Landrace (fallen at the first hurdle?)

Hi there!

I am new here. I will keep it simple...

Have I fallen at the first hurdle?

I am going to give Landrace gardening a try as it feels like the most obvious way to garden.

I want to start with Landrace Squash (North West England) I really enjoy growing Squash, makes sense to start there!

I've been through my squash seeds and ordered a few more and put them all in jar and then realised that some of the packets have the scientific names such as Maxima, Pepo and Moschata... have I messed up?

Should I have only mixed Maxima together ect and will these cause toxic squash if a Maxima mixes with a Pepo?

Thank you!

You should be OK
https://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/5-tips-for-avoiding-squash-cross-pollination/

I think the different species can sometimes crosspollinate, it probably wouldn't be a bad thing if they did but it is rare.  Your only issue might be in how many you have room to plant. The seeds of different species look a bit different so if you only have room for a few you might want to sort them by looks and plant similar ones together, or even just plant one kind and save the rest for the next season.

Sometime in the history of the world Joseph Lofthouse posted images of all the different squash species showing the differences in the leaves, stems, seeds and so on. If you could find that you might reidentify the different species but not the varieties. Since you are wanting to start the landrace the variety names don't matter anyway.

if you’re only starting from eating-squash, you shouldn’t end up with anything toxic. cross-species crosses are rare but can happen. do you have at least a couple varieties from each species? if any species has only one member in your collection, that one’s unlikely to change much, and won’t ‘landrace’.

i grow a purely moschata landrace, lots of shapes and sizes! and lots of mixing.

If you have the space, plant them all! Save seeds from which ever are best tasting, or appear healthiest, or are in some way more interesting. Pitch those that look weak, don't taste nice, or are just boring.

Buy more seeds next year and do it all again. There is no one magic way do do this. If it turns out you are most interested in one species, increase seed numbers of that. After a few years you should end up with whatever you like, and it will be better adapted you your area.

For me, my wife only likes one kind of squash, Japanese Kabocha, so that's what I grow. The other stuff is mostly gone.

Thank you so much for all your help! Much appreciated.

I've been through my list and organised accordingly, hopefully this is a good number of varieties to begin with? Some of the below are homesaved seed.

Looks more Maxima heavy then I realised and some of the Pepos I thought were Maxima or Moschata for sure!
turns out there's only one Moschata. I struggle to find Moschata varieties in England perhaps I am not looking in the right places haha.

I love butternut squash but I don't really have the US weather for it. Included 5 seeda from an F1 I've had knocking around for while... didn't think it could do any harm. I did think it was a moschata but the packets says Pepo.

I have plenty of space so no issues on that front. Looking for to seeing what next year brings.

Squash
Big Max Pumpkin (maxima)
Blue Hungarian (maxima)
Hokkaido (maxima)
Burgess buttercup winter squash (vine type) (maxima)
North Georgia candy roaster (maxima)
Jumbo pink banana (maxima)
Volskaya grey (maxima)
Queensland blue (maxima)
Boston winter squash (maxima)
Victor winter squash (maxima)

Organic Thelma Sanders sweet potato winter squash (pepo)
Harrier butternut squash F1 (pepo)
Organic Winter Luxury Pumpkin (pepo)
Winter early butternut squash (pepo)

Waltham butternut Squash (Moschata)

I am trying to do the same thing for Corn but there's such little open pollinated varieties in the UK... There's plenty of F1s to choose from... I don't suppose that would be a bad thing to use F1s to build a grex or will they be sterile??

How jealous I am of all the amazing corn varieties you have in the US

Here is a link to Joseph's squash ID chart at his website. There's a post or thread on that here on Permies somewhere.

Oooh! Here's the Permie thread!

Lewis Steward wrote:
I am trying to do the same thing for Corn but there's such little open pollinated varieties in the UK... There's plenty of F1s to choose from... I don't suppose that would be a bad thing to use F1s to build a grex or will they be sterile??

How jealous I am of all the amazing corn varieties you have in the US

Sounds like you have a great start for your squash project. Next year let us know how it's going.

As for corn, that's my hobby.

Corn sterility is rare enough you shouldn't even think about it. If it occurs you won't even notice because the other corn around it will do the job. F1s F2s etc. are fine.

What kind of corn is your goal? Sweet corn to eat as a vegetable, or field corn for making cornmeal to eat yourself, or animal food?

In decades of growing different species of squash, close together, I have only found one naturally occurring inter-species squash hybrid among maxima-pepo-moschata. In theory, a maxima/moschata hybrid might occur infrequently.

Mixta and moschata seem to me to not quite be separate species, so I find hybrids between them fairly regularly.

I don't expect poisons to show up in your squash, unless you grow decorative gourds.

Thom Bri wrote:

Lewis Steward wrote:
I am trying to do the same thing for Corn but there's such little open pollinated varieties in the UK... There's plenty of F1s to choose from... I don't suppose that would be a bad thing to use F1s to build a grex or will they be sterile??

How jealous I am of all the amazing corn varieties you have in the US

Sounds like you have a great start for your squash project. Next year let us know how it's going.

As for corn, that's my hobby.

Corn sterility is rare enough you shouldn't even think about it. If it occurs you won't even notice because the other corn around it will do the job. F1s F2s etc. are fine.

What kind of corn is your goal? Sweet corn to eat as a vegetable, or field corn for making cornmeal to eat yourself, or animal food?

I certainly will keep you updated.

That's amazing to hear that I don't really need to worry about sterility... phew one less thing to worry about! Haha

I suppose sweetcorn is my corn goal but I do love the colours of drying flour corn. My corn this year hasn't done so well... as the weather here has been very weird.... one day we had 29C then the next day dropped to 17C with wind and rain so very bipolar, however there's a few small ears being produced and hopefully these are fully pollinated... i will save anything produced as seed.

A family member mixed a popcorn variety in with my sweetcorn seeds without realising but it's a very small amount and i could pick them out if this causes issues.

Thank you everyone for your help and support. I am glad I joined now.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:In decades of growing different species of squash, close together, I have only found one naturally occurring inter-species squash hybrid among maxima-pepo-moschata. In theory, a maxima/moschata hybrid might occur infrequently.

Mixta and moschata seem to me to not quite be separate species, so I find hybrids between them fairly regularly.

I don't expect poisons to show up in your squash, unless you grow decorative gourds.

Thank you so much Joseph! So happy that I don't need to worry about poisons from any rare crosses that could happen.

Never heard of Mixta before... I take it's common in North America?

Lewis, I did exactly the same thing! I jumped into landracing while I was such a newbie gardener that I didn't realize the three big squash species wouldn't cross up well. I thought the difference was winter vs summer squash. (Which is also not any kind of reasonable distinction because you can eat young winter squash like zucchini/courgette and let those summer squash grow giant and cure for storage!) Here's the mix I started with:

Candystick Dessert Delicata C pepo
Sweet Meat - Oregon Homestead C maxima
Spaghetti Squash C pepo
Galeaux d'Eysines C maxima
Potimarron C maxima
Musquee De Marog C moschata
Giant Show King C maxima
Guatemalan Green-Fleshed Ayote C moschata
Nanticoke C maxima
Sweet Dumpling C pepo
Hessel Sugar Loaf C pepo
Oregon Homestead Sweet Meat C maxima
Marina di Chioggia C maxima
North Circle Butternut C moschata
Bigger Better Butternut C moschata
898 Experimental C moschata
Canada Crookneck C moschata
Lakota C maxima
Hopi Pale Grey C maxima
North Morning Moon C maxima
Vermillion River C maxima
Theron's Winter C maxima
Sweet Meat C maxima
Best of Buttercup C maxima
America C moschata
Gete-Okosomin C maxima
Borchart's Wonder C maxima
Gueramon Martinique C moschata
Arnie's Golden Buttercup C maxima
Emerald Naked Seeded Pumpkin C pepo
Lofthouse Buttercup C maxima
Ukrainian Squash C maxima

I've also used Joseph's squash ID doc to start sorting things out, but it's very incomplete and I'm still growing squash. I'll eat whatever I get and save seeds from what keeps and what I like.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Lewis, I did exactly the same thing! I jumped into landracing while I was such a newbie gardener that I didn't realize the three big squash species wouldn't cross up well. I thought the difference was winter vs summer squash. (Which is also not any kind of reasonable distinction because you can eat young winter squash like zucchini/courgette and let those summer squash grow giant and cure for storage!) Here's the mix I started with:

Candystick Dessert Delicata C pepo
Sweet Meat - Oregon Homestead C maxima
Spaghetti Squash C pepo
Galeaux d'Eysines C maxima
Potimarron C maxima
Musquee De Marog C moschata
Giant Show King C maxima
Guatemalan Green-Fleshed Ayote C moschata
Nanticoke C maxima
Sweet Dumpling C pepo
Hessel Sugar Loaf C pepo
Oregon Homestead Sweet Meat C maxima
Marina di Chioggia C maxima
North Circle Butternut C moschata
Bigger Better Butternut C moschata
898 Experimental C moschata
Canada Crookneck C moschata
Lakota C maxima
Hopi Pale Grey C maxima
North Morning Moon C maxima
Vermillion River C maxima
Theron's Winter C maxima
Sweet Meat C maxima
Best of Buttercup C maxima
America C moschata
Gete-Okosomin C maxima
Borchart's Wonder C maxima
Gueramon Martinique C moschata
Arnie's Golden Buttercup C maxima
Emerald Naked Seeded Pumpkin C pepo
Lofthouse Buttercup C maxima
Ukrainian Squash C maxima

I've also used Joseph's squash ID doc to start sorting things out, but it's very incomplete and I'm still growing squash. I'll eat whatever I get and save seeds from what keeps and what I like.

Wow, that's an impressive list. Have you had much success?

Have there been many crosses amongst squash that you can identify?

Lewis Steward wrote:Have there been many crosses amongst squash that you can identify?

No, nothing obvious. I'm not out there with a paintbrush, making sure that things cross, I'm just waiting on the insect pollinators to do it. But I'm also only on my fourth year (and only the second produced a real bounty of squash), still waiting to see what this year brings, but it's been a tough year for every crop except favas.

Lewis Steward wrote:Never heard of Mixta before... I take it's common in North America?

Mixta is also called cushaw, or argyrosperma. It is rare in the usa. I find the flavor disgusting. It was originally grown for seeds, but now we have the hulless pepo squash seeds, so mixta fell out of favor even more.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

Lewis Steward wrote:Never heard of Mixta before... I take it's common in North America?

Mixta is also called cushaw, or argyrosperma. It is rare in the usa. I find the flavor disgusting. It was originally grown for seeds, but now we have the hulless pepo squash seeds, so mixta fell out of favor even more.

Wow. Learn something new every time I visit. Glad you are so active. My knowledge is quite narrow.

Thom Bri wrote:Learn something new every time I visit. .... My knowledge is quite narrow.

The more we know the more we realise we don't know!

Good luck with your squash Lewis! I think one reason there are fewer corn varieties in the UK is that the summers have been a bit borderline for it. Also the seed is on what used to be prohibited list (there are probably pests or diseases that could have been imported with them), so new varieties are less likely to have been brought in.
Squash and corn are not on my list of landrace to try at present - both are more likely to grow and crop undercover than outside here on Skye, although I can get courgettes if I start early and find a sheltered spot (I grew some pretty good ones in the compost heap one year!)
My problem with my root crops was failing to keep the varieties separate at first - one swede looks pretty much like another, so deciding which ones to grow on for seed was tricky. I just ended up growing out lots in the hope that they are all represented to some extent! Next year I will try and keep the seedlings separate, just so I can be sure I get the best mix possible. This year none grew :( - old seed, slugs, birds digging up the bed at the critical time?

Are you able to order seeds from Canada or Europe? Northern Europe has some interesting corn, descended from the northern corns originally imported back in the colonial era. I have recently been reading a lot of very interesting research into early northern varieties in the Polish scientific literature, for example.

Nancy Reading wrote:

Thom Bri wrote:Learn something new every time I visit. .... My knowledge is quite narrow.

My problem with my root crops was failing to keep the varieties separate at first - one swede looks pretty much like another, so deciding which ones to grow on for seed was tricky.

I wonder if you can't dig them up, taste then, then replant the tops? It works for carrots and celery.

Sorry since off-topic for this thread.

Thom Bri wrote:Are you able to order seeds from Canada or Europe? Northern Europe has some interesting corn, descended from the northern corns originally imported back in the colonial era. I have recently been reading a lot of very interesting research into early northern varieties in the Polish scientific literature, for example.

I haven't looked if I am honest... I think the import charges would be far too expensive!

It's a good suggestion and I will have a search. Do you have any recommendations?

Eastern Europe and Baltic/Slavic areas are like seed treasure troves.