Bringing Biodiversity Back

Category: Seed Diversity

Oregon Canola Saga 2.0 (2019 ed.)

Let’s start at the beginning…

Back in 2012 the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) threatened to abolish the longstanding canola exclusionary zone in the Willamette Valley. We fought back, with your help, to get legislation passed by the state which funded additional research and included a sunset clause on the canola restrictions in the valley. Here’s a good summary of why canola is problematic for specialty seed production and where we stood in the winter of 2013 from Oregon’s Agricultural Progress by Gail Wells, Canola In The Valley.

HB2427

Oregon HB2427 was passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2013 and the resulting research conducted by Oregon State University (OSU) was presented in 2017. It’s a whooping 105 pages and you can read the whole thing if you like here (the Executive Summary and Recommendations are pages 6-11 of the PDF). In the interest of getting to the point, here are the highlights.

Is canola uniquely problematic? OSU says No.

OSU researchers determined that under current cultural practices in the Willamette Valley there were no unique disease, pests, weed, or cross pollination problems associated with canola. Meaning that turnip and radish have just as many problems as canola and since we don’t currently regulate those crops, why would we limit or regulate canola specifically.

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What is up with so-called Public Plant Breeding? – 2018 Rye Ramble

The 2018 Rye Ramble – What is up with so-called Public Plant Breeding?

Why are public plant breeders releasing most of their breeding work privately, as patented or protected? Should we still call it public plant breeding?

In previous Rye Rambles, I have called out the bad behavior of corporate seed companies patenting seed and breeding hybrids with new techniques that make it nearly impossible to save seeds. This year I have been thinking about my friends in the public plant breeding sector, university plant breeders that have a long history of doing good work and fighting the good fight for the public. In recent years their situation has changed and become less public plant breeding and more privatized.

I get super excited when they release a new variety into the public domain. However, the reason I get excited is because it is now a rare event and these public plant breeders must fight and sacrifice for this privilege. University administrators have increasingly required the use of utility patents and Plant Variety Protection (PVP) for new releases, and/or they impose royalties and Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs). All of these tactics restrict their use. Here are a few related questions stuck in my craw.

• Why are the so-called “public” plant breeders releasing most of their breeding work privately, as patented or protected?

• Why are so-called “private” independent plant breeders releasing their varieties to the public domain?

• Should university plant breeders be called public breeders if and only if they release all their varieties to the public domain?

• Should we be called public plant breeders and they be called the private plant breeders?

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The Control of Seed and Seed Sovereignty

Rye Ramble (from the 2015 Adaptive Seeds Catalog)

The Control of Seed and Seed Sovereignty

At Adaptive Seeds, we talk about our work of Bringing Biodiversity Back. Part of that, of course, is growing and stewarding seed and providing you with good seed stock for your own seed saving efforts. But seed work isn’t only done in the field, and preserving seed sovereignty and freedom takes more than just saving seeds. Working to keep seeds free of control mechanisms, such as patenting, is another important aspect of promoting and preserving agricultural biodiversity, as is building awareness about what seed control mechanisms exist.

We often feel like outliers in the seed world because we wish to keep seed a free, sovereign community asset that is passed down between the generations and between friends. A growing number of people share this pro-sovereignty perspective and we are excited to be part of this community. The more I think about all the different forms of seed control schemes, the more I realize that it is very strange to try to empower seed freedom. It seems like the multinational seed industry is desperately trying to put our collective inheritance into proprietary bondage for the benefit of their shareholders as quickly as possible.

You might think, “Your seeds are not free, they cost money.” So what is meant by free? Like open source software we believe seeds should be, Free as in speech, not as in beer. In a metaphorical sense I see all seed as free and what we get paid for is not the seed per say but the service of stewardship and production of a precious gift. A seed is a living organism that has intrinsic value and a long history, of which we seed stewards have only contributed a small, very recent part. We can’t own that.

Onion flowers at Adaptive Seeds

The concept of seed ownership is problematic in part because it is rooted in entitlement philosophy. As humans we all have a little bit of this philosophy always under the surface. It is a trait that helps us survive in competitive situations of scarcity, but I think it is inappropriate in situations of abundance. As an overt practice it is more common in institutions and businesses (especially in regards to Intellectual Property rights), than in our personal behavior.

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Bringing Biodiversity Back

2013 Rye Ramble (reprinted from the Adaptive Seeds printed catalog.)

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Bringing Biodiversity Back for Real, Explained…

We don’t simply write long variety descriptions because it is interesting and we don’t choose rare varieties because they are simply novel.

I feel that seeds, with the biodiversity and cultural knowledge they embody, are a doorway into the mystical realms of our reality. That sounds a little funny and I am not trying to lose you into a woo-woo made-up universe here. I am just trying to explain some reasons for why we do what we do. And predictably every year we discover more reasons for doing this seedy thing.

Frosty FennelWe write long descriptions and choose rare varieties for the sake of conservation, food security, the joy of the experience, and the encouragement from others to continue the hard work; these are all good reasons. But these reasons are like the layers of a leek stem. Every reason we give is a layer of the leek and we keep getting closer and closer to the core. One day we will get to the apical meristem and continue to peel and there will be an empty space where there was a growth point, mysteriously keeping its secrets from us. And yes, this is yet another reason we give ourselves to continue this journey, because we won’t know every reason.

So why do we write these long descriptions when other seed companies write one sentence and sometimes even get the color wrong? What it comes down to for me is that cultural knowledge about seed varieties has eroded even faster than the seed varieties themselves.

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All about Russian & Siberian Kale

Originally arranged 8/06 by Andrew Still and updated 7/07 with small update 8/14.

Introduction

Brassica napus

It is hard to convince everybody of this fact, but kale is the swellest of vegetables and Brassica napus is the best of the best. The Russo-Siberian Kales mostly have come out of Northern Europe and Northern Asia, though in the past century they have been shuffled back and forth across the globe like many of our cultivated plant species. Red Russian and Siberian are the two most well known varieties in the United States, however many others have been developed from these lines.

These kales are typically more tender and have a milder flavor than the European “oleracea” kales and are therefore the young leaves are better for salad use. They are always superb as a cooked vegetable when the leaves have grown to full size. Most Varieties are great for used for their springtime sprouts (similar to broccoli raab), although some varieties are specially bred for that use.

Napus kales are super hardy winter survivalists. They are hardy to at least 10°F once established and some sources claim them to be hardy to -10°F and maybe -20°F. Survival at these extra low temperatures may require a good mulch and/or snow cover. There are many factors known and unknown that can effect winter hardiness and there can be no real guarantee for how cold a crop can go. Wind can be an important factor in killing plants and a pattern of freeze thaw freeze thaw can also be detrimental. They Perform best in cool weather but many varieties of napus kales tolerate hot weather. It is widely known that the flavor of Russo-Siberian kale sweetens dramatically after first frost. It can be grown anywhere in the US and even in Alaska.

Being variable in its forms, Brassica napus is divided into three groups or subspecies. The Rutabaga (Swedes in England) is ssp. napobrassica or rapifera and are grown for grown for their swollen stems/roots that resemble turnips (B. rapa). Russo-Siberian Kales and Hanover Salad are ssp. pabularis or pabularia and are grown for their leaves that may resemble those of the European kales (B. oleracea). Winter rape and canola, colza in India, are grown for their edible leaves, livestock forage, or for the oil rich seed. All have large, flat leaves 12-20 in (30.5-50.8 cm) long and 8-15 in (20.3-38.1 cm) wide, stand 2-4 ft (0.6-1.2 m) when mature, have yellow, cross-shaped flowers with four petals and the small seed develops in sickle shaped pods.

Presently, the species Brassica napus is thought to have originated from a chance hybridization between Brassica rapa and Brassica oleracea. This cross probably happened in European gardens during the Middle Ages. The rutabaga, kale and rape may have all originated from separate chance hybridization between the diverse forms of B. napa and B. oleracea. For example, napus kale could have been derived from B. oleracea ssp. acephala (kale/collard) crossing with the B. napa ssp. chinensis (Asian mustard). The rutabaga could have been derived from B. oleracea ssp. acephala (kale/collard) crossing with the B. napa ssp. rapifera (turnip).

The red Russian type of kales may have a different story. Tim Peters of Peters Seed and Research did an experiment to retrace the evolution of B. napus. He first crossed a Chinese cabbage (B. rapa) with a European kale (B. oleracea). He did these crosses with a bud pollination technique, which he says “lets the two species have more time to get to know each other”. After the first cross the result was a beautiful Siberian kale  (B. napus). then he crossed in black mustard (B. nigra). This resulted in the red Russian type (B. napus?) with its distinct color and leaf shapes. So some of the B. napus species are two way mix-ups and some are three way mix-ups. How wonderful! This throws a wrench of doubt into the machine of the probable genealogy of plants, such are the ways of science.


Classification Information for Brassica napus ssp. pabularia

Order
Capparales
Family
Brassicaceae (mustard family)
Genus
Brassica (mustard genus)
Species
Brassica napus (rape species)
Variety/Subspecies
pabularia (Siberian kales) Continue reading

Tim’s Quiet Triumph

By Nick Routledge

” We are all responsible for everyone else, but I am more responsible than all the others.” – Aloysha Karamazov, in The Brothers Karamazov

The defining priority of permaculture is the hitching of our wagons to the evolutionary drift of the landscapes of which we are a part. In other words, we rely more on working with natural processes than in transforming the landscape and our lives through high energy inputs – such as repetitive labor for example.

It’s an approach that puts greater emphasis on ‘perennial’ as distinct from ‘annual’ food crops. Admittedly, this shift in fundamentals is in its cultural infancy, not least because recent historical trends have combined to ensure that the foundations of our diet and the overwhelming majority of research and development associated with it is geared toward high input, conventional, monocrop, annual agriculture. Quite simply, we do not yet possess the range of food crops or experience to supplant this construct.

And yet, behind the scenes, almost completely unnoticed, the visionary food-plant breeders in our midst have been quietly but assiduously devoting their lives to transforming this model. One of the most promising areas of exploration relates to grains – the staple food for the majority of humankind – and the emerging story of the decades-long efforts to perennialize them.

For complicated reasons, the creative tensions which hold all life in balance, appear particularly potentized in efforts to shift grains from annual to a perennial habit. It has not been uncommon to see decades-long breeding programs flounder as the dynamic interplay of genetics runs into a brick wall.

But, as we might hope and expect, the challenge to creatively balance genetics in a way that Nature hasn’t yet managed has attracted the attention of the brightest and the best, and right at the forefront of this global effort is an Oregon native, Tim Peters, most recently out of Myrtle Creek, about two hours south of Eugene. .

Tim has been breeding plants for about 30 years. Passionately devoted to the Great Work, he possesses legendary status among that small tribe who have any idea what he has been up to all this time. Tim has devoted almost two decades work to perennializing grains. In a visit and series of phone conversations over 2004-2005 Tim gave context to my own fledgling efforts to root the perennial grain archetype in my own backyard.

Food Crops with an inherent ability to resist extinction

“Every garden’s like a snowflake, and of course every plant breeder’s approach will differ, too,” observes Tim. And if Thoreau’s dictum “In wildness is the salvation of the world”, holds any weight, then Tim’s life and work has particular relevance for our understanding of ‘what works’. That’s because ever since he began his breeding work as a teenager, Tim has been fascinated by the interplay of food crops with Nature “red in tooth and claw.” Arguably, no plant breeder alive has surfed the interface between domestic & wild cultures as keenly as he.

When I visited him in 2004, checking out his breeding plots included a long drive around the surrounding hills to look in on multi-year breeding experiments in clearcuts and along roadsides, well off the beaten track. It is this decades-long fascination and experience with how food crops interrelate with wild nature that has moved him slowly but inexorably toward his recent successes breeding staple foods with an inherent capacity to resist extinction.

Reconciling paradoxical plant traits

It’s an effort that has been almost 20 years in the making not only because it has taken time for the necessary complements to come together in a genetic interplay with the environment, but also because breeding perennial grains makes for a unique challenge – it involves reconciling some fundamental, but apparently wildly contradictory plant traits. It has been the failure to establish harmony among these ‘breeding paradoxes’ that has put paid to many of the efforts of Tim’s forbears and contemporaries.

For one, the qualities of edibility and survivability are typically at odds with one another – the same qualities that make food palatable to humans, also make them desirable to critters: “Animals are supremely efficient foragers,” says Tim. “They gravitate towards the most edible foods as if by spiritual guidance”. Palatable root crops tend towards quick degeneration and/or extinction in the wild, for example, because desirable roots and the roots’ relative physical proximity to key predators, make them especially vulnerable. Stringy roots with noxious flavor typify plants in the wild, because sweeter genetics get eaten out of existence. Not surprisingly therefore, we see a direct correlation between plant edibility and plant domestication through the centuries. For example, as we bring plants into the protection of our gardens we can actively reduce high tannin levels to increase nutritional benefits, but in the process we remove a trait that makes plants less palatable to critters and prevents them from rotting.

“Now there’s a place for royalty you might say, the delicate things of the plant world,” Tim observes, “but we definitely need crops possessing more of the mountaineering aspect… drought resistance, tolerance to low fertility (which means the ability to proliferate roots in search of nutrients), disease resistance, the ability to continually reproduce in the wild, and suchlike. The more energy a plant has, the more robust it is, the more likely it is to overcome the difficulties in a more natural environment.”

Fundamentals of long-term nutrition

“One does not discover new land without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” – Andre Gide

A lifetime devoted to breeding a wide variety of food crops in domesticated, fertile gardens and infertile, wild mountain situations has gifted Tim precious comparative insights into the fundamentals of robust, long-lived cultures. “There’s things that time will tell you that nothing else will,” he remarks. For complicated reasons, Tim feel that perennial grains lend themselves to combining many of the essential qualities he has been seeking to usher forth, in a food.

Structurally, for example, they represent a starchy, staple food crop and yet the focus of attention isn’t the plant base – a big plus in circumventing the predatory intent of ground based critters such as gophers. “And although small herbivores like squirrels will topple grains like falling timber, and go stand on the stumps and shuck them with their hands to get at the good stuff, the bigger herbivores, such as deer have to use their mouths. They can’t strip the awns. If they try to eat them they choke to death.” Most perennial grains have awns.

The robustness of grasses, and perennial grasses at that, lends them added ecological horsepower, too. “Grasses pretty much hold their own until trees shade them out in 5-15 years,” Tim avers. “I mean, look out the window. And although there are places where annuals hold their own – deserts for example – in the western states, at least, perennials always have the advantage.” Why? Because unlike annual grains, the perennials photosynthesize more months of the year, and put down a root system that keeps on going deeper, like trees – which gives them the capacity to ‘dig in’, reach sources of nutrients, and create symbiotic relationships over time.

Fast yields and perenniality: the union of opposites

Perennial grains are fast, moving quickly to yield. On fertile soil, sown in fall, they will produce a bountiful crop within a year. On poor soils, within 2-3 years.

The quickness is evident from day one. I have personally witnessed the vitality of perennial grains relative to other plants. They germinate quickly, with great vigor. Almost immediately, the root systems develop an astonishing tenacity. The plants are tough: they survive neglect. This speed to yield on the one hand, and the tendency to perennialize on the other, perhaps marks the highpoint of Tim’s achievement, because it elegantly conjoins what have historically proven to be two highly contradictory evolutionary traits.

Seed making – a trait we wish to encourage in a grain food plant – typically sounds a grain’s last orgasmic hurrah before it dies. A ‘petit mort’ that ain’t so ‘petit’. This fundamental tendency for high yield grains to race to maturity and dry down and hence ‘kill themselves’ naturally sits wholly at odds with a tendency to perennialize.

Tim seems to have found a way through this incompatibility – solving a conundrum that has stymied some of the world’s most tenacious plant breeders for the better part of a century.
Essentially, by stewarding the plant away from ‘focusing on nothing but maturity,’ by encouraging a reversion to a ‘juvenile’ or leafy state a a critical stage of its evolutionary cycle, he as reduced grain’s ‘annualness’.

We can witness this same tendency to revert to a juvenile (vegetative) state in some varieties of brassicas – in the purple and white sprouting broccolis for example – where the inclination of the plant to ‘mature’ early in the year ensures that it does not fall to the hot weather and hormonal and day-length cocktail (of later maturing ecologies) but instead reverts to a leafy state and avoids the run to seed. (These, and other varieties such as ‘Pentland Brig Kale’ harbor genetic promise for those seeking to perennialize brassicas of other forms perhaps.)

Where do the stands stand?

“Is the cycle any easier to accept in the garden than in a human life? In both cases there is a sense not only of obligation, but of devotion” – Stanley Kunitz

To grossly oversimplify his achievement, Tim’s worldwide search for a complementary interplay of genetics gifted him wild perennial grain varieties furnishing the bedrock tendency to perennialize, and highly productive, strongly winter-hardy annual grains. Introducing these patterns to one another in a manner that Nature hadn’t yet orchestrated, Tim has navigated around fatal tillering habits, chromosomal incompatibilities and a slew of other hiccups, to emerge from his lonely decades of devotion with an array of perennial grain material that characteristically sizes up into a winter, thus producing a vigorous seedburst into seedstalks in spring, encouraging reversion to a vegetative state, and the ability to forge on through the years while concomitantly shaking off the challenges of critters, disease, drought, low fertility, and other potentially fatal vectors including that of a larger culture in the grip of a form of mass insanity. Not bad for a self-taught lad.

Tim’s breeding efforts are still a work in progress. He has individual lines and plants exhibiting all the traits he is looking for. What remains, over the short term, is the fine-tuning to develop a stable profile of these complements.

But he has been releasing this material to the public. Perennial grains are almost impossible to come by. Indeed, I believe Tim’s is the only seed catalog in the world making perennial grains readily available for trial – and perhaps the finest examples of the archetype, at that.

Invest now

Why consider growing these crops just now? Well, for the sheer beauty of the plants, for one. With stalks tillering to 6 feet in height, they make a striking addition to the character of a garden. And I have noticed the fundamental appeal in my own response, and those of others, to this plant – the puppy dog call. Perhaps this has something to do with the great longevity of the humankind-grain relationship, which touches upon some atavistic nostalgia in the human soul. Sheaves of grain lying around my home always appear to induce an awe of sorts in visitors.

Planting these grains now also represents an opportunity to begin familiarizing yourself with a crop destined to move toward centerstage in our collective endeavors to handhold the emergence of a robust, healthy, regenerative culture. These crops may not be feeding our tribe today. But they will soon. How do we become familiar with the little uniquenesses of growing them? How do we harvest grains and process them as food? How do we do it speedily? These questions can only be answered by doing.

We’re also presented with an opportunity to step into a big story at an absolutely fascinating juncture of its unfolding. In a forthcoming issue of ‘Permaculture News’ I hope to outline some of the simple steps we can take to help play a primary role in selecting and stewarding these plants into more sophisticated/simpler iterations.

And most important of all, perhaps, as we begin embracing an entity that potentizes qualities of vigor, nutrition, hardiness, resistance to extinction and a whole lot more, in a distillation co-designed by Nature at its wildest (and ‘least deceptive’) we are proffered insights into how these archetypal qualities can help inform the Integrity of our own lives. As Jonathan Swift put it: “A man can no more know his own heart than he can know his own face, any other way than by reflection.”

Where to begin?

Tim suggests considering 4 varieties of perennial and annual grains. They are:

* Mountaineer: Perennial Rye
* PSR 3628: Perennial Wheat
* Stephens: Annual Wheat
* White Popping Annual Sorghum

When?

For a bountiful wheat & rye harvest by late July, between October and the end of December is perfect time to plant (seeding between January & April will give you a harvest later in the year, but with much reduced yields). Seeding into flats, 3 seeds per cell, & culling back to 1 allows you to begin selecting for vigor from the get-go. Transplant out between mid-Dec & February onto 6″-12″ squares. The more room the plants have the more they will tiller.

Where?

Plant into as clean a ground as possible. Once the plants are established, it is easier for them to fend for themselves. Balance is necessary, but be aware that much as most current human ailments stem from a culture of excess, so fertility can be an enemy of life to plants. Sorghums excepted, Perennial grains tend to live longer on poorer soils (Mountaineer 2-4 years on rich soil: 7-8 on poorer soils). Planting alongside a gravel driveway makes sense.

For the purposes here, treat sorghum as an annual Spring sown grain. Sow indoors Feb/Mar & transplant April or direct sow post frost. Grind & use like corn-meal or corn flour.