Good

Good talks with Avi. He's pencilled in end of July/beginning of August. I suspect there may be a Tucker return after that. I love these people a lot, you know?

If I did calligraphy I'd send an invitation registered mail to Nicholas.

My foot is healing up quickly; I'm giving it lots of breaks and time up in between gardening. There's still some swelling, I'm hoping it gets circulated away rather than needing to abcess. The pain is way down, anyhow, even as much as two hours after being on it.

Corn is almost almost all in. Just some flour corns left to go. Most of the enormous amount of painted mountain is in finally so just the various magic mannas (cream, starburst, and mixed), papas blue, oregon blue, and montana morado to go. Well, and Morden. And a succession of gaspe. But still. The ground is pretty dry, they keep calling for rain and we keep not getting it. That plus my heel make tilling a little harder and that plus the fascinating composition of the soils in those fields means that the plantings are a little ad hoc, but that's ok. The flints are at least segregated in the wood field, the dents are surrounded by painted mountain in the middle, and the flours will go at the end of the far field. I'm putting in blocks of beans etc as spacers in some cases. I'm mixing in a bunch of greens and herbs, both scattered and in rows. I don't know that the greens will have longstanding great quality given they're competing for moisture with the corn and they're on a south slope, but at worst I'll harvest a little and they'll go to seed, giving me weeds that are not wild mustard. There is a little bit of lamb's quarters growing, which I should try to leave to go to seed, but it's a very clean field since it was under grass for so long. Wild mustard and a little cress are pretty much the only weeds right now.

Okay. Facilitating the landrace gardening group meet'n'greet tomorrow morning. I'd better get some sleep. Just, I need to not forget to seek out and spend time with my people. It's good for me.

Selecting for the planting experience

I 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.

NB

I'm not sure I mentioned, but I planted the flint corns first because it takes longer for water to penetrate the seeds, so it takes longer for them to sprout. The flour corns are going in last because they sprout so much more quickly.

Interestingly, in my 4 different sources of painted mountain in growing this year, the one from Salt Spring Seeds grew its radicles way earlier than the others. The glorious organics and sweet rock were a little mixed. The annapolis seed source hadn't developed any radicles when I planted. All were set to soak at the same time. I found that super interesting.

One day

Morning with the landrace gardening crew online, too short as always. Day in the garden working with corn and the tiller and discovering my soils. Evening dinner with J, duck breast and potatoes and caesar salad and music and conversation and hugs.

It was a very good day. I miss my people, but it was a good day.

Now for some sleep, and a morning I don't need to get out of bed early for.