A discussion over on this thread got me thinking that it would probably be a really good idea for many of us with longer growing seasons to try to grow more than one generation per year.
Especially if there are any specific ecosystem challenges that we’re hoping to adapt our plants to.
I have a fairly long growing season (about 180 frost-free days) and fairly extreme summers (95-100 degrees with virtually no rain). So it seems to me that breeding for warm weather crops that can grow to maturity within 90 days and handle some mild frosts at the start or end of their lives would allow me to grow two generations per year.
This would give me a lot of opportunity to adapt my crops to drought tolerance faster. On top of that, it may help with using less water anyway, because the early crops could get most of their moisture from our last spring rain in April, and the late crops could get most of their moisture from our pretty-much-only summer rain in August.
Have any of you grown two or more generations in a year? If not, are you planning to?
I don’t have enough snow-free season to grow two crops of anything per year, but I’ve always thought it would be super fun to start with a diverse population and select to have one “summer (hot/dry)” and “winter(wet, cold, dark)” adapted subpopulations by saving and selecting during those times, and not mixing seeds. It would be neat to start out that way, and see how quickly they diverged…
I’ve been thinking the same thing! Especially with peas, which are the only vegetable my husband and children are consistently willing to eat. (Wry grin.)
I definitely want peas that can live through my winter. Because my summer is so long and I want to grow food for them then, too, it would be nice to also have peas that can grow through my summer. Maybe peas that would do well in full shade in my summer? Then I could plant them under my fruit trees, or something!
Yeah, I would definitely be adapting them to opposite conditions. Summers would be hot, dry, and dark (since I’d rather not waste my sunny spaces on them). Winters would be cold, wet, and sunny.
Of course, once I had two populations that were well adapted for the opposite things, it might also be fun to make a deliberate cross and see what would happen. (Grin.)
Maturity in the shortest time possible has been a major focus of mine for a long time. I’ve tried lots of different things, but I think not it is what offers the best chance of getting a harvest. Kind of an off shoot of that is two generations in one year.
I’ve done it with corn and several beans. Tomatoes are easy, I could probably do three generations of them. Except with corn, which I wanted to speed up the landrace process I don’t really do two generations for the sake of it but rather just part of the shorting of maturity time.
My reasoning is to be able to get a harvest of whatever it is in the reasonably hospitable periods between extremes. To start over if a first panting is destroyed even if the first one was close to maturity.
I don’t separate seed between early and late planting, I don’t believe it is possible to make separate crops adapted to different planting times because the continuing increasing frequency and intensity of freakish weather events are too unpredictable and I have no expectation they will become more so.
Some other crops I believe two generations may be possible with in my climate are cowpeas, soybeans and peanuts.
I us “days to maturity” in a description as a hint of hat varieties might mature fastest but that is really determined by conditions, especially accumulated heat units. Many things also will not grow when it’s too hot even if they have plenty of water or the pollen is killed so, those factors have to be considered a well.
You raise an excellent point about extreme weather being a thing that’s going to get worse. I’m not sure whether having separate summer and winter populations would be better, or whether mixing them together (and thereby selecting for tolerance to all extremes in the whole population) would be better. Maybe two separate populations, and I deliberately plant about 25% of the “other” population with the main population for each season, in order to encourage more overall resilience to everything?
Okay, off-topic, but I’ve been dying to ask somebody. How do you plant your peanuts? I tried to plant them last year, and none germinated. I’m wondering if they all fell apart. I removed the shell and planted them with the red paper husk on, so they were intact when I planted them, but they sure seemed fragile. Do you plant yours in the shell? If so, does it work?
With peanuts those I’m saving for seed I leave in the shell during storage but remove them to plant. I think they are rather fragile seeds; they don’t last really long in storage, and you can’t push the season, the soil needs to be warm.
I like the idea of getting in 2 generations a season, especially if something happens to the first crop. Last year I sowed a good number of moschata seeds in spring, with the expectation that some/many would not make it. Where seeds had germinated but then got eaten or died, I sowed more seed, up until early July. I hope to eventually have a collection of seeds, some of which can germinate under cool conditions and others that prefer hotter conditions. Maybe eventually I’ll only have to plant once and the seeds will come up when they feel like it.
What I wonder now is, as the days get shorter, is there a point at which the plant senses the end of summer and can speed up the maturation of its fruit? And will the memory of that speeding up be transmitted to its seeds? In other words, can selection for short season crops be enhanced by sowing seeds later, thus artificially shortening the season? And will this be passed down to future generations?
For me, so far, I’ve noticed my plants slow down the maturation of their fruit as the temperatures get cooler. I think that’s because heat equals faster growth rates in most species. Day length sensitivity triggering faster maturation may very well be something we could breed for, though. I imagine there’d have to be a tradeoff – the plant deciding to set fewer fruits in order to focus on maturing the ones it’s got, for instance – but when it’s coming on to the end of the season, that would be okay. Possibly even highly preferable. You don’t really want your tomato plant flowering in September when it still has unripe fruit you want it ripening, for example.
Yes, you’re right, I didn’t think of the slowdown with cooler temps. Also, don’t some gardeners remove immature fruits from plants at the end of the season to promote the maturation of the remaining ones? Not sure how that would help us to develop short season landraces, unless it triggers a change in the plant that’s passed on to its seeds.
I’ve found that removing unripe winter squash fruit at the end of the season gives me an extra crop, rather than leaving the unripe fruits to rot on the vine I get a storage crop and an eat-or-pickle-right-away crop. Two crops from one plant is sort of the opposite of two plantings of one crop though.
That’s a great idea for maximizing what’s already on the plant. A lot of times, I leave fruit on the plants thinking (i.e., unrealistically hoping) that we might have some extra days of sun. I usually collect unripe tomatoes before a frost, but have never thought about the other frost-sensitive fruits. I’ll have to keep it in mind this fall. Your baby squash look delicious, by the way!
Anyone know if peas have a dormancy period or rest requirement or cold stratificationperiod requirement for germination?
Am planning on putting in a fall crop of peas (the 2nd gen this year) and am wondering if I can use the saved seeds from this year’s spring crop? I.e. they are only like a month old (Some are totally dry, some look like they are still drying.
Wondering because I have not much seed left from what I originally planted in the spring.
Figured this would fit in this thread the best.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience with us, i truly appreciate it! I have never had that problem before, the vines always just seemed to dry up and the last peas get left on along with the ones we missed picking.
I have had tomato seeds sprout inside the tomatoes though, which I thought was quite interesting.
When I was breeding coloured snowpeas, I tried to push two or three generations a year. It didn’t really work - peas don’t like hot weather, and even planting in late summer to get an autumn crop was problematic since the wet autumn really smashed them with disease. Poly tunnel results were patchy too, trying to grow through winter - but then I didn’t really try lots of times and it might have just required tweaking.
It is possible to to do a spring cross, get the crossed seed and replant it somewhere shady in summer to yield a few pods since you don’t need a huge number to get on with, but after that you want ‘normal’ growing conditions to yield the healthiest plants to continue your selection process. This was NOT for landrace gardening but selected line breeding, but there may be lessons for others here.
My concerns would be each alternate generation would have quite different growing conditions, and photoperiod triggers, and possibly degree days as well- but I’m not sure whether any crops have heat unit triggers., and whether these are driven by accumulated heat units or respond to changes in heat units.
That said, depending on how one is intending to do the initial crossing and growouts, and the crop type, it might be useful to use an ‘off’ season to do the initial cross or second growout to make a crossed up grex, then grow in normal seasons to begin selecting for vigour etc.
When breeding biennials or doing seed production it is possible to use the seed-to-seed method rather than the seed-to-root- to-seed method. this saves you a growing season. rather than sow seed in spring, grow through to roots in the autumn, dig and select roots then replant when the ground thaws and grow through to seed. = S2R2S
instead, sow seed in late summer, grow small roots through autumn and winter and just let them bolt the next spring =S2S.
I use an adapted method of S2S, sow late summer, coddle through the heat, then digging small roots in my freeze-free winter, do a rough selection of gross properties like shape and size and forking, immediately replant and then get bolting in spring, seeds in summer.
final selection requires S2R2S tho, so detailed selection stuff like hairiness, flavour and internal colour can be assessed.
Hope this makes sense.
gm
Looking at traditional agriculture systems, when the same crop species is planted multiple times a year often two distinct land races are used at different times. Even in the tropics you tend to have a wet and dry season to deal with.
The only way I can see this working is through the use of a greenhouse to do controlled crosses for part of the year. I plan to develop quinoa as a winter grain crop here, and due to daylength sensitivity I might be able to grow a second generation in spring that matures at a small size, which would make it easier to grow multiple plants in a greenhouse and easier to do hand crossing.
The other alternative would be to coordinate with another breeder on the other side of the planet, who grows under similar conditions to you. That way you could swap seeds every year (provided the entire life cycle completed in less than six months each time).
Thank you! Your experience helps me to know what to expect.
I’m trying to grow radish, kale, peas and flax twice in a single season, and I feel a lot better about my raggedy kale leaves.
I’m not sure when to plant all these seeds though. I can’t seem to get much to germinate in our hot and dry season. Pray for rain.
