Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Please decipher hickory stump meaning here.


As in "tough as an old hickory stump", a kenning that has a lot of meaning if 
you have ever tried to eradicate one without the assistance of Magnolia.

> 
> >That is clearly true for commercial crops, perhaps most notably corn,  
> but it seems to me that seed produced for and sold to gardeners is  
> designed for home growers of small plots. The value of hybrid veggies  
> for me is not only their reliable taste and size qualities but their  
> resistance to disease. Think fusarium wilt in tomatoes.

Yes, and fusarium wilt resistance is a good example.  Several hybrids are 
much more resistant to it than most OP's.  One way of managing the disease is 
to 
plant a very resistant variety.  Another is to plant 20 different varieties 
even if that means planting only one of each variety and/or stagering the 
crop 
all season with different varieties.  Most will escape fusarium with is 
highly 
opportunistic and preys most dramatically on a monocrop of tomatoes.

But as far as the 'typical' gardener to whom some of the hybrid seeds are 
targeted, how many don't sock on the MiracleGro and Sevin dust?  The enhanced 
qualities of those crops are often in the context of inert salts as 
fertilizers 
and chemical pest control.  If we eschew those practicies, do we not expose 
the 
weak side of the plant (the trade off for the good qualities) to all sorts of 
vicisitudes?

As an example, I've only found one variety of red OP red cabbage readily 
available, Mamoth Red Rock (I'd be grateful for any other types and sources). 
 
I've grown six hybrid varieties and they were all pretty good, did OK.  But 
the 
OP always does better.  I've got two big heads of it still in the fidge and 
doing fine.  On mediocre ground the MRR does passably but nothing to write 
home 
about.  But in the beds where there is several years of dedicated compost, as 
when I first bring the in situ compost heaps back into production, the MRR 
makes an impressively large dense head (much like the gardener's).  The 
hybirds 
just do OK as if they don't know what to do with all that humus.

Bloomsdale spinach (AKA Boltsdale) makes an OK stand on poor ground and bolts 
if you look at it askance.  The hybrid Tyee makes a better stand on poor 
ground and resists bolting admirably.  But if the Tyee is planted on really 
well 
worked organic ground, it does no better.  The Boltsdale will make a 
magnificient crown 15" across as if it is much better suited to the organic 
ground.  
Alas, unless one is camping out beside it and cuts the crown right then, it 
bolts 
about 20 seconds later.

The hybrid peppers (all those bells in 28 different colors) do OK.  Don't 
need all that many of them so I'm OK with that.  But right beside it some OP 
pepper (such as Ancho) will make a tree big enough for George of Jungle and 
yield 
a cartload of peppers.

It seems to me to be a consistent observation.  None the less, I do use some 
hybrid seeds such as the rainbow of peppers and the spinach.


James