I am starting with all new seed this year. So it’s alot of grexes that are the beginning of my landraces. I would be interested in having someone else try these and share seed back and forth every winter. A few I know traits that I’m not interested in so if it’s something others are looking for I’m happy for them to be useful to others.
Things I can share currently:
Yarrow. Wild sourced (leaving plenty behind) from my pastures and fields.
Kiwano, Zimbabwean landrace. Cucumis metuliferus. (27 seed) from Buffalo seed co.
Things I can share probably next winter:
Moschata grex. Composed of butternut rogosia violinia, Lofthouse moschata, and possibly some black futsu. 80-105 days? (Don’t know how short Lofthouse will be. Selecting for: long butternut shape with lots of flesh, nice orange flesh, flavor. Towards shorter DTM is after other traits.)
Maxima grex. Composed of Nanticoke, Jarrahdale, Georgia candy roaster. 95-110 days. (I don’t want the buttercup type so if anyone is wanting buttercup type and I’d be happy to bulk out those seed together.
Selecting for: nice orange flesh, flavor. Shape to be determined, just not buttercup and selecting for lots of flesh. Towards shorter DTM is after other traits.)
Pepo grex. Composed of new England pie pumpkin, Connecticut field pumpkin, table queen acorn. 80-100 days.
(Selecting for orange flesh, thickness of flesh, flavor. Towards shorter DTM is after other traits.)
Watermelon grex. Composed of Janosik watermelon, Clay County yellow meat, Leelanau sweetglo, Early moonbeam. 80-90 days.
Sunflowers. Composed of chocolate cherry, evening sun. 65-95 days. (Plan to add mammoth or something for larger seeds)
Arugula. Unknown variety. Had planted it a couple years ago and it seeded vigorously. Planning to bulk save. I think it would be a great cover crop as long as you cut it before flowering.
Mustard. Unknown variety. Same story as Arugula.
Marigolds. Different varieties from at least five sources. Super easy to save seeds. Flowers make a great natural dye. A study showed that a cover crop of Marigolds the year before your garden veg can deter alot of pests, moreso than companion planting. I think these are an overlooked cover crop option. They always do great with no input after seeding.
Fukuoka style herbs, flowers, dyes. Composed of Woad (dye), Dyers coriopsis (dye), Cosmos (dye), Black eyed Susan’s (dye), Yellow prairie coneflower (native flower), Borage, Echinacia, Yarrow, Chamomile, Calendula.
Lettuce grex. Composed of…
May queen lettuce, 50 day, butter head
Crisp mint, 65 day, romaine head
Little gem, 50 day, romaine head
Tom thumb, 60 day, 3-4" cabbage-like heads
Sweet pepper grex. Composed of Gregs Hungarian sweet pepper, King of the north pepper, Green bell pepper.
Hot pepper grex. Composed of Anaheim, Big Jim. (I’m not big on really hot so this is probably low level spice for most hot pepper enthusiasts lol)
Sweet corn. Composed of…
Dorinny sw corn, 75 day
high carotene sweet, 75-85 day
A few odd kernels from harmony
(Will be selecting for sweet and high carotene. Will be selecting out any colored, if someone is interested in that if they show up.)
Grain corn grex. Composed of…
Painted mountain corn, 70-90 day
Atomic orange corn, 60-90 day
Re-pioneer dent, 80-90 day
Abenaki roy flint, 88 day
Harmony grain corn, 85-115 day
Lofthouse flour corn, 100 day
High carotene flint corn, 100 day
(Will be breeding towards shorter DTM.)
Tomatoes. I have an absolute ton of tomatoes I’ll be growing this year. Promiscuous project. Dwarf project. Heirlooms. I’ll have to update for this when I know what I’m actually saving seed from. I have alot of manual pollinations I’d like to try but won’t know til I try them and see if I can actually do it right.
Tentative list would be somewhat like…
42 day manual crossing grex. Big Hill manual crossing grex. Exserted Orange manual crossing grex. Neandermato crossing grex. Pimpinellifolium manual cross grex. And probably lots of individual plant bulk saving.
TPS Potatoes. This will be my first year with TPS. I have a ton of seed and haven’t narrowed down what I’m planting this year. I’ll be saving seed but thinking I won’t need to keep much because I want to select the best plants/tubers and save seed from the “screened” selection of second year plants (from the first year tubers).
I’m not interested in blue or red flesh so if you are in the USA and would be interested in bue or red flesh first year tubers and don’t want to start TPS.
Things I can share in future years:
Onion grex. Composed of…
Yellow of parma onion, excellent keeper, long day
Red of Florence onion, tall and narrow, long day
Yellow sweet Spanish onion, very big, long day
Leek grex. Composed of…
American flag leeks, 150 day?
Carentan leek, 100 day, 2" across
Bulgarian giant leek, 110 day, long and thin
Carrot grex. Composed of…
Koral carrot, 75 day
Chantenay red core, 75 day
Oxheart, 90 day, huge
Danvers 126 half long, 70 day
Little finger, 65 day
Short n sweet, 68 day
Over the rainbow mix
Lofthouse carrot, 70 day
Danvers half long (dollar store), 70 day
Rainbow mix, 70 day
Dutch Siberian napus kale grex
Wheat
Rye
Barley
Hulless oats
TPS Potatoes. After a few years once I’ve grown out plenty of seed and selected some. At the moment, planning to group them into phenotype landraces. Red skin/yellow flesh population. Yellow skin/yellow flesh population. Red skin/white flesh population. Etc like that. Something kind of like how Clancy seed is. Then collecting seed per population. Growing out first year tubers for second year evaluation. Develop a few things that are good producers and weeding out traits I don’t want, like blue and red flesh.
