Here’s how my rows look like on the 26th of June:
Weeding is limited to the plant surrounding, and expands accordingly along the life of the plant.
It’s been an extremely severe drought so far with less than 100mm over the past four months, and not 50 in the last 2. So even if sowing was anticipated to end of April to get plants the biggest possible at Solstice, they look super small! Could be 4-5 times bigger easily by now.
Anyway, that makes my late selection on vigour very interesting as I can particularly look for “holobionths”… a way to express plants that thrive under the 40 degrees we’ve experienced over the past ten days, and the 30deg+ of the past month… When I say thrive I should actually and technically say keep their turgor under midday bright sunshine, i.e. keep photosynthesizing, + show a deep dark green, or negatively do not abandon their leaves, do not collapse ! Simply!
So I’m looking for specific traits in my rows, in this semi-desertic sandy soil :
One typical counter example, which will be culled shortly :
One of the best example in this row :
Flowering time for moschata is approaching, peak should be in 10-15 days from now (70-75 days post sowing), and I want to help a bit the “elite plants” that will stay by bringing them some water regularly… My sprinklers are down so I’m gonna switch to hand watering with watering cans and give them a liter or 2 per week. That took me only 2 hours to do that for the first time yesterday… In total it’s 1.1 kilometers of rows! Should be about 550 plants or so at final density, so post final culling.
Later, at second fruit stage, I’ll think about doing some selfings and sib-matings, according to phenotypes. The good thing about this 1 row - 1 fruit system is that I can both keep the open-population and do some more intentional projects, it makes it easier to work on, like those 4 plants of last year I’d like to work on specifically, as they caught attention of friends market gardeners : high yielding, long storing, excellent taste, individual weight compatible with sales, etc :
These guys don’t want “crazy landraces” right now, so it could be a (temporary?) midterm for next years : using those “not-varieties” which underwent one or 2 selfing or sib-mating so they get accustomed to some diversity on their rows, and their clients to some diversity on their stands… The expected “+” is plants thriving under constraints, and the best taste they can get! Should be enough to inspire the next steps. Then the other fruits - i.e. 99% - being kept open-pollinated, diversity is kept in a still evolving population, a “proto-landrace”…