|
|
Post by MikeH on Feb 14, 2014 12:22:53 GMT -5
FVS 2014 Seed List and Order FormNew releases for this year (varieties never before sold anywhere): MAGIC MANNA FLOUR CORN and LANDRETH'S LANDRACE MOSCHATA. Returning after an absence is CASCADE CREAMCAP FLINT CORN. This year she's also added Amish Paste—Kapuler, the best line of this great dual purpose fresh eating and processing heirloom tomato and True Gold Sweet Corn, bred by Alan Kapuler and in her opinion the best open pollinated yellow sweet corn. FVS 2014 Order Form only
|
|
|
|
Post by hortusbrambonii on Feb 14, 2014 12:41:30 GMT -5
links not working
|
|
|
|
Post by billw on Feb 14, 2014 12:49:39 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 14, 2014 13:15:21 GMT -5
New releases for this year (varieties never before sold anywhere): MAGIC MANNA FLOUR CORN and LANDRETH'S LANDRACE MOSCHATA. The Moschata squash is the variety that I developed. There was a typo in the description. Too late to fix it this year. We've already made arrangements to get it resolved for next year. Sorry to Carol about my sloppy handwriting. Carol Deepe's Seed List |
|
|
|
Post by raymondo on Feb 15, 2014 17:16:12 GMT -5
Ah, so you are Joseph Landreth. She could surely change it on the website, if nowhere else.
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 15, 2014 18:35:23 GMT -5
Ah, so you are Joseph Landreth. She could surely change it on the website, if nowhere else. I probably labeled the seeds that I sent as "Landrace Moshcata". Perhaps one of her helpers has a lisp or an accent, so Landrace ==> Landreth. Perhaps my spelling was really bad on the package. We've made arrangements to update the web site. The pdf will have to wait till next year. |
|
|
|
Post by MikeH on Feb 17, 2014 7:02:43 GMT -5
The Moschata squash is the variety that I developed. What went into the cross? I've bought some of these seeds from Carol because I like the diversity. How do I go about maintaining the diversity, ie, preventing inbreeding depression? |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 17, 2014 12:02:33 GMT -5
What went into the cross? I've bought some of these seeds from Carol because I like the diversity. How do I go about maintaining the diversity, ie, preventing inbreeding depression? The ancestors included: 4 Moschata landraces from local farmers (pumpkins, butternuts, necked-squash) The Long Island Seed Project's necked-squash landrace The Long Island Seed Project's Cheese pumpkin Face of the Earth Seed's Butternut landrace Long of Naples Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck Buckskin (Libbey's) pumpkin Long-necked squash Waltham Butternut There were other varieties that may have contributed pollen but didn't contribute seed. Black Futzu Seminole pumpkin Varieties from the hoggy swap Grocery store necked squash from Mexico Tromboncino Another variety with a forgotten name from one of the romance languages. To maintain the most biodiversity, save seed from any plant that produces a fruit. To localize the variety to your garden, tastes, and way of doing things save seeds only from the most productive plants that taste great to you. So there is a balance between maintaining diversity and getting what you want out of a squash. I really aughta do an experiment one of these decades to see how bad a problem inbreeding depression really is. I'm constantly trialing new varieties and allowing them to contribute pollen to "contaminate" my landraces. I was thrilled that someone in a warmer climate crossed my moschata landrace with seminole pumpkin. Some of them grew great for me last year, so I will be adding those back into the landrace. |
|
|
|
Post by MikeH on Feb 17, 2014 13:45:56 GMT -5
I think that I should have asked what didn't go into the cross. LOL And therein lies the conundrum: there are limits such as storage space, quantity needed, growing space, increasingly large numbers of seed. You were selecting first for short season and ability to stand up to blazing hot summers. We don't have the first requirement nor the second although drought is a concern. We grow winter squash for taste, mouth feel and keeping ability. Taste and mouth feel are probably already covered off in your landrace so we'd be selecting for the long keepers. It seems to me that the challenge for the small household is to keep the diversity. I'm not well read on the subject but I get the impression that there's no clear threshold to maintain genetics. Suzanne Ashworth lays it out well, both the problem and the solution: The minimum number of plants that need to be grown, in order to maintain a significant representation of the genetic diversity within a given population, varies widely depending on which expert on genetics is being consulted. The miniscule amount of literature that has been published regarding population sizes also varies greatly. The basic general rule is that seed should be saved from 20 inbreeding or 100 outbreeding plants. At the same time, however, it has to be noted that many home-scale seed savers must deal with space restrictions, and in some cases severe limitations. Always attempt to grow as many plants as possible in the space available in your garden, and that will usually yield an adequate range of genetic diversity for your particular gardening situation. This technique has worked well for gardeners throughout the last 12,000 years, creating the amazingly diverse richness of the world’s food crops.With just the two of us, we don't need many squash for consumption but we have the space to grow more so we will just to get the cross pollination and the seed. It seems to me that I should probably keep the seed saved from each plant separate and then replant on that basis rather than dumping all seed into a common bucket and selecting by chance. I really don't want to get into breeding but rather I'm more interested in saving my seeds from year to year. In doing that, I want to avoid the problems that, at some point, come with a diminishing gene pool when a plant is an outbreeder. It seems to me that starting the the incredibly deep genetic pool of you landrace gives me a delay of that problem if I can help things along even a tiny bit. Even then it's not all that clear. How much of the problem is inbreeding and how much is the soil or changing climate? How do add them back in? |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 17, 2014 14:09:14 GMT -5
I'll have to remember "mouth feel". I'm constantly selecting against squash that have the wrong mouth feel. I'm sad that the Black Futzu died out of my landrace. It had the best mouth feel to me of any moschata I've ever tasted. I guess I could reintroduce it.
I really don't like the mouth feel of the Libby's pumpkin, but I had to include it for the orange colored flesh.
The mathematics of inbreeding depression are definitely much different if starting with a landrace than they would be if starting with a cultivar that has already experienced 5 to 7 years of "single seed inbreeding" before it can be called a stable open pollinated cultivar.
I grew the [Joseph's Landrace X Seminole] isolated in a different field about 3 miles away from my main field. That way I could evaluate if it is suitable for my conditions without adding it's pollen to my landraces. About 2/3 of the plants grew fine. The taste wasn't as good as I would have liked, but I'll plant it in a row right next to my landrace this summer. That'll allow the sharing of pollen, and I'm likely to save the seeds from the cross and combine them with my landrace.
I loved the review that Carol sent me about this squash. It was candid. The best kind of review.
|
|
|
|
Post by MikeH on Feb 18, 2014 21:04:52 GMT -5
I'll have to remember "mouth feel". I'm constantly selecting against squash that have the wrong mouth feel. I'm sad that the Black Futzu died out of my landrace. It had the best mouth feel to me of any moschata I've ever tasted. I guess I could reintroduce it. If you give me a mouthful of PotiMaron, Kuri, Golden Nugget, Butternut, I'll ask for more everytime but if you give me a mouthful of a Table King or a Table Queen, I'll spit it out every time. For me nothing beats, the creamy texture of those orange fleshed squash that I listed. That's what I thought. The broader the genetic base, the longer you delay inbreeding depression assuming that you don't start a selection process that narrows the gene pool. If it takes 5 to 7 years to stabilize a cultivar, I wonder if it takes at least that long before you have to start worrying about inbreeding depression if you are starting from the genetic base of your moschata landrace. As I mentioned, we really like PotiMaron, Kuri, Golden Nugget. So I went off looking to see if there was a maxima landrace. I laughed when I saw where the search led. What varieties are in the Maxima, Medium Sized Fruits landrace? |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 18, 2014 22:14:25 GMT -5
What varieties are in the Maxima, Medium Sized Fruits landrace? My maximas are not at all stable yet. They have grown together for the last two years. This year I separated the seed based on phenotype of mother into: About 10# buttercups About 20# to 40# moist fleshed squash XL fruited squash 50# to 100#. I'm intending to not grow this population again. Too hard to sell. Ancestors may have included: 1500 Pound Prize winner (100# in my garden) Blue Hubbard Pink Banana Buttercup Turk's Turban Red Kuri Lakota Face of the Earth Cucurbrita Maxima Grex - A gene pool of mass crossed Maxima types, mostly of South American and African origin as well as some from the orient. Wonderfully flavored moist squash types in many shapes and sizes. Oxbow Landrace Maxima (Crown Pumpkin X Sweetmeat Oregon Homestead F1, Cha-Cha F2, Cha Cha X Katy Stoke's Sugarmeat F1, Crown Pumpkin) Sweet Meat A few maximas from the grocery store Anything I could find at the local farm stands that was obviously a hybrid. I have a separate population which is the F4 of a cross between Red Kuri and buttercup. It is fairly stable at this point. |
|
|
|
Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 18, 2014 22:21:39 GMT -5
I would also say that Joseph's moschata is a really awesome squash, but it isn't perfectly adapted to the Northeast. It suffers quickly from powdery mildew, I think it quickly underwent negative selection for resistance to fungal pathogens in Utah, where there basically are none. I also don't know how realistic it is to think that all of those original varieties are still contributing to the mix. Utah rejected most of those genes. What you see now are the survivors.
One of the things I've started to do with Joseph's squash is to kill the plants that get mildew earliest, and I don't save any seed from those fruits. I've also allowed it to freely intermix with my older butternut population which is later, but more mildew tolerant. I've also been moving more towards smaller fruit, because I can't sell the monsters. I've kept the monster seed, but I don't grow much of it.
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Feb 19, 2014 2:39:54 GMT -5
So many squash, so little appetite! Can't somebody develop a winter squash that tastes like tomatoes or zucchini?
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 19, 2014 8:54:39 GMT -5
So many squash, so little appetite! Can't somebody develop a winter squash that tastes like [...] or zucchini? You're asking now? Those are the ones that I've been throwing away for the past 5 years. |
|
