Removing Work
Mar. 9th, 2022 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormEvolutionary 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.
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.
