Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Lynn Montgomery" <sunfarm@toast.net>]

Dear Paul,

Don't have to plant purslane over here. Even in drought years it covers the garden when it does rain some. And just about any other open, fairly level space. Our wild kind is just as good as cultivated. Simply delicious. My neighbor and fellow gardener, who's family has been here since the 1660s, grew up here in the 30s. She says they used to pick and dry it and fill paper bags all summer long in bad years, and add it to everything, especially beans and soups. She claims it helped them from starving to death. They didn't know anything about omega-3 back then, but that good old native wisdom is always to be respected.

    I would also like to say that hybrids aren't all bad. Most are simple crosses of particular parent lines and are nothing more than the breeding humans have done with plants for thousands of years. Wheat and corn are complex hybrids orginally. I couldn't grow tomatoes here, because of disease, if it weren't for hybrids. Don't tell me I have disease because of bad cultivation. Once these get into the soil, they are there and that's that. I rotate, let lie fallow, and cover crop, but that doesn't rid the gardens of them completely. There might be other methods, but I certainly can't afford them.

    The best and most efficient way to breed your own varieties particular to your own garden is to plant F2, and sometimes even F1 if they aren't sterile, which they usually aren't, hybrids, plant the seed from these, and start selecting. You get a much broader gene pool to start with than with a heirloom. If you want heirloom traits, just plant some along with the other selections. I learned this from Kent Wealey, a founder of Seed Savers Exchange. I planted some sungold hybrid cherry tomato plants in my greenhouse a few years ago. Many fruit fell to the ground and volunteered. I have a plant from these that goes all over the greenhouse that is several years old and has tons of ripe, delicious fruit in the dead of winter. So, lets be realistic. GM is very bad, hybrids can be most useful.

Regards,

Lynn Montgomery

Mayordomo, Acequia la Rosa de Castilla

Las Huertas Creek, NM

 

To Grow a garden is to believe in tomorrow
- Eleanor Roosevelt

 

Message: 8
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:11:40 -0700
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] 11 Best Foods You Aren?t Eating
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <201001101711400604.011FB8FB@mail.lobo.net">201001101711400604.011FB8FB@mail.lobo.net>
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Unfortunately we do get down to 0 degrees, no root cellars in this part of the country, and no room in the fridge for a lot of cabbages. I am exploring the golden purslane this year tho, for the Omega-3s. Mother Earth is handy but you have to know the variety to search for seed sources.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net