2025 Tanager Farm Adaptation Projects

[suffling (Spencer Suffling)]

Background
This year I’ll be giving updates on several of our adaptation projects at Tanager Farm in Corbett, OR. Corbett is 15 miles east of Portland, and our farm is at 1000 ft elevation and is very cool and rainy in the winter, and hot and dry in the summer. We are three people (plus friends and volunteers) on a little over an acre, focusing on vegetables and flowers for our CSA membership program, as well as several other community food distribution projects.

Milpa-inspired field last summer

For our seed saving work, our goals are to adapt crops to our local context and needs. In general this means starting with lots of genetic diversity, allowing for crossing, allowing the natural ecosystem to self-select, and then gently selecting for traits that we value. We are also exploring what it looks like to balance maximum diversity with stewarding varieties with cultural significance.

We also hope to get more involved with community crop breeding. We want to support other growers in our area to save seeds, and begin to build a local seed growers network. We are also working on a shared retail seed rack at a local garden shop, which we hope can help to compensate local seed growers.

Our seed rack debuted this spring, next year we plan to make it a shared community rack highlighting local growers

[suffling (Spencer Suffling)]

April Updates

Favas -
Overview: We’re continuing into year 2 of our fava adaptation project. We are still allowing for a lot of crossing and diversity, so we aren’t selecting too hard yet, aside from hard culling of any seeds that have signs of weevil damage. Our broad goals are for healthy plants and good yields with no fertility inputs. This year we aren’t going to supplement water unless absolutely necessary. In our climate we tend to get good spring rain to establish favas. We also like plants that can withstand a light harvest of top greens, produce good pods for fresh eating, and also produce beautiful dried seeds for eating.

Planting details: Our favas were direct sown around March 1. We planted 3 single rows at 6 inch spacing. Since our beds are 100 ft long, we planted 600 seeds. The seed population is very diverse now, with well over a dozen starting varieties that have begun crossing.

2025 seed stock

Spinach -
Overview: We are continuing into year 2 of our spinach adaption project. In year 1 our spring and fall planted spinach was severely hit by garden symphylans, which is a serious pest we deal with. We didn’t get any food harvest, but there were enough survivors to produce quite a lot of seed.

About half of 2024 saved spinach seed, despite big losses from symphylans

Planting details: We direct sow spinach in spring around April. Our seed stock for 2025 was entirely saved seed from last year’s adaptation project. We noticed more survivors with red pigments in the leaves, suggesting some connection with those genetics? The spinach was planted around April 15, after poor germination/emergence, we seeded again around May 1.

[suffling (Spencer Suffling)]

May Updates

Favas -
Favas are looking really good! 6 inch spacing feels a little close to me, but it seems like a common recommendation. At least a close spacing means more individuals and more diversity. There are already flowers out, and lots of diversity showing up!

Favas coming up in a slightly shady spot. No irrigation.

We’ll plant some drought-tolerant greens alongside these favas. Amaranth, orach, purslane, magenta spreen, Taiwanese quinoa.

What diversity can you spot? Flower color, size, what else?

Brown flowers

Light purple/pink flowers

Pink flowers

Spinach -
Both spring attempts at spinach largely failed, almost definitely due to symphylan pressure. We only had a few individuals that survived, and it’s now a bit late so we are giving up on a spring crop for this year. We’ll try again for a fall crop. Still have tons of seeds from last year, so we will broadcast really heavily in the fall.

Tomatillos -
Overview: We are continuing into year 3 of our tomatillo adaptation project. Over the last few years we have grown lots of tomatillos; although we enjoyed some of the colorful varieties like purple ones and the golden Queen of Malinalco, we ultimately decided that we value tomatillos primarily for green salsa. So our only selection has been for vigorous plants with large ish green fruit.

2024 saved seeds

Planting Details: We start tomatillos April 1, and transplant them into a greenhouse when the weather warms up and plants are 6-8 in tall, around early to mid May. This year we are also trialing a few plants outdoors as well.

Lots of seeds, more starts than we can use; we prefer to transplant before any signs of flowers like these ones pictured

Our beets were destroyed by symphylans, so we transplanted tomatillos into these beds

Sad beets, symphylan survivors developed some leaf miner issues as well. But a happy tomatillo!

More happy tomatillos, sad beets

Promiscuous Tomatoes -
Overview: We are growing just a few plants of the Obligate Outcrossing tomatoes from GTS. We have no expectations, just excited to see what happens!

Planting Details: We start tomatoes indoors March 15, and transplant into a greenhouse when weather warms up, around mid May. Our greenhouses are important for other spring crops, so we tend to plant tomatoes into beds with other things growing in them.

Tomatoes looking good but some first signs of stress as we wait for weather to warm up

Looking ok in a dense patch of other crops

Sweet Corn
Overview: We are continuing into year 2 of our sweet corn adaptation project. We started with lots of diversity in year 1, including several locally popular varieties.

Seed stock is all saved from the farm last year

Planting Details: We direct sow sweet corn around May 1 as the first crop in our milpa-inspired field that will later have squash, cucumbers, melons, beans, flowers, and other friends. We plant 2 seeds together every 2 feet, leaving spaces that other crops will fill in. Corn is a joy to work with, in part because of how easy it is to plant!

Large field dedicated to milpa-inspired polyculture. Corn is in!

Overview: We are continuing into year 2 of our sweet corn adaptation project. Year 1 involved mixing a diverse collection of corn seeds

Planting Details: We direct sow sweet corn as the first crop in our milpa-inspired field that will later have squash, cucumbers, melons, beans, flowers, and other friends. We plant 2 seeds together every 2 feet, leaving spaces that other crops will fill in. Corn is a joy to work with, in part because of how easy it is to plant!

True Potato Seeds
Overview: We had a pretty successful first crop from TPS last year. We got a decent yield for eating, and were able to save a good amount of seeds.

Planting Details: We sow seeds in a tray inside around March 15, and transplant when the seedlings are a few inches tall and have some leaves.

Some spuds from 2024

Some 2024 fruits

Some 2024 saved TPS

Transplanted TPS

Runner Beans
Overview: We are growing out a diverse runner bean population to increase the seed stock for the GTS Seed Share. Our starting population is the GTS Mix, some added diversity from our farm and from Kay Everts, and 5 accessions from the USDA GRIN collection, originally from Mexico and Guatemala.

Planting Details: We direct sow runner beans outdoors around May 15. We use a 6 inch spacing and give them a trellis for support.

Accessions from GRIN

A close up of my favorite packet from GRIN. Diversity already included!

Final seed stock for 2025 planting

Barley
Overview: We have grown a little bit of barley over the years, and this year we decided to begin a full-on adaptation project. We sourced 12 hulless types, plus the GTS mix, and the Naked Barley Blend from Oregon State University. These might include a few winter-types, but we are hoping to select for spring sowing for now. We are hoping to select for vigor and yield with no supplemental fertility, limited irrigation, and easy processing.

Planting details: We direct sow barley around April 15. We opted to broadcast seeds, hoping for a final spacing of 6-8 inches.

Some of the final mix for 2025 planting

Collards
Overview: We are currently saving seeds from our 2024 collard crop. Our starting population was the Ultracross mix from Utopian Seed Project, plus a smaller amount of our two favorite varieties, Cascade Glaze and Champion (F1 Hybrid). We tend to have some symphylan issues with collards, though not as severe as with some other crops. Our goals are good yields, good flavor, and more symphylan resistance.

Flowering collards

[suffling (Spencer Suffling)]

June Updates

Favas
Favas have been awesome this year. We’ve harvested some greens and the first fresh beans for CSA. We are leaving some of the first pods on plants we like to save for seed. This is the first time that we have not irrigated our favas at all, and it might be the best crop we’ve ever grown in 10 years. Very low disease or pest pressure. We got some unusual late spring/early summer rains, which have helped. It seems favas can be added to the list of crops that can grow well without irrigation in our area; favas, garlic, grain corn, barley, and some beans. There are likely others, we just haven’t been brave enough to try yet.

Garlic in our dryland field with garlic and flowering clary sage

Fava diversity

Pink flowers seem to be some of the latest/longest lasting

Lotsa pods

Reaching for the blue sky

Leaners aren’t great, but in this case it’s cause it’s loaded!

Sampling some beans

Some years we’ve had big problems with aphids. I think they are black bean aphids, Aphis fabae? This year there have been only a handful of plants with aphids. Interestingly they have been individual plants scattered around the field, rather than localized pockets of many plants. This suggests to me that there’s might be a genetic connection. We’ve been culling whole plants that look like this.

Tomatillos
Tomatillos are growing strong and setting fruit, though they aren’t quite ready to harvest yet. We have some plants in a greenhouse as well as outside in our milpa-style field. For some reason our tomatillos seem to be much more upright and vertical than their normal rambling, viney habit. It might be from transplanting a bit later with larger plants, but not sure. They might have some issues with branches holding up to the weight as the fruits fill out.

Tunnel tomatillos

Plants seem to have the main stem splitting into two erect “leader” branches; hoping this isn’t a shape that has problem supporting the weight of ripe fruits.

Not interested in trellising! Might have to start selecting for a more prostrate growth habit.

Promiscuous Tomatoes
The promiscuous tomatoes are growing strong. They have much thicker, stouter stems than the other tomatoes we grow.

“Robust” is how I’d describe these plants

These tomatoes can have a bamboo stake, but no more support. Some sprawling around basil is fine.

The flowers are chunky!

Sweet Corn and Maxima Squash
The milpa-style field is starting to fill out! It’s been a fairly cool and cloudy start to summer, which has helped for moisture but we could use some more juice. For our first milpa experiment last year, we gave the section some extra care and attention. This year we are intentionally neglecting it a bit more, to encourage the crops to fend for themselves. Our bed prep was less intensive, just hoeing back residues and forking/raking a bit, and we’ve cut back on irrigation. We’ve had some moles and voles causing a ruckus, but nothing too serious. We fill in gaps with other plants.

This pic shows almost a quarter of the milpa field (with strongest corn)

View from the other direction. Hard to tell at this point, but there’s sweet corn, maxima squash, beans, some onion sets, tomatillos, watermelon, muskmelon, summer squash, amaranth, purslane, sunflowers, Mexican sunflowers, cosmos, calendula, marigolds, and buckwheat.

Chunky corn plant with squash starting to take off

The milpa field has mostly has maxima winter squash, but there’s also summer squash on one end, hulless pepo x Winter Luxury on the other end, and a few moschatas scattered around.

True Potato Seeds
TPS are doing their thing. We haven’t done anything since transplanting and a light early hilling and occasional irrigation. Plants are a bit smaller than our clonal tuber-planted crops, which seems to be the norm. Lots of flowers, no fruits yet.

TPS potatoes on the end of the field, doing fine with no labor

Close-up

More plants

Runner Beans
The super diverse runner beans are growing strong! A few plants when down to moles and voles, but pretty insignificant damage overall. Lots of diversity already, mostly in vigor and size.

Some individuals hustling up the trellis. Over time maybe we’ll determine if this vigor is a beneficial trait. Some first flowers are out.

Barley
The barley has been a tiny bit neglected. We don’t have too much barley experience, so still learning how to get a full, even stand, and how much weed pressure is ok. Seeing lots of diversity as grain is starting to form. A few plants have fallen over but not many.

A bed of barley experimentation, wedged between collard seeds and dry beans and flax.

[MashaZ (Masha Zager)]

Do the aphids actually damage the fava beans? Asking because I have some plants where they cause damage (fruit trees) and others where they don’t (helianthus).

[suffling (Spencer Suffling)]

They do damage when they reach a certain infestation level, first to the greens, then to the beans inside the pods. As with other crops, sometimes it seems like the aphids/bugs show up only after plants have been weakened for other reasons.