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Post by steev on Dec 3, 2018 23:56:07 GMT -5
Yes; until I started gardening on the farm, where it is very hot in the Summer, I had no idea how veggie plants shut down in heat. Serious work needs to be done on dealing with this problem, if our food supply is not to collapse.
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Post by reed on Dec 5, 2018 17:39:12 GMT -5
Yes; until I started gardening on the farm, where it is very hot in the Summer, I had no idea how veggie plants shut down in heat. Serious work needs to be done on dealing with this problem, if our food supply is not to collapse. I think heat is worse than drought, not that they don't generally go together. Still if it is extremely hot, over 90 F for days or weeks at a time, watering doesn't really seem to help all that much. I seriously doubt the ability to tolerate it for a lot of things can be realized by breeding and selecting, at least not with out several decades or more like centuries to work on it and I just don't have that much patience. BUT, there might be food crops I'm not used too that can handle it in the short term. That's why I'm so excited to discover how well sweet potatoes take it. They might wilt in afternoon heat but they just keep on truckin when potatoes planted at the same time are nothing but dust. I'm expanding on okra and cow peas next year and there has to be more than just those to identify and acquire. |
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Post by oldmobie on Dec 6, 2018 10:48:57 GMT -5
...and there has to be more than just those to identify and acquire. Malabar Spinach. |
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Post by steev on Dec 6, 2018 12:27:56 GMT -5
In my experience, Guatemala is neither very hot nor very dry; where I lived (Lake Atitlan) it was much like the East Bay; I think much of Mexico would be more the sort. Mat, urd. and tepary beans do OK with heat.
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Post by walt on Dec 6, 2018 12:40:06 GMT -5
I'm in zone 6 in Kansas. Usually my summers are hot and dry. I've found that seeds from Native Seeds/Search that say they are from desert do well here. Those from high elevation often don't do well here.
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Post by philagardener on Dec 6, 2018 18:47:44 GMT -5
I'm marginally on the 6/7 border in SE PA and those arctic blasts often take out sensitive things (and lately, even some of the tough ones).
Spring sees wide temp swings here - a lot of things bolt early - and our summer humidity allows fungal diseases to take off, and this year the rains were incredible!
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 6, 2018 19:29:21 GMT -5
What I have seemed to notice, and what worries me, is not so much that it has gotten hotter or colder, but more unpredicatable, weather wise.
Each year now, the temperature fluctuates so much that it really isn't safe to plant ANYTHING until the end of May or even the beginning to middle of June, and we can start getting cold snaps as early as the beginning of September. No enough to permanently get col, but certainly enough to kill tender plants off and cause blossom and fruit drops.
And that sort of thing is what worries me. Finding crops that can take either extreme heat or extreme cold is doable (for example Ricter's seed zoo has a tomato that is capable of producing in the full tropics (when I understand the standard tomato finds it a little TOO hot) and I know of ones that can take extreme drought (Cheeseman's) and extreme sopping rain (Nagaraclang). But with things fluctuating so wildly I begin to wonder if we are going to get to the point where the only things that will survive will have to be able to take ANYTHING; freezing cold AND broiling heat, severe drought AND pouring rain. One can buffer a bit with landraces, but the idea of having to make you landrace cover everything from Arctic Tundra to Tropical Rainforest is a little scary. SOMETHING may grow that way, but there is only so much space any person has, and if the sucess rate of our crops becomes so uncertain that our annual return rate is 10% AT BEST, we are all in trouble.
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Post by steev on Dec 6, 2018 19:38:40 GMT -5
For a food-source adaptable to ANY weather conditions, you can't beat soylent green.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 6, 2018 21:39:04 GMT -5
For a food-source adaptable to ANY weather conditions, you can't beat soylent green. Actually, Soylent Green is a LOUSY source of food. At the absolute thriftiest 1 "source" provides enough to meet the minimum food needs of 60 people for one day. That means you need to consume about 16.5% of the population annually, or in other words in about 6 years you have more or less run out of material. Now you know why while there are certainly cultures that practiced ritual cannibalism, there actually are none that used people as their exclusive source of food or even meat. You end up eating more than you population very, very quickly. |
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 7, 2018 2:37:42 GMT -5
What I have seemed to notice, and what worries me, is not so much that it has gotten hotter or colder, but more unpredicatable, weather wise. Each year now, the temperature fluctuates so much that it really isn't safe to plant ANYTHING until the end of May or even the beginning to middle of June, and we can start getting cold snaps as early as the beginning of September. No enough to permanently get col, but certainly enough to kill tender plants off and cause blossom and fruit drops. And that sort of thing is what worries me. Finding crops that can take either extreme heat or extreme cold is doable (for example Ricter's seed zoo has a tomato that is capable of producing in the full tropics (when I understand the standard tomato finds it a little TOO hot) and I know of ones that can take extreme drought (Cheeseman's) and extreme sopping rain (Nagaraclang). But with things fluctuating so wildly I begin to wonder if we are going to get to the point where the only things that will survive will have to be able to take ANYTHING; freezing cold AND broiling heat, severe drought AND pouring rain. One can buffer a bit with landraces, but the idea of having to make you landrace cover everything from Arctic Tundra to Tropical Rainforest is a little scary. SOMETHING may grow that way, but there is only so much space any person has, and if the sucess rate of our crops becomes so uncertain that our annual return rate is 10% AT BEST, we are all in trouble. Is cheeseman's the wild tomato from the galapagos S. Cheesemanii? I thought it was salt tolerant. It's drought tolerant too? Thinking about doing a dry farming experiment and I think Andrew sent me some seeds for S. Cheesemanii Yes |
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Post by jocelyn on Dec 16, 2018 12:06:08 GMT -5
Part of the trouble is that we bring our industrial agriculture biases with us when we measure outputs.
Many parts of the world don't want/use/can afford/ machinery or chemical fertilizers.
Small plots are worked by hand and shade/shelter belt trees are also food trees.
Animal and human waste fertilizes the ground that produced it, sometimes with the addition of fish waste for coastal folks.
In the affluent first world, folks have septic tanks and tile fields.
We have planted a lot down slope of the tile field. Cherries, pine nuts, apples, sweet chestnuts, raspberries...and all yield heavily because of nutrients moving downslope from the tile bed.
A wide range of food options mean that in the bad year, there is still something.
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Post by jocelyn on Dec 16, 2018 15:16:45 GMT -5
Depending on where you live, you might be able to raise some chickens for meat.
For us, using purchased chicks and feed, it is economical to let them graze too.
Our feed conversiopn is 2.88 to 1, on an oven ready basis. This lowers the carbon dioxide produced by shipping meat or feed.
Grass grows with no inputs from us.
Yes, if we do nothing, it's going to cost us, and our kids and grandkids.
Nuts are good protein too, and we now have lots. Anybody close can have seednuts from me, for the postage.
Still, climate change costs with woody agriculture too, having lost 4 sweet cherries after two bad winters in a row.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Dec 16, 2018 18:14:16 GMT -5
S. Cheesemanii? I thought it was salt tolerant. It's drought tolerant too? Thinking about doing a dry farming experiment and I think Andrew sent me some seeds for S. Cheesemanii Not a bad idea, but I would concentrate first on getting reliable seed from it first. |
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Post by mskrieger on Dec 17, 2018 11:04:06 GMT -5
In my limited time growing in two rather favorable climates (coastal New England and interior midAtlantic), my experience echoes Jocelyn's: if you plant a great diversity of crops that in general do well in your region, and plant more than you expect to need, you generally have enough. For example, in this spectacularly wet year, I still had bumper crops of turnips, squash and eggplant. If my blackberries had been mature we would have gotten masses of those, too, and if I'd planted more fall brassicas (broccoli etc.) we would have masses of those, too. And mushrooms? This was The Best Year Ever.
Most of those crops besides the blackberries would have been fine if it had been unusually cold, too, with a little TLC.
If it had been an unusually dry year, the tomatoes, melons, corn, okra and cowpeas would have been the stars of the show. Etc.
And once you know the likely extremes in your place, you can mitigate them. Prone to frosts midsummer? Plan for it with structures you can easily drape with cloth on chilly nights. Make sunken beds and shade trellis if you have crazy hot spells.
I think it's more about noticing and planning for the likely extremes in your region. Of course sometimes there are Acts of God that cannot be avoided, but most "natural disasters" are really man-made, due to our hubris and lack of flexibility or basic planning. Most of the people really this thread already know that, though!
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Post by jocelyn on Dec 18, 2018 5:28:57 GMT -5
Yah, I'm with you. There are many approaches, and folks here seem to be using all of them; breeding a particular crop plant that can take more extreme conditions, and planting lots of different crops so that something will get the conditions it wants.
For us, it was unusually hot and dry, but with a short season(frosts). The squashes, especially the early and mid season ones, were bountiful and extra tasty.
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