I’m working on several projects: I’ve been growing potato onions from seeds for a couple years and I’m planning to continue working on this project this year. I’m also working on landracing fava beans. started this project last year and will continue working on it this year. I’d like to start a few new projects this year: getting some garlic to produce true seeds and growing potato from TPS. I’d also like to landrace dry bush beans, runner beans, dry peas, kale and hot pepper. My goal is to grow reliable staple crops that keeps taste great, thrive with little input in my wetland zone 5b/6a and keeps well. Anybody else is in a wetland or a very humid growing zone and has already landraced some of those crops?
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What are your temperatures like during your main growing season? I ask because that may be just as important to find a good match for your climate as average soil moisture and humidity.
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Hi Emily,
Our average summer high is 68 degrees Fahrenheit. We live in a very temperate area, on the coast so there is cool moisture year round.
Pam
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Temperatures during end of spring and summer are around high 70/ low 80s. Humidity is the real issue for me as I get a lot of fungal diseases even when planting on higher ground. This year, we had a major drought and it was my best year ever because it was so less humid than usual.
When I started gardening I was living in 5b - the two crops that worked incredibly well were Egyptian walking onions (very similar to potato onions, might be interesting to try to cross them?) and kale of all types which I was able to have year round.
Hello Anphlo, i love how people are landracing in all of these differing extreme circumstances.
I guess you get quite some shade as well.
Concerning landracing kale include Russian Red Kale, it’s hard as nails. Sea Kale can grow in semi shade.
From the top of my head i’d say try land cress and watercress. Watercress will do great in a marsh but there is danger of a parasite, landcress is supereasy, thèse are both vit c rich.
Alexanders is a forgotten veggie but might do well in your circumstances.
I got seeds but i’m in France.
This organisation Plants for a future has a book out on wood land gardening, it might contain ideas for edible plants in marshes too!
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Thank you Morvan! You’re right about all those plants. Great suggestions. I actually have them all and they’re doing great indeed! I’m just avoiding the watercress because it tends to get out of control in a place like mine and I’m in a conservation area where I’ll get in trouble if it escapes…
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Very good thinking. Being careful to avoid planting invasive species is a very responsible thing to do.
@Anphlo
As far as the humidity and fungal diseases are concerned, your conditions bear at least some superficial similarities to mine. I’m afraid I haven’t started landracing anything yet. But I’ve grown mung beans successfully for three years and Cherokee black for two. Also Austrian winter peas for cover this fall. Some of that I will let go to seed. If our kale grows back from the roots we’ll have some kale seed next season. Above ground is toast. Have also had great luck with red ripper cowpea if cowpeas are interesting to you. All these are heirloom/inbred, I only learned about landracing this summer. Corn also grows vigorously. Deer corn for squirrels grows as a weed even in the shade. We didn’t plant it, We bought this to keep the squirrels from eating the bird seed but this was a mistake. It’s probably GMO. Now it’s safest to assume any volunteer corn is GMO and we’ve habituated the squirrels to eating it 
.
Oh yeah, sorghum and mustard grow like weeds here too.
@Lowell_McCampbell grows in high humidity and damp conditions too, albeit in a much warmer zone.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing! I have bought some mung beans and cow peas for the coming season but never tried them before. Glad to hear they’re doing great in heat+humidity!
Let me know how your kale is doing. Some of mine (Russian white) is overwintering and I’m now working on land racing it to have more diversity.
Good luck with your squirrels! They’re a big problem for me as they eat so much of my food especially my hazelnuts ! I’ve not found a good way to deal with that yet. Let me know if you find something.
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You’ve got some good suggestions here.
I’ll add that I find that peas stand up to humidity way better than beans in terms of fungal resistance. I have had some powdery mildew issues in the past on some varieties I was growing but it hasn’t been an issue lately because I mostly grow the Wild Pea of Umbria which seems to have a lot of diversity.
Regardless of if you’re growing peas or beans, I find it best if you can time their drying down with a period of seasonal drier weather in your area. For me, in FL, peas are planted in nov/dec and dry down in May with the change between spring and summer when we have drier weather. Our second period of drier weather is in the change between summer and fall, so around October. If I plant my beans right, in July or August, they begin drying down in sync with these months. This is if we’re lucky not to get a hurricane over us and instead it sucks all the moisture elsewhere. 
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Yes, i agree! I have also had good luck with peas especially dry ones such as the one you mention (wild of Umbria. I grow a bunch of different varieties that I’m starting to landrace). I have not found any set period of time when it would go from wet to dry. It seems like it’s always wet 
that is except when we get a drought which tends to happen more and more. 22 was a massive drought all season long ( even the wetland dried up! Great season for me, even the tomato thrived! Almost no fungal diseases. I find those wild types of peas tend to shatter in the field for me . Is it the case for you?
so I just wait until they’re almost done and dry them hanging on a railing outside under cover. That’s been really working well so far avoiding the rain when it’s a wet year and allowing me to sweep and pick up the shattered pod easily on the concrete floor.
For the beans, the bean beetles have became a real problem in my garden, defoliating the beans entirely and , I assume, speaking fungal diseases. I’m hoping that land racing them would reveal some varieties that have better resistance than the few common ones I currently have.
What crops are working the best for you in FL?
You know who else probably grows in humid conditions (though I haven’t confirmed with him) is @MarkReed. He lives just a few hours away.
The mung beans have never seemed super happy here but they are reliable producers. It’s also just grocery store mung bean, though this fall I finally invested in a couple different mung varieties (or at least accessions). They grew underneath corn this year (the corn also had a head start) and still yielded a crop, albeit smaller and longer-seasoned than last year’s. They seemed pretty unhappy this year with the extra water for the corn but they made it. Because of timing (we planted in June), we also couldn’t wait for all the pods to turn completely black before harvesting.
I would have to agree with Lowell’s point about peas being easier than beans. The Cherokee black was miserable last year (first year), but still produced a small number of pods misshapen and discolored by blight. This year it did fantastic, producing abundantly. I can’t speak from an abundance of experience, but beans new to the property seem to struggle to get going. Black, red, and great northern bean all went into the ground in late summer/early fall to either feed us or feed the soil, and very few of them did anything convincing after germinating. On the other hand the borlotto bean we have is a champ. I planted it a little bit later. It all got dead after a couple frosts but grew vigorously until that time.
We planted peas around the same time and they have grown steadily without signs of stress until recently. They are almost all still happily alive if not growing after recent subzero temperatures.
The kale is toast above ground 
. I’ll try to remember to report back on its status in spring 
I agree with the point about timing for dry weather at harvest, though I have no experience with it. Seasonal timing is a dimension of crop planning we haven’t paid much attention to historically and that I’m actively learning about.
Thank you - - I’m not sure what to do about the squirrels. They eat pretty much all of our black walnuts (I’m not complaining, we don’t use them and don’t want more on the property). I’m hoping they only like cheap deer corn though that seems unrealistic. Three sister’s purportedly deters raccoons, and I’ve heard about the corn of second year growers getting so tall it’s less predated, but I can’t speak from experience yet.
Manoomin or native wild rice was a staple wetland food of the Ojibwe and other peoples.
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@H.B, yes it can be very humid here but sometimes not as much as it used to be. Sometimes nowadays we get hot weather without the humidity, I can’t understand that; the Ohio Valley was always known for oppressive humidity whenever it gets hot. And it still does sometimes, so we have both, hot and damp and hot and dry.
Peas have become more difficult to grow in recent years. They do fine very early on but do not take kindly to it if hot dry arrives as they are setting pods. I grow a lot of beans; they handle the dry spells much better than the peas. I suspect a method to improve performance of peas might be discovered but I haven’t focused much energy on it yet.
I have found no effective defense against coons and squirrels other than eliminating them.
yes! I planted some this fall. I’m very excited to see the results! Thanks for the suggestion.
Interesting than your place has now some dry and hot now! I wonder if this is what’s coming for me too. I’d actually wouldn’t mind a little break from the humidity sometimes! Do you enjoy the break in humidity yourself? I have so many coons and squirrels that I can’t eliminate them I think. I have several pack of coyote on the edge of my land (on the conservation land that I border) and they often stroll through my land to hunt. I wonder if they eat coons and squirrels? Maybe it will balance itself out in the future if they do?
Speaking for myself, I lived for seven years in a humid environment (I lived in Hong Kong, which usually has around 100% humidity), and then I moved to a desert. I LOVE dry air. Cold feels less penetrating. Heat feels less miserable. I can breathe. I had asthma in a humid climate, and I don’t have asthma here.
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@Anphlo It doesn’t get any hotter here than it ever has, in my memory. It just does it more frequently and for longer periods. I don’t really like hot and humid or hot and dry either one, but at least hot and humid is what I’m used to. Hot and dry feels alien and I’m shocked at how quickly the soil and plants dry out. The rapid swings from one to the other freaks me out too.
That’s why I mentioned in another tread that I select for fast maturity, to increase the chances of a successful harvest in the halfway normal periods between extremes.
I hear you! Asthma really sucks. I’m glad you’ve found a place where you don’t have to suffer from it. Some members of my family have that too. I feel fortunate not to have inherited it. I’m getting used to the humidity after 10 years living here but if I’ve had a choice I’d much prefer dry too if only for being spared having to deal with ticks. They’re my nemesis!