Really enjoy seeing the, " artistic patch" as my entire garden looks that way. I have a small space and its always crowded with variety. Its a kitchen patch and keeps us with good foods.
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I have had loads of melons and watermelons too, and of each 3 populations: early / normal / keeper… not “airtight”!.. Exemple: if I find some early ones in my “normal patches” I sort their seeds with the early, if I find some storage ones in ly “'normal patch” I sort them with the keeper
Also: each of my patches’ seeds are sorted by taste in three drying containers : “medium”, 'good" (=enjoyable), “excellent”. Medium (or “so so”) accounting for 50%, good for 40%, excellent for 10%. Approximately…
In later year I will centralise the excellent (40% of my patch), with around the good (50%), and then surrounding in thin line the “medium” (10%).
Why am I keeping the “medium” (or “so so”…) in my patch? It’s because as I have reintroduced loads of genetics this year, I consider it still as a grex: I want diversity first thing, meaning : crossings with new genetics, each of them seen as a supplementary chance of finding great offsprings
I do also a strong flavor selection each time, which is what “spatialize” later years.
Overall it has been a great cultivation year. If I didn’t have to go to Antibes, I would have harvested in a week or so… That may be inducing precocification of my grexes, i.e. more earliness in fruiting.
So you’ve seen it:
- large oversowing by type (sorts 30 feet apart or so)+ super strong selection pressure at young stage… (Eliminating 95%)
- … Then marking of the earliest (for scandinavians notably)…
- …then harvesting a bit early…
- …and eventually sort by taste…
- … to spatialize by by sort X by taste in later years
The good thing is that I am done with bringing in new genetics, with these 12-15 grexes very diverse now as I have brought in every interesting thing I could get my hands on using our directory of european seed sellers… So I will be able to concentrate on the selection process in next years, as I’ll have more seeds than needed, so could do exagerated sowing and culing at first stage for example.
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From 6 or 7 varieties in the edible gourd grex to about 50 in the standard watermelon one…
… All in line with a direct sowing objective post cover crop at +3-5 years from now… Hoping to get then super strong vigor + incredible tastes…
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Beautiful harvest!
If I were to go into agronomical details, i.e. what my landraces will ultimately have to adapt to, I must say that
- my weather is kind of “easy” (last frost around mid april, first frost around mid october, so 6 months growing perdiod)
- but my soil is super acidic with ph 4.5-5 …
- … and super draining (mostly sand, no clay): meaning drying down super fast and never gets really rehrydated in depth, as soon as mid July.
- consequence being super oxydised plants, and soil food web accordingly really weak : boosted from april to mid-June, stopped in the summer, restarting with the rains coming back, approx 1st October.
I have got the chance of having there a pond, so I can irrigate once in a week minimum when necessary, using sprinklers
My yields are so relatively low even if I brought in some good quality manure in fair amount this year, which I think I won’t do anymore. And I believe that the nutrient deficiencies caused by low ph…
… are the main limiting factor.
As my main (if not only!) objective is to landrace breed for this soil and climate + adapted to my no-till / cover crop system, I tend not to be willing to correct or compensate this places’ deficiencies.
If I were to cultivate to make a living of it, I would, either go to some better place, or :
- in october (as the calcium disolves in cold temperatures) make a yearly soil correction with lime (400kg/ha/yr in no till, i.e. 4kg on a 100m² garden)
- coat my seeds with oxygenated compost tea, and direct sow them by hand still wet (no drying… super easy). If I wanted to use the same tool I used this year, I would have to dry them first… which is contradictory to the use of micro-organisms…
- spray a cocktail of minerals (i…e a few grams/ha only, using a manual sprinkler) once in a month in growing season (see graph above)
- help the plants protect themselves from oxydation using lactoferments, which are really easy to produce (with fruits remaining immature at the end of season for ex. like these next days I will do), and rich in antioxydants, so helping the soil to balance a bit and are super well absorbed through leaves. Sprinkling before too much stress. 5liters each time, mixed with about 15 liters of water, for my whole 2000m² garden. Takes an hour or so.
- To boost a bit the overall soil food web, I would sprinkle the equivalent of 100L/ha when the soil gets realy wet again, with living roots of my cover crops already installed (otherwise it makes no sense, as this booosts what is already alive, not bare ground). That, possibly during heavy rains, using my irrigation system via a Venturi type thing coupled with it. At least as important as the calcium part, and that I can produce for not a penny.
Regarding cucurbits X my soil : seeming
- worse adapted : cucumbers,
- not-so-adapted: melons, pepo,
- just “OK”: maxima, moschata,
- obviously well adapted : gourds (lagenaria), watermelons,
- super adapted : kiwanos
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Is the trailer coming to Antibes Thomas? Great harvest!
It’s where I would love precise discussions around our understandings in breeding landraces, i.e. the debate “compensating” - or not - “imbalances”.
Right now my understanding is that:
- There, we all want to breed for adaptation to our soils. Meaning : all we correct or compensate with heavy hands-on techniques during the first years selection processes is contradictory to the objective of local adaptation…
- … but we still want to make a harvest, and of good quality…
- …not everyone sees the same techniques and products as super “hands-on”, or even destructive. Not the same understandings also (see the “compost as a limiting factor” topic for example, could have been tilling, or many other subjects).
Then it’s up to each of us to understand what is most important, and put things in his/her personal context, perspective.
My personal inclination is to go with these principles :
- no tilling
- “winter” cover cropping in between summer crops
- and then do minimal corrections to help boost the soil food web itself… as I don’t want to boost my crops themselves… I help the soil getting better, a.k.a. let’s say I am “landracing my soil” using home-made products (lactofermentations)… Maybe adding calcium, as it is a relatively low energy and low cost product, for such surfaces.
My belief (after Joseph), is that if plants can do well in my place they could do well anywhere else. From experience I know that this is not exactly that, but that gives an idea, and as nearly all breeding work has been done on balanced soil, with “balance climate” over the past 150 years, it seems relatively consistent.
Then, even if I tend to be firm on principles, it’s all about adjustments… I have had to rototill my field this year unfortunately… otherwise I just could not start a growing season! I was supposed to leave the place, but eventually not. So adjusted. Then I went into heavy selection pressure on early vigor, with nearly 100% of the plants direct sown and selection pressure up to 95-99% on that criteria, i.e. culling 95-99% of young plants.
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Hey Hugo, yes : not the trailer itself, but let’s say 1 fourth of this harvest + melons, watermelons, gourds, and kiwanos.
That’s one big table filled!
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Yes but it’s not for any table, it’s for the space on the side of GTS / PEPS stands (see drawing sent in PM yesterday to those coming in Antibes). That set up has been confirmed yesterday evening by the local organisors, by the way.
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Keeper watermelons and melons on my terrace… Will be brought to Antibes
“Standard” watermelons (i.e. not “early” and supposedly not “keeper” : my 2 other populations - see previous posts in that topic) on which I will do taste selection in next days:
Watermelon is very promising on my land.
- Late “standard” melons (about the last fourth remaining)
Less promising but we never know what will happen when landraced!
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That is some low pH! You are making me question some ideas I’ve been developing about solicitity and squash.
Our soil types and climate are not exactly the same, but they are similar. I have been theorizing that some species and varieties of squash have a hard time accessing the nutrients in my soil when the pH is lower than 6. C. pepo and C. argyrosperma seem to be okay with lower soil pH. Maybe ficifolia too. Whereas moschata seems to have the most trouble with my soil, and I’m thinking it may be pH related to some extent.
My speculation is that if I want to improve my soil, it might be more worth my time to increase the pH than to add nutrients.
You did not mention trying to raise your soil pH among the possible approaches you are considering. I’m curious whether you have considered it.
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Actually it’s not lime : it’s ground limestone (less agressive)
So yes I consider it, and will add this 400kg/ha/year around october. Then during growing season, you can’t do much and when it’s hot it’s too late for correcting your ph: foliar being the most cost effective way of helping plants, either with antioxydants (ex: lactofermentations diluted a bit) or/and with minimal doses of nutrients made inaccessible because of oxydisation. And as indicated in the graph above it’s not that the nutrient aren’t there, it’s they become blocked, not accessible.
Man who helped me understanding that was Olivier Husson last year in Marciac France when walking in a field with him, him explaining it’s -at best- pointless using something to (try to) correct soil ph during growing season in order to make nutrients available… much better going for low-cost, small quantities foliar sprays.
This is all related to Eh-Ph and I am no chemist, so can’t tell you more. But you can listen to Olivier, interviewed by John Kempf or Matt Powers for example.
But as I was saying I won’t do this while breeding landraces. Would use micronutrients -maybe- if I needed to make a living from agriculture, i.e. boosting plant health and so fruiting, yields.
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Thank you for your thoughtful response, and pointing out where I had missed some detail previously.
For me it is also important that any amendments also fit into the concept and philosophy of what I’m trying to do. I have been thinking about how my predecessors on this land would have been amending the soil with ashes from burning wood and brush. So if I’m applying limestone, I can tell myself what I’m doing parallels a more sustainable approach that could be used with wood ash.
I’ve gotten some advice from a farmer in my region that uses permaculture principles. If I understood her, she amends with crushed limestone as much as she deems appropriate when first establishing a new bed. But afterward she has not needed repeated applications. I have wondered if she is composting certain plants on her beds or doing other methods to keep the pH balance. This person is not very near me but maybe I will have a chance to talk to them again over the winter to get more advice.
Crushed limestone is the only amendment that I’ve applied at the farm, on an experimental basis this year. I certainly will not be applying it every year or even regularly.
Thanks for sharing your information and photos about what you’re doing.
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