Ramps

[kyredneck]

I came into these at the seed swap:

Anyone here ever start their own ramp patch? I'm open to some sound direction. I love ramps.

[richardw]

I tried some seed years ago ..but nothing came up,so,sorry no help,but good luck.

[kyredneck]

Thanks Richard, I found this from NC State university:

"... late summer to early fall is usually considered the best time for seeding ramps. Fresh ramp seeds have a dormant, under-developed embryo. The seed requires a warm, moist period to break root dormancy and a subsequent cold period to break shoot dormancy. Some years there is enough warm weather after sowing in late summer or early fall to break root dormancy. The following winter cold breaks shoot dormancy and the plants emerge in spring. If there is not an adequate warm period after sowing, the seed will not germinate until the second spring. Thus, ramp seeds can take 6 to 18 months to germinate...."

....so I've got the seeds folded into damp coffee filters inside a ziplock bag on top of my CPU to begin the "warm, moist period to break root dormancy".

Now I have to get a plot prepared.

[add]

www.ces.ncsu.edu/hil/hil-133.html

[richardw]

Going by that my seed may not have had enough of a warm period

[MikeH]

We've started Allium canadense, Allium cernuum, and Allium tricoccum from seed.  It wasn't too difficult.  The Allium canadense produced the typical garlic bulbils which we planted in 4" pots under lights.  We planted the Allium tricoccum seed in ProMix BX under lights and got reasonably good germination.  We've not had good success with Allium cernuum.

We planted the Allium tricoccum and Allium canadense in raised beds made from cedar posts nailed together with 10" spikes at the corners.  We located them under deciduous trees that allowed sun until mid-morning and then went into shade.  We filled the beds with a mixture of ramial wood chips, semi-decomposed leaves, and finished plant only compost.  We also inoculated the bed with Stropharia rugosoannulata. 

The Allium canadense develops very slowly and it was only this year after two years in pots that we felt that it was large enough to plant out. The Allium tricoccum developed much faster.

[kyredneck]

Thanks Mike, a couple questions:

How long did it take for the tricoccum to begin germinating, and why the lights? My strategy right now is to simulate the natural warm, moist summer conditions (not sure yet for how long) needed to break root dormancy before sowing outside for the winter cold period to break shoot dormancy.

...and this was a bummer, I just read somewhere it can take up to seven years before home grown ramps can be harvested, is that so?

[add]

...here it is:

"Most gardeners don’t grow ramps from seeds simply for the fact that it may take up to seven years to harvest. Late summer is the ideal time to plant seeds as they require a brief period of warmth and then the chilly temperatures of winter to break dormancy."

homeguides.sfgate.com/propagation-allium-tricoccum-73716.html

[blueadzuki]

Yes that is true, sort of. The problem isn't that it takes an individual ramp plant seven years to be harvestable, it's that ramps don't really divide all that fast and since when you eat a ramp you're pulling up the whole plant it can take a long time before a freshly planted patch is BIG enough to be able to harvest from it without depleting the stand beyond the amount it can recover. That's also why they often recommend picking no more than 10% of your patch in any given year. That why I never planted ramps (despite alliums being one of the few things that grows OK for me) with the amount of space I have I'd basically be limited to having one ramp every decade or so, if that, if I wanted the patch to stay stable.

[kyredneck]

Gotcha. That's makes sense. I have the room, actually it's probably an ideal fertile spot amongst chestnut trees out back, but, there's also a fertile shady spot in big poplar woods, at the bottom of a huge railroad bank (of all places) that I know would support them. Many years ago, at this spot, I haphazardly strew/sowed hundreds of ramp root ends (from cleaning them) that we dug in WV into a rough trench that I scratched out with the heel of my boot and forgot about them. Maybe a decade later I gathered enough healthy ramps for a mess of ramp & eggs plus some scallions (my favorite). Perhaps I should have left them be, but my mouth was watering for those scallions, and it didn't look like they were spreading.

[add]

...well, blow me down:

"The root-ends can be planted to grow more ramps!"

chickensintheroad.com/house/garden/have-your-ramps-and-plan-them-too/

...it was my WV friend's mother who commented while we were cleaning them that she had 'heard' the root ends could be planted back that gave me the idea to do it. Wish now that I had taken it much more seriously; I might actually could have my very own healthy ramp patch now....

[MikeH]

Oct 27, 2014 6:44:40 GMT -5 kyredneck said:

Thanks Mike, a couple questions:

How long did it take for the tricoccum to begin germinating, and why the lights? My strategy right now is to simulate the natural warm, moist summer conditions (not sure yet for how long) needed to break root dormancy before sowing outside for the winter cold period to break shoot dormancy.

We were starting them in January and decided to move the season up by putting the pots on a heating pad under a grow light. I think that we had germination by May since that would have been the time that we were potting up seedlings.

...and this was a bummer, I just read somewhere it can take up to seven years before home grown ramps can be harvested, is that so?

Could be.  The garlic has been very, very slow.  Even now after three years, it's only 4-5" high and hasn't flowered yet.  Leeks could be the same.   We got the seeds from some plants that a permie friend wild-harvested.  Instead of eating them, we potted them up and they flowered and seeded.  We continue to grow the gifted plants in pots in order to harvest seed so that we can start more plants.  We're doing the same with the garlic.

[ferdzy]

We now have a patch of wild leek (as we Canadians call ramps) in our woods. It took several attempts of transplanting them to get them to stick. At first I tried planting clumps we bought at the farmers market. This completely didn't work. MikeH mentions innoculating them and I'm convinced that unless they can be planted in a spot that contains some sort of symbiotic fungus, they will not do. If it is there in your soil already, then fine. But I did not have any success until I transplanted them from another patch along with large amounts of the soil they were growing in.

[reed]

I'm not sure if it is Brown or Monroe county but near Lake Monroe in Indiana there is a road called Ramp Creek Rd. Most people think it is called that because it has a boat ramp but it was called that long before the lake was even there. You could probably gather seed or starts there if you know when and how to go about it.

[kyredneck]

Oct 26, 2014 22:30:03 GMT -5 MikeH said:

  We also inoculated the bed with Stropharia rugosoannulata. 

Was this strictly double cropping, or have these been shown to be beneficial to one another, ramps and wine caps?

[kyredneck]

Oct 29, 2014 3:48:44 GMT -5 reed said:

I'm not sure if it is Brown or Monroe county but near Lake Monroe in Indiana there is a road called Ramp Creek Rd. Most people think it is called that because it has a boat ramp but it was called that long before the lake was even there. You could probably gather seed or starts there if you know when and how to go about it.

Reed, you ever hear of anyone digging ramps in your neck of the woods?

[steev]

I've never eaten ramps; saw them once in my produce market, but I won't buy meat at the price they wanted for ramps.

Many years, I've kept myself in scallions by planting back the root-ends; think I'll try that for other Alliums.

[khoomeizhi]

lots of them around here, for sure.