(no subject)
Jan. 18th, 2023 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI was invited to infodump about my favourite topic today. I responded with this:
I like plants, especially edibles, and especially temperate and cold/temperate edibles, especially growing in ways that genetics and combination on the landscape contribute to carefully-chosen system goals, especially heterogenous varieties eg modern landracing (or old landraces, I'll take 'em all!), especially if those goals are non-conventional (eg not 'how much land can we farm with the fewest people but the most gas and tractors' but more to optimize for human power or climate or the particular site's water or soil or aspect or or), especially if animals are involved in that small human-designed ecosystem, especially if it's allowed to evolve through propagation and selection over time, especially if the surplus that humans take from that system is optimized for local community use including aesthetic preferences and values as well as flavour, comfort, etc, especially if those surplus foods (but also fibre etc) is aligned with cultural use and preservation practices, plus I enjoy learning those use and preservation practices including charcuterie, brewing, canning, drying, annd fermenting. But sometimes I go on a kick and grow a monstera or my grandma's spider plant or fifty kinds of hot pepper just for fun and I keep a bunch of geese and cats and dogs and an old hen around as pets even if they're not contributing to my system. Oh, and I love love love plant variety trials; I live where the only domestic plants that grow reliably are from the old Siberian breeding programs so I need to trial and breed my own varieties (it's super cool here over the summer so nothing ripens, and it's -40C in winter so any perennials die).
Last year I trialled 24 varieties of corn including my heart-corn (gaspe) and discovered some new ones that do well here and I'm going to landrace them, and I made a a surprisingly successful squash grex, and I'm growing a bunch of tomatoes that a collaborator outcrossed to wild relatives to try and get the flowers to cross-pollinate more and thus allow more natural geneflow within the population so I don't have to make a million hand-crosses (tomatoes don't naturally cross much). I was asked in the group this evening about what kind of plant breeding I was into and kind of saved this up for a more appropriate spot. 🙂
Gaspe corn is knee-high and comes from the gaspe penninsula in Quebec, it's one of the shortest season corns in the world; it's a grain corn and grows about knee-high and fills me with absolute awe and gratitude that so many hands cherished corn from the time it was a grass in south-central mexico, and with love and attention they slowly selected and planted and selected and planted until it was corn, and then selected and planted and selected and planted and it spread into myriad forms across north america, slowly, going at the rate of friendship and sharing and at the rate the plant could adapt over so much time, through forms 20' tall with aerial roots, and then eventually spreading up to Quebec where it was so cold and short-season that it was basically unrecogniseable from not just the original plant but from the intermediate forms. All those people, all that persistence, that cooperatively created this plant that now can come live with me where no modern corn can grow. I love it so much. Also if you want to try growing some grain corn and are serious about it, I have seeds to share. (imagine a sea of green heart emojis)
I like plants, especially edibles, and especially temperate and cold/temperate edibles, especially growing in ways that genetics and combination on the landscape contribute to carefully-chosen system goals, especially heterogenous varieties eg modern landracing (or old landraces, I'll take 'em all!), especially if those goals are non-conventional (eg not 'how much land can we farm with the fewest people but the most gas and tractors' but more to optimize for human power or climate or the particular site's water or soil or aspect or or), especially if animals are involved in that small human-designed ecosystem, especially if it's allowed to evolve through propagation and selection over time, especially if the surplus that humans take from that system is optimized for local community use including aesthetic preferences and values as well as flavour, comfort, etc, especially if those surplus foods (but also fibre etc) is aligned with cultural use and preservation practices, plus I enjoy learning those use and preservation practices including charcuterie, brewing, canning, drying, annd fermenting. But sometimes I go on a kick and grow a monstera or my grandma's spider plant or fifty kinds of hot pepper just for fun and I keep a bunch of geese and cats and dogs and an old hen around as pets even if they're not contributing to my system. Oh, and I love love love plant variety trials; I live where the only domestic plants that grow reliably are from the old Siberian breeding programs so I need to trial and breed my own varieties (it's super cool here over the summer so nothing ripens, and it's -40C in winter so any perennials die).
Last year I trialled 24 varieties of corn including my heart-corn (gaspe) and discovered some new ones that do well here and I'm going to landrace them, and I made a a surprisingly successful squash grex, and I'm growing a bunch of tomatoes that a collaborator outcrossed to wild relatives to try and get the flowers to cross-pollinate more and thus allow more natural geneflow within the population so I don't have to make a million hand-crosses (tomatoes don't naturally cross much). I was asked in the group this evening about what kind of plant breeding I was into and kind of saved this up for a more appropriate spot. 🙂
Gaspe corn is knee-high and comes from the gaspe penninsula in Quebec, it's one of the shortest season corns in the world; it's a grain corn and grows about knee-high and fills me with absolute awe and gratitude that so many hands cherished corn from the time it was a grass in south-central mexico, and with love and attention they slowly selected and planted and selected and planted until it was corn, and then selected and planted and selected and planted and it spread into myriad forms across north america, slowly, going at the rate of friendship and sharing and at the rate the plant could adapt over so much time, through forms 20' tall with aerial roots, and then eventually spreading up to Quebec where it was so cold and short-season that it was basically unrecogniseable from not just the original plant but from the intermediate forms. All those people, all that persistence, that cooperatively created this plant that now can come live with me where no modern corn can grow. I love it so much. Also if you want to try growing some grain corn and are serious about it, I have seeds to share. (imagine a sea of green heart emojis)
