An interviw with Alan Bishop of Homegrown Goodness

[ottawagardener]

I have no idea where this subject belongs but Alan kindly agreed to do an interview with me on my blog telling all his secrets or at least lots of great detail on his path to farming, and projects:

veggiepatchreimagined.blogspot.com/2010/01/alan-bishop-agricutural-explorer.html

Telsing

[mnjrutherford]

Awesome. I had to just scan it for the moment, but We want to understand a little more about the strawberry system. The way it appears, the gutters are attached to the tops of the posts, filled with dirt, and the plants are planted in the gutters? Is that correct?

[deanriowa]

That was a nice read and definitely gives me a little more incite into Alan. I especially like the family history side of the article.

thank you both.

Dean

[plantsnobin]

Great job, both of you.

[Alan]

Jan 6, 2010 8:27:25 GMT -5 mnjrutherford said:

Awesome. I had to just scan it for the moment, but We want to understand a little more about the strawberry system. The way it appears, the gutters are attached to the tops of the posts, filled with dirt, and the plants are planted in the gutters? Is that correct?

Indeed. The soil mix will be a mixture of worm castings, sand, lime, and garden loam, amended with batguano and bone meal.

I really enjoyed doing the interview and hope you guys enjoyed reading it.

[johno]

Telsing, Alan, fantastic!

[flowerpower]

It was really interesting to learn more about the farm's history. Great reading.

[bunkie]

awesome idea telsing and terrific interview alan!

"So many gene banks and seed companies are dealing with inbred lines that we are going to loose all of those important genes if we don’t start gene pooling them and increasing their diversity and limiting in a major way their diversity."

i'd like to hear/read more about this...and what we can do.

[Alan]

"So many gene banks and seed companies are dealing with inbred lines that we are going to loose all of those important genes if we don’t start gene pooling them and increasing their diversity and limiting in a major way their diversity."


Just noticed where I left out a word there, that should have read:

"So many gene banks and seed companies are dealing with inbred lines that we are going to loose all of those important genes if we don’t start gene pooling them and increasing their diversity and stop limiting in a major way their diversity."

This was referencing corn in particular and I'll expand on it shortly.

[sandbar]

Very nice article!

I agree that tomato breeding has been overdone. I think there are still some interesting projects out there (some have been mentioned in these forums), however, we could stand to work on developing some other crops, too. Like ... MORE HOT PEPPERS!!

[Alan]

Hot peppers are on my list my friends!


In response to the "inbred" corn quotation.


In the past five years I have grown out over 100 lines of OP sweet corns, most if not all gathered from either seed companies or gene banks. The common consensus would be that corn would be highly outcrossed with other varieties (in some cases it is) that for it to be inbred, but this is not the case.


Many of the sweet corns I have grown have shown signs of little to no selection work, poor pollination, poor cob development, poor kernal development, poor germination and more. It's not that the germplasm is useless, it's just that, in my opinion, many of these corns are being grown in isolation in far too small of a population and or too limited an area of seed is selcted, or the foundation stock was made up of less than ideal numbers of genetics.

Of the many OP sweet corns I have grown (and many strains and sources for each) only Anasazi, Buhl, Golden Bantam, Golden Bantam Improved, Sunshine, Stowels, and Country Gentleman don't show major imbreeding. These are not counting new releases like Alan Kapulers work and Munk Bergins and J. Sperro who all do excellent work with maintaining genetics.

As an excellent example, the term Indian Corn often refers to Landrace varieties that started out as genepools, hence the many varried colors and traits, but take the time out to go and look at simply the pictures of sweet corns and other corns at Native Seeds/SEARCH. 100 years ago when many of these tribes were growing these corns they were openly crossing constantly with other varieties, often this was actively encourage, now they are grown in isolation and with little to no selection criteria, they and many others, particularly lines in Seedbanks and held by seed traders are suffering majorly because corn is made to outcross!

It's important to maintain corn but it's also important to do so properly. Many lines are being lost because they aren't being selected correctly and are down to too few genes without having any new material added in.

Some of them are just too far gone unless you do some outcrossing and backselect for the original traits, but even then you have still lost the original variety, if we don't work with these genes while they do still exist, albeit in a much inferior form, we will loose them.

[Alan]

a few examples of accessions nearing worthlessness:

Millersburg Red
Red
Red Evergreen
Nuetta
Yellow Evergreen

In a few years all of these genes, many for lodging reisistance/stiff salk, and resistance to Stewart wilt as well as nutritional qualities would have been lost if I hadn't hedged my bet and bred and selected for the useful traits in Astronomy Domine, there are about 100 more there as well.

[baby daddy]

Really enjoyed reading the article, Kudos to both of you...
- baby daddy

[johninfla]

I really enjoyed your article. I am learning so much here.
This may be something you have gone over a hundred times but I'm just learning so please be patient with me as I come to grips with this new paradigm. If I understand correctly we are saying that in our home gardens/farms we can have the variability from a landrace that may not produce as much as in industrial style farming but has lower input and a greater chance of surviving a catastrophic infection. Are there landraces available for all garden crops?

Thanks for the inspiration!

[ottawagardener]

Not generally but have a look around at local seed sources or you can develop your own. Have you checked out Joseph's page on landraces?

garden.lofthouse.com/adaptivar-landrace.phtml