Category: climate change

Book Review: Saved by Seeds, Embracing Diversity, Adaptation, and Resilience, by Chris Smith.

Front cover of Saved by Seeds by Chris Smith

Book Review: Saved by Seeds, Embracing Diversity, Adaptation, and Resilience.  Chris Smith. Chelsea Green.

“Seeds compress future potential and deep past into miniscule abundant objects” (Dr Courtney Fullilove.)

I always enjoy Chris Smith’s writing and speaking, ever since his first book The Whole Okra. This book includes his love affair with okra, as well as beans, tomatoes, and sorghum seed growing. Also here are six chapters exploring aspects of seed saving, seed sovereignty, preserving purity, encouraging diversity, adaptation and resilience and seed selection. For those drawn in to the seed saving community, the appendices provide details hard to find elsewhere.

Chris’s home in Asheville, NC is a 5-hour drive from the nearest coast and was thought to be a climate haven. A place that would be less impacted by climate change than many other places in the US.  But on 15 September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene moved over Asheville and by some measures caused a 30,000-year flood. Many lives were lost as entire towns were swept away. Felled trees devastated the energy infrastructure, flood waters and landslides ruined water distribution, and cell services were unavailable for weeks in some areas.

We cannot avoid climate change and have reached the limits of adaptation to it. We urgently need to work on quick recovery and mitigation.

Utopian Seed Project logo

In 2018 Chris founded the Utopian Seed Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating, researching, and celebrating resiliency in food and farming via crop diversity.

This is not a text book on growing seeds, although it has that information too. It’s an inspirational book on why and what if we challenge the current orthodoxy of heirloom preservation. Chris is neither advocating for heirloom preservation, nor advocating for hybrid seeds, either.

Heirlooms are not the David champion against Goliath hybrids, although Chris admits that publicly critiquing heirlooms is like picking a fight with everyone’s favorite granny. See the book for a comparison of seed savioring vs. seed saving. Don’t hold on to what was but seek what can be.

Seed strains can usefully and pleasantly evolve, with deliberate or accidental crosses, as has been happening over much of human history. The strict heirloom preservation movement is a more recent phenomenon. Chris started there, and moved to embrace diversity, adaptation, and resilience to find varieties adapted to his garden.

Slow adaptation doesn’t pay in this time of climate change. We need seeds that are highly adaptive and resilient (and therefore include more diversity). Back to “landraces”: local varieties of plants or animals that have distinctive characteristics born from development and adaptation over time to the local geographic region and that typically show greater genetic diversity than types subjected to formal breeding practices.

Heirlooms can be sirens, distracting us from what we actually need to seek –  varieties that are rare may be rare for a reason! Not everything is worth keeping!

Chris says “I’ve been deep in the seed world for over a decade, and from the start I’ve heard and read (and regurgitated) countless stories of the importance of heirlooms, while exploring diversity still feels fringe.”

There’s a concept in journalism called Hallin’s spheres, developed by Daniel Hallin, which describes how systems of status quo define the boundaries of acceptable discourse. I find the spheres to be a useful framework for thinking about our relationship with seeds.

  • The Sphere of Consensus generally maintains or protects the status quo and is collectively assumed to be true.
  • The Sphere of Legitimate Controversy includes areas of acceptable debate, but all remain “serious” topics.
  • The Sphere of Deviance includes ideas that are either invisible or dismissed. In mainstream circles, these are often considered unscientific, impractical, or purely ideological.

Ideas can move between one sphere and another. “Ideas in the sphere of deviance may be considered deviant just because they disrupt the status quo or current political regime . . .   At the time of writing, reporting has documented widespread edits to federal agency websites, including the USDA and EPA, where language related to climate change, diversity, and Indigenous communities has been flagged, removed, or replaced. I think it’s time to be deviant and disruptive.”

In Dr. Bennett’s book Plant Genetic Resources, she wrote: “ I see no special advantage in conservation in the form of seed apart from the very eminent one of convenience, and I think that attempts to find other merits in the “steady state” which seed storage represents, seem to come dangerously near to adopting museum concepts.”

“A freezer full of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basket.”

“Bennett and others advocated for seeds to be grown and saved by communities in order to maintain the people-seed connection so that the seeds could continue to adapt and evolve.”

We need in situ preservation for ongoing adaptive change. The world of community-centered plant breeding ecosystems points to a vision of a better world.

“Early American plant collecting and farmer adaptation is often romanticized, but American agriculture was built on stolen land, largely by stolen people, and in some cases, stolen seeds.”

The Emergence Network

“The Emergence Network asks, “What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?” One of the responses to the impact of the green revolution on crop diversity has been to preserve crop diversity. But this style of preservation feels similar to billionaire bunkers or an escape plan to Mars. We can and should preserve seeds, but the systems driving their loss are still very much in place.”

“The 2017 Census of Agriculture reported that 95 percent of US farm producers are white, while a 2018 National Agricultural Workers Survey reported that 83 percent of all farmer workers are Hispanic.”

As well as How-to, the chapters cover the history of seeds in the US, botanical and technical info to help seed-savers succeed, examples of seed-saving for some main crops, an overview of diversity, adaptation and resilience applied to seeds, a step-by-step sequence of exploring seed diversity, and more about genetic diversity, including using ultracrosses.

Here you will find the information you need to prevent accidental cross-pollination, save seeds, dry them and grow them next year. The science you need is there. The explanations are clear and amusing (grow enough of your grandma’s rare bean seeds so you can give some away and dilute the risk of her haunting you).

This book doesn’t shy away from complicated things such as mutations and sports, random genetic changes that occur unbidden and you may not even notice. If you do, you may form an opinion: is this a Good Thing, a Bad Thing or an Interesting Thing? Chromosomes carry genetic information, usually in pairs. Brassica oleracea has 9 pairs, Brassica rapa has 10 pairs. Usually if a B rapa and B oleracea cross the result will not be stable.  A mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse and cannot produce any offspring of its own. Occasionally in the plant world, a new tetraploid species (with two sets of paired chromosomes) forms and fertility is restored.

This book explains many details of genetic and epigenetic changes as well as inherited seed biomes and the mysteries of non-neuron-based intelligence. Don’t let these complex ideas deter you. You will marvel at our world after reading this.

Chris Smith, author of Saved by Seeds

Chris says “I am quite a pragmatic (non-woo-woo) type of person, but. . .” I’m similar. Plant communication is strange and amazing, challenging to what we were raised to believe. Chris asks “What is possible if we approach seed saving and plant breeding as a partnership between people and plants?” This could perhaps lead to the development of more resilient crops, very much needed in this time of climate chaos.

“We need genetic diversity at the variety level, especially for adaptive systems. Inbred heirlooms and uniform hybrids aren’t going to cut it.” There is a lot of value in diversity. Regeneratively-Grown Climate Blend whole wheat flour is a blend of unique wheat varieties grown using regenerative practices that improve soil health. Climate Blend showed no drop in yield in the 2021 heat dome over the Pacific NW. Other growers reported a 40% drop. “If we have a chaotic climate, our strategy is to have genetic chaos in the field,”

This kind of diversity is the same as the Landrace concept in indigenous farming: diverse populations that always succeed in growing a crop, depending on the conditions. “The term landrace is used in many contexts but generally it describes domesticated crop populations that have evolved intergenerationally (that is, over long periods) through traditional farming practices and natural selection in specific local environments.”

Front cover of The Whole Okra by Chris Smith

The book includes a description of Chris’s multi-year okra trials, which you can read more about in The Whole Okra.

You can also read in this book about Ultracross collards, Ultracross okra; the development of a Purple Peach tomato with delicious Cherokee Purple flavor; the okra progeny of Puerto Rico Everblush (a round, velvety pod with red blushing and tasty flavor) and Aunt Hettie’s red okra (a robust, chunky okra pod with great flavor and high productivity) and more. Chris is breeding for resistance, flavor and more. Diverse seeds create a breeding ecosystem that can quickly evolve, adapt to local conditions, and bring resiliency.

“We must do everything possible to rapidly mitigate our collective human impact on the climate. If we don’t, it’s game over for life as we know it.”

Community-based seed keeping has declined, and with that we have lost a traditional way of advancing seed genetic diversity. It’s time to reestablish seed-keeping as a community activity: everyone a seed saver instead of a handful of seed saviors; infinite seed options instead of a limited number of “perfect” varieties. Chris reports that he resisted being called a plant breeder for a long time because of the term’s strong association with what he perceived as elitist corporate and academic systems. He came to realize that it’s a term that seed communities should reclaim. “The human history of plant breeding is long and vibrant; its narrowing to a pursuit of profit and purity is a recent phenomenon.” Chris recommends Adam Alexander’s book The Accidental Seed Heroes, which I also enjoyed (and reviewed).

During the rise of Monsanto and genetic modification, independent plant breeders and researchers began discussing how the ideas behind open-source software could be applied to seeds. The idea of protecting seed freedoms with open-source concepts led to the formation of the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), which was officially established in 2012. They named four seed freedoms:

  1. The freedom to save or grow seed for replanting or for any other purpose.
  2. The freedom to share, trade, or sell seed to others.
  3. The freedom to trial and study seed and to share or publish information about it.
  4. The freedom to select or adapt the seed, make crosses with it, or use it to breed new lines and varieties.

To protect these freedoms, OSSI created a system for plant breeders to register their varieties with OSSI. When seeds registered with OSSI are shared or sold, the OSSI pledge goes along with them. No one can claim ownership in order to profit from a cultivar and prevent others developing it.

An issue has arisen of indigenous seeds used for private profit in a mostly white-led seed industry. If your beliefs include recognizing seeds as ancestors, or as beings embedded within specific cultural and spiritual lineages, then the idea of seeds as the common heritage of all humankind can be deeply inappropriate. This debate led to the Culturally-Informed Community Seeds Pledge, for seeds from plants that have retained ancestral, traditional, or cultural relationships with specific communities and places of origin.

The pledge states, “I respect the natural rights of seeds and their people by producing CICS-Pledged seeds under the pledge’s culturally-informed practices and code of ethics.” People receiving CICS-Pledged seeds are asked to follow the same guidelines.

Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) identified all the varieties they held that had a tribal affiliation. They then asked First Nations community members if they were okay with their seeds being distributed to non-tribal people. All but one respondent said no, they were not okay with it. So SSE took those seeds out of general circulation and reserved them for Indigenous communities.

Appendix A is a US Timeline of the Biological and Legal Enclosure of Seeds from 1790 to 2018. Until 1924, the US government ran a free seed distribution program, leading to profit-based seed companies. In 1889 The US commissioner of patents had ruled that it would be “unreasonable and impossible” to patent “the trees of the forest and the plants of the earth.” In 2018 The United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which recognized the rights of peasants to maintain, control, protect, develop, save, use, exchange and sell their own farm-saved seeds.

Appendix B provides population sizes and isolation distances for common vegetable crops.

Appendix C lists crop types and promiscuity

Appendix D lists seed companies selling Ultracross seed and other genepool collections.

The 8-page Glossary, a bibliography, an index and chapter notes round out the offerings in this remarkable book.

Thoughtful, inspiring, and of practical help, this is a book to treasure.

Seeds in glass jars. Best to label seeds inside and outside the jar. Photo Broken Banjo

Success with Growing Lettuce in Winter

 

Ezrilla, a favorite cold-hardy lettuce.
Photo Wren Vile

Lettuce Seed Inventory and Ordering in September

We’re doing a seed inventory and ordering seeds of winter and early spring lettuce varieties, to get us through to the main lettuce growing season starting in early March. By then we will have received our big seed order for the year.

I’ve updated our Lettuce Varieties List, after perusing catalogs and choosing a few promising varieties new to us.

Lettuce Varieties 2027

We’ve decided not to grow romaine lettuces in our hoophouse this winter (and maybe never again), due to finding too many frozen or at least cold damaged stems last winter. We already gave up growing bibbs in our hoophouse some years ago (tip burn and restricted airflow encouraging fungal diseases.). So we’re left with leaf lettuces. We particularly like the Multileaf types, also variously known as One-Cut, Eazyleaf, Salanova, or Cut and Come Again lettuce.

Red Hawk Farm hoophouse planted wall to wall with multileaf lettuces.
Photo Pam Dawling

These produce “heads” composed entirely of small and medium-sized leaves – the outer leaves do not grow very big. They are bred for uniformly small leaves, with more texture, loft and flavor than baby mixes and faster harvesting. Transplanted 6″–8″ (15-20 cm) apart they produce 40% more than baby leaf mixes. (We transplant at 10″-12″ (25-30 cm), to improve airflow, so our production might not be as much as 40% more than baby leaf mixes.)

The full-size plant can be harvested as a head, providing a collection of bite-sized leaves.  But you get higher yields, particularly in winter, if you cut just one side of the plant (or the outer leaves) and let the plant regrow for future harvests. Growing multileaf heads takes 55 days in spring weather, compared to 30 days for baby lettuce.

Lettuce with sclerotinia drop.
Photo Pam Dawling

One of our winter lettuce challenges is sclerotinia lettuce drop, a fungal disease we call Solstice Slime. The Missouri Integrated Pest Management site linked here has lots of excellent photos and info on using an IPM approach to tackling this disease.

https://Image of red and green lettuces including some with Sclerotinia Lettuce Drop. <ipm.missouri.edu/MEG/2016/2/recovered/index.cfm>

Our instructions to ourselves say: “Sow 10 winter varieties, 2′ of each. We want to include Multileaf types. Best slime resistance: Buckley, Ezrilla, Hampton, Brentwood, Merlot, Oscarde, Panisse, Red Tinged Winter, Revolution, Rhone, Tango. Next best: Red Salad Bowl, Salad Bowl. (NO: Hyper Red Wave, Outredgeous, Romaines or Bibbs)” Of our eleven favorite slime-resistant lettuces, eight of them are currently available and in-stock from Johnny’s, High Mowing, or Fedco.

Rhone lettuce.
Photo High Mowing Seeds

Two varieties on our wish list seem to be discontinued now: High Mowing is out of Buckley and Brentwood and won’t be restocking.  They recommend Rhone as a substitute for Brentwood (we grew that one last winter and liked it a lot).  They recommend a new Eazyleaf variety called Ezflor as a sub for Buckley, and we hope to try that.

I have notes from last year to try Frisygo, Rubygo, Ezpark from Johnny’s.

Merlox Red Oakleaf lettuce (resistant to Sclerotinia Lettuce Drop) from Fedco

Merlox Red Oakleaf (resistant to sclerotinia) from Fedco sounds very promising – we hope to try that. It’s not a multileaf type, but any winter-hardy lettuce resistant to sclerotinia, especially a red one, is worth trying.

We’re ordering more Oscarde and Red Tinged Winter seed now in case there’s none available next year. We may have enough, but don’t want to take big risks. Red Tinged Winter is a particularly productive and beautiful variety.

In 2026, we had bad germination on everything except Salad Bowl and Oscarde in our 9/15 sowing. I think this was due to inadequate nursery seedbed care. We’ll try to do better this year.

Lettuce Log

We are getting to the end of sowing lettuces for growing outdoors this year (it’s early September). Those lettuces will be harvested in the second half of November.

Lettuce Log by Pam 2024 onwards

Click the + button to enlarge to readable size!

I’ve just updated my Lettuce Log, which is a work in progress, aiming to provide transplants for continuous lettuce year round for up to a hundred people. We tweaked some of the sowing and transplanting dates in hopes of a more even supply. Of course, every year is different, and all are unpredictable. Part of my strategy for resilience is to sow four different lettuce varieties each time, hoping several will thrive. It’s worked out very well this year. We had a slight shortage in August. Some bolted and we got no food from those ones.

As you can see from the log, the intervals between sowing dates get smaller as the year progresses, starting with 14 day intervals in January and February, decreasing rapidly in March and April to land at 8 days for early May, then 7 days and 6 days until mid-June when we start sowing every 5 days. In mid-August we sow every 4 days, then 3. We no longer grow winter lettuce in our coldframe (as the hoophouse provides a much better environment), so we can take a break from lettuce sowing for the first half of September. In the second half of September we sow for transplanting in the hoophouse and the greenhouse in late October.

Looking next at the column of transplanting dates and the column just before it (Days to transplant from sowing), you can see the length of time it takes a lettuce seedling to grow to transplanting size decreases from 51 days in January/February to mid-20s in May, then 20 or below right through to the end of August. You might well ask why we don’t just start sowing later in January, or even wait till February, and that would be a reasonable question. Probably the later-sown ones would catch up! We’re just enthusiastic to get sowing!

The number of days between transplanting one sowing and the next also decreases from 10 days at the beginning of the year down to 4 days in September. September plantings will each take longer than the preceding one to grow to harvest size.

The Harvest Start and Harvest Finish columns have the least reliable data. I hope to pay more attention to this part in 2027! My general goal is to harvest at least 100 good lettuces (from a planting of 120) every week from late April to the end of November.

The columns to the right include details about when we need to shade the transplants, when we put ice cubes on top of the seedbed, and when we watch out for cutworms. Those are topics for a different time of year.

I wrote about our late summer lettuce transition in August 2025, and about winter lettuce in December 2022. Also about Lettuce All year in a Changing Climate in September 2021. I wrote about our Fall Lettuce Transition in my September 2022 post Preparing your Hoophouse for Fall and Winter.

If you want to start from scratch figuring out sowing and transplanting dates for a continuous lettuce supply in your climate see this post, which includes my slideshow Lettuce Year Round and our graph of succession planting dates.

Winter Gardening Challenge

Digging compost into our coldframes for a winter spinach crop.
Photo Wren Vile

Winter Gardening Challenge

The Seedtime annual free Winter Gardening Challenge is just around the corner!
Dates: Sunday July 19-Wednesday July 22 2026

Time: 7:00 PM CDT every evening (with additional sessions at 10am (paid), 12pm and 3pm (free). It kicks off Sunday 7/19 at 7pm Central (8pm Eastern, 6pm Mountain, 5pm Pacific).

If you’re out in the garden right now, sweating through the heat, and you’d love to still be picking fresh food out of your yard once the frost hits, take a look at this.

A free, 4-day, live online Winter Gardening Challenge, hosted by Edwin and Paul Dysinger, the father and son team behind Seedtime, on how to keep a continual harvest of fresh food through the winter. With optional additional paid morning sessions.

Over-wintered Acadia spinach emerging undamaged from under the ice and snow. Ken Bezilla

Over the four days, Paul and Edwin (with co-host Luke Hammond and an awesome line up of guest speakers) will walk you through how to keep fresh food coming out of your garden all the way through winter. Yes, even when there’s snow on the ground, with the right cold-hardy crops and protection to hold off the cold.

And because it’s live, you can ask your real questions and build your winter garden plan right alongside them, so you walk away with an actual plan you can put in the ground, not just a pile of notes.

This year The Winter Gardening Challenge has three of the most respected fall and winter growers around joining them to teach, live:

Melissa K. Norris, the voice behind the Pioneering Today podcast and a fifth-generation homesteader who teaches people to grow, preserve, and cook their own food, will present Your Climate-Based Plan, choosing crops for your location and season, how to choose the right winter growing strategy based on climate + goals + tools available (none, row covers only, tunnels/hoophouse) on Monday at noon Central (1pm Eastern, 11 am Mountain, 10 am Pacific).

Pam Dawling, who wrote the book Sustainable Market Farming and grew food year-round managing a 3.5 acre garden for 25 years. I’m presenting Habits of a Winter Gardener (Temperature thresholds, frost strategies, crop-specific protection) on Tuesday at noon Central (1pm Eastern, 11 am Mountain, 10 am Pacific).

Nicole Burke, founder of Gardenary, who has helped so many people start a kitchen garden that actually feeds their family, is presenting Timing and Crop Selection (Fall & Shoulder Season success) on Wednesday at noon Central (1pm Eastern, 11 am Mountain, 10 am Pacific).

Every one of them is showing up live to help you grow through the winter. You get to be in the room, ask your questions, and learn from people who have actually been doing this year after year.

It’s completely free to join.

Save my spot
Takes about 10 seconds.

Overwintered Acadia spinach, weeds, March 16, Pam Dawling

Grow your best cool season garden ever.
Act fast because this event is coming up right around the corner!
On registration, users have the option to purchase the replays and VIP experience for $19 plus some optional bump and upsell offers.

Book Review: The Resilient Farm and Homestead, by Ben Falk

Front cover of Ben Falk’s book, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, revised edition. Chelsea Green

Book Review: The Resilient Farm and Homestead: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design. Ben Falk. Chelsea Green. Revised and Expanded Edition, 2024. 342 pages, $44.95 US, 40G BP.

Ten years after writing the first edition of his book, Ben Falk has made a revised and expanded edition with new information on greenhouse design, agroforestry, silvopasture, beekeeping, human health and more. Even more valuable are his further ten years of experience feeding his thoughts and practice of permaculture in a cold Vermont climate, no-till farming, native versus introduced plants and insects, vegan versus livestock-included farming, dealing with climate change and living a whole life. He was a single, physically fit, energetic and slightly idealistic, 25-year-old when he landed on his 10-acre homestead in 2003, and 35 when he wrote his first book, encouraging readers to “Be bold and try stuff.” After another ten years, he has a partner and a son, a lot of lived experience with various agricultural theories, a realization that his first decade was the “establishment phase,” a career in professional land use design, and determination to live a balanced life. His gained wisdom shines through.

Ben has the courage to tackle his earlier ideas and those of other agricultural writers and speakers and say what did not work for him and what does. You can be confident that his suggestions are practical and efficient, as well as resilient. The beautiful photos show ideas in action, not merely under construction as some permaculture publications do. Rice paddies in Vermont, possible but sensible? Swale-enclosed ponds, lovely.

The book includes chapters on creating a legacy in a time of change, design and site establishment, water and earthworks, fertility harvesting and cycling, food crops, adaptive fuel and shelter, resilience and regeneration for the long haul. There are useful appendices, including an aptitude quiz on living a resilient lifestyle, a skill list for emergencies, a curriculum for a resilient homestead, a checklist of tools and materials, a vulnerability checklist, and a glossary, a resource list, chapter notes and a thorough index. The introduction lists 20 new ingredients in this revised edition (including a list of 30 common cold climate site design and building mistakes); 16 practices they have stopped since his first book (spraying compost tea takes too much time and shows little result); and 10 new practices they have adopted (grazing cows).

Farming and ecological living can appeal to people across the political spectrum, but Ben does not shy away from briefly mentioning the current threats of economic, social and environmental collapse, while addressing vulnerabilities and how we might respond. This is not a “doom-reading” book, but an encouraging and very practical one! “If we steer Earth towards adaptive regeneration, we’ll see true resilience much sooner than by just letting it develop ‘naturally’.”

This book uses permaculture design and its framework for problem-solving and refers to numeric zones within a location. This is concisely explained, so don’t let the word deter you if you are new to permaculture. Ben Falk has not unquestioningly adopted that cause, or the Green Dream (personal ecological consumerism regardless of lack of fundamental political change) but thoughtfully tested and applied ideas that work and don’t cause problems elsewhere in the world. Ben advocates for people becoming producers rather than merely “less-bad “consumers.

The chapter on design and site establishment is best read before you decide which piece of land to buy. This is the time to consider your mission, goals, analysis of what’s possible, and how you plan to do that. To make your land use design, analyze what’s available, consider your options and implement your decisions, (aka think-design-do-reflect-redesign) as many times in a repeating cycle as you need to. Likely you’ll have more ideas for tweaking the system than you have energy for, so you’ll need to prioritize the adjustments that will have the most effect. This ensures maximum regeneration of land for minimum energy and time input. Ben lists his top five leverage points: swale construction and use, grazing animals, broadcasting seed and transplanting, cutting and clearing trees, scraping and tillage to create bare soil.

We need crops that convert the most sunshine and rainfall into usable food. More nut trees, for example, and intensive rotational grazing. Much of the cold-temperate climate landscape would be most productive converted to permanent silvopasture. Sometimes fossil fuel use to develop a site sooner is very worthwhile. Examples include chain saws, earthmovers, electric power tools.

Resilience is the ability of a system to recover from disturbances. Factors include Diversity, Redundancy, Connectivity and Manageability. Efficiency is not the same as Resiliency. The “whole world” picture needs to be included, and adapting to changing conditions must be built in. Actions that increase both biodiversity and biomass increase the ability to be regenerative.

No single design works for all sites or all groups of people. Your own skills and aptitudes are your most dependable asset. Practice welcoming adversity (the blessing of disillusionment), as a chance to learn and grow stronger. Try to avoid tight attachments to your goals, as this can lead to big struggles. Check out popular notions that others have already found faulty: planting marginally-hardy perennial plants beside bodies of water does not keep them warmer in winter! Your climate is not the same as information from ten years ago would have you believe! Keep your own weather records. Likewise, observe whether some practices you don’t believe in – dowsing for example – do in fact work. Modify your design to balance theoretical “best” practice with practicality: perfectly on-contour plantings do slow, spread and sink water best, but they make mowing and harvesting harder.

Once you have your land, assess it in some detail before taking any firm direction. Work with the realities of your land, rather than planning to radically change them. You may see a better plan emerging. Good designs incorporate the ability to change. Using modular designs makes this easier. For example, consistent bed and path sizes.

Overview of Ben Falk’s homestead. Photo from his website, https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/

Swales are on-contour ridges made by ditching along contours and piling the soil below the ditch, helping even out the water supply and retaining water that would have run off the surface as much as 20ft downhill. Swales make great places to plant hedges, and the space between one swale and the next makes a good small paddock for intensive rotational grazing.

Only the importation of fertility from other parts of the world has enabled chemical farming to continue after the Great Soil Erosion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When this becomes no longer tenable, will we turn to regenerative farming, or let society collapse? We can save farming by building and conserving topsoil.

When we make compost we need to investigate the source and the content of the materials: What feedstock was given to the Organic livestock that provides the manure? Was it from lab rats with a diet of antibiotics or worse? Grasses take up PFAS, such as those in flexible plastic sheeting. But if not contaminated, they can be a key nitrogen resource. Are roadside leaves safe? Pond weeds, comfrey, burlap bags, cover crops and organic mulches all have their advocates, Human urine benefits plants. Humanure is possible if the household doesn’t use pharmaceutical drugs. Biochar can increase soil water retention, reduce nutrient leaching and encourage diverse micro-organisms, but poorly made biochar can stunt plant growth spectacularly.

Wood chips are great, but wood chippers are expensive to own and operate and a pain to use. (One colleague said to me, “Lots of money, lots of noise, lots of gasoline, lots of time, lots of logs and branches. Small pile of chips.”)

Remineralization is the replacement of missing or deficient minerals, which could be factors limiting crop health. The Soil Food Web is an approach that focuses on soil biological activity as the main limiting factor in crop health.

Livestock has an important role for resilient homesteads. Regenerative high density stocking with very short periods of grazing in each paddock (called intensive tall-grass grazing or mob stocking ) is very productive and builds soil. Tall grasses (having deep roots) are grazed down to within a foot of the ground (not all the way down). Some roots die back once they are no longer needed.  As the tops quickly grow back, more roots grow, and soils build. Active management produces much healthier soil than neglect does. Anyone wanting to restore a neglected field area can read what not to do, and what to do, in this chapter. Ben’s approach included sheep, prescribed burns, scything, and over-seeding for several years. But no tilling or plowing.

There are benefits to mowing in some circumstances, with correct timing and severity. Stem density increases and grasses are promoted. If the existing plants have been cut down enough by grazers or machinery, May and June are the windows for lightly reseeding. Never let a field lie fallow for more than a year. Water management will help reclamation. Mow early and often.

Consider permanent fencing. Plan tree plantings in straight rows to make fencing and mowing easy. Refrain from pruning off lower branches if you plan to have livestock, as that will deter browsing. Feed hay to cattle on pasture if needed. If you don’t want to raise animals, you need to mulch or mow the understory of your trees and perennial vegetables. Those tasks take a lot more labor than raising livestock.

Ducks and chickens, sheep and cows all have their niche. Ben found sheep to be more work than cows, and both to be quite an emotional and logistical commitment. Sheep are prone to many diseases, but have a role as smaller, short-term livestock, practical on a smaller homestead. Ducks eat slugs, forage actively, are cold-hardy and have low health maintenance needs. They are good layers, and good mothers, have good predator-awareness, and generally won’t fly away.

Don’t believe all the generalizations you might hear about livestock, species, varieties or even individual animals. Ben reports that his ducks never ate mature vegetation during the growing season, for 3 years. In year 4 they attacked the cabbages. Who knows why? It was a dry, relatively slugless summer, which might have contributed. Observe what is true of your animals this year, but don’t depend on the same thing happening next year. Do believe that chickens will scratch up your seedlings and new transplants!

Keyline plowing is favored by many permaculturists. It was developed in the drylands of eastern Australia and may not translate to moister climates. It doesn’t work well in New England, for example. It may be useful in cold climates (where weather and soil conditions combine to move water across the soil, rather than into it) if drought conditions prevail. Managed small ephemeral ponds can capture and hold heavy rainfall.

Ponds at Ben Falk’s homestead. Photo from his website, https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/.

In-ground septic systems have leach fields capable of supporting good crop yields, of either cover crops or food crops. Plants cannot move bacteria or other organic pathogens through their tissues, so there is no danger of E. coli in tomatoes grown above your leach field. Plants can, however, bioaccumulate heavy metals and other inorganic compounds. If in doubt, test the plants. Research 2020-2023 suggests plants tend to accumulate PFAs as well as toxins in their vegetative parts, rather than their fruits and seeds.

Chapter 5 moves us on to details of food crops. Long ago, Polynesians navigated the Pacific in their canoes, locating small pieces of land to settle. They took with them 24 special “canoe plants”. These included foods, medicines, fiber and dye plants, building materials and ceremonial plants. They carried plants gathered from a wide area of the world, to adapt to many situations.

Alongside the benefits of perennial crops, there are some disadvantages. Climate weirdness brings changes to frost dates that kill blossoms and pollinators, and can affect chilling hours and flowering dates. One harvest per year from the space the crop occupies can be less than short term multi-cropping annuals provide. Establishment of perennials can take years (so grow some annuals around new perennials for the first few years).

People with short growing seasons would do well to grow lots of storage crops, and all of us are advised to grow a wide range of diverse crops. The book has tables of perennial crops best suited to various extremes of weather, Goldilocks crops to try out on a small scale, if at all, and those that give high yields.

For simplicity, focus on larger quantities of more-reliable long-storing foods rather than lots of small-quantity foods (but keep that crop diversity in mind!). Although Ben’s family used to grow paddy rice, they no longer do so, due to challenges of aquatic weeds, and losses to birds. Especially focus on summer-planted late fall harvests, to preserve food for the Hungry Gap from March to whenever it warms up enough to produce spring harvests. Another option is fermented storable foods like krauts and kimchi, which take less work than canning.

Ben Falk, author of The Resilient Farm and Homestead. Credit Marcia Falk.

Ben has a very interesting essay on “Native to When? “Invasive” Species, Species-ism, and Optimization” that really got me thinking. Healthy ecosystems include high diversity. Humans are part of the ecosystem (not kings or tyrants, but participants). We intend to manage our gardens and farmland in a responsible right-action kind of way. Not merely sit back admiring the view while elsewhere forests are razed to grow soybeans to feed us and our livestock.

Permaculture views plants and other organisms that have been in place for 10 or 100 or 300 years as not fundamentally more natural or proper than recent arrivals. More important is to consider what the plant does and how it affects the soil and other organisms, and our needs in that space. Plants, animals and other humans are not regarded as evil aliens.

Permaculture seeks inclusion and synergy, with adaptation to challenges that arise. This includes a high level of biodiversity, embracing the legacy of food systems from across the globe. It is not modeled on what the ecosystem looked like on the North American landmass in 1491, or before native peoples managed the land to promote chestnut and oak forests, or before mass migrations of buffalo or any other date.

Some conservationists seem perversely focused on getting back to specific species and ecosystem arrangements from an idealized past time, even if this involves large inputs of fossil fuels, chemicals, labor and money.

We are unwise to adopt a “Nativist War-on-Alien-Invader” ideology. During the time that humans have been moving around the Earth, we have moved around plants and animals (and associated microbes). What year could be chosen as a starting point to determine whether a plant is native or alien? We have potatoes from South America, corn from Mesoamerica, honeybees and earthworms from Europe, apples from Southwest Asia, and much more. Choosing European contact as a starting date is a prejudice that ignores previous centuries of land management.

No living thing is permanent. Plant successions and ecosystem change are natural. Native white pine and goldenrod have forced out numerous species across New England. A human moving a plant from one area to another is no more unnatural than a bird moving seeds. Movement of species is part of biodiversity. It is our responsibility to determine if it would be helpful to redistribute a particular species, considering the needs of other humans and other forms of life.

Ben says (and I strongly agree) “Feeding oneself from a monoculture in Iowa or Mexico while devoting time to spraying Japanese knotweed with toxic chemicals will not get us where we need to be.” Attempting to maintain the world around us in a static condition is simply not an option. We now need to provide for 8 billion humans. Hunting and gathering is no longer viable for most. We cannot live as people did when the Earth was more thinly populated.

Worries about invasive alien species may also indicate a fear that nature will “take over”, and even a belief that humans are separate from nature, perhaps its masters, a very colonial concept.

The urgent ecological and social issues in front of us require unified solutions. Fragmented approaches, including wars on specific plants (and cultures), have rarely, if ever, worked. Species eradication and similar fear-based hyper-controlling and divisive efforts fail even as they line the pockets of Monsanto. Treating all life-forms with respect leads us to more understanding, with prospects for synergy. Why, oh why, do the Acknowledgements list 16 men, while Ben’s wife Erica Koch is one of only four named female family members? Let’s have more biodiversity and inclusion!

Chapter 6 covers adaptive fuel and shelter, well worth reading, but one on which I took few notes. It includes house design and construction, fuel for heating and for power equipment, tips on common mistakes to avoid. Chapter 7 is on resilience and regeneration for the long haul, including intergenerational success, children on the homestead, and more.

The whole book is thoroughly researched, clearly written, and will be tremendously useful to all who use it. For more, see Ben’s website https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/ 

 

Climate Change in Virginia Report

 

The First Virginia Climate Assessment

We gardeners and farmers are experiencing the climate changing. We need to pay attention and reduce the risks to our land, crops, livestock, lifestyle and livelihood. We also need to be resilient and adapt our farming and gardening to realities we face. This publication is a clear help in doing that. While it’s written for Virginia, it can be useful to those in neighboring states. Those in other states can look for (ask for or work for!) a similar publication for their state.

We are all vulnerable to climate change, either directly or by secondary effects such as wildfires, vector-borne diseases, road closures, power blackouts and failures of our aging infrastructure. Farmers can lose profits (income) or even their entire livelihood.

The First Virginia Climate Assessment

The First Virginia Climate Assessment was published in November 2025 at George Mason University. It includes sections on Climate Variability, Recent History, Projected Changes, Temperature, Precipitation, Sea Level, Heat Risk, Flood Risk, Drought Risk and Cascading And Compound Effects.

Virginia has 27 different ecoregions and 6 climate divisions: coast, plains, mountains. Since Thomas Jefferson started his weather journal at Monticello in 1776, we have experienced about 4.5°C or 8°F of warming. Virginia has become warmer and wetter overall, remembering that the averages include a range of specific changes, not simply a gentle shift upwards of a few degrees or fractions of an inch.

Monticello Then and Now Temperature Comparison from the First Virginia Climate Assessment:

Projected Changes, quoting from the First Virginia Climate Assessment:

  1. “Virginia’s climate is shaped by weather patterns stemming from higher and lower latitudes, while regional variation reflects topography and coastal proximity (high confidence).
  2. The Virginia climate has become warmer (very high confidence) and wetter (medium confidence) in recent decades, with greater precipitation extremes (high confidence) and more frequent tidal flooding (very high confidence) along the Atlantic coast.
  3. Climate projections indicate continued warming (very high confidence) and wetting (medium confidence) for Virginia through the middle to late 21st century, with chronic tidal flooding along the Atlantic coast (very high confidence).”

This 98 page science-based work includes a glossary of the unusual words, and was published with support from support from the late Honorable US Representative Gerry Connolly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and former Virginia Climate Center Project Manager Amanda O’Connor. It is thoroughly down-to-earth and provides a collection of evidence-based take-home messages. By incorporating information from a range of experts in the field, and including statements as to their level of confidence in their findings, the authors ensure we are getting a realistic picture of what the future holds.

Virginia Temperature 

Large temperature changes and increasing extreme heat events are bringing greater health risks, labor disruptions, crop and livestock stresses. The adverse effects are found in the state’s major economic outputs, especially crop production and livestock.

In Virginia, we are experiencing larger temperature swings throughout the year. In January 2024, within a stretch of 11 days, Charlottesville experienced a daytime high of 79°F (26°C) and a daytime high of 28°F (-2°C), the largest January range on record.

With higher humidity in hot weather, outdoor workers have a harder time cooling themselves, as sweat cannot evaporate off the skin. We are losing cold days faster than we are going hot days, but the effect is not as benign as that might sound. Conditions have become more erratic: hot days followed by much colder days. On April 20/21, 2026, we had a real frost (27°F/-2.7°C). We’ve been having hotter-than-usual weather, including 90°F/32°C. This variability and range is hard on crops. Crops germinate, make fast growth, and then get zapped or fried.

Quote from the Virginia Climate Assessment on Temperature

  1. “In Virginia, large seasonal and daily variations imply that the most prominent temperature effects will be shifts in extremes (high confidence).
  2. Observations indicate that while there is an overall increase in temperatures across the Commonwealth, the coldest days are warming faster than the warmest days (high confidence).
  3. Global climate projections display a robust, statistically significant warming signal of mean and extreme temperatures in Virginia across a wide range of emissions scenarios (high confidence).”
Observed and Projected Temperature Change from Virginia Climate Center at George Mason University

Virginia Rainfall

In recent years, Virginia has had both high-impact rainfall and extended periods of drought, combined with windier conditions that can lead to wildfires.

Virginia is experiencing wetter conditions overall, with more frequent and intense rain/snow events. Although the number of days with rain in both spring and fall are remaining steady, the amount of rain is increasing. This increases the likelihood of flash flooding, and of saturated soil, reducing crop yields, perhaps increasing crop diseases and pest outbreaks, and disrupting transportation. Summer and winter tend to be drier seasons, but they, too, are becoming wetter via flash droughts – quick onset droughts that can end very suddenly.

Half of Virginia’s rural counties face water shortages that jeopardize $472 million in crop production. Data centers are a new feature that also require large amounts of water. Who will get first rights?

Quote from the Virginia Climate Assessment on Precipitation

  1. “Virginia’s precipitation patterns reflect a complex interplay of seasonal cycles, diverse storm mechanisms, climate pattern variability, and regional topography (high confidence).
  2. Virginia is experiencing wetter conditions overall, with more frequent and intense precipitation events (medium confidence).
  3. Spring and fall are getting wetter, particularly in coastal regions, while summers are becoming wetter in the eastern Chesapeake Bay watershed (high confidence).”

Here’s the information-rich Office of Flood Resilience Planning.

Virginia Sea-Level Rise

Sea-level rise and sinking coastal land are leading to “sunny day flooding…” The sea is rising regardless of recent rain. Because of a combination of land erosion and rising waters, Virginia is experiencing a faster sea level rise than the average global rate. This affects not just coastal regions, but far inland. Salinity (salt levels) are rising in the York River and migrating inland. (I live and farm in the York watershed, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay.) https://www.virginiaplaces.org/watersheds/3wsheds.html

Virginia Watersheds and Divides. Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation

Quote from the Virginia Climate Assessment on Sea Level Rise

  1. “Sea level has been rising in Virginia due to a combination of global sea level rise (very high confidence), land subsidence (very high confidence), and influences from oceanic and atmospheric variability (moderate confidence).
  2. Future projections indicate that sea level rise will accelerate across Virginia coasts (high confidence), causing acceleration in coastal flooding (very high confidence).
  3. The impacts of sea level rise lead to changes in Virginia’s ecosystems and shorelines (high confidence), habitat conversion (high confidence), groundwater salinization (high confidence), and erosion (high confidence)”

Virginia Climate Equity

Cities such as Richmond have shown uneven exposures to hazards like heat, and resulting neighborhood-level vulnerabilities leading to the need for tools like the Climate Equity Index to address such issues. The key climate-related risk here is referred to as “Economic exposure”. Social vulnerability to climate change in Virginia is shaped by a combination of geographic exposure, socioeconomic disparities, and historical inequities. In Norfolk (and elsewhere) , historical differences have led to disproportionate climate impacts on low-income and marginalized communities, limiting access to resilient infrastructure and adaptation resources.

Impacts and Implications for Virginia

There is much more information in the report, including the impacts of the various risks. Download the publication yourself to read more. We all need to know this information and think about how to prepare ourselves and our farms for what is coming over the horizon. This publication is invaluable for discussion groups, home-schooling and individual research for projects.

Other Virginia Climate Change Resources

For those who prefer to listen than to read, WHRO Public Media has a one-hour story by Virginia Hafner: Virginia’s first Climate Assessment highlights how conditions are changing across the state

and Radio IQ Meteorologist Nick Gilmore provides the CommonWx newsletter, including The first Virginia Climate Assessment: a warmer and wetter Commonwealth

The Future for Virginia Climate Assessment

This first Climate Assessment is planned to be followed by others in the future, that will build on this foundation by adding finer-scale geographic detail; expanding coverage of climate impacts on agriculture, public health, transportation, ecosystems; and giving a more comprehensive review of disasters such as wildfires and landslides, all while ensuring relevance and applicability. This way, Virginia can prepare for and respond to the challenges (and even the opportunities) presented by a changing climate.

Exposure to various risks is only one component of vulnerability; later Assessments will address the other components: sensitivity and adaptive capacity.

Virginia is working to become more resilient to climate change, including the recent establishment of the Virginia Office of Resilience, and the enormous efforts led by community groups, universities, and non-profits across the Commonwealth. Together, we work to ensure all Virginians, present and future, can mutually flourish alongside the rich natural resources for generations to come

The recommended citation

for the Assessment is Ruess, P.J., Kinter, J., Ferreira, C.M., Ortiz, L.E., Ellis, A.W., Ermagun, A., Ezer, T., Fox, A. Klinger, B., Maggioni, V., Peterson, T., Allen, M., Burls, N.J., Cash, B., Clower, T.L, Costadone, L., Dollan, I.J., González-Dueñas, C., Henneman, R.F., Hoffman, J.D., Larson, M., Lindquist, H., Mitcham, M.B., Mitchell, M., de Lima, A.d.S, Tong, D., Ugliano, A., Whitehead, J. (2025). The First Virginia Climate Assessment. https://www.vaclimate.gmu.edu/virginia-climate-assessment

Creative Commons license

 

Our garden on March 16, one month after the Snowcrete

Daffodils in our garden on March 16. Photo Pam Dawling

We have daffodils flowering, one of the phenology signs that conditions are warm enough to plant potatoes. We have our seed potatoes chitting (pre-sprouting) in the basement. The plot has had one round of disking and the addition of a nitrogen fertilizer, but it is now far too wet to work. We must wait!

It’s been a month since the “Snowcrete” snow, ice and very cold weather, including 3F on the night Feb 9-10. Since then, we’ve had some very hot days, including 68F on Feb 28, 87F on March 11. You can see pictures of that time here. 

Today I took photos of the same crops that appeared in that post. I’m loading them in the same order to make visual comparison easy.

Compare Over-wintered Acadia spinach emerging undamaged from under the ice and snow. Ken Bezilla

Overwintered Acadia spinach, weeds, March 16, Pam Dawling

Compare Our garlic beds totally covered in snowcrete February 2026. Ken Bezilla with today:

Overwintered garlic March 16. Photo Pam Dawling

Compare Tadorna leeks damaged by exposure to cold weather Feb 2026 Pam Dawling with today’s

Overwintered Tadorna leeks, speedwell, purple deadnettle, March 16. Photo Pam Dawling

Lastly the Vates kale looks much greener, but is now bolting. Compare Vates kale exposed to cold above the snow Feb 2026 Pam Dawling with today’s

Overwintered Vates kale bolting, with weeds. Photo Pam Dawling

And here’s a bonus:

Overwintered Champion collards March 16. Photo Pam Dawling

Unfortunately, we haven’t got accurate outdoor temperature readings as our weather station was the victim of a hit-and-run, and we haven’t set it back up yet.

Now we’re bracing for a very cold night Tues/Weds March 17/18, maybe 18F here. According to WeatherSpark, the average daily high here in mid-March is 50F and the average low 28F. 90% of the time the low is above 26F and the high is below 76F.  We can see the climate is changing. Such wide changes are hard on us (we have not acclimated yet to high temperatures, and our brains think such low temperatures should all be behind us!). Fruit trees have fewer chances to get their Chilling Hours in. Overwintered greens are kicked into bolting.

Spinach is one of our favorite greens. Read about What makes vegetable crops bolt and how can I stop it? which I wrote almost exactly 5 years ago. Not everything is within our control!

The variety in these photos is Acadia, which is becoming hard to find.

High Mowing will have it back in stock at some point.

Harris Seeds has it at 50 seeds for $1.95, 250 seeds for $3.64, 1000 seeds for $5.07 and 10,000 seeds for $12.90

Gurneys has it at 200 seeds for $3.99.

Several smaller suppliers have Acadia too.

Meanwhile I heard that Tyee, my long-time favorite, is back on the market, although I only see a couple of suppliers.

https://www.gnseeds.com/tyee-hybrid-spinach-seeds/ $2.80 on sale for 200 seeds.

https://www.hazzardsgreenhouse.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=Hazwho&Screen=PROD&Product_Code=S7934V $12.54 for 2000 seeds

Book Review: The Accidental Seed Heroes by Adam Alexander

The Accidental Seed Heroes by Adam Alexander

Book Review: The Accidental Seed Heroes: Growing a delicious food future for all of us.  Adam Alexander. Chelsea Green. 2025. 128 pages, $29.95US, $40CAN, 20GBP.

By stewarding heritage varieties and breeding wonderful new ones, farmers, plant scientists and gardeners across the world are the seed heroes giving us delicious food that considers our environment and is resilient in the teeth of our changing climate. Adam Alexander brings us absorbing and inspiring stories that give us hope and encouragement for our future, and ideas on how to move forward with providing good food.

This book shows us the big picture of feeding the world and goes in well-explained depth into plant breeding and selection. After reading this book, we can feel pride in our food-growing efforts and encouraged to do more. We will have a renewed respect for seeds and seed growers. The book includes a glossary and chapter notes for those wanting to know more.

This book is a delightful compilation of very readable short chapters that are an engrossing combination of travelogue, food writing, biology, farming and science. The engaging stories of traditional farmers preserving indigenous crops are matched with modern plant-breeding efforts focusing on flavour and sustainability.

This book salutes people who fervently believe seeds should be owned in common, not used to make private profit, and the growers who breed crops that are not dependent on chemical inputs, uniformity and monoculture, particularly those who freely share their seed-breeding work with other breeders.

A “cultivar” is a variety that has been deliberately bred to meet a farming need, while the word “variety” includes plant types that have arisen from accidental crosses and mutations. The two words, however, are often used interchangeably. A landrace, farmers’ or folk variety (FV) is a plant population with a limited range of genetic variations, which is adapted to local agroclimatic conditions and has been generated, selected, named and maintained by local farmers.

Accidental Seed Heroes gives a great explanation of plant breeding, both phenotype breeding (classical, traditional) by hand pollination or mutagenesis (forced mutation), and genotype or molecular breeding, including transgenics (genetic modification) in which genes are transferred from one species into another. Adam does not argue about genetically modified cultivars, but points out that those designed to thwart a specific bug or disease are continuously evolving and are vulnerable to losing their immunity. Also, we don’t need them.

Stories in this book range from indigenous crops like enset, tef and sorghum used in the Global South, and grain mixes known as maslins grown to provide resilience in the face of extreme climate variations, to vegetables and fruits both prosaic and exotic.

Dr. John Garton, photo from Wikipedia

The first chapter provides a brief history of plant breeding in Europe, starting at the beginning of the 19th century with Dr John Garton who systematically cross-pollinated thousands of combinations of grain varieties. His first big success was an oat named Abundance, in 1892. John Garton worked for the public good, creating a great diversity of new varieties which spread throughout the British colonies. Garton offered to donate his whole body of work, with seeds available free (or at market price) to farmers. The ag board turned down his offer, and for 85 years, Gartons Limited sold his seeds.

In the US from 1843, US Navy ships collected plants and seeds across the world for the benefit of American farmers. The seeds were distributed free. Newly arrived immigrant farmers were very happy to develop the wheat varieties they knew from their home countries.

Newly created open-pollinated varieties were sold or given away. Both publicly funded bodies and independent research groups founded gene banks with thousands of varieties of every type of crop, making their work available to all who requested it, with no strings attached. This proliferation of crop development continued until the discovery of genetics in the early twentieth century led to plant patents.

In the UK, the Plant Breeding Institute and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) were established 1912-1919. F1 hybrids were developed by selecting pure lines of plants with specific traits and then crossing them, resulting in cultivars that were better than their parents. These public institutions were privatized by the Thatcher government in 1987, and later sold to Unilever, Monsanto, and RAGT (associated with Bayer).

The next theft of the common wealth of seed germplasm was to grant patents to seeds and treat them like intellectual property. The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) was established in 1961 and now has 79 member countries. Four criteria are used to determine if a variety can be patented: novelty, distinctiveness, uniformity and stability. The rules of patents say that conventional breeding employing essential biological processes cannot be patented, but agribusinesses have succeeded in receiving patents, due to varying interpretations of the rules.

Patents impede small-scale plant breeders from building a sustainable food production future. The author has a lot of information here about Intellectual Property (IP) rights, Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBR) and growers’ rights. Just 5 seed companies control over 40% of seeds sold worldwide. 6,995 seed companies own an average of 0.008% each.

Albania and Ethiopia are two countries offering insights and examples of sustainable ways to feed ourselves, thanks to the genius and persistence of farmers. Ethiopia’s climate varies from arid desert to tropical and subtropical arable land with large rivers, and mountains up to 3,000 meters high. Ethiopia is home to a huge diversity of domesticated crops, and one of Africa’s oldest and largest seed banks, working with over 30 local community seed banks. Farmers borrow seeds and after harvest, return the amount they borrowed, plus a little more.

This “conservation through use” provides security by decentralizing the seed supply and adapting varieties to the changing climate. 90% of agriculture in Ethiopia grows such “Farmer Varieties” of crops. The Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute (EBI) holds germplasm of 90,000 varieties of edible and medicinal plants. Some is stored in the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway.

One of Ethiopia’s most important indigenous crops is enset (Ensete ventricosum), commonly known as the false banana. Ethiopia is the only country to have domesticated this valuable carbohydrate crop. The stem and root are fermented and ground to make porridge, bread and pancakes. The fibers are used as a packing material and to make rope. Enset is propagated clonally, and provided the rate of harvesting is sustainable, it is a wonderful insurance crop.

Enset, the false banana, in Ethiopia. Photo by Sabine Troeger Creative Commons BY license. https://www.promusa.org/blogpost357-Enset-the-false-banana

“The ProMusa website is licensed under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce in any medium, provided the source (ProMusa), and when appropriate the authors, are credited.”

Extracting fiber from enset, the false banana. Photo by Guy Blomme. Creative Commons Creative Commons BY license. https://www.promusa.org/blogpost357-Enset-the-false-banana

Albania has a wide diversity of plants and is the last of the Balkan states to introduce hybrid cultivars. Until 1990, the system of collective farms enabled Albania to feed itself sufficiently, if not well. After the collapse of communism, the land was reallocated to individual families, with an average holding of 1.4 hectares (2 acres), and the country continues to grow almost all the food it needs. In the last 30 years, farmers have moved away from growing and saving seeds, and Albania now imports 80% of its seeds. Traditional seed varieties are rapidly being lost.

Adam devotes a chapter to bread, wheat and other cereals. There has been a myth that good wheat for bread baking can’t be grown in the UK or most of the US; that northern climates with cold winters are needed. Adam discovered Hen Gymro (“Old Welsh”), a Welsh Farmers’ Variety of wheat that is wonderful for bread baking. It grows and yields well in what could be seen as unpromising conditions and produces long straw good for thatching.

Wheat started its evolution in the Fertile Crescent, (eastern Mediterranean). Wild grasses were the ancestors of emmer and einkorn. Wheat is special in containing many glutenins, which help create good stretchable stable doughs.

Sorghum was domesticated in Sudan 5000 years ago. It is one of the world’s most important cereals, and there are about 25 species native to Africa. Three other grasses: maize, wheat and rice, provide 50% of the calories consumed in the world.

The 1930s US Dust Bowl saw farms turn to dust because of eight drought years following many years of poor land management. Dryland Farming methods for growing with less rainfall and irrigation were ignored: pasture rather than arable farming; attention to healthy soil rather than extracting water for irrigation and using fertilizers to get high yields; diverse crops rather than monocropping which is vulnerable to disastrous diseases.

Climate change is likely to drastically reduce global maize yields (due to higher temperatures), but increase wheat yields due to higher CO2 levels. Crops bred to succeed in low-input systems will most likely do better than homogeneous cultivars.

Tef is a super cereal, fast-growing, viable at elevations of 0-3000 meters, used to bake the fermented flatbread injera, eaten daily in Ethiopia.

Hunter-gatherers could avoid famine by finding different plants to eat. Domestication reduced options, increasing the risk of starvation. Many gardeners and farmers practice some kind of “insurance-growing”: hardier kale to eat if the weather is awful and the preferred kale doesn’t do well; chard for hot weather leafy greens.

Included in Farmers’ Varieties of cereals are maslins, which are mixtures of different grains (sometimes including legumes) grown together. These provide greater resilience against pests, diseases, droughts and floods than varieties grown separately. When wheat and barley are grown together, in drought the barley survives. In good years, wheat does better and yields more than barley. This is insurance against bad outcomes.

Diverse heterogeneous seed mixtures (evolutionary populations and cultivated land races) have greater resistance to pests and diseases and are therefore more valuable to farmers. They adapt to changing environments in just five years. They can be traded at seed swaps, but not publicly sold in the US, because they don’t meet stringent government requirements. Encouragingly many farmers and growers are working locally to increase and improve crops that can do well under organic and regenerative agriculture.

An average of 43% of people in the UK eat beans on toast once a week.

Next, we move on to beans. In the UK, canned baked beans provide ubiquitous quick meals. The bean used is the small white haricot, also known as the navy bean. Ironically, this bean does not grow well in the UK climate! 50,000 metric tons are imported annually, mostly from the US, to just one Heinz factory in Wigan. There, 3 million cans are produced each day. Another supplier, Princes, in Lincolnshire, produces 0.72 million cans per day.

In the UK there is a big move to develop more beans for the chilly damp cloudy climate. In 2023 Princes pioneered a conventionally-bred British-grown bean, Capulet, and is expanding the acreage of that variety. 43% of the UK population eats beans-on-toast at least once a week.

Capsicums are next. Really hot peppers have their enthusiasts, although I am not one of them. If you are, you’ll enjoy reading about the hundred chili pepper varieties grown at Sea Spring Seeds in an interesting method involving no deliberate crossing. They have keen eyes for spotting improvements and saving seed from those plants.

Sweet bell peppers are grown in California on a huge scale for winter harvest. These hybrids are harvested in just a few passes over the fields, demonstrating a classically fragile food system. This crop needs about 5 gallons of water per pepper, and is being grown in a desert, with water extracted from the Colorado River and declining aquifers.

Tomatoes grown in Rajasthan, India use various colors of shade cloth to moderate the extreme range of temperatures there. 50% green shade was working best at the farm Adam visited. That area gets very little rainfall and over-extraction of ground water using tube wells was causing the salinity of the water to increase. Finding crops that can cope with high-salt conditions is a modern-day challenge.

Adam Alexander, author

Adam’s visit to Austria led to the Awesome Emma tomato, bred by two amateur seed breeders to thrive outdoors in a low-input system, such as organic farming, in the foothills of the Alps. Awesome Emma is descended from Bianca (a small pale yellow cherry) and Stripes of Yore (bred by the American who brought us Green Zebra). The fruits are purple and gold cherries with a complex flavor, and a tasty balance of sweetness and acidity.

Awesome Emma cherry tomatoes https://www.123seeds.com/cherry-tomato-awesome-emma

A network of professional plant breeders (the Bauernparadeiser-Projekt) across Austria, Germany and Switzerland is developing new tomato cultivars resistant to late blight (Phytophthora infestans) which thrives in high humidity and rainfall. Most of the blight-resistant varieties are hybrids, but in Hessen, Germany a company is selling a diversity of blight-resistant OPs.

Hybrids offer uniformity, reliability, high yields and sometimes great flavor. A good example is the much-loved Sungold cherry tomato. Cultivars like this lend themselves well to efforts to develop an OP strain, and many growers are doing just that.

“Dehybridising”, or growing F2s and their offspring using classical breeding methods, has proved to be a successful strategy for freelance breeders to develop new lines. I do not like the word “dehybridizing” as there is really no going back or “undoing” involved. It’s more a matter of using the plant’s genetics to create something new, closely resembling the desired fruit.

Mango Lassi cherry tomatoes. https://vitalseeds.co.uk

Adam investigated the creation of Mango Lassi, a delicious red cherry tomato, developed by Vital Seeds in the UK from 25 plants of Sakura cherry, which is a great starting point. From the F2 generation of 25 plants they carefully selected for flavor, growing habit and other traits. From the best six plants they saved their F3 seeds and grew another 25-plant generation. They took seed from the best four plants, which had fruit with some mango flavor, and started selling Mango Lassi.

The next chapter is about breeding pea seed, particularly Honest Ærling’s Genuine Eating Pea. The name sounds better in Danish: Æliger Ærlings Ærgte Æde Ært. Adam already had his own favorite pea, Avi Juan, which he wrote about in his earlier book The Seed Detective. Other well-loved pea cultivars include Winterkefe, a tall tasty mangetout or snow pea with some winterhardiness for early spring harvest, maintained in Switzerland by ProSpecieRara.

Sugar snap peas originated with an accidental mutation found in an Idaho pea field, bred with Mammoth Melting Sugar to have larger, straighter, tender pods of sweet fat peas. After eight years Sugar Snap was ready for sale.

Sweden is stricter on pesticide use than many other countries. Pea researchers in Sweden have worked to find resistance to downy mildew and pea root rot. Breeding for resistance to multiple diseases is hard because it can reduce flavor and yield. When stable resistance can be bred in, the cultivar can continue to be used for many years. Most Birds Eye pea cultivars have been grown for 25 years!

Frozen peas are very important these days. Invented by Clarence Birdseye, Birds Eye went on to become a business model bringing together farmers and breeders in the pursuit of quality. All Birds Eye peas have the recessive rr gene (wrinkle-seeded) which creates peas with twice as much sucrose as RR (smooth-seeded) peas.

In the UK, Birds Eye buys its peas from The Green Pea Company, a cooperative of 250 growers, all within a short drive of a freezer plant so the peas get frozen promptly after harvest. Birds Eye contracts with the coop and covers the harvesting costs, while the coop covers the risk of poor yields, and other bad luck.

We want peas sweet, but greens can be tasty and healthy when bitter. Bitter compounds serve the plant by deterring insect pests. The bitter compounds in brassicas are glucosinolates. When our gut microbiome interacts with these compounds, highly bioactive compounds form and help our liver and kidneys remove toxins. Cooked broccoli is better than raw in this cleanup task. Lettuce plants, when stressed by drought, heat or old age, can produce excess milky sap (latex) containing bitter sesquiterpene lactones. Some bitter plants such as hemlock are very poisonous. We need to discern which are good for us, and which not!

The next chapter is about eggplants/aubergines, which, 300 years ago, were creamy-white and goose-egg sized. In their homeland of India, 2,500 varieties of eggplant grow in hugely diverse climates. Despite this, there is no guarantee that there is an eggplant for every climate! Gardeners in cool climates find this a challenging crop.

Seed breeders are challenged because eggplants are parthenocarpic – they set fruit without pollination. Growers, however, benefit from this trait, as a decent yield is achievable even when conditions are wrong for pollination! Commercial breeders have little incentive to develop strains for marginal climates. Fortunately there are growers who rise to the challenge.

Søren Holt in Denmark has a shady, wet, windy garden. He started with Applegreen, and other varieties that flourish in cool climates with a short growing season. He pondered how to overcome the self-fertilizing habit that made cross-pollination rather unlikely. He had promising results with Skorospely, Rima and Almaz (Black Diamond), developing a locally adapted Danish Farmer Variety. After three years, he had three breeding lines of F3 plants, including one that gave high yields of large eggplants. But few seeds!

There could be a paradigm shift in plant breeding, to improve biodiversity, food security and human health, and to sequester more carbon than produced. This will take a lot of work, both in persuading people to take that path, and in breeding suitable food crops. In Andhra Pradesh, in the rice bowl of India, the regional government has set up a goal for the entire state to grow food agroecologically. With one million farmers enrolled, they have achieved an 11% increase in productivity and almost a 50% increase in income, using sustainable farming methods, as well as improving social cohesion and wellbeing.

Adam firmly believes that future generations will look back on the 21st century as the time when agricultural sanity was restored. Everyone who grows food and saves seeds is on the right side of history! Open-source plant breeding empowers all seed growers to be part of building resilience and sustainability into our food system.

Cold winter weather damage to our vegetable crops

Over-wintered Acadia spinach emerging undamaged from under the ice and snow. Ken Bezilla

Cold winter weather damage to our vegetable crops

Like people and gardens in many parts of the US, we had a very cold February snap. We had at least two nights down to 2°F (-17°C). In December 2025 we had one night at 13°F (-11°C), one at 14°F (-10°C), most were in the 20s. We had one 20°F (-7°C) night in January (1/4-1/5), one at 10°F (-12°C) (1/15-1/16), one at 7°F (1/23-1/24), then two nights at 3°F (-16° C) (1/26-1/27 and 1/30-1/31). In early February we got at least two nights at 2°F (-17°C). Our weather station was the victim of a hit and run, which broke the pole, so we haven’t been consistent at recording our outdoor temperatures. We need the soil to melt before we can dig a new post hole.

Our garlic beds before the snow Feb 2026. The tops can be seen poking through the hay mulch. Photo by Ken Bezilla
Our garlic beds totally covered in snowcrete February 2026. Ken Bezilla
Our garlic beds after the thaw Feb 2026. The tops are all still alive! Ken Bezilla

Luckily we had thick snow before it got really cold and the snow froze in place, forming what is now called “snowcrete”. Crops completely covered, like our spinach and garlic, seem to have survived. Ones that had tops out in the air suffered much more. Our Tadorna leeks and our Vates kale don’t look much good, but they are not dead.

Tadorna leeks damaged by exposure to cold weather Feb 2026 Pam Dawling
Vates kale exposed to cold above the snow Feb 2026 Pam Dawling

I keep records of how well our crops do in winter, both outdoors and in our double-layer hoophouse. I record this as Winter-Kill Temperatures of Cold-Hardy Crops, and I note each increasingly cold minimum temperature and when the various crops die of cold, to fine-tune our planning for next year.

Winter-Kill Temperatures of Cold-Hardy Vegetables 2021

Cold-hardiness zone map, heat zone map and fruit chill hour requirements

Watching the Weather

We are in zone 7a, with an average annual minimum temperature of 0-5°F (-18°C to -15°C). According to https://weatherspark.com our temperature is rarely below 15°F (-9.5°C). Here’s screenshot from their site for Winter 2025-2026 so far.

The winter of 2024-2025 was fairly average in temperature

The winter of 2023-2024 was more like the average temperature, with extra precipitation in December and January.

The winter of 2022-2023 included a spell with a deep dive in temperature in late December, and again a cold March. Precipitation was fairly even.

Reflect spinach in the open got damaged but not killed at -9°F (-23°C), in a previous year Photo Pam Dawling

See the Dec 2022 post How cold can leafy greens and salad crops survive?

The winter of 2021-2022 was colder than the 90th percentile average several nights each month, particularly in November and April, meaning it felt like a long winter.

The winter 2020-2021 was mild, with our lowest temperature being a single late January night at 10°F (-12°C). We had one night at 11°F (-12°C) one at 17°F (-8°C), three at 18°F (-8°C also) and one at 19°F (-7°C). Very little snow or ice, similar to temperatures in the 2019-2020 winter.

The winter of 2018-2019 had lowest temperatures of 6°F (-14°C) in late January 2019, 8°F (-13°C) in December 2018 and a couple of 11°F (-12°C). In early January 2018, we had some extremely cold temperatures of -8°F and -9°F (-22°C and -23°C). Our Vates kale got freeze-killed centers. Averaging our winter low over the four winters 2017-2021 gave 4.8°F (-15°C), within the zone 7a range.

Posts on aspects of winter growing, to help you be better prepared next winter!

Resilience: Survive, thrive and farm another season! Note that Carol Deppe’s website has been taken over since this post. Instead, go to https://www.caroldeppe.com/bio-2016-1-15.html which has links to much of her writing

Success with Spinach for Fall, Winter and Spring

Winter lettuce and other salad crops

The Winter Greens Trifecta: Kale, Collards and Spinach

Success with winter kale and collards

Dazzling Blue kale is beautiful, tasty and cold-hardy!

Dazzling Blue kale.
Photo High Mowing Seeds

Posts on responding to the weather you have, even as our climate changes

What can you do if fall sowings fail?

Signs of winter, signs of spring, includes some phenology (robin migration, crocus, Lenten Rose)

Vegetable Seed Germination Temperatures and Phenology

Winter Preparations for Vegetable Gardens, includes an article Autumn’s first frost is falling later. For farmers, the consequences are wide-ranging by Sarah Vogelsong, November 3, 2020 from the Virginia Mercury.

Growing vegetables in a winter hoophouse

Lettuce in our hoophouse in winter. Pam Dawling

No crops died in our double-layer hoophouse, where we spread inner rowcovers when the outdoor night temperature is forecast to be 8°F (-13°C). We did get some cold damage to lettuce stems and chard stems but not much, considering.

Another aspect of early spring in our hoophouse, is bolting of the overwintered greens. See Success with Asian Greens in Spring. In spring the order of bolting of some Asian greens is: tatsoi, Maruba Santoh, Tokyo bekana, Koji, Napa cabbage, pak choy, Yukina Savoy, Komatsuna, mizuna, leaf radish, senposai. I wouldn’t even try sowing tatsoi after the winter solstice. Yesterday (2/17/26) I was researching bolting in order to find something to sow in some short-term open space we have. From memory I wasn’t sure which of Yukina Savoy and senposai bolted first, so I counted bolting plants in the plots which were sown on the same day. Yukina Savoy had 15 bolters among 67 plants (22%). Senposai had 9 bolters among 220 plants (4%). Then I considered that the senposai grow enormous quickly and I was sowing in the outer thirds of beds that would be interplanted with tomatoes, squash or cucumbers transplanted down the middle on March 15 or April 1. The shorter, smaller Yukina Savoy was my choice. We can eat the thinnings small in salads, and then harvest larger leaves as the plants grow bigger. In milder weather, it takes 21 days to baby size and 45 days to full size. I’m hoping we’re moving into milder weather now!

Yukina Savoy in our hoophouse in late October

Posts on growing vegetables in a winter hoophouse

Planning winter hoophouse crops

Winter hoophouse growing includes a roundup of links to earlier winter hoophouse blogposts

Dealing with Winter Weather in Your Hoophouse

Back-up plans for winter hoophouse crops

Mid-winter hoophouse harvests

Hoophouse tomatoes interplanted with spinach. April photo. Pam Dawling

When to Transplant, When to Direct Sow

January photo of radishes sown in our hoophouse at the end of November.
Photo Pam Dawling

Looking ahead to next year, what do you want to change? Perhaps you will transplant some crops you have direct-sown up till now? Or perhaps you will start direct sowing some crops you previously transplanted? The climate disaster means we need more resilient responses to produce our food.

Epic eggplants ready to transplant. Photo Pam Dawling

Reasons to consider the pros and cons of transplants and direct sowing

  • Your decision will affect your starting dates
  • Is what you want available as plants, or only as seeds?
  • Do you have the equipment and space to grow enough transplants?
  • Do you need certified Organic?
  • Is the price of starts (transplants) worthwhile? Money vs labor.
  • If your garden space is limited, use transplants to help you grow more successions of summer crops.

Direct Seeding Pros and Cons

Turnip seedlings thinned to 3″. Photo Pam Dawling

Pros of direct sowing

  • Less work than transplanting
  • Lower cost compared to buying starts
  • More varieties are available as seed than as transplants
  • No need for a greenhouse and equipment
  • Better drought tolerance – roots grow without damage
  • Some crops don’t transplant easily, and do much better if sown where they will grow
    • Root crops (carrots, radishes, turnips, parsnips) are never worth transplanting, in my experience. If the root is the part you will harvest, it’s best to avoid transplanting it, which likely causes some damage. Beets do OK if transplanted.
    • Cucurbits can be tricky (especially melons, but also cucumbers and squash)
    • Peas and beans can be less successful, and you probably need a lot of them
  • Some crops have millions of plants! (Carrots, baby lettuce mix)
Leek seedlings less than one month old. Photo Kathryn Simmons

Cons of direct sowing

  • Uses more seed
  • Uses more time thinning
  • Occupies the land longer, and could get lost in weeds
  • May be harder to get started in cold (or hot) conditions

Getting the Best from Direct Sowing

Sowing seeds in the fall garden. Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
  • Good soil conditions lead to even germination: tilth (size of particles), moisture
  • Decide sowing dates by the soil temperature, not the calendar. See Sustainable Market Farming, 2nd edition or New Seed Starter’s Handbook for days to germination at various temperatures
  • Ensure seed is not too old; run a germination test ahead of time if unsure
  • Get the correct depth and sowing density
  • Ensure good seed contact with the soil: tamp lightly, hand water immediately
  • Take special steps if the soil is hot.
  • Check daily and gently break up any forming soil crust
  • Good tools: Jang seeder, EarthWay push seeder, hoes, jab planters for large seeds, tractor seed drills.
Sunn hemp seeds germination test. Photo Pam Dawling

Transplanting Pros and Cons

 Pros of transplanting

  • Use fewer seeds, save on seed costs
  • Start earlier than you can outside, transplant crops for an earlier harvest
  • Start seed in more ideal conditions in greenhouse, better germination, more fun!
  • It is easier to monitor and care for seedlings in a greenhouse
  • Protected plants grow quicker as conditions are more optimal
  • More flexibility if weather turns bad. Plants still grow!
  • Transplant tender crops from indoor protection once the weather is suitable
  • The uniformity and larger size of transplants can lead to higher total yields
  • Select the sturdiest plants to set out, compost the rest
  • Setting out transplants in spring allows the winter cover crop to grow for longer
  • Fit more crops into the season, as the crop is in the ground for a shorter time.
  • Use time windows for quick cover crops, if not another food crop
  • Transplanting suits crops where you want a few plants each of several varieties (tomatoes)
  • If spring is cold and/or wet, transplant crops that you’d normally direct seed. We did this once with our winter squash, when the plot was much too wet. We transplanted the squash young, and our harvest was not much delayed
Transplanting pak choy. Prompt watering is vital! Photo Pam Dawling

Cons of transplanting

  • Extra time caring for the starts
  • More attention is needed to watering new plants, both before and after transplanting
  • Aphids can be a problem in the greenhouse in late winter and early spring
  • Until you can transplant well, transplant shock can delay harvest
Pepper plant with aphids, still in the greenhouse in its pot. Photo Pam Dawling

Getting the Best from Transplanting

  • Start with crops that are easy to transplant: brassicas, lettuce, tomatoes, beets
  • Use good seed compost and suitable-size pots or cells
  • “Up-pot” if needed to larger containers – don’t let plants become pot-bound
  • Transplant shock is less for plants with good root systems – harvests will start sooner.
  • Use a soil thermometer, not a calendar, to decide when to plant out tender plants. Don’t rush them! Cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes especially will not do well transplanted into cold soil
  • Measure and mark the correct spacing: tractor equipment, rolling dibbles, row marker rake, measuring sticks and triangles, span of finger and thumb.
  • Ideal conditions for transplanting are mild windless afternoons and evenings just before (or during!) light steady rain.
  • Transplanting late in the day gives the plant a chance to recover during the cooler night hours – the rate of water loss is slower.
  • Shadecloth or rowcover can be used to reduce the drying effects of wind and sun.
  • Good tools: long narrow trowels such as the Wilcox All-Pro 12” digging trowel (I like the 2” x 12” 102S, but they come in various sizes); the paperpot transplanter; the bed prep rowmarker rake, Winstrip trays, soil block maker

Molokhia (Egyptian Spinach) Update

Molokhia (Egyptian spinach) flower

 

I wrote in this post in May, saying that we are trying some Molokhia (Egyptian Spinach) this year as a hot weather leafy green. It is recommended as a versatile, continuous-harvest vegetable that can survive both dry and wet conditions in warm or hot weather. Egyptian spinach is related to okra, mallow, roselle hibiscus (red sorrel, Jamaican sorrel), also cotton, cacao and durian. Okra is the only crop on that list that we have in our vegetable garden, so we had no worries about crop rotation.

We’ve had a couple of meals, and then accidentally mowed half the plot, which was hiding behind some enormous sorghum-sudangrass cover crop.

I sowed 50 cells on April 1, and transplanted them May 24, 12 (45 cm) apart in all directions. We hoed once and gave scraps of mulch, but the plants grew very quickly and weeds were no longer an issue. We did not give them much TLC. Not 2″-3″ (5-8 cm) of water a week as recommended: maybe 1″ (2.5 cm). We did not add any compost or nutrients throughout the season.

A fresh shoot of Molokhia in August. Photo Pam Dawling

The 70 days to maturity, if from transplanting, takes us to the end of July. They were mature before that. If it’s 70 days from sowing, that’s only June 10. I wasn’t paying them good attention then, but with hindsight, I think it would have been good if I had snipped the tops off for a meal then. It would have helped the plants bush out at a lower level, giving more tender young leaves.

I didn’t make a first harvest until around July 12, by which point the plants were tall. Harvest takes a while, if you are going for 10 gallons, as I was. I used the method of cutting the upper 6″-8″ (7-10 cm) of growth with scissors and then stripping the leaves off in a cooler location. People with smaller households and milder temperatures might harvest individual leaves from the plants. Although I do think shortening the stems helps produce more leaves.

I made a second harvest around August 10 and took a survey. Our cook removed the individual leaves from the stems and steamed them lightly on their own. They were served alongside shiitake mushrooms, which some people mixed in, while others preferred the leaves on their own. Cooked this way they were not excessively mucilaginous as I had been mentally prepared for. Nine diners of those surveyed liked the molokhia and wanted us to grow it again. One said no and two said maybe.

Molokhia looking ragged in late August. Photo Pam Dawling

By August 10, the plants were starting to flower, small yellow flowers emerging from the leaf axils. The pods could provide an additional tasty harvest, I’ve read. But we don’t have many pods and they do tend to hide among the leaves.

A pest that I didn’t find mentioned in the research I did is the Japanese beetle. The larger leaves were the ones attacked. It appears that molokhia is not their favorite food as many of the leaves were not attacked. Worth knowing about, if you are particularly plagued by Japanese beetles.

Molokhia with large leaves eaten by Japanese beetles, younger leaves ready to harvest.
Photo Pam Dawling

If we had not reduced the number of plants unintentionally with our mower I might have wanted to cut down the plants before the frost and dry the leaves and pickle the pods. The dried leaves can be used to thicken soups or for tea. We could save seed for planting next year. Maybe I can interest someone else in doing that. Maybe having fewer plants left to deal with will be seen as an advantage for that task!