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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.

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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?

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Japanese Gobo

This is a very strange looking plant, almost like a faux Joshua Tree or something.  I got the seeds last year from Alan Kapuler’s seed company, Peace Seeds.  It’s a big plant, about 2.5 meters high.

It didn’t seed the first year, so it’s either biennial or perennial.  If you want to know before me, I’m sure about 30 seconds with Google will give all the details.  These prickly buds are sticky and detach easily.  They’re very annoying if you get too close when weeding, and get one tangled up in your hair.

It’s about to bloom, and I’m planning to save some seeds.  It’s supposed to have a very long root that’s very tasty.  It’s supposed to be popular in Japan.  I’ve seen the roots for sale in Asian supermarkets here, but I’ve never bought one.  I dug up one of my plants last year, but the root was too small to be interesting.  After I harvest some seeds, I’ll dig up another plant and see how the root looks.

Anyone have experiences with this plant?  Anyone have any advice or thoughts?  Recipes?

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No-Weed Beans

Over the last couple of years I’ve discovered a really interesting variety of beans.

They are Yellow Forest Beans, an old variety that used to be grown in Friesland, in the northern part of the Netherlands and probably parts of Germany too.  They are what Americans would call bush beans and British would call dwarf French beans.

What’s interesting about these beans is they require little or no weeding, at least in my climate!

Ordinarily, this type of bean will grow to smother any weeds, but usually needs a little hand weeding at the beginning or the weeds will overtake them.  This bit of hand weeding at the beginning is most of the work required to grow them!

Below is the bed of beans where I didn’t do any weeding.

You can see a few weeds poking their way through, but it’s not very serious.  Here’s a picture taken straight down.

Okay, because I’m a diligent gardener, I’ll probably do a little weeding here later, but it doesn’t need much!

Here’s a similar bed of beans of a different variety.  Can you see any weeds here?  This is going to be a lot more work.

For the sake of clarity and honesty, I did use a weed burner on both of these beds before planting them, and this does reduce the weeds.  Next year I’ll try the Yellow Forest Beans without burning the ground first, and I expect to see more weeds.

I also haven’t had a chance to eat these beans yet, because I’ve been trying to bulk up on seeds.  I’ll try them in a few weeks.  They may not taste good.

All of these beans above were grown on rich soil, where I’ve grown beans within the last few years and so I know there’s good availability of rhizobia bacteria.  These things are important, because I think the ability of this variety to compete against weeds comes all or partly down to the plant’s vigor.  It’s possible however there’s more than that, for example a growth inhibiting chemical in the roots, that makes weeds grow slower.

Why It’s Important

You might think I’m a lazy gardener, and perhaps that’s part of it, but I do everything I can to avoid pulling weeds or digging in my garden!  The problem is weed seeds, once covered, remain in the ground for decades or even sometimes centuries.  When you disturb the ground, you bring these seeds to the surface where they grow.  This means every time you pull or dig weeds, you’re just creating a self-perpetuating problem.  By using no-dig methods like mulch or weed burning, you reduce this problem.

The problem is even compounded further when you grow something like beans, because they fix nitrogen in the ground, which makes the weeds grow all that much faster!  If you don’t manage the weeds, not only will the beans not grow well, but the benefit of nitrogen fixing will be at least partly lost as the weeds consume it.

On the other hand, if you have a nitrogen fixing crop that smothers weeds and is largely carefree, it’s of much more value to grow, even just as a cover crop!

When it comes down to it, the limiting factor for almost all of us is the amount of effort our garden takes to manage.  By not weeding, much of the effort needed to maintain a garden is gone and we can manage a larger piece of land with more crops if we want.  This is also true commercially, where a variety that needs little or no weeding can make all the difference in profitability.

These days of thinning ozone make me a little worried with every hour I spend in the garden.  Growing anything that requires less weeding means fewer hours in the sun.

After all, all of these benefits of reduced weeds are what make RoundUp ready crops so attractive.  This on the other hand is a sustainable and organic alternative.

The Genetics

Like I mention above, I haven’t tasted these yet.  In many ways, it doesn’t make that much difference if these taste good, but rather I’ve discovered genes that can be used with further breeding.

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Field Liberation Day in Belgium Declared a Success

On their Dutch and French language blog, organizers of the Field Liberation Day action in Wetteren, Belgium declared their success. They also published a multi-lingual dossier on the GM potatoes here, English is mixed in with other languages.

On the 29th of May about 500 people gathered at the trial fields. A broad mix of people including professionals, scientists, farmers, young and old.

Standing between them and the potatoes were about 60 police officers dressed in full riot gear prepared for battle, a 2 meter high fence, razor wire and electronic sensors.

As the demonstration progressed about half the participants, 250 or so, penetrated the barrier and entered the trial fields. There were about 30 arrests, and prosecutions are expected to follow.

While the fields sustained about 20% damage on the day of the action, some participants returned in the days following to continue damaging the fields.

Civil action is expected against the demonstrators, as the multinationals behind the trials claim financial damages.

The demonstrators are now looking to build a support network; including moral, legal, logistical, financial and other help. If anyone reading this would like to participate, let me know and I’ll make sure you’re in contact with the right people. I think you can also probably contact them via their blog I linked to above.

Bees

One of the things uncovered by demonstrators were beehives kept 30 meters from the potato trial fields. A glimpse of this is shown in the last few seconds of the second video.

University Researcher Fired

A few days following the action in Wetteren, academic researcher Barbara Van Dyck was fired by the Catholic University of Leuven . She wasn’t fired because she trespassed, damaged anything or broke any laws. She was fired because she was present during the demonstration, outside of working hours on a Sunday, and voiced her public support. She was fired for performing what in many places in the world are constitutional rights.

Just in case any of us thought universities were places of free thought and expression, now we all know we were wrong.

Regardless of your personal views on the Field Liberation Day, please consider signing the petition to ask for her reinstatement and sending an email to the University. Details can be found here.

Free Expression

So much of what happened on May 29th comes down to freedom of expression and proportionality of actions.

Sixty police in riot gear? If I ever had problems with vandalism in my garden, even if I knew who it was and had dates and times in advance, I would never get the attention of the police here. It doesn’t matter if I had a breeding project, or if I had years of time an effort invested into what I was doing. It’s also not just me as an individual, but we have the same problem at my community garden complex where we have 50+ gardens, problems with vandalism, and the police won’t do anything about it.

If I were to grow something provocative, for example marijuana (which is permitted here in small amounts), and my garden was overrun with 19-year old stoner-vandals, I might even get into trouble with the police for creating problems.

What’s more provocative than a field of GM potatoes? The people behind the planting of the field are as much or more to blame for it’s destruction than the demonstrators themselves.

There isn’t any court in the Netherlands that would award me more than market value if a field of potatoes in my garden were destroyed by vandals and I sued for damages. It doesn’t matter how much work I put into growing and possibly breeding them. Face it, even if you could find someone who wanted to buy and eat them, the potatoes aren’t worth more than 50 cents a pound. What’s this talk of civil action…arrests and prosecution…over potatoes?!

This is very much the same logic of Monsanto suing farmers like Percy Schmeiser when their crops become contaminated with GMOs, and it’s abuse of the justice system and civil courts.

Anyone reading this who has ever had a garden or farm knows that, however distasteful it may be, destroying someone else’s plants and the work behind them is mindless and no problem at all. Build a wall and block the light. Enter at night and pull the plants up. Throw salt on them. Spray them with herbicide. Pollute the genetics of wild crop relatives with GMOs, so organic seed saving is more difficult or impossible. This can easily be done by 3-4 people in the darkness of night, and hundreds of people aren’t necessary.

As growers of plants we are totally at the mercy of nature, natural disasters, climate change, genetically modified crops and even vandals. We all need to take all of these things into account when we grow things, and roll with the punches as they come.

The people being punished for participating in or supporting Field Liberation Day, are not being punished for the destruction of $100 worth of potatoes, they’re being punished for bringing 500 people together to express ideas and opinions and filming 60 riot police beating unarmed demonstrators. They’re being punished for making us all think about what a monstrosity research into GM crops has become, together with all the politics and unfair laws behind it.

Supposedly it all comes down to us consumers. What I hear is if we don’t accept GM foods, they won’t be sold. Has anyone else heard that too? I don’t think the big agro-chemical companies have heard this yet.

Does it really come down to destroying one another’s work before the message is heard?