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Tom Wagner

Update: 21 September — more countries added to Tom’s schedule.

Through the sponsorship of Kokopelli Seeds of France and many other hard working people, not the least of which being Lila Towle of Frøsamlerne, Tom Wagner will soon begin his trip through Europe.

Final touches are being put on Tom’s schedule, but already details of the following events have been published (sorry, these are not all in English):

France

Switzerland

Austria

Denmark

Germany

Ireland

Tom will conclude his European tour in Oxford, England where he will attend Oxford 2009, our annual bloggers meeting on the 25th of October and potato breeding workshop the following day.

In all Tom will visit 10 countries over the course of about two months.  When I have some more specific information about his schedule, I’ll try to post some more details.  In the meantime, there’s still space both at our Saturday, October 24th meeting as well as the potato breeding workshop.

Below is a description of the workshops.

Tomato and Potato workshops 2009

Tom Wagner will be holding a series of unique global workshops starting in Europe during September and October 2009.

The venues for the events will take place in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, and England. No ONE workshop held will be identical to another. By using the internet and couriers all attendees will be not only able to make work and talk about it, but will be able to modify each other’s work electronically but also on physical pieces of potatoes and tomatoes, especially seeds.

This year, the format for the workshops will change to enable the development of ideas over a longer period. To this end, in September and October this year, there will be mostly weekend events in each location comprising lectures/presentations and informal workshops during which projects will be set to be developed over the following days, months, and even years.

The workshops are open to all but there will be very limited numbers in each location. Anyone who is familiar with past workshops will be aware that we usually try to keep the numbers of participants low so we can enter into meaningful dialogues with everyone on an individual basis. If you want to find out more about the workshops we’ve held before please visit Tom Wagner’s blog site.. http://tater-mater.blogspot.com

As these events will be more complicated than the previous ones there will likely be many questions so I will set up a FAQ page on my website over the coming weeks.

If you are seriously interested in taking part, please email your intention in English, French, German, or Danish, and do try to leave questions that you wish Tom would address.

Some of the topics that will be covered will be:

The history of Tater Mater Seeds

The development of some of Tom’s classic tomatoes such as the Green Zebra, along with dozens of other varieties that are available in the open market.

Tom’s other tomato varieties include Banana Legs, Green Grape, Vintage Vine, Green Sausage, Green Bell Pepper, Lime Green, Schimmeig Creg, Brown Flesh, Verde Claro, Gold and Green, Greenwich and Elberta Girl.

Some of Tom’s potato varieties include Viva el Sol, Adirondacksen, Azul Larga, Awol Dude, Nordic October, Baby Banana, Skagit Valley Gold.

How Tom is rapidly accumulating a large germplasm of potato clones and TPS (True Potato Seed)

Hands on demonstrations of how to cross tomato and potatoes, many times with actual plants and with video and power point presentations.

Tom will talk about how he has taken just a few varieties of potatoes and tomatoes and created a vast diversity of seeds for the future. By using heritage potatoes and tomatoes, and adding some newer releases to cross with, Tom is working with these to create tomorrow’s heirlooms.

Tom will discuss making F-1 hybrids that anyone can make over and over again. He will talk about making backcrosses and taking each year’s seed increase to the filial level of F-5 on tomatoes which indicates a rather stable line. Tom will illustrate how his potato lines have better berry production which aids hybridization efforts.

Tom will talk about the nutriceuticals of tomatoes and potatoes; the essential nutrients that these crop could contain with a bit of breeding expertise. Enhanced antioxidants, anthocyanins, carotenoids, lycopene, are but a few. Fast cooking times in his new potatoes clones that cook in 5 minutes in boiling water will be featured in his topics.

Through a variety of breeder/grower initiatives beginning with the workshops, there will likely be many cooperatives dealing with plant breeding and variety development starting with seeds of Tater Mater.

These workshops will be part of an effort to keep seeds free, legal and available for people to grow in their gardens, farmers to grow on their farms, and not controlled by major seed companies, universities or governments.

A concerted endeavor will be launched to work with local heritage varieties to incorporate them in variety improvement and to avoid GMO’s at all levels.

Potatoes can be grown from true seed and avoid the virus contamination of tuber trades. TPS is but one way to foster diversity and reach local needs for flavor, storability, yields, disease resistance, all with organic growing methods

The workshops will features many ways to look at seed extraction, seed saving, clonal selection.

Single seed descent and bulk population breeding and variety maintenance will be discussed.

The workshops will try to feature local gardens and local growers. The goal is to find ways for this to help Tom in his work and how he can help local growers in return.

Video and audio recording will likely be part of many of these workshops. Some of those may be shown at succeeding workshops to show the growth of the information exchanges. A few clips of how to cross potatoes and tomatoes may be linked to the Tater Mater blog. Many still photos will be shown of his tomato and potato varieties.

Each of these workshops will invite anyone to submit questions to answer during the workshops and/or later in an interactive format. With sufficient interpreters present, these answers will be delivered in the original language.

Workshop fees will go towards Tom’s travel in Europe and to free up important new seeds to be introduced. As Tom devotes more and more of his time to being a seed ambassador of sorts, these fees will help continue his workshops towards the future.

The goal of Tater Mater Seeds is to get young people involved in plant breeding, therefore, if Tom can be a mentor and teacher for many potential plant breeders, justice is done.

During Tom’s 56 years of breeding plants, he has not only proven that anyone can be a home garden plant breeder but will show many how they, too, can be plant breeders. His unique collection of proprietary seeds of tomato and potatoes will be a great resource for plant breeding groups in each nation.

Tom has created hundreds of varieties of tomatoes and potatoes, including potatoes totally resistant to blight. He is presently working with 100,000 lines of potatoes.

Tom started out breeding plants on his family farm near Lancaster, Kansas. He kept a family heirloom bean alive and growing each year in his gardens from a few beans his great grandmother brought to the USA in 1888. He kept growing new selections out of his breeding work even while he obtained degrees in Anthropology, Botany, Geography, and Education. His career includes farming, managing garden centers, managing greenhouses, potato buyer, potato and tomato breeder under contract, teaching, seed catalog, and a wide host of other professions. He has offered many of his creations in Farmers’ Markets and has introduced his varieties to other organic growers.

Tom stays busy with his TaterMaterSeeds forum and is a moderator on the Tomatoville.com for CrossTalk and Potato sub forums.

Tom currently lives in Everett, WA. His plots are all organic and shuns any chemicals applied to the soil.

Tom Wagner
8407 18th Ave. West
7-203
Everett, Washington 98204
Phone +1 425 512-0313
Mobile +1 425 894-1123

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Japanese Trifele Orange Tomato

jap_tri_org

I made a post last year about various colored Japanese Trifele tomatoes I grew, and this year I grew the missing orange colored variety you see in the picture above.

These were quite a bit larger than the other I grew before, the one in the left of this picture weighing in at about 125g and about 7cm wide.

This tomato too has the same slightly green and slow to ripen shoulders, that isn’t obvious in this picture but showed up on most of the fruits.  I wonder why this seems to be a trait sought after by the breeder?  Anyway, I didn’t find it a plus point.

The flavor wasn’t as complex as the black version, but the taste of this tomato was very good!

The seeds for this tomato came from Andrey Baranovski of Minsk, Belarus, a seed saving gardener.

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The Doers

My last post about Amateur Foods prompted an interesting discussion in the comments, and a comment from Cynthia led me to a new blog I haven’t seen before Growing Power.

Will Allen, in his first very well written and powerful post, offered a
A Good Food Manifesto for America.  In particular my attention was drawn to this:

Many astute and well-informed people beside myself, most notably Michael Pollan, in a highly persuasive treatise last fall in the New York Times, have issued these same warnings and laid out the case for reform of our national food policy. I need not go on repeating what Pollan and others have already said so well, and I do not wish merely to add my voice to a chorus.

I am writing to demand action.

It is time and past time for this nation, this government, to react to the dangers inherent in its flawed farm and food policies and to reverse course from subsidizing wealth to subsidizing health.

While I have a great deal of respect for Michael Pollan, and he has without a doubt done more to attract attention to the US and worlds food problems than anyone in the last century, he is not a doer.  By far the most important people in the battle to fix the broken food system in today’s world are the people in the field like Will Allen.

This is not the first I’ve heard of Will Allen.  Cynthia, a reader of this blog and someone I have been in frequent email contact with over the last few years told me about him some time ago.  Having interesting information and being able to translate it into a post suitable for publishing don’t always go together, as was the case here.  The same thing is true with Cynthia herself, who is very involved in the food culture of Virginia and a market gardener.  The best I can offer on her is to take a look at her recent comments on the last post.

Next on my list of doers are public domain plant breeders and collectors of old varieties.  Some really amazing things have been created or found in recent years by people like Tom Wagner, Alan Kapuler and Tim Peters in the US, as well as many others.  In Europe people like Lieven David, Ben Gabel, Frank van Keirsbilck and others.  Together with these people are all of those running small farms around the world, have a look at my links page for some of those.  I’m sure there are many others I’m forgetting.  These are the people who roll their sleves up and get their finger nails dirty, and they are all special in their own ways.

These are all the people creating the food systems of the future, and they are the ones we need to be talking and listening to.

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Perennial Grains Project

Traditional grains are annual crops.  That is, the land is cleared and plowed, seeds planted, several months later the crops are harvested and the cycle starts again.  This is particularly suited for energy and chemical intensive agriculture, because large swaths of land can be planted in the way, with a predictable and heavy yield, then the following year replanted with the same or a different crop.

Public domain plant breeder Tim Peters is working on creating perennial grains.  The way he’s doing this is kind of interesting.  For each of the cereal grains commonly grown today, he has sought out wild relatives in genebanks and other places and cross pollinated them with modern varieties.  The reason is because modern grains were made to be annuals for the convenience of the farmers, so what Tim is doing is reintroducing some of those genes that were lost in that process.

Why are Perennial Grains Interesting?

Perennial grains are interesting because they have a much better carbon footprint than traditional grains, and require fewer chemicals.

Besides the ground not needing to be plowed every year and the energy savings that comes from this, ground that’s disturbed releases carbon.  By not plowing the ground, it allows it to act as a carbon store.

Perennial grains develop strong root systems, and compete very well with weeds.  This reduces or eliminates the need for herbicide applications.

It’s expected perennial grains will also be more disease resistant than modern grains.

They are also drought resistant and do well in poor soils without the addition of fertilizer.

Potentially, this type of grain will become an important source of food for the world.

A Chance to Participate

Would you like to see first hand what a perennial grain looks like and help in the breeding process?

Tim Peters is looking for people to help him develop localized varieties.  The basic idea is to grow it, then select the strongest and most productive plants to save seeds from, then send these seeds back to him.  Of course you would be able to keep some too.

The first grain to trial is rye, and this trial is starting right now.  Planting is done in July and August, so there isn’t a lot of time. [Correction: Tim tells me that while July and August may be best, in fact the trial can be started any time your weather is warm enough to sprout seeds.]

The cost of participating is US$25.  This is because Tim cannot afford all of the postage and other support costs himself.

Next year other grains will be trialled, but it’s expected far fewer seeds will be available for these trials, and priority will be given to those who have successfully participated in the rye trial this year.

You will need some considerable garden space, at least several hundred square feet (30-100m2).  Perhaps you can do with a little less now, if you will have more space available in the spring.

If you’re interested, send me an email as soon as possible and I’ll pass your details on to either Tim or the project coordinator.  If demand for participating exceeds the available supply of seeds Tim may have to choose people according to the space they have available or if their climate is desirable for his trial.