Breeding Goldini Zucchini Podcast

[William Schlegel]

I think now having grown goldini seed to seed it is a nicely short season squash. It sure liked the NE garden.

[Nicolas]

Have you tried to eat it like a cucumber ?

[William Schlegel]

A little blander than Lofthouse crook neck eaten raw like a cucumber. OK though. I really want to dry some to taste what Carol wrote about. Just busy with the dehydrator and seeds.

Interesting side note. I discarded the mature flesh. However I took a couple small raw bites out of curiosity. Non-bitter. Maybe even a little cucumber like.

[William Schlegel]

The seed for Carol Deppe's Goldini squash seems to be dry after being spread out all week. I have given most of it to my wife for selling through her Etsy store once she puts it back up for the year. I reserved a good bit for replanting next year- a handful, more than I started with by far. I want to cross it into my pepo grex even more now that I have grown it. 

[William Schlegel]

I harvested another Goldini seed squash today. I thought there weren't any more but found one.

I just reread the podcast transcript. My Goldini packet that grew had maybe 12 seeds in it. Carol bred Goldini to be mass selected with a population size of sixty and she describes leaf shape variability. My best guess is that the Goldini I received and am passing on is not what we would get directly from Carol Deppe. It is a little bit inbred of a sub sample. So in my sub sample of 12 isolated plants here is what I noticed. Relative uniformity. Leaf uniformity. All bush type. All ridged. All yellow. Some slightly crookneck shaped when fully mature. I did not like the fresh flavor as well as that of Lofthouse crookneck. That doesnt jive with Carol's story and makes me wonder if they taste different here than there. I still haven't tried the dried flavor. Speed: germination was good. Suitably short season. Outperformed all other squash this year in time from seed to seed but it had a big advantage. I only had about 12 seeds. So I spaced them well.

Was also reading in Carol's books and she liked the flavor of Zephyr F1. Which I added to my pepo grex this year.

Mandan squash is a phenomenal variety here. Ive crossed it with Lofthouse zucchini and crookneck last year. Added zephr F1 and costata romanesco this year. Next year I'll add Goldini. I like my new grex a lot.

[William Schlegel]

It bothers me now that I think my population is an inbred sub-sample of this. We can fix that- in fact Carol wrote about how to do just that in one of her stories, but we need more samples of the variety to do so.

Or we could recreate the original cross and cross it to the sub sample.

However, I think for my part I prefer to send samples out, and then use mine to breed a new variety with.

I hope Carol has a stash of it and gives some to a seed company to grow out properly.

[PhilaGardener]

It sounds like your sample's genetics were bottlenecked before it got to you.  Given the scarcity of Goldini seed in circulation, it remains valuable.  Perhaps there are independently-derived lines out there that could be crossed with this one to restore some of that variability, but this highlights the importance of banking OSSI varieties when they are pledged so all that work isn't lost.

[William Schlegel]

True, but also philosophically I believe that we should never stop plant breeding. Also, we should never stop saving seeds and trading seeds. If we want to respond to climate change as gardeners this is the climate change adaptation we can do. In that view I am fine with the sub sample because I am going to make crosses with it. Also as long as the parent varieties of Goldini are still around its genetic diversity isn't lost only some of the within variety diversity and resilience.

[William Schlegel]

https://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/goldini-ii-organic-yellow-summer-squash-1530

Fedco is going to be selling Goldini II

I bet if Fedco is involved it must be a quality strain. I wonder if it is true to Carol's description and what is up with the II?

[Nicolas]

I like the  Breeder Royalties / OSSI at the end

No shipping outside US / CA though

[AndrewB]

I like the  Breeder Royalties / OSSI at the end

No shipping outside US / CA though

I am willing to help any overseas friends obtain hard to get seeds such as these. I just need to fill out the customs forms and as long as your country has no import restrictions (or you are willing to take the risk) then it is a fairly straight forward thing to do. Just slightly time consuming and possibly costly for postage.

I am confident others would be willing to help also, though I have not seen many offer like I have. I have had a few friends on this forum and others help me get hard to find seeds from Canada, the UK, Germany, and Turkey.

At this point I have shipped packages to Austria, Australia, Canada, England / UK, Germany, Poland, Turkey, and probably others. Some of these countries I have shipped packages with seeds more than once.

p.s. I am interested in learning more about heirloom or unkown varieties of vegetables and herbs in the English speaking world from France. I have a suspicion France (and Québec?) may be growing a lot of interesting things that we here in the US know nothing about. It seems like there may be a big free-the-seed movement over there with the strange laws on seeds and the movement to save and breed new varieties from heirloom crops. But again I know very little about things like that that go on in France or Europe that occur in languages other than English.

[Diane Whitehead]

When the EU was formed, a decision was made to allow sales of seeds only of an approved list of vegetables. This prompted the formation of societies that supplied seeds not on the list.

I don't know whether newly bred plants were added to the approved list.

[PhilaGardener]

In addition to FEDCO, Goldini II is also being listed by Adaptive Seeds in Oregon.  They call it Carol Deppe's "improved line".

https://www.adaptiveseeds.com/product/vegetables/squash/summer-squash/zucchini-goldini-2-organic/

[William Schlegel]

I noticed Adaptive Seeds as well.

I saw a post today on the new organic seed commons where they compared Goldini II, Dark Star, and Costato Romanesco dry farmed, medium, and high irrigation. Goldini faired the worst. I am intrigued. I wonder if anyone here knows if Goldini is the only bush type of the three?

After seeing that trial result I would be inclined to back cross Goldini II to Costato Romanesco or out cross it to Dark Star. Though not sure if the trial would matter as much here as these varieties may perform better in different climates. The trial was west coast maybe California.

Last summer a old packet of Costato Romanesco underperformed for me making one weak plant that I decided to use as a pollen parent only. Not surprising as seed gets old and a bad start matters. One plant is far from a trial. I can't be sure if it was Vining or bushing as it was a small plant. A packet of Goldini original strain but I suspect inbred performed very well for me. Definitely bush type. I was impressed with its shortness of season seed to seed an important trait here.

[William Schlegel]

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1415598323/30-goldini-zucchini-seeds-bred-by-carol

My wife put up the Goldini seed I grew on her Etsy shop. It is a remarkably good variety- though I think for large gardens or dry farming it might be better if it was vining and not bush. I plan to plant it again in a crossing block with my Mandan x Lofthouse grex.