Thank you for the latest podcast. Thoroughly enjoyed every minute. I really appreciated the reminder that there is a community we can reach out to!
I have been agonizing for months and I’m going to be brave and just ask.
Did I mess up last year’s growing season?
Reaching out for clarification. I had tremendous success growing the Landrace Cucumbers Everything Mix. When it came time to send seed back in I began to question myself. The easiest way to explain might be to list the events and a bit of my thought process at the time.
The seeds came up with almost no help from me. I placed them on the ground and in cracks and they grew!
I ate the first fruit from a couple plants. I knew that was bad but can I admit I did it anyway!?! I had been reading about these magical vegetables and wanted to see if the hype was true. It totally was. They were phenomenal! Overcome with guilt I resolved to not partake in any more. * Then came my second mistake. I didn’t taste anymore for the rest of the season.
They turned orange then yellow on the vine. I kept waiting for them to get mushy and they never quite did. I brought them in and sat them on a bakers rack for a week or more till a few began to get funky.
On the long awaited processing day I began with the black spiky ones. They still smelled and looked good. So I tried them and they totally were. Wild. I placed the seeds in a jar and continued. The big Cucumber. I hadn’t seen one like that before. My notes regarding taste state it was kind of gelatinous and bitter at seed saving stage. I saved the seed separately. The rest were like cucumbers at that stage I had seen before. They were icky and not really edible but I tried a little anyway. I didn’t have any way of knowing if they were good before that moment but they weren’t then. I threw them out to the birds.
Where I over/under thought/ still don’t know what’s going on…
Did I mess up by only keeping those three that were still delicious at maturity and the big one? Or is that what I should have done?
First year should I have kept everything and sent it back in? Just grow for increasing the gene pool no matter what? Should we give precedent to outstanding varieties and send only those or all?
I’m still separating? Is this an example where I should go ahead and give priority to these? I find immense value in a cucumber of this quality. The ability for folks to have their fruit and save the seeds too? That’s really phenomenal to me. Is that okay for my home garden but should I have saved the ones from the bitter as well to send back in? Also, can you sample a piece of Cucumber while it is on the vine like Squash?
I stated in another post I was going to try to grow these out locally here and see what happens. Why? I missed the deadline because I was scared of asking a question.
The real lesson…I should have came clean and just asked months ago!
The real question…How should I proceed from here? Mix them into another everything mix or grow them out by themselves and see what happens? Then…at the end of the season would you like them all returned or only great tasting?
I appreciate any guidance that could be offered. I believe in this beautiful project and am beyond grateful for the chance to participate.
I planted 14 seeds from the Landrace Grex, 7 Marketmore, 14 Straight 8. End of season around eleven plants that were thriving the best and I let them keep going. Not all produced but pic is from ones that did. Thank you for your help. I appreciate any advice you could offer.
There are so many different ways to garden. There is no explicit right or wrong, or rarely. And whatever you did last year didn’t permanently “screw” your cucumber future in any ways
Also, if you sent in seeds from three varieties that have been grown together, and one of them was a grex, frankly you already did so much more than most people ever venture to do. What you sent in is valuable, then!
I used to allow all kinds of genetics initially, except in cucurbits where I still allow most kinds of genetics with the exception of bitter stuff. If a cucurbit is bitter it means toxic, and it’s a dominant gene so it rips through the entire population in no time and if you save seed from a patch that has produced bitter fruit, chances are that much of that seed stock will produce plants that produce bitter fruit. A trait that is extremely difficult to weed out. You didn’t keep anything bitter so we can get that one out of the way…
If it doesn’t taste bitter, just nothing exceptional, I might allow it for year 1 or perhaps even year 2 in my population and select hard later only when I have a population with rather wide genetics. That is, I go for maximum genetic recombination initially and start to cull later down the line. So I would have kept all first fruit with the intention of mass sowing as broad a base as humanly possible in year 2.
Others cull harder already in the beginning. I think a lot depends also on how marginal cukes are in your area. For me one hour South of the Arctic Circle, every cuke that manages to set seed that matures is pure gold, and if I were to select too hard in my first year from that already rather small pool I might simply end up with nothing. If I were to live in a little better climate I might select & cull harder right away.
TLDR
If your climate is not marginal then I think that in some way, you did the right thing by saving only the best! Your seed will be mixed with other participants’ seed anyway (I assume you mean now returning seed to the GTS seed stock, I’m not in the US so…)
Thank you. I’m printing this out and adding it to my hard copy resources. All the “what-if’s” I’ve been struggling with have been addressed by your response. I didn’t send any back in because I was worried I hadn’t understood the assignment and would have to start all over again. All winter long I’ve been afraid to ask. I missed the deadline and I’m not sure if I can send them in now. Looks like they might be here with me one more season. Lesson learned. Beyond excited to hear it’s all still on track!
So absolutely wholeheartedly concur! I appreciate the time you have taken to address the questions I had. Back on course. Thank you. Sincerely appreciated.
Wow! That is phenomenal you are able to grow in such a challenging environment. I appreciated the example of how we can be more selective if we have more options to choose from. Also helped me realize that criteria is perspective. Kind of like beauty in the eye of the beholder.
Also remember that most cucumbers are NOT edible at seed stage. By selecting for those that were, you have provided good genes to future growers that want that trait.
