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greenstormWhat's calming? Writing about the principles of landrace gardening.
The principle is, it's more likely that a plant will be able to determine if it can survive there its own self than that I can predict what will grow well based on generalized descriptions from unlike soils/climates/water regimes/altitudes/biotic communities/growing styles/etc. Give something three years of trying to grow and by the end of it you will know whether it will grow well there.
More excitingly let genes mix. They won't be shackled to the rest of the genetics in that one variety. Over time the genes that aren't suitable will drop out of the mix and ones that are will combine in new ways. Each plant will have a larger and larger percentage of genes that work well on your site, for you, in your situation.
There needs to be some survival and some mortality for this to work. Genes need to be propagated at different frequencies. If you carefully save every seed from every plant, and keep every plant alive, there will be no change in frequency of surviving genes and thus no selection. Obviously if no seeds survive to make the next generation there will also be no propagation of genes.
For a gardener this means that things will often look bad or die. A garden grown this way is a garden that, on walkthrough, displays visible failures. Maybe some of the food tastes bad before it's removed from the gene pool. Maybe locusts or aphids descend and eat 80% of the crop.
Up to a point more failure of individual plants means more success for the project. When only 10% of the plants are dying out you're not getting tremendously strong selection; that's when you can step in and remove something that sprawls over the pathway or is too upright or doesn't look pretty or is bitter without erasing the whole project.
I think this is a different paradigm? We like nourishing the little plants, taking great care of them, feeling pride and love when they thrive. It can feel like a loss if they die, because of course it is. Those genes might well be propagated elsewhere but the individuals are what we get attached to. It is a different feeling to pivot from caretaking the individual to a fierce curiosity as to what the next generation will be, and to caretaking this balance between genes and hyperlocal spot of land.
In any case it's a much humbler and more intimate interaction with natural processes. Instead of doing all the intellectual and physical work to keep nature out and thereby create a perfect specimen myself, I am partnering with a cloud of resources and processes that function all around me whether I'm there or not and will grow something whether I am there or not. My goal becomes half guide, steering the process of selection to include my own needs layered on to those of the specific spot of land; but also half student, leaping along from development to development and trying to decipher what just happened and why. The process is in some ways more violent - there's more death, after all - but also less hubristic and narcissistic. We cease warring with nature when we cease warring with death. I suppose that makes sense.
So basically my garden will now always have things dying and failing. That's how new things are born and how new life comes forward. My garden will also likely always have things held static, preserved out of sentimentality or utility or just lack of energy to change them. Balance, right?
This doesn't feel complicated or hard to me, even though it kind of is complicated. Lots of sources and varieties and uncertainty as to particular outcomes is part of this process. I am created to love this kind of thing and to resist one-to-three-cultivars-that-get-planted-every-year-forever.
Is it hard for you to think about? Would it feel wrong?
The principle is, it's more likely that a plant will be able to determine if it can survive there its own self than that I can predict what will grow well based on generalized descriptions from unlike soils/climates/water regimes/altitudes/biotic communities/growing styles/etc. Give something three years of trying to grow and by the end of it you will know whether it will grow well there.
More excitingly let genes mix. They won't be shackled to the rest of the genetics in that one variety. Over time the genes that aren't suitable will drop out of the mix and ones that are will combine in new ways. Each plant will have a larger and larger percentage of genes that work well on your site, for you, in your situation.
There needs to be some survival and some mortality for this to work. Genes need to be propagated at different frequencies. If you carefully save every seed from every plant, and keep every plant alive, there will be no change in frequency of surviving genes and thus no selection. Obviously if no seeds survive to make the next generation there will also be no propagation of genes.
For a gardener this means that things will often look bad or die. A garden grown this way is a garden that, on walkthrough, displays visible failures. Maybe some of the food tastes bad before it's removed from the gene pool. Maybe locusts or aphids descend and eat 80% of the crop.
Up to a point more failure of individual plants means more success for the project. When only 10% of the plants are dying out you're not getting tremendously strong selection; that's when you can step in and remove something that sprawls over the pathway or is too upright or doesn't look pretty or is bitter without erasing the whole project.
I think this is a different paradigm? We like nourishing the little plants, taking great care of them, feeling pride and love when they thrive. It can feel like a loss if they die, because of course it is. Those genes might well be propagated elsewhere but the individuals are what we get attached to. It is a different feeling to pivot from caretaking the individual to a fierce curiosity as to what the next generation will be, and to caretaking this balance between genes and hyperlocal spot of land.
In any case it's a much humbler and more intimate interaction with natural processes. Instead of doing all the intellectual and physical work to keep nature out and thereby create a perfect specimen myself, I am partnering with a cloud of resources and processes that function all around me whether I'm there or not and will grow something whether I am there or not. My goal becomes half guide, steering the process of selection to include my own needs layered on to those of the specific spot of land; but also half student, leaping along from development to development and trying to decipher what just happened and why. The process is in some ways more violent - there's more death, after all - but also less hubristic and narcissistic. We cease warring with nature when we cease warring with death. I suppose that makes sense.
So basically my garden will now always have things dying and failing. That's how new things are born and how new life comes forward. My garden will also likely always have things held static, preserved out of sentimentality or utility or just lack of energy to change them. Balance, right?
This doesn't feel complicated or hard to me, even though it kind of is complicated. Lots of sources and varieties and uncertainty as to particular outcomes is part of this process. I am created to love this kind of thing and to resist one-to-three-cultivars-that-get-planted-every-year-forever.
Is it hard for you to think about? Would it feel wrong?
no subject
Date: 2022-03-01 07:40 pm (UTC)Oh gosh, I wish I could offer you some ducklings.
Benefit of breeding your own animals is you can find local folks who have friendly males, and continue to breed for that? When you hatch them out you have an awful lot to choose from.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-01 11:35 pm (UTC)that's a good idea for the seed-saving.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-03 08:44 pm (UTC)A rooster that came with last year's bought-in chicks attacked me today. I've never been attacked by a rooster before, but they've all been my chantecler lines. He will be a definite cull.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-05 02:58 am (UTC)maybe so, maybe no - i think interest is a lot of it. we aren't raising geese because of lack of interest (and a couple of us were attacked by geese as children and it left an indelible impression), but people here totally do raise geese. for instance. same with pigs (minus the attack part).
no subject
Date: 2022-03-05 06:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-05 06:27 am (UTC)yes, it does. we flood irrigate the back acreage, moving the goats off it first; geese and ducks would love that. 4" standing water across the fields once every two weeks. of course it starts soaking in immediately. the red-wing blackbirds have a party wading in the water and eating bugs that come up with it. i love listening to them. when the mud starts to harden (2-3 days) we move the goats back to the field. alfalfa is grown with flood irrigation, and corn, buckwheat and so on. it's river water, essentially, though pulled out through a network of ditches that starts north of the city.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 04:36 pm (UTC)You've described that network to me before and I love it. I tried to find it on google earth imagery but failed.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 10:04 pm (UTC)but a clear example/image of how it works.
here's what it tends to look like in my area, from a walking view: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/380132024767719418/
this one shows some check-gates & turn-outs, so you can see more of the infrastructure of how water movement is controlled: https://newmexiconomad.com/acequias/ i didn't look at the text. :)
no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 11:55 pm (UTC)Amazing where we choose to build and how we support it.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-11 07:19 pm (UTC)that's neat! it makes sense that drainage from wet places would be managed just as intensively.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-15 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-16 05:50 am (UTC)cranberries! i remember seeing a video of flooded cranberry fields being harvested.