Breeding Goldini Zucchini (interview with Carol Deppe). Podcast. OSSI has sponsored a series of podcasts on plant breeding. Each podcast features a particular OSSI-Pledged variety and a 35 - 45 minute interview with the breeder on how she/he bred the variety. The interviewer, Rachel Hultengren, herself has a degree in plant breeding, and is really first rate. This interview with me on Goldini was the first. Here's the link: https://osseeds.org/free-the-seed-podcast-01-goldini-zucchini/
Thanks Carol, that was great
Thanks for posting this Carol. I listened to it a few weeks ago and thought it was awesome. It's a variety I want to grow now.
I Love these podcasts! its a great way to hear how different breeders create their masterpieces.!
All interesting podcasts, thanks Carol.
Where is the best place to get seeds for the Goldini Zucchini?
I read there is little seed to share right now?
Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2018-12-29, 07:59:18 AM
Where is the best place to get seeds for the Goldini Zucchini?
I read there is little seed to share right now?
Only place to get Goldini, as far as I know, is my own seed company. Click on my website link and see my 2019 seed catalog. Yes, there is seed available.
QuoteSomeone was looking around for Goldini over on Homegrown Goodness not long ago. Wonder if Carols 2020 catalogue will be out soon?
Be aware, for the last 2 years she has been cashing people's checks but not filling their orders. The first time, she gave a long apology after a year of silence, and promised to fill all the back-orders if people just contacted her, but as far as I've seen she still hasn't filled a single order during that time. 2019 orders also weren't filled, but the checks were cashed, and there has been no communication whatsoever. If anyone here has gotten their order from 2018 or 2019, I'd be curious to know, because in every gardening forum I frequent, not a single person has gotten their seeds.
I hate to say things like this, because I respect her work, and I think the varieties she's developed are awesome. But I kind of hope she doesn't put out a 2020 catalog. There's talk on some forums of reporting her for fraud.
I even tried to contact her through a private message on this forum, and offered to help process and package orders. No response.
I suggest looking for her varieties elsewhere. I've been putting together a list of alternate sources for her varieties. I'll keep an eye out for that one.
I was one of the folks looking for Goldini seeds. I tried contacting by her e-mail earlier this winter to see if she would have seed available and never received a reply. I had seen several postings about her not filling orders so did not send any money but would have if she had answered. I've given up on the idea of growing this fine variety.
Regardless of the specific undergoings of this particular issue, i think this is a perfect example of why just "open sourcing" seeds is not enough. Yes it is good that we know the original parent varieties if someone wishes to recreate such a variety (though i doubt anything with fluid genetics can be recreated exactly like the original), but rather that if you decide to create and pledge such a variety it needs to be accessible from multiple places and/or vendors. In this case i don't think the "Source" is the documentation, but rather the genetics and seeds themselves. If no one can find these seeds, then they might as well not exist or even be pledged in the first place.
Say... Don't i remember Carol or something on the OSSI pleding form that states you need to send them a decent sample of seeds in order be grown, kept, evaluated, saved as backup?? Does not the OSSI organization in general have backup seed of this variety in a vault somewhere?
I am not expecting the worst of this situation, but if it were, did we just loose an open source variety that easy?! If so, this is a major oversight of such a system and perhaps we can fix it from now on going forward.
How many OSSI pledged varieties are ONLY grown and maintained and sold by the original breeder? I'm willing to bet most of them. Should an online store be set up similar to Seed Savers Exchange? I know not every variety kept by SSE is sold online, but many of them are.
As a side note, and almost on the rant side, i feel like most of the breeders / OSSI head board members do not use this forum at all or nearly never post anything. How much more wonderful would this forum be if people actually used it. Heck, why haven't most breeders made a thread for each variety they've bred in order to tell us more about it, post pictures, talk about it's history, and try to upsell and market these varieties to the rest of us??
*sigh*
at least i can understand why most of the members who sign up never post. Probably because they don't feel like they have anything interesting or valuable to contribute. Far from it. Or like they are not as experienced as other breeders on the forum. I wish everybody would post whether they are planting their first plant or breeding their 700th. Okay, this paragraph did feel like a small rant. sorry. :/
I don't want to get in the middle of Carol's business, other than to say that she is OK and there is no question in my mind that there is no fraud going on. I have no doubt that she will get things sorted out, even if it is taking much longer than expected.
Before a variety can be pledged, it must be available in some form, whether that means that the breeder is handing it out or a seed company is offering it. There is no requirement on duration, so some things get offered for one year and never again. One benefit of having them open source is that anyone is welcome to pick up varieties and offer them if they are worth keeping on the market.
There is no centralized or long term storage of OSSI varieties, although we are looking into a possible mechanism for distributing varieties that otherwise wouldn't be available. That is not likely to happen quickly. Having the OSSI potentially become a competitor to the mostly small seed growers who pledge varieties is a tricky subject and has so far be strongly resisted.
Trying to get the OSSI board a little more engaged with social media has been a recent subject at our board meetings. Part of the problem is that the age of the board skews older and many of us are not really social media users at all. I hope that we'll see a little improvement in the future. I have to admit that I have been part of the problem as well and have good intentions to post more here.
I decided to ramble on a little here, probably won't amount to much more than that but here goes.
I wonder if there might be a way to add a retail aspect to the OSSI site but as a beneficial partner rather than a competitor. OSSI might for example offer "OSSI Foundation Seed" a concept I swiped from Carol. Anyway it would be primarily for the developers, maybe under contract to produce the seed and OSSI sells it. I've never grown on contract so don't know the normal terms of such an arrangement but I'm envisioning an arrangement where the developer/grower gets the lions share of proceeds with OSSI taking a cut to offset expense of labor, web development and so on. The developer and anyone else could still sell independently if they want but as an OSSI variety, not as OSSI Foundation Seed. OSSI Foundation Seed only comes from OSSI. Also OSSI can only sell OSSI Foundation Seed produced by the original developer unless said developer agrees otherwise and yes, marketing is a primary part of this arrangement.
For small growers and amateur breeders such as me I think this would be a great arrangement. I could grow and sell my seeds with little or none of the effort, expense and work of becoming a seed company. Opening a seed company is a major hurdle that I and I suspect many others just can't jump. The expense and time is just too much for someone who is only growing a few crops and on a small scale.
I think from a marketing standpoint the weight and reputation of OSSI might give a boost, and maybe make it more attractive and perhaps a little profitable for more people get in the business. The OSSI page might still have links to availability of seed from other sources but also the buy direct OSSI Foundation Seed. Actual handling and shipping might even still be done by the seed companies that have means to do that.
Bigger seed companies could buy bulk OSSI Foundation Seed and if they want continue producing or contracting their own OSSI pledged varieties. They could even breed their own, branded with their name, OSSI varieties if they wanted too.
In a nut shell the breeder/grower gets the marketing boost of OSSI, OSSI skims off a few bucks to support operations.
This might also open up opportunity for distributing small quantities of experimental or early stage development seed, eliminating the need for large scale trials and long term selection projects. It might only be available as OSSI Foundation Seed a few times, maybe only once. Anyone one who wanted to could jump in, buy it all up and come back later with their new named varieties. Off shoot of that is more germplasm gets distributed under OSSI pledge. OSSI plant breeding Starter Kits, I'd buy one once in awhile.
Anyway I got a couple more ideas I could ramble about but that's enough for now.
Quote from: bill on 2020-02-05, 07:32:41 PM
I don't want to get in the middle of Carol's business, other than to say that she is OK and there is no question in my mind that there is no fraud going on. I have no doubt that she will get things sorted out, even if it is taking much longer than expected.
I really, really hope you're right. Carol's books changed my life. I'd be happy to help in any way I can, but a lot of the trust people had in her is gone. It's going to take a long time to rebuild that, even if she sorts this all out tomorrow.
QuoteThere is no centralized or long term storage of OSSI varieties, although we are looking into a possible mechanism for distributing varieties that otherwise wouldn't be available. That is not likely to happen quickly. Having the OSSI potentially become a competitor to the mostly small seed growers who pledge varieties is a tricky subject and has so far be strongly resisted.
There might be a way to make OSSI a partner and not a competitor. Some of Reed's suggestions are very similar to the way Baker Creek handles a lot of their varieties. The person who first offered them the variety gets first dibs on the growing contract. The grower sells the seeds, in bulk, to Baker Creek, and then Baker Creek handles the packaging and distribution.
What if OSSI had something similar, but in more of a co-op format? Instead of buying the seeds in bulk, have a commission taken out when the seeds sell. Have a standardized label for growers who don't want to design their own, but also have a reasonable range to which they could customize their labels, provided that it works with the same printer and uses the same paper. Use the same kinds of packaging machines to process the seeds, just to streamline that part.
If a grower decides that they're unwilling or unable to continue a particular variety, the co-op asks if any existing members would like to pick it up. If not, it goes in a seed bank.
(Slightly off-topic: if you ever get the chance at a behind-the-scenes tour of Baker Creek in MO, take it. That place is amazing! They have an entire warehouse full of seeds that aren't in the catalogs, because if they tried it would be the size of an encyclopedia. Even when they discontinue a seed, they keep some in their seed bank.)
How to fund this kind of a start-up? I don't know. Might it be possible to partner with an existing seed company? Or even contact several smaller seed companies and see if they'd be interested in teaming up?
I came across a website where people can post their own seeds, and the site handles the marketing and the payment processing. Kind of like Etsy, but for seeds instead of crafts. It would still leave the grower responsible for the sorting, packaging, and shipping, but for some of us here it might still help enough to make it worthwhile.
The website is https://www.seedwise.com/
Thanks for your thoughts Bill.
As a follow up to my comments earlier I was browsing through the listed pledged varieties on the OSSI website. I'm wondering if they are out of date. There is only one variety listed under melons, and yet Joseph's oliverson lofthouse muskmelons are not listed, despite them being featured on the podcast.
In addition a bunch of pledged varieties of flint corn are linked as being sold by sandhill preservation, but the link or website is dead. So either sandhill went under or the link is bad. And if sandhill went under it comes back to my original question. What is the point of pledging a variety as open source if there is no place to source those seeds?
Until these questions can be sorted out it could be argued that the open source seed model is failing. I get why it is a tricky subject not to want to create competition, but I bet there could be a way to mitigate that. Perhaps only small seed samples could be released at a time from such a backup system. The only downside is that could create a genetic bottleneck effect.
I have no problem with the board not being media savvy, but if the board skews older then I wonder what other bias is affecting decisions on things like this. Wonder if the board needs more diversity in age or whether a new board needs to be implemented.
Andrew, Sandhill is still online and when I checked under breeder the musk melon is still there.
Quote from: William S. on 2020-03-07, 04:48:12 PM
Andrew, Sandhill is still online and when I checked under breeder the musk melon is still there.
hmm. okay. my mistake then.
Quote from: bill on 2020-02-05, 07:32:41 PM
I don't want to get in the middle of Carol's business, other than to say that she is OK and there is no question in my mind that there is no fraud going on. I have no doubt that she will get things sorted out, even if it is taking much longer than expected.
Before a variety can be pledged, it must be available in some form, whether that means that the breeder is handing it out or a seed company is offering it. There is no requirement on duration, so some things get offered for one year and never again. One benefit of having them open source is that anyone is welcome to pick up varieties and offer them if they are worth keeping on the market.
There is no centralized or long term storage of OSSI varieties, although we are looking into a possible mechanism for distributing varieties that otherwise wouldn't be available. That is not likely to happen quickly. Having the OSSI potentially become a competitor to the mostly small seed growers who pledge varieties is a tricky subject and has so far be strongly resisted.
Trying to get the OSSI board a little more engaged with social media has been a recent subject at our board meetings. Part of the problem is that the age of the board skews older and many of us are not really social media users at all. I hope that we'll see a little improvement in the future. I have to admit that I have been part of the problem as well and have good intentions to post more here.
Does anyone have seed for "Goldini"? It seems this still has not been sorted out and this open source variety has basically been officially lost and is already in the process of trying to be recreated. I guess in some ways the source being the known parentage could see it recreated from scratch.
https://alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/9498/creating-goldini-sandwich-slice-squash
For something I might breed however it is likely that the source material would be hard to find and not a standard variety, perhaps not a variety at all if wild material. In that case, my work could not as easily be recreated.
Without someone saving seeds as a backup source I kind of don't see the point of even having an OSSI board.
If I develop an open source variety, why should i go through the tedious process to get it approved? Why should i rely on a board that is aging as you say? This business with Carol, though it did not affect me is still troubling after all this time. I've seen others of an older generation with rare seeds on other forums just disappear and those seeds are lost as well.
Perhaps this is why Alan Kapuler has resisted open source and has instead gone the public domain route. Makes one think.
Since goldini is no longer available in some form as the original requirement to get it pledged, does that mean we should revoke its status as an open source pledged variety? In some ways I think yes as it would be awful to have dozens of varieties in the list of pledged material that no one can find available. I can see this system breaking down in say 10 years if that were to happen.
I'm not trying to pick on Carrol or bill, more I think this needs to be discussed before it becomes a bigger problem.
In other news, one person MIGHT still have seed for it.
https://m.facebook.com/watershedfarmNS/posts/2861877270495143
Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2021-01-16, 01:06:28 PM
Does anyone have seed for "Goldini"? It seems this still has not been sorted out and this open source variety has basically been officially lost and is already in the process of trying to be recreated. I guess in some ways the source being the known parentage could see it recreated from scratch.
https://alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/9498/creating-goldini-sandwich-slice-squash
For something I might breed however it is likely that the source material would be hard to find and not a standard variety, perhaps not a variety at all if wild material. In that case, my work could not as easily be recreated.
Without someone saving seeds as a backup source I kind of don't see the point of even having an OSSI board.
If I develop an open source variety, why should i go through the tedious process to get it approved? Why should i rely on a board that is aging as you say? This business with Carol, though it did not affect me is still troubling after all this time. I've seen others of an older generation with rare seeds on other forums just disappear and those seeds are lost as well.
Perhaps this is why Alan Kapuler has resisted open source and has instead gone the public domain route. Makes one think.
Since goldini is no longer available in some form as the original requirement to get it pledged, does that mean we should revoke its status as an open source pledged variety? In some ways I think yes as it would be awful to have dozens of varieties in the list of pledged material that no one can find available. I can see this system breaking down in say 10 years if that were to happen.
I'm not trying to pick on Carrol or bill, more I think this needs to be discussed before it becomes a bigger problem.
In other news, one person MIGHT still have seed for it.
https://m.facebook.com/watershedfarmNS/posts/2861877270495143
The comments on that Facebook post say that seed will be available from them this year. That comment was a month ago. Might be a good idea to have multiple people watching over certain varieties/offspring.
Quote from: Garrett Schantz on 2021-01-16, 01:22:45 PM
The comments on that Facebook post say that seed will be available from them this year. That comment was a month ago. Might be a good idea to have multiple people watching over certain varieties/offspring.
yes, maybe a solution could be to have listed seed stewards with the OSSI seed info. For example, a variety named "Example 1 Squash" could list that it is stewarded by me in colorado and someone named john doe in New Zealand or something like that. If a variety is new and there are no seed stewards and no companies that are known to sell it, perhaps a warning should go out with the pledge papers to whoever requests seed to grow that they are currently the only ones growing it and to try and save seed for at least 5 years. I don't know. Just an idea. Not sure if it would work.
as @andrew pointed on Alanbishop board (edit: and here yesterday, damn i missed the updates on the thread), some seeds maybe available to canadians at the end of the month on https://www.seedtoseed.ca/
I hope some of you will be able to buy seeds and propagate this promising cultivar
https://m.facebook.com/watershedfarmNS/posts/2861877270495143
Noticed that someone made a post on Permies about Carol's "Bigger Better Butternut Squash" seeds for sale. https://www.seedwise.com/listing/910/bigger-better-butternut#.YATXTmlOlPx
Seems to be the only source for it right now - besides seed trades, probably because it was never offered on Carol's site. Hopefully everything is well with her, I never had the chance to actually try out any of her seed - other than sweet meat from a grocery store packet. Her books seem nice as well. I have seen a few pages from "Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties", might actually buy it soon as well.
I have bought a few different varieties of zucchini just to grow out and allow random hybridization, probably some intentional crosses as well.
Goldini is available for sale to canadians : https://www.seedtoseed.ca/product/goldini/
Thank you, Nicholas. I have ordered a packet and there are several left.
Did anyone get seed for this?
Any of our Canadian members growing it out?
I would like some seed if/when it ever becomes available. I'm toying with the idea of setting up a seed shop for OSSI varieties since we are running into the problem of OSSI varieties going extinct and having no backup genebank. This might be the perfect variety to start with. I'm thinking I may want to do it for all of the OSSI varieties eventually. Sounds a bit daunting, but I think if I organize myself more it might be possible.
One Canadian company has it for sale.
https://www.seedtoseed.ca/
Picked my Goldini seed crop today.
Those look great! It is nice to see this being grown out.
22 of them. So far. I intended them for a pollen parent for my grex but they ended up not growing there but growing great about 500 some feet away. So semi isolated.
About 2 lbs of goldini seed. A bit more in the food dehydrator. Need to spread it out though to dry more. Still a little too moist.
I think now having grown goldini seed to seed it is a nicely short season squash. It sure liked the NE garden.
Have you tried to eat it like a cucumber ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I like the Breeder Royalties / OSSI at the end :)
No shipping outside US / CA though :(
Quote from: Nicolas on 2022-11-23, 11:59:12 PMI 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.
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.
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/
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.
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.