Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
Richard just sent me an email to tell me about his new blog Nu Trac (=New Track).
He recently left formal employment, and is pursuing a more self-reliant lifestyle on a property north of Atlanta, Georgia. This includes bees, chickens, organic gardening and composting, rainwater collection, bread baking and more! His blog looks really good so far!
For those of you thinking about coming to the meeting in Oxford this year, I’m sorry but I need to cancel. I’m planning other travel around the same time and have already done a lot of travel this year. I’m also unsure if enough people are interested this year, and to be honest I don’t really have enough speakers lined up to keep us busy an entire day.
Maybe next year we can plan something. I’m always looking for groups or people to team up with in order to make a larger event, so if anyone has any ideas please let me know.
Film maker Alex Ikonomidis recently sent me an email to tell me about his latest project, A Seed for Change.
All I can say is it looks great to me! I think if anyone would like to help out with a donation or tips or pointers, he would like to hear from you.
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.
A few weeks ago I posted about an action to stop a law pending in Poland that would have legalized the cultivation of GM varieties there.
I’m pleased to say the Polish president decided to veto the measure, stating in particular the Act was too poorly written and “was not stopping GMOs”. The president, senators and parliamentarians were all bombarded with letters, phone calls and visits, and there were several vociferous demonstrations and actions outside the Polish parliament, the President’s palace, as well as all over Poland. These have been attended by many younger people who have helped lead and organise anti GMO support. and more than 200 letters directed to parliamentarians and the president came from abroad!
Poland faces general elections this October and it is clear that the present government was worried that passing the pro GMO Act might cause controversy amongst the electorate. It remains to be seen what will happen if the present government is re-elected.
