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Post by alkapuler on Jan 17, 2011 16:37:37 GMT -5
Peace Seedlings grew several hundred pounds of oca and about a 80 pounds of mashua last year. Write for a free seed list to 2385 SE Thompson St. Corvallis OR 97333 or online at PSeedlings.com. The predominant oca cultivars are Amarillo, Grande, Hopin, Rebo and Mexican Red. The mashua is Tropaeolum tuberosum v. filifera from Colombia (north of the equator). It is exceptionally more productive than Ken Aslet and other probably Bolivian cultivars (south of the equator). The tubers and creamy white with a mild anise fragrance/taste.
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Post by alkapuler on Nov 29, 2010 18:38:56 GMT -5
i'd like some seed of this wild hardy morning glory relative of the sweet potato to use for making crosses with sweet potatoes to develop hardy varieties that can grow in PNW ecosystems and provide new food crops for this bioregion
i am glad to trade seeds/tubers cf PeaceSeeds.cn we have had excellent crops of oca (>6 cvrs), mashua from Colombia and very productive of 5-8" roots and yacon crowns
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Post by alkapuler on Jun 29, 2010 12:46:46 GMT -5
In early May, a fellow botanico and i went looking for Lomatiums in the high desert, just east of the Cascades. One location had four species, one with mature seed: L. cous. There were some L. nudicaule just spiking, as well as L. canbyi with white flowers (seeds still not mature a month later), L. ambiguum (maybe, not easy to distinguish from L. triternatum). By traveling along the Deschutes River, there are populations of L. suksdorfii, large clumpy plants in basalt scree hillsides mixed with poison oak with mature seeds in mid June. One area had L. grayi, Pungent Desert Parsley, again large plants with a fine characteristic fragrance and finely dissected foliage. In previous years i had misidentified L. grayi only to find that several of my seedling pots/flats had this species doing quite well. So i transplanted more than a dozen into gallon pots. Stevil and Utopiate are both right about how interesting, somewhat difficult to grow, and worthwhile are these Lomatiums. In the Willamette Valley, L. bradshawi is considered an endangered species. So after three years of looking, we found 2 plants, one which had been run over by a car. Last week we collected 13 seeds.
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Post by alkapuler on Jun 29, 2010 12:25:30 GMT -5
Last year i planted some Steely Green Kale, the seeds coming from the cross of Cascade Glaze Collards with Lacinato Kale. A few seeds escaped my collecting and the volunteers, 4 of them, appear to be the cross of Steely Green with Walking Stick Giant Kale. Two of them are impressive, big thick stems, bright green shiny large leaves, 3' across and they are 3' tall so far. As to the polyheaded Kales and polyheaded Cabbages, i have planted about 20-30 seedlings of each, looking for developments of the polyheaded traits which have yet to appear.... Having read some comments about the 'glaze' trait, in the Cascade Glaze Collards, our selection of Green Glaze Collards, there are some plants with purple stems, purplish green glazed, ruffled leaves. The most unusual and beautiful of these are now planted separatedly, well isolated from other brassicas to inbreed them and select for lines.
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Post by alkapuler on Mar 18, 2010 22:22:12 GMT -5
when we first began looking for free amino acids in our common garden foodplants, we were surprised to find 17/20 amino acids used to build proteins in fresh, organic tomato juice...though the six that were most common were the ones that are metabolically easiest for the plants to make, ie derivatives of the tricarboxylic acid cycle....then after hundreds of analyses of various aspects of diversity we found small amounts of free tryptophan in the root tubers of Stachys affinis or chirogi, an edible tubered mint. we did broccoli, from the stem to the flowerbuds, an inch at a time, and then onions, one leaf bulb at a time...all for free amino acids that are used to build proteins. then it occurred to us to confirm whether miso, fermented soybeans, which are rich in protein acutally become free amino acids; we only checked one sample, a garbanzo bean miso, and half of the protein had become free amino acids. these preliminary explorations of free amino acids for reducing the amount of protein we need to eat in order to break it down to free aminos by using garden grown foods to provide the free aminos directly is an early part of the ongoing process of upgrading our archaic, inefficient, wild evolutionary foodsystem
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 13, 2010 21:29:00 GMT -5
for many years i was interested in white sweet corns, then i learned that there are several kinds of pigments in our eyes; visual purple also called retinol that comes from beta-carotene (aka Vitamin A-an orange pigment) and two kinds of yellows, pale yellow which is lutein and dark yellow which is zeaxanthin. both of these yellow pigments are in our retinal cells and they prevent the bleaching of our visual system by overexposure to some of the rays of the sun... since these pigments are in the pericarps of corn (as well as marigold petals), i am now more interested in yellow corns though i don't know of yellow corns being distinguished as for example Pale Yellow Sweet Corn or Dark Yellow Sweet Corn which would then correspond to hi lutein and hi zeaxanthin cultivars
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 11, 2010 23:45:49 GMT -5
response to Pugs questions: 1. single large stalked plant had 7-8" ears, popcorn seeds 2. multistalked plants were 5-6' tall and ears 6-7" 3. haven't tried popping them; 4-5" ears 4. Double Red female x Chires male: detasseled the Double Red
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 5, 2010 0:40:25 GMT -5
Peace Seeds 2010 List available only on line at PeaceSeeds.com or PeaceSeeds.cn
Peace Seedlings 2010 List on line at PeaceSeedlings.cn for a hard copy send a SASE to 2385 SE Thompson St., Corvallis OR 97333
Peace Seeds is Linda and Alan Kapuler Peace Seedlings is Dylana Kapuler and Mario Dibenedetto
having seen some questions about our websites.... Al Kapuler has been collaborating with eminent Chinese agronomist Bi Jihuan since 1993, cooperating in conservation and biodiversity efforts predominantly with vegetable crops, some flowers and herbs... Bi Jihuan offered to construct a website for Peace Seeds and we have worked together as he maintains the website and we grow, clean, supply the seeds and fill orders from our seedroom in Corvallis, Oregon. Early this year he encouraged Peace Seedlings to have a website also. He constructed one for them and they supplied the seed list and also fill orders from seeds they have grown during the past several years.
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 5, 2010 0:36:12 GMT -5
we have ordered from they for years, their printed catalog is modest, their prices are good, their diversity is interesting and their plants excellent
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 5, 2010 0:28:30 GMT -5
1. what have been your favorite personal breeding projects? 2. what have been your favorite breeding projects done by others? 3. what discoveries await the next generation of plant breeders? 4. what breeding projects that began with simple notions ended up incredibly complicated? 5. if you began breeding all over again, which projects would you continue, which would you drop and which new ones would you engage?
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 5, 2010 0:19:28 GMT -5
having obtained the heirloom leek called Babbington from the SSE some years ago, it perennialized in our backyard garden and has been thriving ever since...each mature stalk makes 10-15 nice sized top bulbils (seems that underground little bulbs are called bulblets and above ground vegetative seeds like in some garlic are called bulbils) that root when the stalks fall over and make new plants... so a few days ago the plants began to sprout and i dug some up to propagate them in our field garden to find that they have nice round bulbs, the largest an inch across, an unexpected surprise
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 5, 2010 0:01:14 GMT -5
we grew Black Hokkaido Soybeans, and used some of the seeds to make soymilk and then tofu....the tofu was lavender-pink when we used bicolor or green soybeans, the tofu was white
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 4, 2010 23:17:57 GMT -5
some years ago, i grew Chires corn, a multistalked, multieared popcorn originally sent to me by RoseMarie LaCherez with Double Red Sweet Corn, starting Chires early in a greenhouse 2 months before planting Double Red outside in the garden... several years later after selecting for crinkle (sweet seeds), i had only sweet corns with an interesting population of multistalked, multieared corns with 6-14 5-6" ears... some of the ears had intense purple seeds, others had amber, orange, yellow and gold seeds...the seeds from plants with the most ears and the most beautiful colors were then planted, harvested and packed away for the following year but we didn't plant them, just tilled the ground and got several dozen volunteers with remarkable traits; one plant 9' tall had only one stalk with large ears in every leaf axil and carnelian colored seeds; there were many plants with 4-5 large stalks with 2-5 ears per plant, some with large ears and brilliantly colored seeds but no mixes of the seed colors on any ear...in addition there were a few plants with large popcorn-like seeds having coloration unlike anything previous...we will continue to explore and develop this interesting cross
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Post by alkapuler on Jun 3, 2009 0:10:46 GMT -5
going back into the past to remember how some interesting tomato cultivars came to be is not so simple... so i asked Kusra about where the centiflors came from, tomatoes with more than a hundred flowers per inflorescence and she remembers crossing hirsutum with humboldtii and while humboldtii has 2-3 dozen flowers per inflorescence, its progeny with hirsutum are covered with fine stellate hairs that give the spikes the appearance of insects and then too there are sometimes huge tresses of flowers and fruits
i looked into the suggested website for species tomatoes and have my doubts about the photos and correct identifications
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Post by alkapuler on Feb 28, 2009 1:03:04 GMT -5
-have yet to see a variegated Alexander's among thousands of seedlings which right now are volunteering in droves -reminds me of other successful umbels like Angelica archangelica and Turkish parsley which appreciate the mildness of our moist fall/winter/spring
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