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Would you rather create a new vegetable or a new garden tool?

Matt McSpadden

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Would you rather create a new vegetable or a new garden tool?

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Matt McSpadden

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Honestly... I think there are enough vegetables. I think creating a cool tool to help people garden better or easier would be fantastic.

M Ljin

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I would like to grow an edible, large-rooted variety of bindweed. There are plenty of good garden tools around.

Unless you mean to just make a garden tool from scratch?

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John F Dean

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I will leave it to nature to create the vegetables.

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Pearl Sutton

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A new vegetable that is not just a small modification of the common ones but something that can be as major of a food source as potatoes, but a totally new one, doesn't relate to any of the older ones.

There are a lot of types of tools, but as a culture we eat a VERY limited palette of food variety.

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Anne Miller

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I am not tool oriented and like the tools I use so why reinvent the wheel? Just not my cup of tea so I would rather create a new vegetable if I knew how.

I understand landrace and could create a better vegetable though...

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Steve Zoma

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I would like to do both.

I know that is not fair to say, but I grew up in potato country where we grew potatoes up until 1988. In my area, at one time potato farming was huge but it now has ended. Still, a neighbor bred his own famous potato, the Foote Potato off the old Foote Farm. In my childhood, this was boasted about. Sadly today there are only 3 kinds of potatoes in commercial use: White, Red and Russet. They all have thick skins so they can endure the commercial harvesting and shipping of potatoes. I would love to do what my neighbor did so many years ago and create my own variety of something!

But that being said, I love engineering and thinking outside the box to make things easier for others. Over the years I have given a lot of ideas on here to aide in that.

M Ljin

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Steve, for potatoes this is very easy. Potatoes are outbreeding, so all you need is to get some berries, take the seeds out and let them dry--then I soak them for one to four weeks until they sprout, as they can take a while--and plant them in spring as you would tomatoes.

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Jay Angler

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Pearl Sutton wrote:There are a lot of types of tools, but as a culture we eat a VERY limited palette of food variety.

This! Not just variety, but plant families - just think of how many foods fit in just 3 families, "Brassicaceae", "Solanaceae" and "Poaceae" (grain).

If something were to take out a whole family, Humans would take a huge hit.

So creating a truly new veggie, or even a variety based on a family less used like the succulents or cacti, would be awesome. Even popularizing some of the less efficient, niche plants in other families and improving them enough to be a viable homestead contender to the above three, would be good.

What family is skirret in? I've heard of it... Have I spelled it correctly?

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George Ingles

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I like the idea of my wild-style gardening leading to some new hybrid or variety, but I don't have the scientific mind to do plant-breeding in the controlled manner that Carol Deppe talks about... rather I, "Just try things."

In my mind I have been formulating The Perfect Blackberry Wrangling Tool for decades now... while I continue using loppers, grub-hoes, and pole-saws for the job. The specialized tool I imagine is still just a notion in my noggin....

My Grandpa used to say, "Good enough for who it's for," and I sort of just make-do with what I've got.
Though he would have gone to his shop and invented that tool in a couple of days, rather than ponder it for decades like me.

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Carla Burke

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I'd actually rather get the vegetables back to their original nutrient and medicinal properties, though it would also be excellent to keep some of the easier to grow, store, and harvest properties of the current cultivars, too. So, *IF* accomplishing that would be considered "new" vegetables, then that's what I'd rather do. Otherwise, a new tool - maybe a pruning or harvesting drone, to help me take care of some of the trees and plants I can't access.

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