Chance Lunceford

Chop N Drop in progress.

It's one of my favorite activities. So soothing.

Also, a note on rubus breeding:

Ploidy matters.

What's ploidy? The qty of chromosomal copies in a cell, i.e. haploid=1 copy, diploid=2, triploid=3, tetraploid=4, etc...

Plants with odd ploidies are sterile and can't interbreed (though brambles are special and can produce genetically identical seeds with no fertilization in a process called apomixis, as well as creating sports far more often than other plants due to their wild cellular activity), and wild blackberries can be anything from diploid to dodecaploid (12-ploid), with 5, 7, and 3 ploidy specimens not uncommon.

Even ploidy plants, i.e. 2, 4, 6, etc... can typically interbreed, and what's interesting is that the larger polyploidy results in more potential genetic variation.

Most commercially available varieties are tetraploids (4-ploid), FYI. That's because larger ploidy usually means larger berries and healthier canes, and also because thornless genes (apparently, from what the research says) are stable and consistent in the tetraploid form

So, what this means is there's a decent chance that my wild blackberries won't cross with my commercial varieties. No worries, there's also a decent chance they will, and even if they don't, it's still worth preserving hardy genetics just in case -A crappy blackberry is still better than no blackberry, at least in my book.

Also, I found my first ever wild blackberry patch growing locally. They're not native, so it's likely from a picnic berry (it is growing on the edge of a bare-dirt canal/storm water ditch adjacent to a park with picnic areas), and they were -UNFORTUNATELY- the worst blackberries I've tried all year, even worse than the store bought ones.

However, it's still a thrill to see a blackberry patch growing in an area similar to the one I'll be planting in come autumn, in my guerrilla community food forest project, because it demonstrates the viability of what I'm about to do.

It's also cool because it's been naturalized in an area that blackberries don't normally thrive in (not the riparian area, that's normal, but the high-desert with hot, drought-stricken summers), and so I'll be digging up a clump to transport into the project.

The flavor genetics are awful, but the survival genetics are prime. So, we'll include this specimen in my project to help ensure long-term viability. I'll also be working on blackberry breeding, using the ≈dozen varieties I'm installing in the project this year as the basis. Stratifying and popping seeds over the next several years to further increase the genetic stock of the area, and then I'll mostly sit back and let nature run its course (propagating any outstanding offspring for further use, as I get my skills up for future nurseryman work).

I'll drop a picture of the wild patch soon.

Chance Lunceford wrote:

Chance Lunceford wrote:

Update:

Grabbed the two ripest ones. They're a little underripe, but they've got most of their color and they're fragrant, so they'll ripen on my kitchen table just fine.

I'll go back in a couple weeks and harvest the others, hopefully all the way tree ripe, since that'll increase the viability of the seeds

It was quite a bushwhack to get there, but I did find a better route on my egress, so I'll have a lot less bloody scratches the second time through. Heh.

In the picture below, you'll notice the sliced peaches which I've circled in green.

They have a beautiful blood-splashed trait in the flesh. Flesh is otherwise a rich yellow, and these are fully clingstone.

Speaking of stones, I pulled one and the other split, but left the kernel intact, so I'm going to plant the kernel immediately, and I'll stratify the intact stone before planting later.

By the way, the peach was favored by 3/5 over all the plums, plumcot, and apricot sliced up beside them. Everybody liked the peach. It was a bit tart, with delectable aroma, great firm texture, and outrageous juiciness.

It's official:

The Slaughterhouse Peach is a keeper.

NOTE: One of my kids calls them the Pig's Bum peaches. We'll see which one sticks.

Donna Lynn wrote:
It's been about two weeks, and nothing has sprouted yet.  I keep the soil consistently moist, and the container is outside in dappled shade/sun in zone 5.  There is a slight possibility a chipmunk dug it up and ate it, but I don't see any obvious soil disturbance like I normally do when they dig in my plants.  I'll keep watching...

Well, heck. I'd be interested to see if there are still seeds present. If so, I'd keep going for awhile. Sometimes strawberry seeds can be stubborn. If they haven't sprouted by 6 weeks, I'd call that a straightforward miss.

I've put a lot of work into that area every year. It's been rough because it's the south facing side and was getting cooked every summer, with my plantings barely hanging on.

But, this year we've entered a new paradigm. That's true for the whole of the yarden this year, but it's especially apparent in the side yarden, because it's thriving and vibrant and growing at a time when it's usually wilting, and paring branches as a drought response life support, and dying. So, the difference is most drastic. Last year things did okay instead of terrible during the summer, but this year this area has actually responded with vigor to the summer sun and heat.

There are a number of reasons why that is, but one of them is the mineral soil amendment regime I designed and implemented for my site this year. I'll discuss that in an upcoming post.

I've put a ton of work into the side yarden this year. We've got nanking cherries, honeyberries, jujubes, a grape, some blackberries, black raspberries, long-lived perennial kale, bush cherries, mulberries, red raspberries, strawberries (including a wild strawberry harvested from 9000' elevation about two hours south of where I live), lilacs, hollyhocks, mint, catmint, clematis, bush honeysuckle, sunflowers, hostas, rose of sharon, rose, Austrian black pine, ninebark hydrangea, cosmos, borage, wild carrot, helleborus, and a bunch of other stuff too.

I'm a bit wilder than my neighbors, but we're a tight community and I have no haters. Life is good.

Chance Lunceford wrote:If you have more aggressive runners that send multiple nodes, you can actually root from each node. So you could get, say, six starts off of one stolon.

As an alternative look at strawberry propagation, consider that seed grown strawberries aren't too hard either.

Lots of different methods, but if you cut a thin slice of strawberry, close to the surface so you have seeds all across one side of the slice, and bury it in good potting soil with the seeds facing upwards (and you should barely cover the top of the seeds with soil), then keep it moist for the next week (you can use the plastic over the pot trick, but don't let it get too hot or the seeds will rot), you'll see a bunch of little strawberry seedlings growing. You can keep them growing for awhile and then loosen the soil and pull them apart, or break the clump into a couple-few small pieces, plant in pots and thin down to a single plant (my preference). You can get ≈ 4-8 slices out of any strawberry that isn't a virginiana (in which case just use the whole berry), so you can get quite a few seedlings going from a single strawberry.

In this way, you can clone using stolons (runners) but freshen genetics+develop locally adapted cultivars with the seedlings.

I just did this, and took some photos. See below:

Here are two photos of my largest nanking cherry specimen. It's in a special place in the yarden, and gets basically infinite fertility and water.

It's about 9' tall.

I had to tie it up and support it this year, it grew about two feet and then we had a crazy late snow/frost and it had the then 7' plant drooping to the ground.

If I didn't have it tied up, it'd be as wide as it is tall. I'm going to be pruning this one, and most of my other nankings, this winter to clear out the bottom and to give them some shape. I'm also going to experiment with tree form versus shrub form, and monitor for production and aesthetics.

They're a great landscape plant, with spectacular spring blooms, attractive foliage, manageable size, and tasty fruits.

Chance Lunceford wrote:On that same walk, I took some pictures of a peach tree I'm calling the Slaughterhouse Peach (because it's growing on the hillside beneath a slaughterhouse) which I discovered yesterday.

I'm going to harvest the fruit when it's ripe. WHAT? THE FRUIT?! Yes, the only stonefruit I've seen on any tree this year, wild or domestic, on a volunteer peach.

It's growing on the bank of the Strawberry Highline Canal, which I've mentioned multiple times before (and I'll teach you about the canal project and what a miracle it was for the region in a future post), in a damned harsh environment but likely with a root or two tapping into a crack in the canal's concrete so water isn't an issue for the Slaughterhouse Peach.

Two fruit are getting ripe, and then there are a few more lower down that are not significantly further back in the ripening process. Hopefully I'll be able to harvest all of them for propagation, because it's disease free and must be late-flowering (of great use here normally, because we have late frosts in general), and is clearly well adapted to the local soil, so (if it is delicious) would make incredible starting stock for my project area and my yarden alike.

Here's a few pictures:

Update:

Grabbed the two ripest ones. They're a little underripe, but they've got most of their color and they're fragrant, so they'll ripen on my kitchen table just fine.

I'll go back in a couple weeks and harvest the others, hopefully all the way tree ripe, since that'll increase the viability of the seeds

It was quite a bushwhack to get there, but I did find a better route on my egress, so I'll have a lot less bloody scratches the second time through. Heh.