Making work

So. Controlled cross breeding.

If two plants breed true (the offspring are similar to the parents several generations in a row) and I cross them, the first generation seeds of that cross (F1) should all be pretty much the same. So the first year after a cross there's not too much to grow out-- a couple plants per cross.

The second generation (F2), assuming there are multiple traits that are different between the two parents, almost every seed produced will probably be a different plant. So if I grow out three plants from the second generation seed I'll get three different plants; if I grow out fifty or a hundred I'll get many of those being different. So it makes sense to grow out many of these second generation seeds to find the best out of the offspring, which might be one or many different ones.

Then of those best offspring the process of growing many plants and choosing the best should be repeated in the third (F3) generation and so on, until the plants are mostly the same as their parents in F7 or so.

So I'm planning to make a bunch of crosses this year, and growing the offspring out the first year isn't such a big deal. But after that, F2 generation and so on, ideally many plants would be grown out in each subsequent year. Alternatively I could grow out the F2 in multiple years, say 10 plants per year, but it's harder to compare them to each other across years and then that really slows down the time until the end of the process.

So anyhow I'm planning on doing a bunch of crosses this year. Next year will be fine! And honestly the F1 plants will probably be relatively boring, many of the fun traits are recessive and won't come out until F2.

But 2024 will involve some interesting choices.

I'm not sad about having that to look forward to.

Removing Work

Evolutionary breeding, which includes landrace breeding, is another thing I'm into in a big way this year. In the beginning it requires a fair bit of space and curation for little return: I really try (and enjoy) to get a breadth of genetics that somewhat lines up with each aspect of what I want, and then all of that goes into a space at a density where it's likely to interbreed. Most of those plants will fail to produce a crop, or to produce seed. It's therefore taken a lot of land and research to get not a great crop. Of course some work is also removed: I did only the most casual weeding last year on my tomatoes, squash, and corn for example (and actually the squash in the weeds were the ones that set seed).

In subsequent years only the plants that can tolerate the climate and treatment set fruit and pass on their genes. This philosophy of gardening means that instead of committing to starting early transplants, amending soil just so, creating and maintaining a greenhouse and maybe little wall'o'water or hoop houses, trellising or staking or caging or Florida weaving (I still love Florida weaves) I just... don't. And the plants eventually learn to do ok.

I can still absolutely do the kinds of work I want: if I liked watering every evening I could keep doing that, it would be fine. But tasks I don't like - I am not a weed-free gardener, for example, and I find staking the number of tomatoes I like growing to just not ever get done - can go away. That work can vanish and as long as there's still a wide enough set of genes in the populations for selection to function and I'm being thoughtful about what selection pressures are occurring, gardening gets easier every year.