Grapes

[greenstorm]

Oh.

The northernmost of the BC grape wineries is supposed to have one of the baltics varieties. I wonder if they would give me a bucket of their pomace-with-seed from that variety after pressing?

This is not a short term solution but might be an easy one.

Plant a hundred feet of fence with seedlings every 6", see who survives.

Comments

[squirrelitude]

It sounds like grapes do the apple thing where there's a ton of variation when grown from seed. So I guess you're hoping to get some phenotype spread, and maybe some will be even better-adapted to your climate than the parent?

(I suppose that kind of variation might be expected of any plant that has a long seed-to-fruit time -- less opportunity for selection for a stable heirloom variety.)

[greenstorm]

One of my favourite things about wild fruits generally is just how variable the flavour of individuals are. It makes foraging so interesting and creates bonds to specific extra-good individuals (like this one saskatoon berry growing by my duck pond).

It hadn't occurred to me before that woody trees & shrubs would have fewer generations of domestication and that might be a cause for so much variability in the fruit. I'd like to fact-check that just because it feels true, but... it feels true. I know with forest trees, so many traits are controlled by a whole host of genes that you can't get uniformity without severe bottlenecking. I guess the mutations/crosses for grains or whatnot kind of *were* the bottleneck, in a lot of ways. Hm.

Instead of going down the synthetic wheat rabbit hole tonight I will go to sleep.

[squirrelitude]

I'd like to fact-check it as well, but I'm not even sure who I'd ask. I guess it would need to be someone who researches plant genetics, but isn't specialized too far into any one family. Or genus. Or species. :-P