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Post by 12540dumont on Feb 8, 2012 13:04:46 GMT -5
Raymundo, I agree, 3 years in the freezer, tops. When planting 3 year old seed, I always give them a few hours soak in fish emulsion.
Thanks Nuts and Joseph. That helps a lot.
The "B" word. I have not dabbled in biennials, but I "B"elieve it's time.
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Post by terracotta on Jun 28, 2012 12:49:53 GMT -5
So get as many genes as possible, plant all, save seed next year, repeat. Let the environment do the selection for you. in other words you need 40 acres to have a land race and a storage shed the size of a garage for all the seed since a person doing this will need to plant extra heavy. Too many genes are just as bad as too little since desirable genes may get lost in the mix or be overwhelmed by the number of other genes you added in the following years.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jun 28, 2012 20:30:06 GMT -5
So get as many genes as possible, plant all, save seed next year, repeat. Let the environment do the selection for you. in other words you need 40 acres to have a land race and a storage shed the size of a garage for all the seed since a person doing this will need to plant extra heavy. Too many genes are just as bad as too little since desirable genes may get lost in the mix or be overwhelmed by the number of other genes you added in the following years. Landrace development can be done in a small garden. There are really only two steps that are required: Grow your own seeds!!!Don't worry about keeping varieties pure. I have the space, the inclination, and the collaborators to trial hundreds of new varieties per year for some species. I grow them in semi-isolation from my main production crops, and 95% of the new varieties that I trial don't get incorporated into my landraces. So the genes that work well for me continue year after year, and those that don't work for me get eaten or composted. Sure I grow teosinte and tripsacum, but no matter how bad their pollen is for my corn, a few plants are not going to ruin a whole field of corn. I only do the collect-as-much-diversity-as-possible thing once at the beginning of some landraces, and then only for crops that are very important to me. Minor crops or things that I don't care about undergo a slower pace of development with fewer cultivars. Once I have a well adapted thriving landrace I might only do a major trial of new varieties once every 4-5 years. But landrace development can just as easily be done one cultivar at a time. Grow your favorite cultivar. Save seeds from individuals that grow best. Plant them next year. Grow another variety nearby. If the new variety produces decent add some seeds from that to your landrace. If not, perhaps a bit of pollen will be shared between the two cultivars. Repeat year after year. (I grow purple top white globe turnips this way, maintaining a very narrow phenotype.) And just to be thorough, some species are so uncommon, that to obtain any germplasm at all for them is a tremendous achievement. There might never be any new incoming germplasm. |
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Post by terracotta on Jun 30, 2012 15:55:56 GMT -5
good advice joseph. Despite people telling me cantaloupe where i farm I planted 9 varieties and got some small cantaloupes 1. earliest minnesota midget, hearts of gold and sweet and early 2. highest production : sweet and early ( different plant produced many weeks earlier ) 3. unripe: all the other ones who had mature seed but not mature fruit to maintain diversity I have read it takes 6 generations to form a landrace. this is where a large population encounters a new environment and only those that produce viable seed survives. the genes that have a negative impact are filtered out and then one has a landrace. i have also heard adding new genes during this process resets the time clock back to generation 1 since negative traits have been reintroduced. some good points I'm busy with the astronomy domine sweet corn ,I grew for two years now.I don't do any selecrtion for color or taste I just choose the about 50 minimum best ears,well developped and well filled.That's the only thing I plan to do for a few years and see what happens. Years of blending genes,like stirring the soup.How much will it stabilize(size and color and such). A landrace is a variety,traditionally present in a region for long time,that never went trough the bottleneck of modern plant breeding, What we are talking more about is about creating new landraces,by mixing many genetic origins in one population to create something new.You take two packets of seed and you put them in one packet,for me you don't have a landrace(yet ;D) I think you must have some blending of genes before you can call it an embryo of a landrace. pretty much what I do I use mutation because instead of stirring I put the genetic soup in a pressure cooker. The genes for resistance will stabilize it in a way that makes a healthier plant. With more mutations and the selection caused my the mutagen then you are closer to a landrace because then you are not just blending the same genes since all will have a different mutation. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jun 30, 2012 16:19:31 GMT -5
Terracotta: good work on the cantaloupes! Looking forward to reading about how the descendants work out for you.
In general I don't consider my crops to be a landrace until the third year of development... The first year I call them a trial. The second year I call them a proto-landrace. The third year I may consider them a landrace. I like to introduce a bit of new genetics every year, I consider that a bonus not a negative.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Jun 30, 2012 23:19:04 GMT -5
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edwin
gardener
Posts: 141
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Post by edwin on Jul 2, 2012 9:20:06 GMT -5
We have grown our tomatoes in close proximity with a fair amount of crossing. While some of the crosses are edible, so far none have been good. Last year we continued an experiment of growing out an F1 hybrid - we grew 18 plants. Two were noticeably better than the others, but not great.
How does one start a landrace of tomatoes and end up with nice tasting tomatoes?
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Jul 9, 2012 2:37:23 GMT -5
Joseph, i'd be interested to hear more about your squash landraces. Specifically C. Maxima.
..unless your website mentions them in detail.. Maybe i should check..
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 9, 2012 6:08:48 GMT -5
Joseph, i'd be interested to hear more about your squash landraces. Specifically C. Maxima. The only squash I have been working on long enough to call a landrace is Moschata. It is partially descended from LISP. It does very well in my cold short-season garden. I am growing the Oxbow Farm Maxima landrace and the Homegrown Goodness Grex for the first time this summer. Also a possibly early season Banana from Holly. I am growing proto-landraces of crookneck and zucchini. They are partially descended from LISP and Homegrown Goodness. I am growing Ficifolia and Foetidissima for the first time this year. I am attempting Argyrosperma one more time this summer. I put them in my best fields where I can watch them more closely. I dislike Pepo winter squash so I don't grow them. (So many cultivars, so few opportunities for isolation.) |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 9, 2012 6:13:00 GMT -5
How does one start a landrace of tomatoes and end up with nice tasting tomatoes? Save seeds from nice tasting tomatoes.... If there are no nice tasting tomatoes in your existing seed stash, then look further afield until you find them. |
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Post by caledonian on Jul 25, 2012 15:02:01 GMT -5
Taste is almost always a complex polygenetic trait. You can't have a diverse population and reliably get a specific taste - if there's any real diversity in the genes that influence it, it will vary wildly. And almost everything affects how things taste, sometimes in very complicated and indirect ways.
The desire to reliably get excellent-tasting vegetables is one of the factors that caused people to breed narrow, homogenous lines in the first place.
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Post by raymondo on Jul 26, 2012 1:07:38 GMT -5
If I was maintaining a mixed planting of tomatoes and had ones that tasted like Green Giant and others that tasted like Jaune Flammee I'd be keeping them both in the mix even though the tastes are markedly different - one is sweetly mellow while the other is quite sharp indeed - as I like both tastes a lot. Surely a homogenous line would have all the tomatoes tasting like each other.
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Post by terracotta on Nov 14, 2012 15:22:09 GMT -5
interesting, the only ones to grow well from my cantaloupe land race are the ones from immature fruits. got a ripe fruit (from rind color and sweet smell ) from one the size of a gumball 9 seeds 5% brix
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Post by mountaindweller on Nov 15, 2012 2:52:17 GMT -5
Joseph, can't you please write finally a book about how to breed maintain and save seeds from landraces? I'll buy it for sure! You would get famous too.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 15, 2012 10:16:54 GMT -5
Joseph, can't you please write finally a book about how to breed maintain and save seeds from landraces? I'll buy it for sure! You would get famous too. OK, here's the front cover. What chapter headings belong in it? What questions should it address? How does one go about motivating people to step outside of the corporation model of growing food? Should it be written for people who know little about gardening, or for master gardeners? Perhaps to home growers who already grow a garden but have always grown corporate seeds? |
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