This YouTube video describes the process of “programming” seeds by starting the seedlings in poor soil. Stefan Sobkowiak describes this process for trees. It sounds very interesting and seems to fit in with the general idea of landrace adaptations. It seems like it would work best for perennials, but may have some bearing on annuals as well. Has anyone tried this before?
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It’s an interesting theory, but switching gènes on and off… I don’t know if that’s possible.
There’s this going to seed podcast with Mark Shepard which explains him growing thousands of seeds of trees. Direct seeded trees, which he sélects for best growers. Then he selects for earliest fruiters, and direct seeds those seeds en masse looking for the best growers again. Mulching the losers, building the soil.
I believe that’s the ‘secret’ stunning and selecting.
I guess what’s happening with the mycelia is important too you know. Our scientific knowledge is limited immensely, far from perfect and growing everyday, but still we could say we are only starting to understand.
But not mentioning mycelia… At all.
Quite voodoo-esque.
And so now we’re supposed to all follow this based on two trees in New Sealand. Maybe they were simply different varieties. Or one got ill the other not.
I see some logic. But at all times we need strong sélection processes, because we hardly know anything.
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I don’t know about poor soils, but I usually don’t fertilize transplants in the pots, which does deplete soil from nutrients eventually. I’m more concentrating on other traits like cold tolerance and trying to move towards direct sowing to have more natural selection pressure. My soils aren’t depleted and at the moment I’m adding some fertility with manure and organic matter, but eventually I might use less of them. Depends on the availability of manure and how well they are able to adapt on the other challenges.
Yes it’s. It’s called epigenetics and it happens really often. It’s maybe not very long lasting over generations even when offspring inherit activated genes. Still I would think it’s very important in the short term adaption before more long lasting adaptions kick in.
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Dynamics like this happen on all sorts of different levels. Pest/disease resistance is impossible maintain without the problem present.
John Kempf talked about a fascinating topic similar to this on his podcast. He said providing soluble phosphorus to young plants causes them to put off investing root exudates that normally build up a microbial population that helps source phosphorus for them. When the soluble nutrients run out part way through the growing season the plants hit a wall, and it is too late to start building up the microbial community.
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