Hi. You may know me as Bower on T'ville. I see many familiar names and faces here, good to see you all. Warren sent me here to check out the pea breeding thread, and I just have to join.
I need advice on a new project (shallots!) so I'll be posting about that in the near future.
I got my love of gardening from my Dad, who grew up a farmer's son here on the Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland, in the days before we had fertilizers, pesticides or anything but nature to work with. We have a short cool growing season with a cold, late spring and very fickle weather in general. There can be frost any month of the season, or not. Icebergs affect the spring weather due to the cold air blowing off the water. Climate change is bringing us a lot of miserable weather as sundry pieces of Greenland's melting glacier float by and/or cause the "cold blob" in the ocean affecting our weather in unpleasant ways. We are also getting more unpleasantly hot weather in summer when the wind changes - for us that is anything approaching 80 F! Unbearable and sometimes lasting for weeks.
All kidding aside, our variable weather has simply gotten more extreme, and that has implications for food security in the future.
I built a home here in the sticks 25 years ago, on a piece of land that belonged to my grandfather but was never farmed. Never farmed, as I learned, is a key piece of information for a gardener in this area. The glaciers scraped most of the topsoil away when they retreated just 10,000 years ago, leaving lots of interesting rocks of all sizes and yes, a small bit of red clay on the ridges, with a pH of 4. In spite of that I did manage to establish a bountiful perennial herb garden which is pretty much self sustaining without water or inputs. I was more interested in growing medicine than food, but tbh my efforts to grow vegetables were not well rewarded here. I maintained a fence around the garden to keep out the snowshoe hares, but they always managed to get in. I didn't do too well with fruit and nut trees and other trees and shrubs either, although some survived, the browsing of moose and hares could be described as brutal. At some point I gave up on the fence here, and instead enjoyed the company and inspiration of my Dad growing vegs together at his place - one of the first places ever farmed in this area, so 400 years of organic inputs and fantastic soil by local standards. I also got inspiration from two young friends who are farmers and returned to the island about ten years ago to get serious about growing some food.
I started a tomato breeding project to meet our local needs and tastes in 2012, after one of the most horrible summers on record. It has not been a straight line to the finish, and that's okay but I am a bit tired of having too many tomatoes in a small space, and giving it so much of my time. The two farmers who also helped with growouts and selection along the way have chosen an indeterminate F5 each to grow out this season, which they will take to stability. One of the determinate lines which I grew out myself this year has diversified from a bee cross between sibs, so it may take me longer, but I don't mind. They are close to the goal I had in mind - low maintenance plants that produce early tasty not red fruit. Maybe this line wants to be a landrace project. Can bees be wrong?
I think that ten years ago I had never saved a seed of any kind. Now it's an integral part of my gardening. It's fantastic to have our own fresh seed every year for all the greens we now grow, even in winter under lights, to supply our needs. And share and swap, to try something new each year as well. I'm really grateful to the online gardening community at T'ville and beyond, for the information, inspiration and seeds shared. TIA for this new forum and the focus on breeding! I expect to learn a lot.
