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How about using it as a covercrop? If it grows 2 and a half meter tall with zero inputs it surely can pass some of that nitrogen on to the soilbiome of which the next crop can profit.
You’re absolutely right.
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I wonder if some of those are flint corn (which Im interested in) and also if they would produce seed in my shorter season. This year I grew cascade ruby gold, a super early variety, with fertilization at all, and only got a few seeds
EFN also has some options which are currently out of stock.
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In case you want to delve more into that, all Walter Goldstein’s work on corn is based on those microbial interactions, for which he wasn’t breeding intentionnally originally : Breeding Corn for Endophyte Integration and Nitrogen-Fixing | Mandaamin Institute
In that video I already posted he is explicitly saying that his composite cross population (= modern landrace = evolutionary population =…) is doing as well as his best hybrids for a decade or so.
Originally he’s been asked to grow hybrids by the organic farmers themselves, around 2000. He’s making that clear in the video.
What I found really interesting is that even with his inbred lines, and so to say a line with a super narrow genetic, he observes many variations in the field, probably due to plant-microbiome interactions. So to say a diverse and rich microbiome on its own seems would be able to “express” some diversity in the plants.
As he is doing most of his work on microbial interactions with James White many of us on this forum would be familiar with it. If not of course go there to get the free course : How Microbes Help Local Adaptation – Going to Seed
@julia.dakin made such a great work on that! 
It’s how I got introduced to the topic. Such a complementary revolution !
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The excellent Harriet Mella:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5H2ZbVI2PA7iEqnBfQcdOE
She offers understandings complementary to those associated with the genetic variations showing up via the crossing process, helping to highlight untapped potentials.
Some fantastic moschatas of David The Good! Not-grown intentionnally… vigorous volunteers ending up in a nice harvest of pumpkins with nice colors
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Soilcraft guy fools everyone into thinking the correct answer was “soil,” but it was “SEED.”
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Wooow!!! That will help us connect even more the dots between agronomy, seed saving and breeding - landrace or not! Fantastic 
Thanks for the link @JonathanDeRevonah
Little intro to it :
- people have to get that high brix (11 and above) means zero pest pressure, i.e. health, because healthy plants (above 11) DO NOT attract pest : they just can’t eat them and are not attracted to them (see other videos to get that right!)
- Brix is measurable by a little tool called refractometer, costing 50$ / 50€ or so. No batteries, hand held, optic measurement by pressuring a bit of the sap of a plant. Easy
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They have a conference coming up very soon (January). How cool would it be to have a “Going to Seed” booth there or even a speaker? @julia.dakin @Joseph_Lofthouse
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I wholeheartedly agree! The best agronomists frequently don’t get a thing about breeding, and even less about adaptation breeding !!! So much untapped potentials are at the junction of those different fields of expertise!!!
Thanks for the link to those conferences and that suggestion Jonathan!!?
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That’s an interesting little talk about corn and as far as the history and cultural aspects it sounds like she did some pretty good research. She falls down a bit when she mentions transposons and their relationship to color or mutations. The accompanying photo of the multicolored ears shown do not reflect the effects of transposons. Those varying colors are the result of mixed genetics (for color) in three different parts of a corn kernel. The color of the endosperm for example, generally either yellow or white, has little to do with the color of the aleurone or pericarp and since the second two can vary greatly in color and in transparency or opacity, the color you see on a kernel does not originate with a single thing. The endosperm, either yellow or white, with yellow being dominate is pretty simple. When color is missing and transparent in the other two is when you have a kernel that appears either yellow or white. If color is very dark and or opaque in the aleurone or pericarp you can’t see the color of the endosperm at all and the color in the aleurone can be extremely variable in the same ear. This doesn’t mean that transposons are not at play in those ears, just that you can’t tell if it is, in those ears.
I don’t remember if it is in her books or from a paper, but Carol Deppe has a good explanation of transposons, I could even understand, part of it. I’ll have to track that down and read it again, but I don’t recall her mentioning transposons and mutations being related. Going just on memory from Carol’s writing transposons are when the same gene, expresses in different ways. It can be seen for example in an ear of corn that has all white endosperm and uniformly colorless, transparent aleurone. In that example the only color, if any, is in the pericarp and the pericarp is maternal tissue. It is part of the mother plant and not effected at all by the pollen doner.
The genes involved for pericarp color or pattern is exactly the same on all kernels on all ears of a particular plant and in theory all kernels will look alike. Except, sometimes they don’t. The genes involved are the same, but the appearance sometimes isn’t. That’s where Carol’s writing moves a little bit beyond my pay grade on the issue.
The little black and white slide the presenter shows, I’m guessing from the researcher she cites, looks more along the lines of what Carol wrote about. I think I will track that researcher’s work down, along with rereading Carol’s and see if I can get a better understanding of these transposons in general. I imagine they are at play in any organism, not just corn, and might explain some of the odd things I see in sweet potatoes. I also can’t remember for sure if Carol mentioned a connection between transposons and mutations or not, so I need to track that down too.
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That was interesting about Honeycrisp apples and in general. Breeding something good does take a long time and a good bit of effort. On the Honeycrisp, from what I’ve seen they certainly are not robust growing trees, I cut mine down to make room for other stuff and used the wood on the grill. I do have two trees grown from Honeycrisp seeds; one is rather puny but has made a few nicely flavored apples, but just a very few and not as good as Honeycrisp so it will probably also be cut down. The other one is very healthy and seems pretty much immune to everything that bothers the other apples, but it doesn’t bloom very much, some years not at all and has never made an apple.
I also have several patented, own root grape vines. I sell cloned grape vines and even though at the scale, and the places I sell my vines I could easily get by with it I don’t clone those vines. I would have been happy to pay the $3 per vine fee to clone those vines but they also wanted a $250 yearly fee. My large mature vines have permanent metal tags with the date the patent expires, so I’ll be adding them to my sales as soon as they do. The patents do not cover sexual propagation, but none so far have produced anything near the quality of the parent vines, if anything at all.
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Oh, that’s really smart, writing down the date the patent expires right on the tag! That’s a great way to make it easy to remember.
Which grape varieties do you sell currently?
@ThomasPicard A few more photos of them here and here.
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