Selecting for the planting experience
Jun. 11th, 2022 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI am going to make a gross generalization here but: the propagules from original American crops (potatoes, in the case of potatoes; seeds from sunflowers, squash, corn, and beans) are enormous and easy to handle, and they don't require a very finely prepared seedbed. Seeds from the old world crops tend to be smaller and fiddly, even the grains like rye but also crops like turnips and cabbages.
In turn this means that American crops would be easier to mindfully place, since it's easier to place those larger seeds on the landscape one-by-one instead of scatter them or pour them into a row. It might also lead to less thinning? Which maybe affects which part of the lifecycle selection occurs in? And then the seeds are more noticable when they emerge. I'm not sure, but intuitively it seems like they should be easier to plant into an already vegetated landscape with larger seeds, since they can hold more energy and thus get themselves up into competition better.
I realize modern crops don't always compete well with weeds, but still, the potential is there.
This morning on the gardening chat we were talking about how to keep crows from eating the seedlings of corn and beans. Someone said they planted their corn into tiny cleared patches, maybe 8"x8", six or eight seeds at a time, and then only weeded the rest of the patch when the corn plants were pretty tall. He said this tended to keep them from being eaten, and then when he weeded them they looked spindly for a day or two but just leapt into growing.
I had already been marvelling at how American crops have so many seeds where the seeds themselves are just such gorgeous objects: corn and beans are more beautiful than many human-made art objects at that scale. Er, hm, this implies that domestication isn't a form of making, but anyhow. That beauty was selected for, it isn't an accident.
But in my case the whole experience with these American crops is so lovely: I get to handle beautiful seeds, I don't need to worry about the soil being tilled into flour because the seeds are big enough to navigate bigger clumps of dirt, I can see where I'm putting the seeds in the furrow for spacing. The seeds can be buried more deeply so birds can't immediately eat them, because they're so big. Granted, their size also makes them a snack for the bigger birds, but I am sure the little songbirds would be happy to eat smaller seeds too, so.
And I think some of this might translate into a totally different planting experience altogether: more gardening than farming, less tilling and more careful placement. Milpa gardening bears that out somewhat.
My thoughts on this are obviously pretty unformed still but it's all very interesting. It's also not true across the board, as my carefully transplanted tomatoes will show. But. It's just easier to have a relationship with those big North American crops.
In turn this means that American crops would be easier to mindfully place, since it's easier to place those larger seeds on the landscape one-by-one instead of scatter them or pour them into a row. It might also lead to less thinning? Which maybe affects which part of the lifecycle selection occurs in? And then the seeds are more noticable when they emerge. I'm not sure, but intuitively it seems like they should be easier to plant into an already vegetated landscape with larger seeds, since they can hold more energy and thus get themselves up into competition better.
I realize modern crops don't always compete well with weeds, but still, the potential is there.
This morning on the gardening chat we were talking about how to keep crows from eating the seedlings of corn and beans. Someone said they planted their corn into tiny cleared patches, maybe 8"x8", six or eight seeds at a time, and then only weeded the rest of the patch when the corn plants were pretty tall. He said this tended to keep them from being eaten, and then when he weeded them they looked spindly for a day or two but just leapt into growing.
I had already been marvelling at how American crops have so many seeds where the seeds themselves are just such gorgeous objects: corn and beans are more beautiful than many human-made art objects at that scale. Er, hm, this implies that domestication isn't a form of making, but anyhow. That beauty was selected for, it isn't an accident.
But in my case the whole experience with these American crops is so lovely: I get to handle beautiful seeds, I don't need to worry about the soil being tilled into flour because the seeds are big enough to navigate bigger clumps of dirt, I can see where I'm putting the seeds in the furrow for spacing. The seeds can be buried more deeply so birds can't immediately eat them, because they're so big. Granted, their size also makes them a snack for the bigger birds, but I am sure the little songbirds would be happy to eat smaller seeds too, so.
And I think some of this might translate into a totally different planting experience altogether: more gardening than farming, less tilling and more careful placement. Milpa gardening bears that out somewhat.
My thoughts on this are obviously pretty unformed still but it's all very interesting. It's also not true across the board, as my carefully transplanted tomatoes will show. But. It's just easier to have a relationship with those big North American crops.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-12 01:40 am (UTC)Beans and corn and sunflower are also a classic for the kindergarten "let's grow a plant" exercise. Extremely dependable, easy for kids to handle, very vigorous and visible seedling.
I wonder if there's also something about it being easy to distinguish the crop seedlings from the weeds at a glance.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-12 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-12 02:59 pm (UTC)The Cucurbitaceae and the various pulses are pretty cosmopolitan, right? Pulses are hugely important in a bunch of cultures around the world. Chickpeas, peas, fava beans are big. (Lentils are a bit small, but some have pretty patterns, which might be noteworthy.) Cucurbits are mostly eaten for the flesh, but some have seeds that are desirable.
Europe and Asia seem to have gone all-in on grasses, which shifts the balance. North America also has... what else? Chia, various Amaranthaceae, grasses in a couple places? It does seem like large-seeded seed crops are more the norm, but I can't tell if it's significantly so. And I don't know which plants started out with large seeds in their wild types.
I can't even tell with corn. Not knowing a ton about maize domestication, but looking at teosinte seedheads... those seeds look pretty chonky, but maybe that's *after* humans did some selection. I wonder if it's even possible to find teosinte that is untouched by human selection. There's got to have been a ton of backcrossing, right?
no subject
Date: 2022-06-12 06:22 pm (UTC)Now I want data about the relative size of pre-domestication and post-domestication seeds by originating continent, and by main continent of domestication (whatever that means)