Question, what do you think starting a spinach landrace with some hybrids varieties? Pros and cons?!
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With some hybrids there is this male sterility thing going on, which you don’t want in your grex. I never encountered it so far and i mix-in all spinaches for a while.
If it’s not on the label, what is it called Male Infertility Syndrom or something ? Male flowers don’t make pollen… It’s something they do to be sure the seeds of two varieties must be crosses on the side of the variety which has no pollen. They mix them together and all seeds on the variety which has no pollen is therefore a mix…
But i don’t know if it’s even a thing in Spinach.
It could be though because they have separate male and female plants. The smaller plants get tall and thinish and the they flower their pollen on the lower branched out female plants.
I always try to harvest many thinish spinach guys so only the stronger pollinate the females.
But apart from this i’d say if you’ve got two F1 ones, you’ve got 4 ancestors in the grex already. Which is all the more fun.
Although i’ve encountered ancient varieties with evil spikey seeds. You know how they clumb together? Spinach seeds? But then with spikes pointing outwards, like these balls cops throw on the road to puncture cartires…I hope that trait didn’t enter my grex!
Hope my half assed reply helps you out a bit. Bigger chance now i talked someone will chime in and try to look good knowing what i tried to say.
Best of luck. If you’d happen to be inEurope anyday soon i’d send you seeds, but no such luck might come your way.
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Hi Hugo,
Yeah it guides me!
I’m asking this question because I firstly looked on the appendix of the Landrace Gardening book and there is no ‘‘advertising’’ on using F1 hybrids for spinach. Which is pretty exciting because there is a lot of spinach hybrids availaible on the market!
It reassure me that you never seen, based on your experiments, any male infertility, this is what worried me at first.
Yeah I know how they clumb together, I hope I’ll don’t get any evilly traits in my grex, haha!
My goal is to select the subjects which are slow to bolt in my sandy loam soil. Spinach tend to bolt quickly here.
I live in Canada, Québec, but I can easily send seeds to France, which I guess is not your country. Where do you live in Europe?
Thanks for your help!
Roby
I started a spinach landrace with material that included at least one hybrid. I decided that I don’t really care about male sterility in my own garden, but I haven’t checked to see if it is present in my landrace. Of course, I won’t offer this seed to GtS because of the community guidelines.
If you think about it, the downside of male sterility is that any traits it has will ultimately be lost from the landrace, other than the male sterility itself. So such varieties don’t contribute anything. On the other hand, I’m not sure that they do that much damage, either.
(Each generation, the female plants of male sterile lines receive pollen from the other plants in the mix; it is like endless back-crossing. Eventually, you end up with a male-sterile version of the other plants, with virtually no other genetic material from the initial male-sterile varieties . . . if I am understanding this correctly.)
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The only con is the already mentioned male sterility issue but I have no idea whether this trait is in F1 spinach hybrids.
We started a spinach landrace project last season but only with open-pollinated varieties and no spiky seeds. In other projects, like our Cucurbita maxima project, if we want to introduce F1 hybrids we grow them in isolation to see if they set viable seed. If they do, they are added to the mix. We’ve already done this with one F1 maxima hybrid.
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There are male plants, female plants and hermaphrodite plants right? I think the bigger plants are female. Maybe that f1 is made from the bigger plants of one variety and the smaller plants of other variety?
mmm I am interested in that spinach grex. When do you plant yours?
I planted some spinach transplants in spring and they did very well. They set seed in Summer. Then in Autumn I planted like 6 plus new varieties and the seed harvested in Summer and they did nothing. They grew like 5 cm and then started to set seed. They did not like my hot Autumn
Thanks everyone for your help, very informative!
I think I’ll stay with open pollinated varieties just to be sure.
Happy growing guys!
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Have you thought about growing a bed of just hybrids and then moving pollen to your open pollenated beds? I suspect some of those hybrids will have viable pollen. If you only save seed from your open pollened bed(s) and keep a clean brush, I only see advantages.
A barrier/deterrent has been created to keep you out of the gene pool. Are you going to stare at the wall and turn around or are you going to find a way in? Lol just a thought
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I’ve put them in the serendipity, but it’s going north for now, so tough cookie Richard!
But if you want some sooner and a bigger amount PM me.
I’ve got spinach growing in quite some spots. At times if i’ve been missing seeds they pop up, and then add saved seeds.
But in summer i use this red mountain spinach, Atriplex, which is tough as nails and doesn’t mind scorching heat and enjoys drought spells like when grass turns yellow, it’s happy as can be. I even prefer it’s texture. That’s in the Serendipity too.