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Post by walt on Sept 17, 2016 13:08:19 GMT -5
About 20 years ago I built a greenhouse by digging a 20' x 20' hole in the south facing side of a valley. I lined it with free used railroad ties, roofed it with 4' x 8' glass from a huge solar collector that was being taken down, also free. The door was an old storm door, free. The 2x6 rafters weren't free. The floor was dug in a stairstep fashion, and the roof stuck about a foot above the outside ground. The floor was deep enough I could stand straight in it, about 6'. It had no insulation or heater. Tomato plants survived a couple of winters in it. They didn't actually grow or ripen fruit between late November until March. But the green tomatoes formed by November went ahead and finished ripening in march or April. After a few years a huge (for central Kansas) blizzard piled 3' of snow on it and the roof collapsed. Where I live now, I built a 10 ft x20ft greenhouse on the south side of my house. I used 2x4 rafters and polycarbonate sheets from Low's. There were patio doors on the south side of the house, and I heat the greenhouse by opening the patio doors and let house heat into the greenhouse. With the greenhouse's second winter coming, I'm installing 4'x8' styrofoam panels on hinges so they can be swung up at night to turn the whole greenhouse into a giant styrofoam picnic basket at night, even on days that are cloudy and nasty cold. Days the panels can be down against the house wall. Nights the panels will be up against the greenhouse roof. Thermal mass is the floor and the side of the house, and 5 barrels of water.
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Post by walt on Sept 16, 2016 15:18:26 GMT -5
Forgive me if I seem a tad egocentric, but I just can't imagine how you all would soldier on, were my posts to be deleted; damn, I'm so important. You're right. Sure we would try to soldier on, and this group would last a few weeks after you're gone. But it wouldn't be the same. We'd know the group is doomed, and go compost ourselves in our gardens. Or go eat at MacDonald. Same thing pretty much.
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Post by walt on Sept 16, 2016 14:47:52 GMT -5
Yes, I think so too. I never really had any intention of breeding corn or anything else for that matter but now, now it seems fundamentally and spiritually wrong not to. Here is another interesting trait that showed up. I saw it last year but to a much less degree. It happened on the stalks that made multiple ears. Don't know if it is thought of as good or bad but I kinda like it. It's like the lower down ones were jealous of the top one so they grew these extra long stems. Look like they could come in right handy for grilling on a fire, they got a built in handle. Reed. I was told by a corn breeder that he could tell the number of husks on an ear by counting the number of leaves between the ear and the tassel. I counted about 4 or 5 plants and it was true for those plants, so I'm guessing it is generally true. So I'm not suprised that lower ears have more nodes of the branches. I see that those in the photo also have longer internodes, which I hadn't noticed before.
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Post by walt on Sept 12, 2016 15:41:37 GMT -5
I lived 3 years in Rep. du Niger, west Africa. Sorghum (milo to Americans) and pearl millet are the staples and were domesticated in that general area. So were cowpeas. So those are the native and very well adapted crops. The traditional, and still used, way to farm is to go out with your hoe in May when the rains are due. They dig a hole about 6" wide and a couple inches deep and throw in the seeds. Cover the seeds and wait for the rains. Why work the field if you aren't sure the rains will come this year? The planting holes are about 6", 2 m. apart each direction. If the rains come and the seeds sprout, then they will go out with their hoe and work another 6' wide ring around the origional hole. That makes the the worked circle around each seeded spot about 18' 1/2 M. wide. When the sorghum or millet get about 10' tall 25 cm tall. Then they decide there is a chance there will be a crop, and they go out and hoe the rest of the field. About 20 years ago, I moved to a home where there had never ever been a garden. It was planting time, so I dug holes like the Nigeriens did and planted corn, beans, and squash. I had no tiller, not much time outside my new job, and I needed food. When the seeds were up, I started digging a spades-width wide around each planting hole. As soon as I was finished with one added spade width, I started another. Finally my worked rings were touching, and I could work the remaining area. I got a good crop. The hard part was keeping the soil working ahead of the sqaush vines.
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Post by walt on Sept 12, 2016 15:03:15 GMT -5
Sheeps wool is hair, or course. Andhair is high in (non-digestible) protein. It has nitrogen. It shouldn't take it out of the soil. shheps wool has gotten so cheap that sheep farmers I know, who are few, don't bother to try to sell it, unless it is a special kind that home weavers, hobbists, like my daughter, will pay a good price for. So it is more economical to breed short-hair sheep for meat.
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Post by walt on Sept 11, 2016 15:04:50 GMT -5
Ingrimmer. I don't know the name of either of the two zygotic Poncirus. I have the name of the one I have seedlings from, but not here at the public library where I do internet. I'll get back to you on that. I got my seeds from Riverside. They were free for the asking. The person who answered my request said they had 2 such trees but only had seeds from one of them. That is all I know about that. The Ponciris Nikita is news to me. Always I'm glad to get leads like that. My information is that all Pociris hybrids are zygotic if the other parent is zygotic. It is good to hear that all are. I have read a paper that says that most seedlings with one parent that is zygotic will themselves give zygotic seedlings, though certainly not all such crosses do that. I am interested in the poncirus-ichange hybrids you mention. I wonder how hard it is to import seeds to USA. I'll look it up, and if I can get citrus added to my import permit, I'll be asking for seeds. It is almost time. I am the seed sale chairman for the Species Iris Group of North America, which actually has members in Europe, Australia, South America, and Asia, as well as North America. So I got an import permit for seeds of all non-prohibited iris relatives. But I know citrus quarantine is much more strict. I have been a member of an internet group on citrus, but it has been down for some months now. There are many hybrids I hope to get seeds of, but I haven't been able to contact any of them expect through the group.
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Post by walt on Sept 10, 2016 13:54:26 GMT -5
So I've been out of touch a few years. I actually started the hardy citrus breeding project 3 years ago. and all I have to show for it is some rootstocks in the ground, about 150, about 25 F2 trifoliate orange x orange hybrid seedlings, and 25 about 25 pure trifoliate orange seedlings from a tree that produces sexually produced seedlings. And I have much more information stuck in my head and have a better idea how to do this and how things could go wrong. Problems with breeding citrus start with the fact that most citrus come true from seed. The fertilized egg cell starts growing and dividing, but nucellur tissue also starts growing and dividing, making embryos that are clones of the mother plant. But the following types can be used as seed parents. Pocirus trifoliata, the most winter-hardy citrus reative, taking temperatures down to -5F, some say -10F. But only 2 clones regularly make sexual seedlings. I now have seedlings of one of those clones. Fruits are golfball size or smaller, full of seeds, and taste terrible. F1 hybrids with good citrus also tste really bad, but some people use them, especially the hybrids with grapefruit. Citrus ichamgensis, takes freezes down to 5F, more or less. Fruits are seedy, rather small, the juice can be used for lemonade, but it isn't really as good as lemons. Somew hybrids with kumquats, mandarins, lemons, etc. have been made (not by me) and the hybrids taste much better, though still not great. Most kumquats make good seed parents. The best hybrids of trifolite orange are 1/2 kumquat, 1/4 orange, and 1/4 trifoliate orange. Kumquat also goes dormant at about 45F, and once it is dormant, it can take temperatures down to 10f, maybe. Clenentine mandarin produces all sexual seed seedlings. Other mandarins also seem to produce a good proportion of sexual seedlings. Finger lime, and all other australian native citrus relatives, make only sexcal seedlings. Finger lime also can flower in as little as 1 year from seeds. That is an advantage in tree breeding. Pumelo an ancestor of grapefruit, could be a good parent, but seedlings take 20 years to flower.
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Post by walt on Sept 8, 2016 17:10:58 GMT -5
I'm all for increasing the genetic diversity of domestic sunchokes. But I think there is no need to recreate the species when there is so much unused natural diversity in sunchokes, especially the wild ones. But like Steev says, if it interests you, go for it. What I like most about this group is that so many people are doing things many gardeners would think are crazy. But people are getting good results. Not always maybe, but often enough I want to be part of it.
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Post by walt on Sept 8, 2016 17:02:01 GMT -5
Eric Toensmeier has suggested that people try to cross sunroots with seed sunflowers in order to get a perennial seed-producing sunflower. As I believe sunroot seeds are edible as-is, I think they must not be as prolific as common sunflowers. But it's also possible that it's an issue of seed size. I recently read an article in a formal ag journal describing perennial sunflower breeding at the Land Institute. To summerize it, the pollinated several clones of J. artichokes with pollen from oilseed sunflower inbreds. Seed set was low but non-zero. Many (most?) of the F1 plants didn't survive the winter, but some did. Seed set and pollen production on the F1s were low but again non-zero. Better than the seed set on the J. artichokes with sunflower pollen. Head on the F1 plants were bigger than any pure J. artichoke head, but smaller than the oilseed parent. Branching was reduced from the J. chokes, but all were branchedd and no plants had single heads. The F2 plants had better seed set, no suprise. They also had fewer branches, bigger heads, bigger seeds, fewer heads, but still no single heads. This was all the F2 plants, before human selection.
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Post by walt on Aug 31, 2016 17:02:44 GMT -5
Years ago, I liked to grow some Polar Vee F1 sweet corn, just so I wouldn't have to wait so long for the first taste of sweet corn of the summer. Then I thought about crossing it with Gaspe Flint and O'odham-60-day flour corn, the 2 earliest corns I knew of in those days.
It was a good idea. The hybrid vigor the American corn industry is built on is from crossing northern flint with southern gourdseed. Gaspe Flint is the most northern flint there is. O'odham-60-day is probably related to southern gourdseeds. Generally, southwestern corns give similar hybrid vigor as the southern gourdseeds.
I inter-crossed those 2 OP early corns and crossed them with Polar Vee F1 for the su gene. The result was a very early sweet corn, early enough I called it ASAP, for "as soon as posssible", for any of you non-native English speakers. Well, the time wasn't right. Divorce and such, and I lost the land. A few moves and I lost the seeds. Now I'm retired and am trying to do all the things I couldn't do sooner.
Thanks to Google, I've found more possible breeding stock. Native Seeds/Search still has O'odham-60-day. A few others have Gaspe Flint but are out right now. Next spring then. Instead I'm using Alberta Clipper, a dent from Oikostreecrops.com which is very early. I'll also throw in Amazing Alberta Flint from Sandhills Preservation. Polar Vee seems to be gone, but there are Yukon Chief and Yukon Supreme with su.
My earlier attempt gave me a corn with the kernels flat against the cob. To fight that, in addition to just selecting for upright kernels, I want to bring in the shoepeg trait from Country Gentleman and the pencilcob trait from Pencilcob. That should squeeze the kernels up a little.
Right now I'm trying to cross Alberta Clipper with Bodacious F1 for the su se genes. Alberta Clipper and O'odham are in 1 gallon pots in case of early frosts. I'll try Gaspe and the others x O'odham in the greenhouse when they arrive this fall or winter.
I'll know more when I make all the F1 crosses next year, but I think I'll keep O'Odham-60-day at about 50%, to exploit the southern x northern hybrid vigor. I strongly expect the rest to be Gaspe relatives, but I don't know yet.
Back about 1982 Dr. Clarence Genter presented a paper to a corn-sorghum conference, I forget which one, presenting his efforts to develope a high-yielding population by recurrent selection the the progeny of a commercial F1 hybrid corn. He made 256 sib-crosses each year and grew replicated trials, then selected based only on yield and % moisture at harvest. Then he'd intercross the 16 best sib-groups adnd intercrossed them and made another 256 sibcrosses for the next generation. By the F13 his population was outyielding the F1 hybrid he started. And the caculated co-efficient of inbreeding was about equal to that of an F3 population from a single selfed F2 plant. That's why I want the maximum hybrid vigor at the start.
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Post by walt on Aug 28, 2016 16:56:33 GMT -5
I didn't mention that one reason for starting with crosses with several varieties is that based on the F!s, some of the F1s would be discarded.
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Post by walt on Aug 28, 2016 16:54:23 GMT -5
Early in this thread, Carol said that intercrossing two or a few squash varieties will give better results than intercrossing several varieties. Sounds right. But for some time, I've been thinking about starting a breeding population by crossing several varieties with Butternut, then backcrossing the F1s to Butternut. My reasoning has been, Butternut is my favorite squash. But as an inbred variety, it is stagnant. Furth selection will do little good. Outcrossing to other very good squash should give variation for selection, while still being 3/4 Butternut, the population should be mostly good, well-adapted squash. Comments?
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Post by walt on Aug 27, 2016 13:00:40 GMT -5
Thanks people for the welcome back. And thanks especially philagardener for the link. I'll be checking if this is a source of LA 0722. And it is quite interesting even if it isn't a source of LA 0722.
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Post by walt on Aug 26, 2016 15:18:09 GMT -5
This is my first post in years. But I was a professional tomato breeder from 1978 through 1981. I had run out of money for grad school, and joined the Peace Corps. They sent to Niger, where I was appointed tomato breeder. The only one in the country. I went into shock for about 6 weeks,d oing little but wonder how to start a tomato breeding breeding program from scratch. Finally I realized that anything I tried would be better than doing nothing. So I started muddling around. Later I found that sometimes doing nothing IS better than doing things wrong, but that turned out not to apply in this case. So I wrote to Dr. Charles Rick, who had spent much of his life collecting tomatoes in South America, asking about heat and drought tolerant topmatoes. He sent me seeds of 3 accessions. Two were cherry-sized but shaped like beefstake tomatoes. They were collected from the wild in hot, dry areas. The third was LA 0722, a S. pimpinefolium accession. With it he sent a photograph of where he had collected it. There was a saguaro cactus and a green mound (the tomato plant) and nothing but rocks to the horizzon. So I started the seeds, with Super Marmand as a control. Super Marmand was a commonly used tomato in Niger, in the clay soil areas with irrigation. So I planted seedlings of each of the 4 kinds of tomatoes in dune soil. I watered them until they were established and let them go. It was the start of the "rainy season" Much like summer in Kansas. Super Marmand surived for a few months. No flowers and no fruit. No vigor either. It looked pathetic until it died. The 2 cherry-beefsteak tomatoes lived and each produced 5 or 6 fruit each. They were sad looking plants, but lived until the last rain, then died. The LA 0722 made itself at home. It grew, it looked happy, it bloomed, it bore pea-sized fruit, but many of them. 6 weeks after the last rain of the season, it still was thriving, until a herd of cows walked over them and that did them in. Pea sized tomatoes didn't look promicing to me, so I crossed LA 0722 with various domestic tomatoes. The F1s were large-cherry sized, tasted good until the start of the cold season, when they became bitter, as did LA 0722. The F2s averaged about the same, but with some variation in size, not much. Don't know about change in flavor as the cold season started. That is as far as I got before leaving. By planting during the cold season, I found that LA 0722 germinates in cold soil. I did tests in the refridgerator to make sure that was the case. After all, when a bunch of tomato varieties are planted at the same time, there could be many reasons why only pne kind comes up. I was still new at this. This all started in 1978. When I got bck to the USA, I obtained more LA 0722 and tried crossed again, but I was employed working with sunflowers, sorghum, and and a few other crops. The tomatoes were neglected. I recently retired and ordered more LA 0722. The tomato gene stock center is temporarily shut down due to a viroid infection. I'll be getting seed when they are sure their stocks are free of the viroids.
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