Dan Borman

Hello Jan, Terri, friends,

Thank you for posting your replies to my advert.

I want to be clear that I am corresponding with a prior respondent who lives close by. It seems like we might be able to make something work out despite my being so stuck in my ways.

I hope that does not discourage you from writing via PM, sharing stories, and being friends.

We all need good friends.

As soon as the situation warrants, I will remove this advert.

Cheers
Dan

Hello Renee,

I look forward to getting to know you. Thanks for posting.

I am also sending a PM.

Actually, the PM button is in different places on the screen depending on which device I access a person's profile from. So I apparently can not predict how it is found.. oh well.

Life is good.

Before 1990 I had found that Red Russian Kale was not winter hardy in my extreme NW Cascadian location. As told in Carol Deppe's book "Breed Your Own Vegetables", I located every Kale that was similar to the Red Russian Kale I liked growing. I ultimately found about 20 unique kales that were cross compatable and allowed them to cross. I then grew them for several generations also allowing further crosses. Then I selected every year back towards the original Red Russian Kale I had loved while nature selected out the non-hardy ones. The result is a much hardier kale than any I can purchase from any seed company I can find, and I keep trying. I had found my own Red Russian Kale landrace.

Those small leaflets growing from the surface were one of the characteristics I thought were important to re-select for in my Red Russian Kale.

Yes, you can have some soft Svevo if you want. Tell me how to go about that.  I'm 45 minutes east of Pullman, WA. Higher, colder, overall drier than the Willamette Valley. I'm at 2700 ft elevation. Wheat is grown from Pullman to my place and even a little further east of me, but then it turns into forest land.  I'm piecing together what you've said and what Michael wrote... that the Pacific NW is home to soft white wheat, because it grows best there?

RE: Soft Svevo, I am sending you a Purple moosage.

The Willamette Valley is basically part of the Maritime PNW. It is warmer at all points of the year than my maritime location near the Canadian border-- very noticeable in terms of heat accumulation and nighttime temperatures in the growing season. Neither environment is much like the inland NW east of the Cascade mountains.

I am reluctant to say "grows best there". Perhaps "grows well enough most years". Soft White Wheat--SWW-- is grown many places in the inland NW as a consequence physical environment, disease pressure, economics, access to distribution, and historical issues.

True, there are many kinds of pasta.  Each pasta type is best accepted if made with flour of specific qualities. One way to accomplish that is to blend flour from different wheats. There will not be a static proportion as a variety of wheat will have different qualities when grown in different years or different environments.

If your plot is damp enough for rice then take small handfuls of azolla that you are growing for animal feed, compost, etc and plant it in small depressions between the rice plants. It will be a more visible indicator of the need to water your rice.

My experience with dry land or upland rice is that is a reference to not being flooded. Not that the soil can be actually dry at all ever without damaging yield.

Another good bet is Streambank Clover which I got from the Willamette Valley. It is a high moisture tolerant low growing type. It will not indicate too low soil moisture though as it's native environment has summer drought.

I believe Duborskian was sourced by Anpetu when he lived on the east coast with a miso making cooperative. I believe Duborskian is an accidental renaming of Dubovosky. Dubovosky itself has many diverse spellings and transliterations. When grown, they look very much more similar in my conditions than either looks like any other variety.

Hello Caroline

I have grown around 350 different wheat varieties, land races, and species here on the "wet maritime side" of the PNW including in about 5 different local environments. Success has not been predicted by historical varieties as those were planted years before diseases appeared at all or before new variants of numerous diseases showed up.

It turns out that if one digs deep enough one finds out that there are about 2 million extant varieties of wheat. There are about 200 thousand unique varieties or accessions held at various world seed banks. The same can be said for rice. Almost any vegetable species will only have a few thousand varieties or accessions in seed banks around the world. I take this to indicate that wheat is less flexible about where it will grow well and what one can do with the result in different environments.  

So varieties of wheat can be specific to environment and disease pressure. For example, the varieties of the disease Stripe Rust are different here in the maritime PNW of Washington than in say Pullman, Washington, and that really matters.

You do not say what part of Idaho you are in, that might matter as much where you are as where I am for the above reasons.

I have only used a threshing machine once at another person's farm demonstration. That was a failure. It turned out that without perfect adjustments for each batch or variety or moisture content or degree of ripeness,  heads were torn off, grain was not separated at all, machine plugged up, well you get the picture. Meanwhile we took a large piece of plywood and placed a large durable sifting screen on that and had a shuffle/stomping party. That was WAY faster than even when the machine was dialed in. Sides on the plywood, or a box of some sort would have been even better. Then the chaffy mix was run through the winnower with great results. In our trials we just use a box fan as we do not have a winnower. I do find out a lot by threshing each variety over a large bowl or tray by hand without gloves. That is awful most of the time so I switch to rubberized gloves often. There are a few that do not shatter in the "field" but are a joy to thresh with bare hands.

That said, out of the many varieties I have trialed, only about 100 produce very well at all here. The many initial types were chosen world wide to match environmental, or disease, or usage issues as best as I could and still only a third or so worked here in my garden type conditions. Some of the best for here are from the most similar environment in England. If you are actually going to search beyond your area for other varieties to try you might search for those originally from similar latitude and higher elevations. I do not recommend trying to source seed from abroad. Some seed borne diseases have not made it here and would be devastating.

I too am fascinated by awnless varieties, but you might find that they are more attractive to birds and other opportunists. I have given many "grain introduction days" at the local grade school. With the shuffle/stomp wearing their normal shoes in an 18? gallon tote method even first graders had no problem threshing awned wheats and barleys.

We have found that it is useful to grow several varieties in blocks to hedge against seasonal variation in performance. There is no one perfect variety for all years in any one environment.

I have made noodles from ordinary wheat flour so ordinary wheat "does work" for noodles depending on expectations. There is another "new" variety you might be able to obtain in your area call Ryan that is supposedly great for Udon noodles. I would also love to trial it here if I can find a source.

I would love to trade some variety(s) from our collection for Soft Svevo and possibly others from your collection.

Cheers

I believe Amazon, Google, and Firefox (+other browsers) keep track of searches so explains everyone's different search results. I use linux, Firefox, and Google. If the following works please let me know.

Amazon.com and Amazon.ca searches had many useless results when done directly on Amazon.ca however Amazon.com was slightly better.

Here is a successful Google Images search using quotes and excluding Pinterest.

""strawberry jam" or "strawberry preserves" amazon.ca" -pinterest

the worst "contaminant" was how to make strawberry jam


Here is a successful Amazon.ca direct search for mason jar lids correct size. Using no quotes

mason jar lids 70

For wide mouth replace 70 with 86

All

Over a period of several years I have actually read most of the posts in the SEED AND BREEDING sub-forum. I sometimes find one that looks interestingly like I have not seen it, but when I open it I find that I have read it already. That is how interested and invested I am. Really! I am geek- nurd- obsessed. Permies is the only forum in general  that I even begin to feel well I hesitate to say "normal" in my interests and beliefs, because even here I am pretty out there.

I will try to post in said / suggested sub-forum and see what happens.

I was not clear on the first point and thanks Greg for catching that. I wanted to know how to divert the SEED BANK ETC conversation to a different sub-forum. Now I have decided to copy/paste from my singles post the material that gives a natural lead into the SEED BANK ETC topic.

So for now I guess I will deal with both issues in the above ways.

Dan