Tag: genetic diversity

Selecting and saving seed from favorite varieties

This is the time of year I start selecting and labeling plants to save seed from two of my favorite open pollinated vegetable varieties. For crops where the fruit is the edible part of the plant, it’s very easy. You simply let the fruit get a bit over-ripe, then use a wet seed extraction process to get the seeds.

Crimson Sweet Virginia Select watermelon. Photo courtesy SESE

Crimson Sweet, Virginia Select WATERMELON 3 g

We have been selecting Crimson Sweet watermelon for early fruiting, large size, disease-resistance and flavor, and this seed is now sold by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange as Crimson Sweet Virginia Select. (They supplied this photo.) We used to mulch our watermelon patch with hay, which actually delays ripening, because it cools the soil. So working to get earlier watermelons was very important to us. Using the biodegradable plastic mulch warms the soil, causing the melons to ripen earlier. The combination of plastic mulch and seed selection means we now get melons when it’s hot, and not just at the end of summer as we did previously!

Once the melons start to form on the vines, I walk through the patch and write a number on the skin of big melons with healthy foliage. I just did this last week. I numbered 1-42, using a grease pencil. Large early size is related to early ripening, but it’s not the same thing. If the numbered melon doesn’t actually ripen early, I don’t save seed from it. Once the melons stat to ripen, I look through the patch once a week and choose 6-8 ripe numbered melons to save seed from. I cut open the melon and eat a big spoonful from the heart. If the flavor is only so-so (I have high standards!) I don’t save seed, but just put the melon in the kitchen for everyone to eat. I keep a log book and record the harvest date, size and flavor. Then I scoop the seedy part of the melon into a seed bucket and the edible flesh into a clean bucket for us to eat later.

I ferment the seed for a few days, then wash and dry it. Usually I do one batch of seed a week for about 6 weeks, from late July to early September. Ones not ripe by then can’t qualify as early-ripening!

Roma Virginia Select, grown at Twin Oaks. Credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Roma Virginia Select, grown at Twin Oaks.
Credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

On a different day of the week, I collect ripe fruit from the Roma tomatoes. Here we are selecting for earliness and disease resistance, particularly resistance to Septoria leaf spot, which used to plague us.

As the first fruits ripen, I walk along the rows with two colors of biodegradable flagging tape. I use red tape to mark plants with early ripening fruits (and average or better foliage). Later in the season I also use another tape to mark plants with particularly healthy foliage and a reasonable yield of fruit. I tie the tape to the neighboring T-post, with a bow on the side of the post indicating which direction from the post the chosen plant is. Early in the season all the foliage is healthy – the leaf diseases develop as the season goes on.

Once a week I harvest a couple of ripe tomatoes from each marked plant. I don’t extract seed immediately. but store the bucket of tomatoes for a few days in a secret place (where no-one will find and eat them!) This lets the fruit and seeds mature a bit more. To save the seed, I cut the tomatoes lengthwise and spoon out the seed. I wash the tomatoes first, so I can then save the flashy “shells” for making salsa or tomato sauce. The tomato seed goes through the same kind of fermentation process that we use for the watermelon seed. This is a surprisingly easy way to separate the seed from the extraneous stuff, and in addition, fermentation kills off the spores of certain diseases.

This photo of Septoria Leaf Spot is from Cornell University Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Service.

With both these crops, we get both food and seed from the same fruits. And we are developing the varieties in ways that work best in our climate and under our methods of growing these crops. Plus I get to sell seed to SESE, as well as have enough for ourselves. The process of saving our own seeds involves selecting from at least 25 plants, to ensure some genetic diversity, and this inevitably leads to saving more seed than we need just for ourselves. Happily, that means we can supply this seed to others who want similar traits in their crops.

Southern Exposure has information for those growing seeds, and there is also a wealth of useful info on many seed crops at Saving Our Seeds. They have seed growing manuals for both the mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Northwest, for a range of crops. And if you find yourself really drawn in to seed growing, see my review of John Navazio’s book, Organic Seed Grower .

Book Review: The Seed Underground: Growing a Revolution to Save Seeds by Janisse Ray

The Seed Underground: Growing a Revolution to Save Seeds
by Janisse Ray, published by Chelsea Green, June 2012

A few years ago, I read and enjoyed Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, so I was already primed for excitement when I heard of The Seed Underground. That, plus also being a believer in keeping the genetic diversity of vegetable varieties alive and in the hands of growers.

I found this book inspiring, validating, enthusiastic, thoughtful and entertaining. It has the power to pull us out of any inclination to wallow in hopelessness about our food supply, by providing many ideas, many examples of what we can do to improve the state of agriculture by acting locally to help and support people developing and preserving regionally adapted vegetable varieties.

Janisse exudes a sense of wonder, of fun and of appreciation for those who have been leading the way. And she recognizes that it is her turn to step forward and teach and encourage others. Her central message is to save seeds and not let the big acquisitive corporations control our food supply and therefore the length and quality of our lives.

The book contains stories from her life and stories of farmers, gardeners and organizations who have saved certain seeds: the conch cowpea, preacher beans, keener corn, various sweet potato and tomato varieties, mustaprovince pumpkins, Stanley corn.

Our seed supply is in crisis – when we do not control our own seed supply, we do not control food supply. There is a corporate robbery of the commons (publicly owned, publicly used resources). As the first verse 17th century English protest poem against common land enclosure, The Goose and the Common, goes:
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The last verse is:
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
In other words, we need to cultivate a working system for propagating, preserving and distributing seeds, so that corporately “owned” seed varieties become irrelevant.

The rate of loss of vegetable and grain varieties is very worrying – 43% of all food eaten everywhere across the world consists of just three grains, wheat, maize and rice. A dearth of crops leads to vulnerability, both in the fields and in the body. A crop disease can wipe out an entire variety – think of the Lumper potato in Ireland, the Cavendish banana. Modern wheat is associated with a sharp rise in gluten intolerance and obesity – it isn’t well suited to our needs. My favorite chapter title is “A rind is a terrible thing to waste.” Janisse points out that if we have to peel our apples to reduce the pesticide level before we eat them, it’s bad news.

This book tells tales of the author’s travels to meet various seed growers, breeders and savers as well as seed swap groups. The cast of characters is variously passionate, inspiring, quirky, nerdy and eccentric. New varieties are being breed to grow under organic conditions in particular regions. What are the ethics of profits in this situation? There are stories of seed banks and vaults, with discussion of public access and ownership.

There’s also basic information on how to select good plants, isolate from other varieties, hand pollinate and save seeds. And examples of farmers who banded together to get legislation passed to protect their property rights over their land, plants and seeds. Of course Monsanto should be responsible for their genetic drift when GMO pollen pollutes other plants! The book includes a list of “What you can do” and an eight-page small-print collection of resources.

Hope is valuable, but not essential before action is taken – no-one feeds a child because of what kind of future they hope that child will have. Love leads to determination to strive for what we value, and gives us courage. Don’t use lack of hope as an excuse for lack of action.

Her closing words are “Look around, so many people have put their shoulders into the load. You. Find a place to push. Pick up a tool.” Become a local hero, increase your circle of influence. Claim food sovereignty, preserve local seeds. “Have the courage to live the life you dream. There is nothing greater than this.”

Home from CFSA, Superstorm Sandy

Beauregard sweet potato
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Superstorm Sandy didn’t do us much damage, luckily. It’s been raining for 40 hours, but we’ve only got 2.8 inches so far and it looks like it’s going to clear up later today. Despite my worries about the broken hoophouse windows blowing in and us losing our newly re-plasticked hoophouse, it didn’t happen. We didn’t have any really high winds, and we didn’t even lose power, but of course we did all the prep work.

Georgia Jet
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Yesterday we re-stacked our sweet potatoes which had finished curing (the skins don’t rub off any more). We moved them into a wire rodent-proof cage, and close-stacked them, taking away all the sticks that spaced the boxes during curing. I haven’t got numbers for the total yield yet, but it comes to 96 boxes. The Georgia Jet produced 42 boxes and the Beauregard only 32 from the same length row. Our two heirloom varieties produced three boxes each. We don’t expect many of them, but we are keeping the varieties alive, because genetic diversity is important and who knows what secret virtues these varieties have?

We also bravely spent time in the rain, digging drainage ditches to reduce the impact of the hurricane. They seem to have worked quite well. And we draped the soggy rowcovers over the frost tender crops, in anticipation of freezing conditions.

While I was away at the CFSA Conference, the crew harvested the white potatoes. We got a good yield (also no numbers yet), but we got a disappointingly large number of greened potatoes. (Green from being exposed to the light.) I think the reason is that our new experimental tractor-mounted furrow-making disks don’t make furrows as deep as we need. The walk-behind BCS furrower on the rototiller made adequate furrows, but not as good as the old Troybilt furrower. This flags a need to research better gear before March.

I had a great time at the CFSA Conference. I think there were about 700 people there. About 70 came to my workshop Growing Great Garlic, on Saturday afternoon. They were very appreciative, and I managed OK without my notes! It’s not as bad as it sounds – I had a slideshow and had practiced quite a few times, and knew it better than I would have guessed. Somehow I couldn’t get my notes on the laptop screen without them also appearing on the big screen along with lots of clutter. This flags a need to find out before my three workshops at the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, January 23-26. Busy, busy.

The conference was very well organized and the food was spectacular – mostly local and sustainably grown. I had the chance to attend several workshops by other people. Tony Keinath, the vegetable pathologist at Clemson University, talked on Sustainable and Organic Approaches to Managing Cucurbit and Tomato Diseases – a very well-prepared and information-packed session. I feel in a better place to tackle next year’s plagues now. I was struck by the fact that he had seen NO benefits of using Oxidate, the hydrogen peroxide disease control product.

A workshop I found particularly valuable was Laura Lengnick‘s presentation “Is Your Farm Climate Ready?”  She is doing valuable work to help farmers get ready for climate variability. She is one of the main authors of a USDA ARS report Climate Change and Agriculture: Effect and Adaptation. Its publication date is November 14 2012. She also spoke at the August 2012 symposium of the Ecological Society of America, Climate change impacts on agricultural systems:

She suggests viewing climate change as yet another production risk to assess and prepare for. The vulnerability of your farm has two components: exposure and adaptive capacity. As far as vulnerability, the most immediate key exposure is water issues (too much and too little). Rising air temperatures, including night temperatures, more extreme temperatures provide threats and some opportunities. Increasing CO2 levels will provide some positive effects such as faster crop growth. As far as adaptive capacity, the main feature of that aspect is our personal capacity to respond and plan. Laura Lengnick says “Greater attention to climate as critical for decision-making is expected by future generations of producers.” We need to start with ourselves.

Baby ginger, ready to be eaten, pickled, candied, frozen.
Photo East Branch Ginger

Next I attended a workshop by Susan Anderson of East Branch Ginger, and learned so much about how to do the best by this crop, that I am looking forward to an even bigger harvest next year. This year we harvested 165 pounds, and saved 65 pounds as seed stock, so we can plant a bigger patch in next year’s hoophouse.

Harvested baby ginger, about 6 months old
Photo East Branch Ginger

Meanwhile I’ve finished my next article for Growing for Market. My working title is Knowing When to Take Action. It’s the third part of my series on being a resilient farmer. This article includes scouting and monitoring for pests and diseases; using pest and disease forecast services; and being prepared for the effects of extreme high and low temperatures. When is it time to cut your losses? A big part of the article is a table of soil temperatures to help when deciding planting and harvesting dates.