What are you planting differently than you would have?
I'm thinking about maybe adopting more of a practical food focus.
Maybe not quite so experimental as I am sometimes.
That might mean potatoes, carrots, sweet corn, domestic tomatoes, winter squash, spaghetti squash, summer squash, spinach, orach, green beans, siberian kale, and beets.
I mean of course after all the odd stuff I have already planted or started.
We already plan our garden to minimize the number of vegetables we have to buy, so no real difference here. In fact, we are trying out a lot of new beans. Of course, they are a pretty safe bet - we're going to get beans, barring disaster. We did squeeze in some hulless barley, but we did that because we already wanted to.
I'm writing from a Canadian perspective. All incoming travel was banned jusssst before all the migrant workers were due to arrive and there was quite a bit of alarm on the part of farmers, who rely completely on them. I'm talking about fruits and vegetables. Meat, grains, and legumes are fairly mechanized and/or mass processed and can work with local labour. Fortunately, the government relented and allowed them an exemption, although they are going to have to self-isolate on their destination farm for 2 weeks. So I am no longer worried about a big shortage of locally grown produce here the way I was at the beginning.
However, without imported produce (and I do expect a lot of disruption in the US and Mexico, where most of it comes from) there will be a hell of a lot more people looking for the local produce. I expect prices to rise, and rise substantially.
I expect the small local market gardeners who employ local people and already charge accordingly will have a bumper year, at least so far as demand goes. If they can handle it, I hope it will have lasting effects.
I also tend to think that the more labour intensive it is, the more it will be disrupted. So I expect berries and fruit, and leafy greens etc to suffer the most. Things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, etc should still be fairly available. I would hope.
Hmm, maybe I shouldn't spend too much time or space on potatoes. Though would like some seed potatoes.
Squash help me in that I do think they deter deer. So I may still grow an extremely large amount of squash- and they are easy.
Have a contract for sweet corn and another for tomato seed. Tomato seed you can still eat the tomato sans seeds.
Fruit is pretty consistent year to year, though not our harvesting of it.
Leafy greens, hmm. I'm at a low for seed. Might need to pick up some packets. Also other salad type vegetables.
Don't wait with your seed shopping! I'm checking on various on-line seed companies, and even the most obscure seem to be overwhelmed with orders. Errybody starting a garden this year!
Yes.
Unable to access to greenhouse space due to closures.
I'll be killing a larger number of seedlings than usual, due to space and north facing windows.
No bales of Promix when I went shopping, so Miraclegro it is. :(
Similarly to Ferdzy, we already plan our garden to minimize the amount of vegetables we have to buy. Although right now we are only year-round self-sufficient on turnips, garlic and tomatoes. Every year I try to become self-sufficient on another crop. We were all set to produce massive amounts of blackberries and raspberries this year until a rogue motorist plowed them all down in the fall (my berry hedge borders the street, and doubles as a protection against dog walkers allowing their animals to shit in my vegetable garden. It also pleases passerby who can snack on the berries. ;).)
Coronavirus is inspiring me to aim for self-sufficiency in salad greens this year. Especially scallions, which we eat loads of but usually have to buy. Mine don't grow very fast, which I suspect is limited by nitrogen. I've noticed already that the grocery store tends to run out of salad greens quickly, and if trends keep up (fewer migrant farm workers due to closed borders) it could get even worse.
Note to self: seed lots of scallions. Score some soybean meal for nitrogen fertilizer.
I've got an enormous stash of vegetable seeds and am supplying seeds to friends and family who normally grow only flowers.
I decided I had better make sure the seeds are still viable, so I'm doing tests of half a dozen each to see if they will germinate, before I give them to people who will be very discouraged if they don't.
I am reducing my potato beds (keeping more seed to start again) and only keeping the most promising tubers for replanting. Putting the rest of the beds into vegetables for the house and to sell. I have also put in a lot of trays of winter veggie seeds for selling as seedlings in a few weeks.
I was contemplating a new seed order today and it boiled down to salad greens and carrots. Last I knew still plenty of seed racks in stores here. So maybe I will wait and just add carrot seed and lettuce seed to the grocery list. Also need to consult with my wife. I asked her to pick up a few packets as she went to the store last. She got us broccoli, and dill, but misplaced a packet of beet seed. I have a cold so wasn't allowed to go. I am really torn about a few possibilities like if we want to grow a few onions. I generally don't do well with fresh onion and neither does my wife, causes reflux. However, no onion at all could be dull (it's fine if well cooked). So need to talk to her a bit...
normally I grow mostly for seeds.
this year I am going to try to grow all my own food. if I can avoid going to the grocery store, then I will be happy.
some of my breeding projects may get put on hold.
going to focus on potatoes, onions, sweet corn, and zucchini.
Starting a more advanced stats class to help with analyzing some data from last summer.
Not very advanced mind you. More like say stats 102 on a quarter system.
However in first week nonsense it just reminded me how much population size matters.
My plan for my 3/4 domestic Big Hill x tomatoes this year was to grow ALL of the seeds. Couple thousand probably. I've got a couple hundred germinated most in little clumps.
Was thinking to take the rest and direct seed them. Get that big population size.
Though maybe I should play it safe and grow out a different population direct seeded. Like I have thousands of might have crossed with wilds Big Hill and Thousands of Might have crossed with other domestics like Blue Ambrosia Big Hill. So if it's down to these three Big Hill cross populations and I want to play it safer food production wise. Or possible fourth option could be: mix the three populations and put them all in the seeder together. Then I get food with the occasional spitter? Or alternate rows.
It's definitely shifted my plans somewhat.
I normally wouldn't be planning on growing as many greens and herbs as I am now. And I'm growing more semi-storage veg like kohlrabi and celeriac, flour corn instead of sweet corn, and lots of squash.
Also a little concerned about potential theft of seed plants, i.e. someone clearing out my pea pods that were for seed increase/breeding, as I do 90% of growing on an allotment far from home. I hope my concerns are unfounded, it's just people act strangely in times like these. (Can peas bear successfully in a shaded north-facing area? :P)
I would not plant anything special, like your pea breeding stock, on the allotment. Pea pods are so noticeable, and so easily taken.
With your maritime climate, I suppose you can grow peas all through - from early spring till first frost. When I was breeding peas, I found I could sow the next generation as soon as the pea seeds had reached their mature size - no need to wait for them to dry down as I would if I were saving the seeds. So I was able to grow several generations each year.
Nothing I bred was exciting, so I gave up and now just grow peas to eat - from the shoots through to the pods, and the seeds.
My plans have change somewhat, although not completely. I still have 5 different kinds of squash I'm planning to grow large quantities of for seed production. And I have sections set aside for my Cultivariable assignment, my Baker Creek contract, and some for my Job's Tears breeding project.
But, I'm quadrupling the amount of space dedicated to potatoes. They're a major part of my diet, but they're usually so cheap and plentiful that I mainly grew them so I could practice growing them, and so I could test different growing methods. This year, I'm planting with the assumption that there will be several waves of shutdowns, and that there will be major issues with supply lines.
As a sign of how weird things have gotten, my dad, Mr. "Why bother growing that when you can just buy it in the store", is borrowing some space on my farm to grow his own patch of potatoes!
I'm also growing wheat this year. I have some small packets I was thinking of planting as a seed increase, but when report after report showed up of stores being sold out of every kind of flour they carried, I decided it's time to go all-in. I've ordered large canisters of 2 different kinds of wheat, one spring and one winter. That should provide for most of our baking, given that we don't eat a lot of bread to begin with.
The bean and pea sections are also being increased, and I'm going to try growing carrots. I haven't planted carrots in years, but I think I've found a variety that can handle my soil. We'll see. There is a big patch of greens planned, but I'll admit most of it is for the chickens. They've been keeping us supplied with eggs since laying picked up in early February.
Oh, and there will also be more non-food plants. Useful things like soapwort, pyrethrum daisies, and luffa gourds. I'm testing 3 varieties of cotton to see if I can get them to produce here. And one variety of tobacco, even though I don't smoke. I figure it might make a good trade item.
A different kind of change to my garden plans: I'm trying to be more aggressive when it comes to pest control. I'm planting mints around the edges to help repel mice. I'm putting the squash all around the field as a border, since I've noticed the local deer don't like walking through them. And my air rifle is ready with lead-free pellets. I'm hoping to get some rabbit stew out of the deal.
Fingers crossed that the weirdness of the past few weeks turns out to be the worst it will get.
I'm not going to be doing much of any breeding this year; most of the projects will be shelved, with the exception of the "prophet Elisha project" (Buffalo Gourd wide crosses.)
I'm trying to really ramp up the amount of food we get out of the garden, so I'll be focusing on vegetables at home and winter squash and other staples on remote plots.
I got the greenhouse mostly finished, which is a plus.
I want to get started with grain corn, but have never done anything with it before. Do any of you have advice as to how to start, what varieties might do well with little care, flint vs flour, what would happen if I bought whole grain grinding corn or popcorn and planted it, etc? I'm sort on funds, thus the attraction of buying corn meant for eating (or chicken feed!) and growing it. Would I just get a big jump start on landrace starting? If I was concerned about GMO contamination (I'm not sure if I am) are there any GMO flint corns?
Most corn sold for animal feed is GMO if not certified organic.
I only have flour corn seed as I haven't grown flint in a long time. Can't grow it this year have a sweet corn contract. I have a few kinds with some LR style mixing. Painted Mountain, Papas Blue, Arikara White, and Lofthouse. You want I should send you some? You are in Colorado right? The seed library's coming to pick up my excess saturday. If rather send it to you.
My plans have not changed at all. :)
I'm pretty aloof when it comes to being plugged into society, and as such I'm a fairly independent outsider when it comes to people in general. Especially fads and mass hysteria. Not really my thing, so I usually just go about my own agenda regardless of the state of other people. They can do what they want as it usually has no bearing on me.
Someday when I have my own place i will definitely be planting a large orchard or two though, making sure I have a good self sustaining water access, and perhaps putting in a fish pond. Water will be the new gold. Or perhaps the new toilet paper? someday.
I got my watermelon patch seeds planted. Just direct seeded one of the new raised beds here at the rental house. No water, just dry seeds planted (for now).
Got to figure out how I'm going to plant my other peas, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, etc in the space that is left. Need to buy a few garden hoses, but avoiding the hardware stores for now as I don't like how they are forcing everyone to go through long lines and through one exit.
Working from home is an interesting experience. In some ways it great, in most ways its terrible. But that is a separate matter irrespective of gardening and plant breeding.
"I want to get started with grain corn, but have never done anything with it before. Do any of you have advice as to how to start, what varieties might do well with little care, flint vs flour, what would happen if I bought whole grain grinding corn or popcorn and planted it, etc? I'm sort on funds, thus the attraction of buying corn meant for eating (or chicken feed!) and growing it. Would I just get a big jump start on landrace starting? If I was concerned about GMO contamination (I'm not sure if I am) are there any GMO flint corns?"
I have been growing some heirloom dent corns for some time. 3 'moonshiner corns' noted for their ability to grow and produce despite heat, drought, and poor soil: Jellicorse Twin, Neil's Paymaster, and Looney along with Blue Clarage for anthocyanin. This year I'm adding Joseph Lofthouse's Harmony Grain corn.
White is recessive to all colors so I select any colored kernels growing on the moonshine corns. I am growing a lot this year to share seeds with my neighbors as I suspect they will be asking for seed in a few months.
Andrew,
Carol Deppe in The Tao of Vegetable Gardening combines plants that get harvested at different times.
for instance: winter squash and kale that will be eaten after the squash is harvested, plus peas around the edges. She also grows peas up those wire tomato cages.
I haven't grown watermelons. Do you pick them all at once, or all through the season, like zucchini? But maybe your peas could share the same bed, grown up the tomato cages.
Watermelons don't ripen all at exactly the same time but season is much less spread out than zucchini. I used to just plant one or two kinds but now I have a varied mix so harvest is more extended.
Quote from: Gilbert Fritz on 2020-04-08, 05:43:12 PM
Do any of you have advice as to how to start, what varieties might do well with little care, flint vs flour, what would happen if I bought whole grain grinding corn or popcorn and planted it, etc?
When is your wet season? If your area tends to be wet in the spring but dry in the fall, flour corn should grow well for you. If it's wetter in the fall, I'd go with flint corn. I've never grown popping corn, but it seems like it would do better with a dry fall.
How do you like to eat your corn? Flint corn works better boiled, while flour corn tastes better baked. Dent corn tastes better if baked with a batter wet enough that it actually boils and then bakes.
Personally, I grow both a flint and a flour corn, alternating years.
The pandemic has changed my plans some. More focus on what I consider staple crops dry beans and sweet potatoes for example. I'm still growing everything but more or less in a landrace fashion, not that it is really much different than I had already been doing. Most specific breeding where I'm chasing specific traits is out the window for now.
Corn is an exception where I still want to select for a short season flint with other specific attributes, still I might not be as picky on that this year as I had planned.
Sweet potatoes is another exception, primary goal there is reliable production from true seed and that goal remains unchanged.
The plans have been altered, but not because of COVID. My brother and his family will be moving here in a few months, so I've switched over to more food production and fewer "projects." Onions and sweet potatoes will be the same (since I already had them started), mostly everything else will be put on hold. Our dry beans will be kidneys instead of the beginnings of the dry bean landrace, green bean landrace will also be on hold. Of course the watermelon proto-landrace will continue (no need to change that) with one new variety mixed in. Everything else will go to straight food production.
Why are so many of us assuming our breeding projects are incompatible with food production? Is this just an assumption. I clearly recall in Carol's Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties her saying something like you can eat your mistakes/rejects/culls...
How do we continue to breed with food production in mind?
The wild tomato crosses I hoped to spend huge resources on this year are definitely going to throw some inedible/unpalatable/unproductive stuff. So my thought is grow some more of crosses that are likely to be productive. Like only a few cherry tomatoes, lots of beefsteaks. Still going to grow a lot of the wild crosses, certainly all I've started. I just might not direct seed more and more of them.
Tomatoes is the primary place I'm cutting back this year. I have several of which I intended to plant in larger numbers to screen for disease resistance. Instead I'm devoting that space to more beans and sweet potatoes.
My water and musk melon seeds are getting old so I'm still gonna find a spot for them too.
This is the one time of year when I tend to buy a certain amount of vegetables. There's some sprouts of lettuce and spinach in the garden. I used the last stored carrot yesterday, and the cabbage is about to run out. The squash is history, and potatoes and sweet potatoes are running low. We have frozen veg, but they too are a noticeably smaller pile than they were.
It's hard to get groceries. At the best of times, our local grocery tends to not get everything they order*. There are certain times of the week where things are more likely to be in, and I'm having a hard time slotting myself in there because I have not yet adjusted to the idea that I need to place my order a good 2 weeks in advance. So, there will be no lettuce-y salads this week. (Whine, whine, whine.) Okay, got that off my chest.
*Oddly enough, I think it's because they are the only store in town. I suspect that the warehouse sends short-supply items to towns where there is a competitor, to keep people from going to the other one.
Most of my breeding projects are likely to produce less food than other plantings; I'm working with citron/watermelons, overwintering breeding where most plants don't survive, dahilas, wild tomatoes, wild (toxic) squash, wild, slow growing sweet potato relatives, black walnut seedlings, etc. Some of them might produce food but are experimental and might not produce the food we'd like.
Quote from: William S. on 2020-04-12, 10:20:12 PM
Why are so many of us assuming our breeding projects are incompatible with food production?
In my case the breeding is very much compatible with food production. I just don't have space for my projects as well as food for six additional people. So those projects that were already planted when we found out they would be moving in (onions, dry beans, sweet potatoes) will continue. The space allocated for other projects (rice, barley, new landraces) is being repurposed to grow larger amounts of the traditional crops.
Business as usual here - made sure I had lots of straw and manure for compost early on, and the carrot, parsnip beet leek and onion projects all seeded.
The only change is distributing my excess produce - i would normally give it away to my student workers or their households, but everyone has left town, and im not going out anyway. What i have done is call a few friends, and just set them loose in the kitchen garden for rhubarb, tomatoes, eggplants peppers and chillis. and im composting a whole lot of melons after taste testing. I was going to put a free food table in the street, but i don't want to advertise that i have a productive garden :(
GM
gmuller, I don't know if it is too late, or if it is something you can do, but melon dries amazingly well and makes a delicious snack.
probably down to the last 30-40 melons ferdsy. i'm a bit over processing produce. I f i grow it, I'm the one who has to do the kitchen work, and ive cooked myself stupid for the last month. maybe i can get around to cleaning the cherry tomato goop off the dehydrator and put a batch on. did make a couple of litres of melon icecream, but not impressed.
I haven't changed my plans much, since I was pretty focused on growing as many staples as possible.
It helped me make tomato decisions though, just start lots of seedlings and don't worry about where to put the extras, someone will take them. I picked a group of most rugged OP's that are fairly guaranteed to produce no matter the conditions, including a couple that needed to be grown to refresh seed. And growing out some early generations of a couple of lines I expect to be productive and tolerant, whatever the fruit are like. As well as some faves of the determinates from last year. And I started a load of micro tomatoes to spread around the neighborhood - something anyone can grow even if they don't have a greenhouse.
The one reason I never got into wild tomato relatives, our space is too limited to waste any of it on something you can't eat. I grew a pimpinellifolium once - it was inedible to me, so that really damped my interest in other cousins. Anything from the halfbreds will have some food value - at least some of them will be good to eat fresh, and even the losers can be blended up to make muffins (the tomato last resort, if they're not even good for sauce...)
Another thing I'll be sure to do this year is mind my seed crops. I have a couple of things bolting now in the greenhouse - the leftovers of what I ate in the winter, yu choy and arugula, could have had michihili too but I need the yu choy more. Seeds of my michihili crosses just got harvested today and drying down.
Ironically, this is the first year in many that I actually ordered seeds, instead of making do with what I had swapped or grown. Now there's a shortage or it's hard to get seeds, but I was lucky to order early and got what I asked for. So I'm stoked to have a few new things that I'll be really hoping to set up for seed production next year (carrots, celeriac if it works, etc) Nothing in ground yet, we are still mostly snow covered (later than normal, for sure).