Lettuce Prey

I've been updating some of the info pages on the wiki... writing down some of the initial info (with pictures) of some of the Lettuce varieties I'm growing for seed this Autumn. The aim is to record much better notes on the habits, uses and cultivation of the numerous Lettuce varieties I grow over time. We'll see how that works out. I'm notorious for forgetting to keep those things up to date. Usually I'll notice a bunch of interesting stuff while my hands are all muddy and I'm having too much fun in the garden to go inside, wash up, fire up the computer,... so my observations get abandoned by the wayside.

Some of you may remember that I had ideas some years ago of growing organic-quality Lettuce seed as a commercial enterprise, but those plans -- indeed the Lettuces themselves -- were brought to nought by the Great Drought of 2008-10. Well, I still like the idea, and, although rain has been a little scarce in the past couple of months¹, I'm trying once again to build up my Lettuce seed stocks to the point where I can produce decently large quantities of seed. Summer is, as always, too hot, and many of the Lettuce varieties bolt to seed early from the heat and don't produce viable seed as a result. So early-Spring and Autumn are my best chance at growing Lettuce seed.

Some of the varieties are new to me: Malawi, Lital, Lavi and Vulcan. Seed was acquired from friends and barter, and started in late February, and the first-to-seed varieties are just producing flower spikes about now. Others are old friends: Forellenschluss and Cimmaron, but my current seed stocks are getting too old to be reliable, so in dire need of refreshing.

I do wish I'd had bed space for growing more varieties, but I don't so that's about as many as I can manage whilst maintaining adequate isolation distances between the varieties. I've also managed to stagger them in time where I've been forced to place different varieties rather closer together than I'd prefer, and, given that Lettuces are mostly self-pollinating, I think I'm pretty safe for keeping these varieties pure.

I do need your help though!  Can anyone help me identify this beautiful Lettuce? I thought it might be "Merveille des Quatre Saisons" ("Marvel of 4 Seasons" - and ancient French² heirloom, famed for its ability to withstand a wide range of weather conditions and temperatures) but it doesn't form a head, which my online researches tell me MdQS does. Leaves are quite large and broad, rumpled, fleshy textured and delicious even when very mature. But I'm stumped for a variety name. Any ideas?

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[1] ...and as I write this, it has started drizzling. Hooray!
[2] Who woulda guessed?

GMO Scam Followup

Quickly: A short article on how Monsanto's biotech maize which is supposed to be resistant to corn root worm attack, is "losing its effectiveness".

The article is pretty vague on just why this "effectiveness" is being lost, and Monsanto are naturally trying to spin this is "small numbers, minor incidence, easily managed". But I think it's pretty obvious what is going on here, don't you?

Spring Update

Just as suddenly as it started, Busy Season is over. At least until harvest time. All the veggie beds that needed preparing are prepared, most of them already occupied by healthy young plants, and just a few gaps waiting for seed-tray occupants to demand their permanent home.

Dear DuPont, You're Not Welcome, Here.

In some slightly good news... South Africa's Competition Commission has blocked the purchase of local seed company Pannar by Pioneer Hi-Bred, a division of the US-based chemical giant, DuPont. Thank goodness for small mercies. The Competition Commission has said that they're release their full report soon, but that the deal was turned down because it would effectively reduce the number of large-scale Maize seed suppliers from 3 to 2.

Not that Pannar is any kind of beneficent angel. They're a large seed company in their own right – the largest in Africa, and as equally enchanted with the idea of controlling seed supplies as any of their US and European compatriots in crime.

Remember that Maize is SA's staple crop, so the Competition Commission's reasoning looks like sound to me. Looks like they're one of the few parts of the kakistocracy actually doing the job they're supposed to be doing, and doing it comptently!

It would be good would be to have an even wider range of suppliers in this country, but the laws around seed-sales are complicated, convoluted, restrictive and blatantly favour the entrenched big players.

Plant Breeding Ideas

Plant breeding projects I'm interested in tackling...

Carrots:

I am interested in a wider, more interesting range of Carrots. More colours, more flavours. I am particularly interested in one or more varieties that are specifically grown for juicing. They would need to be juicy and somewhat sweet; colour would not matter very much, but a touch of anthocyanin would be a good thing for its nutritional advantages. On the other hand, people might be put off by a "Carrot Juice" that is not orange... (People are funny that way.)

Cabbages:

I'd love to see a purple-leaved Savoy or conical Cabbage. Its flavour should be sweeter than most Cabbages, somewhat along the lines of Red Russian Kale, and I'd like it to have a tender, succulent texture. More of a salad Cabbage than a cooking variety. Size should preferably be a bit small so that we don't have to keep chunks of partly-consumed Cabbage hanging about in the back of the fridge because they're way too large to use all at once. This variety would definitely be a "use fresh" type. Heat tolerance while growing would be a big advantage, because Summer is when we would want these, though I guess it might be good in Winter soups, too.

Parsnips:

Just interested in working with them, since there don't seem to be too many varieties available (at least locally.) Only "Hollow Crown", in fact.

Chiles:

I'd like to once again taste the Jalapeno x Habanero type I accidentally got a few years ago. Had the size and general shape of a Jalapeno, with the dimples characteristic of Habanero, and a flavour that was a fantastic blend of the two. If all goes well with our weather and water I'll be trying that cross this year.

Then, too, I'd love to see whether C. Baccatum "Amarillo" (Aji Amarillo) will cross with anything else. It's a pretty wide cross, so likely nothing will come of it. Crossing C anuum, chinense and frutescens at least stand a chance; according to my books they share a common ancestral gene complex that allows some of the crosses to work. I'll probably be shooting for crosses between (at least) Purple Jalapeno, Jalapeno, Sweet Banana and Amarillo.

Another accidental cross some years back resulted in a Chile I called Hot Banana: Sweet Banana with something warmer crossed into it, probably Serrano, but maybe Jalapeno. I'd like to try and stabilise something like that. The heat was not very great, perhaps about 4/10, but the Sweet Banana flavour really worked very nicely with a touch of heat.

I'd really like some thin-skinned drying varieties, but with better and more interesting flavours than the commonly-available Long Thin Cayenne. Then, too, ALL varieties could do with better UV-tolerance and drought-resistance than I have seen to date. Another interesting direction could be for better Wintering: most varieties that I have were sourced from the US, frequently from higher latitudes, and they have mostly had their cold-tolerance destroyed or diminished - mostly, I suspect, through it being unattainable under any circumstances in those climates - and I'd like to get it back in. There's no reason for Chiles to be anything but perennial here, since we have no Winter frost at all.

Potatoes:

I'd like to see more varieties, and more specialised varieties than the generic "potato" varieties available locally - fryers, boilers, mashing potatoes, salad types,... Greater disease resistance is always of interest, particularly in our climate and soil. Would also be interesting whether one could breed a good-tasting and nutritious Porcupine-resistant variety. :-O

Mostly this means growing from true seed, and few of the commercially available varieties set seed. Challenging...

Beets & Chard:

Interested in where they can go - wild crosses. I'd like to get back to some Sugar Beets, Fodder Beets, Fodder Chard, as well as new, interesting eating varieties. Chard in more colours. Chard grown primarily for its stem, which would need to be flavoursome and stringless. Worthwhile, since Chard lasts so well in the ground, and just keeps on coming while we harvest leaves. Nicely< trouble-free under my growing conditions, too.

Grains:

Maybe not so much a breeding project as maintaining some of the older
varieties. Modern agribusiness grains are very monopurpose - grain only - and terribly vulnerable in the face of anything but the Full Monty of fertilisers, supplements, and drug cocktails. Not at all suited to permaculture, organic or self-sufficiency setups. Older varieties tended to be more multi-purpose; straw was used for animal bedding, mulch, roofing material, chaff for mulch and composting, sometimes feedstock, fuel. Not to mention that there's a genetic heterogeneity there that's worth preserving, propagating and playing around with in its own right.

That's probably enough to be getting on with for a while... Anybody who can help source genetic material that might be interesting for these, please get in touch with me!

More Rain Delays Play

More rain.  The trouble is that I have to wait a day or two after rain for the soil to drain enough to work safely without damaging soil structure.

Most of my early planting seems to have paid off, though not by much, I think.  Most of the seeds planted have come up, but are showing such slow progress that plantings made later are likely to catch them up.

I have in mind to start selling (organic) veggie seeds.  I don't know of any organic seed suppliers in SA, and I love growing things all the way to seed.  I usually have to make a conscious effort to rip out plants that have grown past their prime and "should" come out to make space for more productive crops, but I seldom have the heart for it.

Together with the many heirloom and unusual varieties I have, I think this could be a nice little income.  And I love doing it, unlike my feelings about computing these days!  I'll start small, especially since I have some varieties that cannot technically be called "organic" - I simply haven't grown them to seed for enough generations to satisfy purists.  To me it smells of "politics and ego" when I get told that a variety has to have been grown organically for three generations before it can really be considered "organic seed".  I suppose there really has to be a line drawn somewhere, especially since there are so many bullshit artists and fly-by-nights in the local organic scene, but it really is just arb.

I would love some feedback on this idea - what sort of vegetables, what varieties, quantities and pricing...  especially from South African organic growers.

Thinking Ahead: Seed Wanted!

So here it is, not yet full-Summer, and I'm thinking ahead to my Winter garden. The Tomatoes are still (mostly) under 30cm tall. The Chillis -- the few, pathetic survivors of the season's Great Chilli Holocaust -- barely past the seedling stage.

This year -- in contrast to my usual habit -- I decided to Buy In seedling mix. Usually I just use my own compost, and it works reasonably well, up to a point. My compost is made from stable-muck where they use wood-shavings for the bedding instead of straw. It's great for compost, and means that I get lots of odd fungi in the garden, but its a little heavy for seed-mix. The bottom parts of the seed-trays tends to stay waterlogged, and the roots of all the tiny plants don't get enough Oxygen. So the seeds germinate well, grow fantastically to a point... and then come to a complete halt! Hence my (reluctant) decision to buy in a "professional" seed mix.

Turned out to be a disaster. The stuff is like cement. Maybe harder. The seedlings get even less Oxygen to their roots, if that's possible. As a result I'm having a terrible Chilli year. My third Disastrous Chilli Year in a row! I've lost a number of Chilli varieties that I've been saving seed from for years, including Serrano, Jalapeno (can you fucking believe it?) Bolivian Rainbow, and New Mex #6-4. Only two plants of Cherry Pepper -- I'm guarding them like a Hawk.

So: I'm going to have to buy in a whole lot of Chilli seed for next year to rebuild my seed-stocks. Here's a list of what I'm looking for -- if you have any of these and are open to swaps (or whatever -- I'm happy to pay a reasonably price...) please drop me a line:

• Pasilla
• Rocotto (sp?)
• Jalapeno (none of that Jalapeno-M stuff, thanks -- if it's not hot, what's the point?)
• Serrano
• Poblano
• Nu-Mex #6-4
• Mira del Sol
• Cherry Peppers
• Aji

That's just the absolutely essential ones. Offers of any others will be most welcome!

In exchange I can (probably -- depending on how the season progresses) offer Bishop's Hat (we tend to call it Red Hat around here, being a bunch of open-source software geeks) plus whatever's on my seed list (not currently up-to-date; I promise I'll fix it in a day or three!)

The thing with Chillis is that I can mostly overwinter them quite successfully. We don't get any frost. So my idea is to plant NOW with the idea that I'll only harvest seed somewhere around Jan 2010. (How's that for Long Range Planning?)

And. Whilst I'm Thinking Ahead, I began to contemplate the Winter To Come. See, with such a mild climate, we have (at least) two growing seasons. And, having learned that Chickpeas ("Garbanzo Beans" to some...) are essentially a cool-season crop, I can tell that they'll never do well through a Summer here! So, I'm looking for 2 or 3 varieties of Chickpeas to plant this comning Winter. While I'm at it, I am keenly interested in increasing the number of Bean varieties we grow. At the ver minimum, I want a good Pinto bean, and a variety of large-white bean. (Locally we know them as "Butter Beans". But do you think you can find anyin the seed racks? Or even in the supermarkets as dried beans?? No!They're all in cans!!)

More Beans Welcomed! Currently we are very successful and happy with Dragon's Lingerie and Hopi Black for dried beans, but I'd very much like to expand the range a bit!

If you have seed to swap/sell/give away along these lines, please contact me!

Winners in the Tomato All Comers Stakes...

First of the Tomatoes to germinate this year: Brandywines, (yay!) Cherokee Purple and Striped Roman.

In the seed-Lettuce departments we have the mysterious variety identified only as "Lettuce K" to this point, and -- this just in -- a couple of cells of "Merlot" -- a small, curly leafed variety, with the most intense deep-marron colour I have ever seen. The few plants I was keeping for seed last season got Take Out at the last minute by a dastardly Porcupine (or so I guess) so I was fearfully low on seed. Hopefully the current planting will rescue the situation.

I also noticed the very first couple of Dragon's Lingerie beans popping their heads out of the ground. Time to get the Hopi Black beans in, too, then (barring disaster) we'll be set for a year's-worth of dry beans. I'm pushing things a bit with the DL beans -- they're actually occupying a bed marked for Chillis in the rotation, but I'm betting I can plant the young Chillis out between the Beans, and then whip the Beans out before the Chillis need the space in any serious way.

No Chillis are up yet, but that's expected. We won't see them for at least another couple of weeks.

Catching Up (A Little)

Whew! Busy times mean less blogging. Consider this a quick catch-up, and I'll try and fill in the gaps in a couple of weeks' time.

Veggies
Despite the Wounded Knee (still troubling me, forcing me to move slowly and carefully, but steadily getting better, thanks!) I've managed to dig eight new beds so far, with another 5 to go before I reach my goal. I don't expect too much out of the new beds -- they still need a couple of years of composting before they reach a good level of health.

The Tomatoes have come up. The first were already showing their heads last Friday, only five days after they were sown. This is out in the open , mind-- no greenhouse, no glass, no bottom heat. Only the Tigerellas are being tardy. (Uh Oh!) Tomatillos are up, alongside Radicchio, Lettuce mix, Endive, some of the Squashes and Artichokes, and even a few of the Chillis.  (That was quick!)  I'll follow-up with yet another sowing of most of these again towards the end of the month.

So What's Been Happening?

So what has kept us so busy, you may wonder... Older Son is getting married next weekend, so we're having family from both sides descend on us for the coming week :-O Bride's family are all from Pietermaritzburg, Groom's from Cape Town. Don't expect much in the way of farm news for the next couple of weeks.

During a couple of rainy days early last week I managed to get closer to the finish line with a software project I've been working on sporadically for a couple of months. More when I'm closer to releasing unleashing it on the unsuspecting world! A hint: it's to do with my main passions and predilections -- gardening, seed-saving and tilting at corporatist/ globalist windmills.

The Mushroom Book arrived, Hooray!  Paul Stammets' Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms. Wow! Everything from A to Z. So lots to learn. Already I'm trying to figure how and when to incorporate fungal growth into my soil improvement efforts.

New Seed Varieties

A couple of weeks ago I once again ordered seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  My parcel arrived today (well, yesterday, probably, but we only checked the postbox today) - much excitement and renewed enthusiasm about the coming season.

I cannot say enough good about the Baker Creek folk.  Apart from the key role they play in keeping heirloom varieties going, their service has been impeccable every time I have dealt with them.  There's a little "something extra" in the pack, and I am wondering how the hell they got the order here so quickly.  I can't get stuff through the SA postal system for local delivery that fast.  The seed has been excellent, the only disappointment being a packet of Golden Beet seed taht had very poor germination.  Nothing daunted, I have ordered it again this year, having heard such high praise for this variety. I am aiming to save seed from it over next Winter.

If we have another Winter.  The weather is so unseasonably warm that I am thinking of starting Chillis and Tomatoes soon, though I (still!) haven't got a greenhouse built.  I have Tomato plants popping up all over from last year's beds, so maybe I won't need to worry too much with doing seed trays.

Along with the Golden Beets, I got some old-time Mammoth Red Mangel Beets.  These were highly valued as fodder crops in times past, and I wonder whether they might be useful as sugar Beets.  Its old varieties like this, that I feel an urgency about having handy as we start down the slippery slope of the oil crash.  Just the slightest bit of oversight and - oops! - we've lost them forever.

I also got in a couple of new varieties of Turnips to try.  Probably a bit excess, since Purple Top is so commonly available here and still a nice turnip, and I also have Navet des Vertus Marteau that someone brought from France, and whose seed I saved successfully last year.  (Note to self: Time to plant more of them!)

Also trying a couple of varieties of Eggplant - some of the smaller Eastern varieties, as well as a few squashes, in the eternal search for squashes that better resist the dreaded Fruit Flies of Late Summer.  I am aiming to sow some Squash seed within the next few days/week in the hope of getting them going very early to try and beat the Fruit Fly season.

So here I am, as usual not enough beds prepared in the veggie garden, so feeling "Spring Pressure" already, and its not yet August!