Welcome and Introduce Yourself!

[Gilbert Fritz]

Hello,

I go by Gilbert Fritz on Permies and Home Grown Goodness. I live in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, high plains desert with very erratic weather.

It is probably overly pretentious to call myself a plant breeder right now. I’ve been the happy recipients of seed from breeding projects that Andrew Barney and Joseph Lofthouse started, and I’ve grown them out and swapped the seeds back and forth.

Most of my own projects have gotten stalled so far. I am very ambitious, and every year I start far more projects than I can finish, from 500 tomato plants to rocket stove hot frames to a backyard blacksmith forge. As a consequence, things get lost or neglected. But I hope to be a successful plant breeder some day.

My interest lies in developing a truly sustainable agriculture for the Front Range; something that can feed our large urban population without fossil fuels in an area that has limited water, erratic weather, and terrible soils.

Along these lines, my breeding plans for the future are:

continued collaboration with Andrew and Joseph on watermelons, melons, tomatoes and squash, particularly moschatas and interspecies hybrids;

working on a perennial dryland squash by crossing with buffalo gourd;

experimenting with native Ipomoea species in the hopes of developing a sweet potato type crop;

Selecting dahlias that overwinter reliably here, with the eventual goal of developing them as a tuber crop;

experimenting with various other tuber crops;

experimenting with, and breeding landraces for, “pasture cropping” in which annual grain crops are sown into dormant perennial pastures, either cool weather grains into warm weather grasses, or warm weather grains into cool season grasses;

selecting peas for overwintering for dry pea production;

crossing as many Juglans species as I can get to select for a walnut that produces well here and is resistant to Thousand Cankers (black walnuts did well here until the Thousand Cankers came; most other Juglans are not rugged enough for this climate);

Planting out seeds from improved honey locusts to select for adaptability here;

and, as a long shot, growing olives in a greenhouse in hopes that crossing the most hardy types would produce a variety that could grow outdoors here.

[jocelyn]

I'm Jocelyn, and I live on PEI, on the east coast of Canada.  I dabble with whatever interests me at the time, but with a long term interest in chestnuts, elms, and potatoes.  I'm starting to get hardier chestnuts, slow going, due to generation time, and the nut size is coming up too.  Blight resistance is a work in progress.
Elms, well, white elms mostly, and some progress on dutch elm disease resistance.

Potaoes, any that taste good and don't take the late blight.

Tomatoes, just dabbling, but looking for flavour, short time to maturity and no blight.

Hubby likes tomatoes, so looking to grow more for us.

I like the nuts, and use them in breads ( have old nut grinder, pre 1900)

Soil is about 5 feet to bedrock, sandy loam, can be dry in summer, rich.

[Doro]

Hi there, I'm Dorothy and on the few platforms I frequent (Instagram mostly) I go by 'torp tomaten', which translates to 'homestead tomato'.
My garden is located in Värmland, Sweden. A very rural forrest area, just above the 60th latitude and close to the Norwegian border. Growing things in acidic sand soil paired with the typical summer being short and cool, but with long days.
I've been gardening, saving seeds and breeding veg for useful or pretty traits for most of my life. Basically since I started walking and helped my grandpa with the family garden. Since then I'm growing food for family and friends, enjoy the diversity of the things I harvest and try to adapt exotic veg to my lousy northern climate.
Main focus atm is potatoes, but I also have projects with tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, broad beans, runner beans, peas, parsnip, turnip, swedes, tomatillo and probably other things which I forgot for the moment. If a crop will grow for me, I usually end up breeding with it at some point.
I have a full time job not related to plants, which peaks at ~80h/ week while it's busy. So my free time in the garden or online can be kind of limited, but I don't sleep much and there is coffee

[rowan]

Wow, it's nice to finally see the actual names to go with the profiles that I see in other forums and on FB.

[Oxbow Farm]

Hi there, I'm Dorothy and on the few platforms I frequent (Instagram mostly) I go by 'torp tomaten',

Torp-Dorothy I'm so excited that you are here! 

[Doro]

Hi Tim! I'm very excited to be here! Thank you so much for guiding me this way.
A place where people won't get upset when I breed or select traits from heirloom landraces - that's heaven

[equant]

I'm an astronomer in Tucson Arizona USA and I live on the alluvium of the Tucson Mountains.  The soil is rock, gravel and clay with little organic matter to speak of.  I am not an experienced gardener, nor plant breeder.  I do container gardening, raised bed gardening, straw bale gardening, and native soil gardening all in a very small space.  Some crops I baby, some I don't.  Most of my gardening is compelled by a love of food and scientific experimentation.

I've bred peppers and cow-peas with intentional crosses and selection in the past.  Recently I've read the books of Carol Deppe and Joseph Tychonievich, and they've started me down a more focused plant breeding path.  I've been putting energy lately into learning to grow potatoes and citrus grafting in order to begin breeding projects with each.  I'm also interested in continuing my pepper breeding.  I am thinking about choosing a vegetable that is marginal in Tucson, and using the landrace approach at a local community garden I am involved in to develop a localized variety.

[Nicholas Locke]

Hi Equant, Sounds great!

[Woody Gardener]

Hi, I'm Ray. woodsy_gardener and Edlinuser on other forums. I live in a cabin that I built on 5 wooded acres with rocky clay soil low in organic matter in the hills of NW Arkansas. I'm lazy and have little money so I put in a natural garden, no till, no poisons, dilute urine for fertilizer, leaves for mulch. I've tried many varieties to see what will be productive in my garden. High bush blueberries won't grow in my garden but Rabbiteye blueberries grow like weeds. Fall planted Russian kale is very productive till the following summer when it sets seeds.

I am currently testing a lot of medicinal herbs especially those that help with my COPD. I am grateful to Carol Deppe and Joseph Lofthouse for the inspiration and ideas I've gotten from their writing.

[Troppo]

Gday, I’m Grant but I go by the pseudo Troppo on other forums. I live near Toowoomba in Queensland Australia. Been dabbling in breeding a quite a few years. Currently my projects include snowpeas, tomatoes, potatoes, spaghetti squash and broccoli next season. Growing in large garden pots/planter boxes until I get a more permanent space to grow.

[Richard Watson]

Hi Ray and Grant.

Toowoomba is a beauty small city, i was quite taken with the place

[Walt]

Hi, I'm Walt, AKA Waltseed on some old forums.  I live in central Kansas, USA.  I'm 68 yers old and was retired for 5 years but recently working part time to get money for greenhouses, rototiller, etc.
My major breeding and gardening project now is hardy citrus.  I'm still debating in my own mind whether to go open source with my citrus, or try to get money out of them so I can at least break even. 
Same with late-blooming apricots, which is a much smaller project.
Other projects will be open source.
Other projects include very early sweet corn, tomatoes adapted to heat and drought, perennial sorghum, and wheatgrass as grain.

[Klaus Brugger]

Hi everybody, hi Andrew!

I'm Klaus, I'm 26 years old, and I live in a wine-producing region in Central Europe with not too much precipitation (<600 mm).
Since my early childhood I've been fascinated by plants and I started a bit of amateur plant breeding a few years ago after having read Carol Deppe's BYOVV.
I got my bachelor's in Agricultural Sciences and I've worked as a member of the plant breeding team of a seed saver's organization here in Austria. Currently I'm doing my master's in Plant Sciences with a focus on plant breeding.
As a hobby breeder I've been playing around with a few plant families and I'm particularly interested in Cucurbitaceae, especially winter squashes.
Some of you I already follow on Facebook or on Instagram, were I go by my real name.

Thanks for having me!

[Richard Watson]

Welcome Paul, ' (even though im across the pond) ' you in the UK?. Thats a saying we in downunderville use also.

[Richard Watson]

Yep England.
I thought you'd get that from the "Blighty toms" 

I guess we'll have the opposite growing requirements eh

Get some blight on potatoes but not on tomatoes