Purple of Sicily Cauliflower
I first wrote about this cauliflower 6 years ago. Bayu who lives in Indonesia left a comment asking if I had any spare seeds I would send for free, but I don’t have these any more. Does anyone have some seeds, or would like to buy some seeds, and send them to Indonesia for free? If so, please let me know and I’ll forward the email address.
These are pretty ordinary seeds. If you live in the US, they are available for example at Baker Creek. There are similar varieties with different names, so if you have something that looks the same it probably is.
Junaluska Apple
Last year around this time I was looking for fruit tree scion wood, and my search led me to the website of Tom Brown in North Carolina in the US. Even though Tom was willing to cooperate, we quickly discovered the Netherlands doesn’t allow the import of apple tree scion wood from the US without lots of red tape, so the discussion ended.
So much of Tom speaks to what it means to collect and share heirloom and heritage varieties. Tom not only has a very impressive collection of heritage apples, mostly from the US south, but he’s done everything possible to collect stories and other documentation to go along with them. The roots of Tom’s interest in his apple collection lie in his childhood and passions as a young man.
Not only has the world lost so many heritage plant varieties over the years, but we’ve lost the passions that go along with growing, documenting and hunting for them.
Tom recently rewrote and reposted the story of how found the Junaluska apple, and sent me a link. Note too the link on the bottom of the page that leads to the various descriptions of the apple he found. Many of us grow the Cherokee Trail of Tears beans in our garden each year, and now thanks to Tom a Cherokee apple from that time is also available.
If you live in the US and are looking for an apple tree to grow, consider buying this or others from Tom via his website.
Garlic Rust in Iran
Last week Arash in Iran left the following comment:
Hello to all
I am a researcher in iran.I and my cooperator have collected 22 accessions from region of Tarom (one of areas of Zanjan province). We want to research taht how many genotypes are being farm in this area and also study resistance to puccinia alli. please gide me how I operate thate conclude best.
He actually doesn’t say it’s specifically on garlic, rather alliums in general, but since my original post was on garlic I assume that’s what he meant.
Does anyone have any information for him?
I can say that in the last few years since I’ve been making posts about garlic rust, I first read that it was present in on the US west coast, specifically in California in the region around Gilroy and a few isolated places in Oregon. I also knew it was present in northern Europe because it was in my garden and those of fellow gardeners in the UK, Denmark and Sweden.
In the years that followed I had reports from readers that it was present in the entire Willamette Valley area of Oregon, and later British Columbia in Canada and Los Angeles, in southern California. Two years ago someone reported it appeared in Ethiopia. I see mentioned on the Internet it’s also appeared this year on the east coast of the US in Maine. It seems to be spreading now, almost all over the world.
Following a suggestion from Søren, a fellow blogger in Denmark I’ve been experimenting with spraying dilute milk on my plants. I have not done this in any sort of scientific way, but my feeling is it’s of significant benefit. It seems to slow the rust down and manage it, to the extent it’s no longer a serious problem. I spray this on the plants about once a week or after rain, during the last 2-3 months or when I think rust infection is likely to occur. It’s benefit seems to be much greater if applied before the plants are infected. I use a ratio of 3-10 parts water to one part milk.
In the last several years I have grown more than 120 varieties of garlic in my garden, and a friend of mine more than 300. We have not really noticed significant signs of resistance to garlic rust on any of them, except a few of the more vigorous varieties like Susan Delafield and Estonian Red (a purple stripe type) seem to stand up a little longer to the rust probably because of the strength of the plants, and some silverskin varieties like Chilean Silver seemed to get infected a little later than the others.
The other thing a number of people observed was the application of high nitrogen fertilizer, in particular animal manure, caused the rust problem to become much worse.
Perennial Rye Harvest
Here are some of the seed heads I gathered from the perennial rye plants on a standard sized dinner plate.
These are among the best I found on the plants. Most plants had empty seed heads, or heads containing only a few or only immature seeds. The ones in the picture are mostly full. The main reason for this is the plants are recent crosses made by Tim Peters, and still need to be selected.
Out of about 400 plants, in about 38m2 or 400ft2, I got about 1 kg of seed heads. After cleaning, the amount of grain and/or seeds would be a little less than this. I estimate with selected plants it would be possible to get yields about 10 times higher. What this means is on a fairly small sized suburban plot it should be possible to get enough grain each year for several loaves of bread.
Harvest time was less than an hour, and care for the the plants while growing was really minimal. It really was almost ‘free’ grain.
Out of the 400 plants I identified and marked about 20 I thought were particularly good, and one in particular that was exceptional compared to the others. What I plan to do is dig these plants up, and divide the crowns for replanting. My understanding is each crown contains about 100 separate genetically identical plants that can be used for replanting, and I’ll make rows with each of the crowns to facilitate cross pollination.
I understand it’s possible to bag seed heads together in order to make controlled crosses between two plants, so the one plant I identified as particularly good I’ll try to plant in such a way as to facilitate controlled crosses with the others. I’ll also plant more of this one in order to promote it’s presence in the overall genepool.
By the way, Nick Routledge recently sent me an email telling me about something he wrote about Tim Peters perennial grains projects. You can find it here.
I have small amounts of seeds to share with people interested in participating in a breeding project. You need to have a climate that’s not too different from mine, because it’s what the seeds are now becoming acclimated to. I live in northern Europe, which is similar to the North American pacific northwest. Preference is for people in Europe, because there’s no need to worry about customs regulations. If you live some place else and are interested let me know. I’ll try to find someone else who might have seeds to share with you.
The main issue is I don’t have that many seeds to share, and I want to send them to people who have the best chance of success with them. In a few years this may be less of an issue, because there might be more people growing the plants who are willing to share seeds.
In particular, these plants are not suitable for very hot and dry climates. Mike tried them in South Africa, and they were killed by the heat. Tim Peters also confirmed they were not bred with hot dry climates in mind, but this may be a future breeding effort on his part.
Tim Peters Perennial Rye
I’ve posted about this several times before. Like here.
The more I watch this grow, the more interesting I find it.
It’s another ‘no-weed’ plant, like what I posted about earlier today. It’s basically grass, and it’s no-weed like most of our lawns are. It just forms a very thick root mass that almost no weeds can penetrate. Like grass, I wouldn’t really expect there to be insect or disease problems. Like grass it can be used as a forage crop, and in fact it grows about 2 meters high, and produces a lot of hay or straw. For gardeners it’s a useful source of mulch.
It will literally grow anywhere grass grows. It’s not uncommon to find unselected rye grasses in lawn seed mixes, and rye is not an uncommon component of people’s lawns. It’s the thicker bladed grass most of us are familiar with.
Okay, I can hear you asking. If it’s like grass and grows where grass grows, what makes it interesting? What makes it interesting is that you can eat it! Literally, anywhere grass grows, this is a drop-in replacement you can eat.
So let me repeat. Replaces grass, including people’s lawns, is weed, insect and disease free, hardly requires any care, and you can eat it. When you’re done eating it, any animals you might have can eat it.
If you were to create a major food for a sustainable future, what would you do different?
