The County Library's Community Seed Lending Library



Seeds to Donate to Pima County's new Seed Library

I recently learned about Pima County Library’s new seed library opening up in order to make seeds that work for this area more available to local gardeners. The idea is that you “check out seeds” at the beginning of the season and “return them” when you harvest your own seed at the end of the season. From what I stated earlier in another post about inbreeding depression I would be wary to check out any corn seed from this library. However, I really do think this is a good way for us Tucson gardeners to get a better variety of vegetable cultivars that just might work for our climate. The only catch is that you never know what kind of disease or poor seed harvesting practices an amateur gardener may have used and you also do not know what the gardener was selecting for. There are many diseases that can be spread by infected seed if a gardener is not very aware of what he or she is doing. Additionally, a beginning gardener, such as myself in the past, may accidently select seed of the slowest growing carrots by harvesting the biggest carrots first and letting the smaller, weaker carrots, go to seed. Practices such as aforementioned would result in weaker seedlings and poor crops in the long run. The library’s website said that they hope that “over time… the seeds will become super seeds—strong, resilient, and well adapted to Arizona’s harsh climate". I may be a bit cynical here, but I don’t think there will be a good chance of that happening without well educated gardeners! In any case, as Native Seeds is involved in the project perhaps their seeds will help the cause. I packed up some of my own disease-free carefully prepared open-pollinated seeds to distribute to the community. Though I do see some kinks to be addressed with the Pima County’s seed library I do truly hope this project is successful.



Staffing the Seed Table at TOG

For those of you who are not familiar with TOG, here in Tucson the acronym stands for the Tucson Organic Gardeners. It is the wonderful organization that I go to in order to talk garden with others. There is currently a mere $15 fee and a minimal number of hours of service to the organization and it is well worth the perks to be involved including their Tuesday meetings and their newsletter. It is the garden club for people who do not want too much of a time commitment, but still want to increase their gardening knowledge. So just last night, the volunteer coordinator for TOG (Kathy) called me and asked if I would staff the seed table for the Compost Fair. Though I had some other commitments in the morning I was able to staff it in the afternoon. I really do like the seeds we order through Seeds of Change. Though I was a bit bewildered by something I saw today. Seeds of Change carries some hybrid seed. This leads me to my feelings about hybrid seed. I have always had a problem with F1, or hybrid, seeds being labeled as organic. Even with my understanding of the fact that an organic plant can produce hybrid seed, I personally feel that a non-organic seed is more useful if it is open-pollinated than hybrid seed is - even if it happens to be organic.

In any case – I had some fun today staffing the seed table. We were also selling compost cranks, soil amendments, and compost bins (what do you expect – it was a compost fair)! One of my daughters came with me. Although I wasn't about to devote a lot of time to her, she did enjoy the event whilst collecting seed packets and marshmallows from a few adults willing to give a cute little girl something. You know there’s a gardener in the household when, upon arriving home from an event like this, my daughter can taunt her siblings by showing off her new seed packets!

Staffing the Seed Table for the Tucson Organic Gardeners

Long of Naples – An Italian Squash that produces prolifically





Myself with 122 pounds of Long of Naples


Though my Tromboncino butternut squash did well in the Tucson heat, I had seed bugs kill some of the fruit by sucking sap out. This began my search for a squash variety that could outgrow the critters and produce more food per fruit. I settled on the largest Moschata variety I could find, Long of Naples. I procured this fine Italian variety from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.



My daughter with a 25 pound squash

My Long of Naples plants began very vigorously but were very slow to start fruiting and took up to 80 days before having the first female flowers blossom. As with many fruiting plants, if you have a large plant that sets its first fruits, each fruit can grow rapidly – even up to a pound per day. Long of Naples squash averages 25 pounds per fruit. At that point they begin to harden up into a winter (long-term storage) squash. Before that, you can pick the larger fruits when they are between 10-15 pounds as a summer (zucchini type) squash. I gave a 15 pound Long of Naples summer squash to a friend, who took over an hour to just cut the thing up.





Nearly 400 #s with a pencil for perspective

All considered, my two long of Naples Squash plants produced almost 500 pounds last fall – a real feat given the limited space of my garden. For a few days I had almost 400 pounds curing in my house at once. My largest squash was 43 pounds. My wife told me to take it to the county fair. I would have but they do not accept produce entries in the Home Arts division. Too bad.



A delicious summer squash

It is safe to say that Tromboncino can produce way too much food – even for my family of 6 – so I was forced to sell some of my monsters to those who would like a vegetarian feast. So how many ways can you eat squash? Plenty. We've had squash in lasagna as the noodles, in cornbread with a white sauce, in spaghetti, in various casseroles, and in lots and lots of pies. The flesh begins white when young but develops a dark orange flesh as it matures. The flesh is sweet though the texture is not as smooth and buttery as some when fully mature.





My waning squash plant soon before the first freeze

 

At the Jessie Owens Farmer’s Market

Selling cucumbers and beans at the Farmer's Market

Occasionally, when my garden produces too many vegetables I sell my organically grown produce at the Jessie Owens Farmer’s market. Even though this market is pretty slow in comparison to others in Tucson, the individuals who run the market are both helpful and friendly. The first time I sold there was in the fall of 2010. Our first experience at the market left my daughter and I selling out all of our excess cucumbers before the market even began. In sharp contrast, this last year I stood outside for many hours to sell off just one of my 25 pound squash. The only was I was able to sell it was by taking 1 ½ hours to cut it up the night before. Sadly, I was forced to lug the remainder of my unappreciated squash home with me. I wonder if I sold less because of less demand for my crop or because I didn't have my children with me.





On Inbreeding Depression



This Acorn Squash is a good example of an outbreeder

In order to remain self-sufficient, many gardeners choose to save seed from their favorite fruit and vegetable varieties. When seeking to save seed properly, it is important to know what you are doing. A seed saver needs to know how to grow a plant, how the plant pollinates, how to save seed, and other factors that may affect future seed viability including plant selection, variety isolation and inbreeding depression.

I began researching inbreeding depression in order to help me better determine how to plant my garden in the future. I recently read about it in The Heirloom Life Gardener by Baker Creek seeds and in The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe. Inbreeding depression occurs when plants have too small of a population of fellow breeders during pollination. It causes future generations of plants to be weak as demonstrated by slow growth, poor vigor and disease resistance, along with poor fruit production. Some varieties of plants such as tomatoes, which can self-pollinate, have a much smaller problem with inbreeding depression than plants such as corn, that require a population of at least 200 plants to keep from inbreeding depression.

In The Resilient Gardener, Carol Deppe says the following about inbreeding depression for corn: “Corn is very subject to inbreeding depression. Here’s an illustration: Suppose you grow up a hundred plants and save grain each year from the plant that yields best. What kind of yield will you have in five years? Answer: Your corn variety will be so weak, wimpy, and low-yielding that you will be lucky to be able to keep it going at all. Its yield will stink compared to what you have started with, even though you selected for the highest yield each year.” pg. 282

Carol Deppe goes on to explain some standards to live by to keep from inbreeding: “The standard seed-saving rule of thumb is to save seeds from 20 plants if the species is an inbreeder and from 100 or more plants if it is an outbreeder”. Pg. 304

So what is an inbreeder? An inbreeder is a kind of plant that can pollinate its own flower if needed. Each flower contains all parts needed for pollination and fruiting. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, peas, and beans are good examples of inbreeders. Though cross-pollination may not happen too often, it is important to grow a large enough population on inbreeders that if a detrimental trait arises you can select out the bad plants and keep only the best plants out of the population.

An outbreeder is a plant that has separate pollen-producing and pollen-receiving structures within the plant. Outbreeders include the cucurbit family, many grains, melons, and most other garden plants.

Each vegetable variety has various tolerance to inbreeding depression but it is good to follow the 20/100 rule to keep from having long-run problems with your seed. That is with exception of the maize family, which requires 200 plants to keep from exhibiting inbreeding depression.

Having to select the best plants from each population and having to make sure there is a large enough population to keep from inbreeding depression can be reason to cause depression among many home gardeners. So what can a gardener do to make sure that inbreeding depression does not happen? A gardener could make sure that he grows enough of a crop each year, or he could save seed from multiple years while using different seed each year, or he could grow the same variety with other gardeners and swap seeds to keep genetic diversity high. The last option assumes that both gardeners are selecting seed for attributes that both have determined are the most important. Another helpful practice for gardeners saving seed would be to mark what year or batch the seed was grown in and note how many plants were in the population that produced the seed.

Some other websites that are really helpful in understanding inbreeding depression include Seed Saver's Exchange Seed Saving Chart. For seed saving, gardeners should at least grow enough plants to maintain a variety. There is also a website that tells about those crops that are most tolerant and sensitive to inbreeding depression.