep enough to hit the flint. There will be a ring representing the aleurone, so you can see both aleurone and flint color under the pericarp.Filing the kernels like that doesn't interfere with their being planted as seed. If you have loose kernels you can file them anywhere other than near the germ and still plant them.
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Post by Carol Deppe on Nov 4, 2014 23:52:01 GMT -5
I have two of the big 9-tray Excalibur dehydrators, and up until last spring, recommended them highly. Mine have a lowest temp of about 80 F and are still running fine after thousands of hours of use. But a friend of mine ordered one last spring, and his wouldn't go below about 120. Turns out the factory has decided that the lower temperatures represent a safety and liability issue. I called them and explained about seed saving, to no avail. My friend found out the factory still had some of the old (better) thermostats, and they were willing to ship him one for free for him to use to replace the crappy new thermostat. If you want an Excalibur, better call the factory and see whether they still have any of the old thermostats available. If they don't I would give the Excaliburs a miss and just build something of your own, big and ugly or not.
I probably will do that anyway. I need something much bigger to dry corn on the ear. I saw something I thought perfect at the Oregon State University Hyslop farm seed lab. It was an old corn drier. Probably hand built. Basically a cabinet that held several wire drawers, each about 3' X 4' x 2' deep. A small heater with a fan delivered warm air to the cabinet, and baffles separated the air flow into streams that moved through each rack separately and independently. I really need something like that because the amount of corn I'm dealing with at this point is somewhat overwhelming my ability to dry it in piles and crates indoors. (Here in maritime Oregon, field dry corn is not all that dry. It needs extra drying indoors.) Such a ear-corn drier could be used to dry anything else also by just using screened trays.
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