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Post by cortona on Oct 9, 2014 13:10:44 GMT -5
me too i've read your two books, i really enjoyed it and i ever want to ask you question about your breeding work!
thanks for joining the forum!
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Post by jondear on Oct 10, 2014 17:29:14 GMT -5
Thanks for the information Carol. Gives me some things to think about until seed ordering time. I actually posted more information about my breeding project on the maxima squash breeding thread.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 19, 2014 14:04:24 GMT -5
Carol Deppe: I'm excited to read that Mixta and Moschata squash might not be "real" species yet... The discussion about splitting or merging species has come up a number of times in this forum. I am on the lumper end up the spectrum. It doesn't matter much to me if a landrace contains several species as long as they have similar agricultural and culinary qualities. Pulses are a group that comes to mind as fitting well within that criteria for my uses. I most typically eat beans as "Hundred Bean Soup Mix". I like that some types turn immediately to mush and that others remain firm regardless of how long they are cooked. The best of all worlds rolled up into one landrace. I could get along well with tepary, common, and runner beans all coexisting in the same landrace. Until now, I have grown the squash as separate species, and not noticed any clear inter-species hybrids between them. I have tried growing mixta squash for years, but didn't get much more than flowers until this growing season. My squash this year were grown in one long row. The mixta squash were separated by about 50 feet in either direction from moschatas. I'll watch to see if any obvious hybrids show up. That's somewhat difficult when I grow phenotypically diverse varieties, but I'll muddle through. I suppose that white-skinned or yellow-striped moschatas would be a good sign. I can also watch for tan skinned mixtas. There might be fruit quality traits to watch for. I haven't opened enough mixtas to know what to look for. 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 bet 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. 
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Post by mickt on Nov 5, 2014 18:11:55 GMT -5
The more different squash you use, the more likely you are to generate genetic combinations that are inferior in quality and flavor to what you started with. So whether you are after a new pure variety or a landrace, when you are after top culinary quality I think there is often much to be said for using just two or three varieties as parents. It's easier to get/keep uniformity for top culinary quality that way. Did anyone else catch that? I might have to agree with my limited experience. Ive done multiple very wide crosses with like 100 "varieties" mixing together and it seems like I spend most of the time in the future roguing out the junk. I always end up crossing that wild cross back to a select few of my favorities in order to get something edible. Im sure I incorporate some interesting genetics that will show up in the future... I dont know... blight resistance or whatever... Especially as a beginner... I have found my seed saved has often times been more 'rustic' than the commercial varieties I started with. I am always bringing in or backcrossing to make up for it. Sorry Joseph... didnt mean to interrupt. |
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Post by notonari on Nov 6, 2014 15:53:24 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.
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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 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 Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 8, 2014 1:27:07 GMT -5
Carol Deppe: Thanks for details about interspecies crosses. Was that max right next to a whole lot of moschata? The maximas occupied the first 60 feet of a row, which was continued with about 40 feet of moschatas. I don't remember how close the seedless fruit was to the moschatas.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 8, 2014 2:09:58 GMT -5
mickt: Comments always welcomed. 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've been burned enough times using closest-living-relatives that if I want to make those types of crosses today I typically make them in an isolated field, and grow the offspring in isolation, and make selections or back-crosses before I incorporate about the 3rd generation into an existing landrace. I remember how horrified I was to discover a bitter C. melo in the muskmelon patch. I abandoned an entire year's worth of a breeding project to eliminate any possibility of passing on the bitter gene.
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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 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 Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 8, 2014 10:21:33 GMT -5
Carol Deppe: Thanks for the grow report. That is a beautiful grow-out. My, what a muddy field you have... I am targeting my plant breeding efforts towards poverty-level subsistence farming, so I don't apply outside inputs like -cides or fertilizers to my fields. I want my varieties to be able to do adequately even in poor soils. Then if they get into soil with a bit higher fertility they can really take off. I get teased sometimes about my small/medium sized population producing "large" fruits when grown in warmer climates with more fertile soil. Oh well.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 21, 2014 13:15:41 GMT -5
Today, I cut into the moschata squash which had the precocious yellow color as a young fruit, and which ripened to orange instead of tan. It contained 2 seeds that looked viable, and several hundred seeds that were empty inside. I managed to collect 5 viable looking seeds from the other one.  |
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Post by darrenabbey on Dec 21, 2014 19:54:29 GMT -5
Today, I cut into the moschata squash which had the precocious yellow color as a young fruit, and which ripened to orange instead of tan. It contained 2 seeds that looked viable, and several hundred seeds that were empty inside. I managed to collect 5 viable looking seeds from the other one. That really sounds like a hybrid between C. moschata and something else. I'm really looking forward to hearing how/if those seeds grow next year. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 14, 2015 17:02:56 GMT -5
There were some seeds in one of the moschata squash I opened yesterday that had some unusual scarring on them. When I dissected a couple of seeds the bump extended all the way through the seed. A few seeds had the scarring on both sides. Here's what a sorted sample of seeds from that squash looked like.  |
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