AdAgrA 2019: True Success

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Seminar 3

Bob Gregory

Seed Saving Basics

1 of the reasons that saving our seed is becoming more important is because there are 3 companies right now that control about 90% of the world's seed.

3 companies only, and I've got more than that listed here.

The ones with a red X on them are companies that existed last year that have either been bought or combined with the 3 companies that are left.

The 3 companies that are left are Bayer Agrisystems, ChemChina, and Corteva, which is a conglomeration of DuPont and Dow AgriSciences.

Cortiva is the only 1 that is based in the United States.

These 3 companies, as I said, control the network of seed producers and seed marketing companies throughout the world.

This aggregation started taking place in the late 1990s with the advent of genetically modified crops and it has accelerated to the point now where basically all of these little blue bubbles were seed companies, companies that had the rights and the fields where the seed was grown and preserved and processed and marketed.

And they're all under the control now of essentially 3 primary companies.

So even companies that we typically thought were independent, because they had a different name maybe than Monsanto, were still controlled by the parent companies that determined what varieties of seed would be marketed the next year.

Now seed is an interesting thing because if we stop reproducing seed, what happens to the variety?

And this is the reason why we had so many thousands of varieties of crops a hundred years ago that we no longer have today because they weren't considered economically viable.

These seed companies profit by developing new varieties and they want you to buy those new varieties.

And if they hold the rights to the seed that you're currently using, and they decide they want you to use a newer variety, all they have to do is stop contracting for the reproduction of that seed, and it's gone.

10 years ago, I was growing a variety of cabbage called Red Success.

It was an excellent open pollinated variety of cabbage.

I can't get seed for that anymore because the company that was producing that seed got a directive from someone up the chain of corporate structure that said, we've got other red varieties that we want to introduce into the marketplace because these are the varieties that we make the most profit on.

So instead of Red Success, now we have Red Express as an example.

And this has occurred with about 15 or 20 of the different seed varieties, some of them hybrid, some of them open pollinated, that I have wanted to produce over the years.

So about a decade ago, I decided if I want these varieties, I better keep them and maintain them for myself.

1 of the activities that we have at Berea Gardens, our farm in Virginia, is that we've decided to start a seed bank there.

And that seed bank is basically acquiring seeds from our friends and neighbors that have a long history of gardening within the Little Canal River Valley where I live, that have been there for 100 or 150 years, seeds like this little bean right here.

And we wanted to make sure that they didn't go extinct.

And we wanted to acquire those seeds for our own use because, hey, they're really well adapted to that area because they've been there so long.

The only way I'm going to be able to grow it successively is if I produce that seed myself.

There's a lot of incentive for us to take up this activity, more so now than ever before.

If you're just starting out in gardening, when you buy your initial seed to plant your garden, I strongly recommend that you buy seed from a reliable commercial grower's supplier, not just some mail order seed company or not just seed packs off the rack down at Walmart or your local garden center.

Go to some resources online and find a company that supplies market growers.

The reason that I say that is that seed just like the foods and vegetables and fruits that we buy vary tremendously in quality.

And guess where the worst quality gets sold?

It gets sold direct market to consumers because frankly most home gardeners don't know the difference between a good seed and a bad seed.

And if they plant something that doesn't germinate well, they just assume it was their fault.

But a commercial grower relies on the seed that he's purchasing.

He's buying a lot more seed than most home gardeners are, and the company's reputation that's selling that seed is a little bit on the line.

They want repeat customers and they don't want bad press.

So a seed can look actually the same in size and the same in appearance and still have vastly different qualities, partly because of the variation in density of the seed.

1 of the ways that seed is graded is by specific gravity.

The heavier the seed and the same size, generally the better quality that seed is.

It has more energy stored in it, and that energy is what's going to produce the plant when you put that in the ground.

And you'll get a better quality plant from a dense seed than from a lighter seed.

So the seeds are graded, typically 3 grades.

And the lightest grade, the 1 that has the least vigor and the least energy stored in it is the 1 that gets sold in the little seed packets typically.

So by buying from a commercial supplier you get typically better quality seed.

If you need a list of those my website is bereagardens.org and we have a list of seed suppliers that I use.

Not that those are the only ones that are good but if you need a starting point there's 5 or 6 seed companies that I use that you can order from online and you'll get much better quality seed than what you'll get locally.

When you're selecting these varieties, select varieties that are for your conditions.

Consider your climate, your day length, how long your season is, and also factors of disease resistance.

Now that's more important for me where I live in West Virginia because we live in an environment that is very hot and humid in the summer and very conducive to a lot of different diseases.

So that's usually 1 of the first considerations I make when I'm selecting a new variety to trial is its disease resistance.

That helps enormously in a variety of other ways too, some of which I've talked about this week in terms of pest control.

Always plant multiple varieties in your garden of the same crop.

If you're growing broccoli, for example, grow 3 or 4 varieties of broccoli.

And that's to overcome some of the variables that we get with environmental conditions during the growing season.

Sometimes, for example, I grow about 7 different varieties of lettuce each year.

2 of those varieties are 1 is a red leaf variety, and 1 is a romaine variety that are my primary economic staples for the markets that I have.

I sell a lot of the romaine and the red leaf lettuce to the school systems in our area.

And if I happen to have a really bad year, and the genetic characteristics of that red leaf lettuce allow for a certain invasion of a downy mildew strain or something, I may not produce it very well, but some of the other backup strains that I have maybe will perform very well.

And I've seen many instances where 1 year, 1 variety will do very well, and the next year it doesn't do so well, and 1 of the varieties that typically doesn't do very well does very well.

So you have variation each growing season with the characteristics of the crop that you're going to grow.

So grow a variety of different crops for your security.

I use also a combination of open pollinated varieties, which is what we're going to focus on today in seed saving, but I do use hybrid varieties too.

And there are many kind of myths circulating among the gardening community today about the virtue of open pollinated varieties over hybrid varieties.

And I want to dispel some of that with you today because frankly there is absolutely no reason not to make use of hybrid seed.

1 of the disadvantages of using hybrid seed is if you save it for the succeeding season you don't really know what you're going to get.

It's got very various variations in its genetic characteristics and you don't really know what you're going to get.

It's got various variations in its genetic characteristics and you don't really know what you're going to get.

But there's no reason, there's no additional virtue, there's no edentic property to an open pollinated seed over a hybrid seed.

In fact, in reality, the only difference between the 2 is 7 generations and I'm going to walk you through that in a minute.

1 thing I strongly suggest too, if you're preparing for next gardening season or a gardening season 2 or 3 years from now is to order your seeds now.

And the reason that I say that has to do with that conglomeration of seed companies that I was pointing out to you.

The range and variety that we have available to us is getting narrower and narrower and narrower.

And if you identify a variety in your seed catalog that looks like it has good characteristics and you wanna get some to utilize in your own garden, even though you may not plant it next year or the following year, get it now.

And I'm going to talk to you in a few minutes about how you can store that seed for a long period of time viably and make use of it when you are ready to use it.

But as I said, this gene pool is getting smaller.

The available varieties are getting narrower.

This world of seed variation is shrinking very, very quickly.

Now, seed is made by the sexual reproduction of plants.

And I'm gonna take us back to our high school science class here for just a minute to give you an explanation of the difference between an open pollinated or sometimes they're called heirlooms variety of seed and what a hybrid seed is and what the difference is between the 2.

If we look at seed, it's the combination of a male portion of the plant which is the pollen from the stamens of the plant and a female egg in the plant which is inside the pistil.

When this pollen falls down, I've got a weak battery here, if this pollen falls down and fertilizes this egg from the same plant, the flowers have both sexual parts, then that's what's considered an open pollinated variety.

And an open pollinated variety can extend across many different individuals if they're all genetically the same.

For example, a Roma tomato is an open pollinated variety and if this flower is growing on 1 Roma tomato plant and this flower is growing on 1 that's 30 feet down the row, they're still genetically identical.

Both the pollen and the egg have the same characteristics.

So this can pollinate this and this can pollinate this and you still have the same genetic characteristics within that plant and that seed will reproduce what we call true to type.

Open pollinated varieties will reproduce true to type, meaning that the characteristics that you get in the following season are going to be identical to what you planted in the current season from which you saved the seed.

Now an F1 hybrid is something that's a little bit different and we use hybridization to combine the characteristics of 2 different types of the same species of plant.

This only works within the same species of plant.

You know, you can't pollinate a corn plant with a bean seed, obviously, And that's because these pollens are very species specific.

So I'm going to use just this example here of having a seed parent.

In this case, this is the female seed parent with the eggs down here and a male pollen parent that has a different characteristic, smaller flower with dark dark petals.

In hybridizing what we do is we secure this this egg here and make certain that only this pollen from this pollen parent fertilizes this egg.

In the traditional early stages of plant breeding, typically this is done by removing the stamens on this flower so that it can't self-pollinate.

So we now have a seed here that has half of its genetic code from this flower, the large single-color flower, and half of its genetic code from the smaller flower with the dark petal tips.

Brad Johnson

Orcharding

Every human being created in the image of God is endowed with a power akin to that of the creator.

Individuality, the power to think and to do.

I give this as a springboard to express what we each have.

We each have our own God-given individual thinking and ability to use, meaning there are a lot of individual details in your particular circumstances.

Glean what you can from this and many other sources and apply them to yours.

Just because I do things a certain way doesn't mean it will be the same for you.

It sometimes takes years to decide certain ways to do things based on Circumstances, crops, spacing, money, farming philosophy, education, to name a few.

Because there are so many avenues to go down with this topic of orcharding, I plan to go through my seasons for sugar plums or prunes, fall, winter, spring, summer, and certain basic aspects of crop production for those.

I'm leaving out many details to look at mainly field operations.

There is not enough time to go over all aspects.

I recommend you use your local university extension office or ag advisor in your area for research, if you have 1, and filter that with your own knowledge and ideas.

And of course now there are so many resources available online for data, it's hard to miss getting lots of information, but also misinformation.

So find someone that's experienced in your area for your particulars Visit other farms and farmers in your area even where I live what I do may not translate exactly to someone who farms in The dirt in the foothills 15 miles away from my place Many times but many times I think much of what I do is simple enough to be called farming for dummies.

At least that is how I feel about certain aspects of what I do.

I wanted to, let's see, okay, what I present may not satisfy your interest or needs in particular.

I will try to give you, give this short enough, keep this short enough to give time for questions.

I'm here to serve and share within the realm of my experience.

But a little note in regard to sugar plums and the prune interchange.

So some of you may know this, but within the prune industry, we were kind of having an image problem and so the marketing group said do people like prunes better or dried plums better and so they really did this they went to the went to the you know the consumers and they said I don't know exactly how they did it, but they said, hey, try these.

And they generally like dried plums better.

So we changed the name throughout the industry.

Only in the United States is what I understand.

So we've always as growers have always called them prunes.

So I kind of stumble back and forth between sugar plums and dried plums and prunes.

And so you'll hear me mostly call them prunes probably.

And you'll hear me call almonds, almonds, because that's what I grew up in Northern California, we call them almonds.

And There's another thing about that I could tell you sometime, if you want to really know the truth.

So anyway, here's on the tree, off the tree, the trees, and then the dried fruit, you know.

You know, there's too many, like the lady that came here that wanted to ask about fire blight on apples.

I mean There's only so many things travels.

I can go down to talk about I don't know everything Believe it or not So I farm with organic production methods, which has its benefits and downsides, as conventional ag does as well.

I'm not disparaging anyone's particular methods.

There is a wide range of tools and methods if you aren't tied to any particular set of production market rules.

This is a picture of conventionally grown California peaches.

I helped my brother produce these in a separate operation from mine.

And You can see an award we received in 2017.

This is as it states awarded annually to recognize the association member with the highest quality delivers reese Statewide and these are our peaches So you can see you can use many methods to produce a good crop.

Anyway, after harvest I will put on at least 1 or maybe 2 irrigations.

I will then take out trees that are dead or push out a whole orchard if I'm starting a new 1 and prep the ground before the winter rain start.

So here you can just see this is my grandson and granddaughter they're helping me open the canal valve to to the field Sometimes we get dead trees we've got to take out and this is 1 of our tools we use to push out brush out of the fields.

Generally if I'm starting a new orchard I will plant a rotation crop for a season or even a few years.

That will be something like wheat, safflower, hay or perhaps a vegetable crop.

Then I will be back to rip level and prep my ground for an orchard during that time I can pull soil samples and add amendments and plan my irrigation system So we've got any more words so here.

This is a hay crop I planted grass hay in the summer as a rotate rotation out of vegetables before I was going to plant prunes back and Here wheat we grow wheat is 1 of our wheat crops.

This is a pretty common tool in our area used for After after an orchard comes out we use that to rip the roots and loosen the soil And these are some of the deep root.

You know the ripper blades that go down the soil.

This is just a small tool that I use for putting in grass seed.

I mean, it's made to put that grass seed just barely in the dirt.

I mean, it's, I don't know, maybe it's whatever.

If the area is large, I will use a local surveyor to lay out my orchard grid, and an irrigation supplier to plan my irrigation system, which is important to calibrate if you're going into a drip irrigation type irrigation.

Neither 1 is needed, meaning neither advisor is needed if you have enough time and knowledge.

And I do a combination of both because many times I'm putting together systems to suit my particular needs and circumstances.

So here's just a, I know you can't probably see that we use a cable we put a marker on here with a little cinch nut and mark it with a ribbon and Put those on our on a cable.

Maybe I don't know hundred and 200 feet long and This is our tree spacing we'll put that on there And then we mark our paint our stakes white so we can see them in the field this guy's helped me lay out the field He he's a surveyor and we just makes our main grid and then we come back with this and we stretch between the main grids and we use a group of people and we we come in and we put in our stakes at these markers and then we do the whole field that way we we don't he's not out there all time helping a stake we just we just haven't put in like you know the hundred or 200 foot markers and then we stretch across and mark each tree and then these help us see it and Then this is just a really nice tool that I use it's a five-point ripper that just to loosen ground Row crops usually I use that but it's a really good tool for loosening up your soils My own adaptation to suit my needs as an example, I recently set up a drip irrigation system that was all buried irrigation lines so I could mow and control weeds without hoses or emitters to get in the way.

Though most of my irrigation is flood type from a canal system, I will show you, which I'll show you later.

We only needed a 4 inch pipe, rather than say a 12 inch pipe to run my...

It's all on a piece of paper But we now we're doing all this field work, and it's all calibrated based on our flow how much water we needed per tree What size pipe and this main tubing so what I did?

I don't know anybody else is doing this, but we have all our trees marked out here You can't see that where the stakes are right now But and then we went back and we just we have this little tool we shank in all our drip lines so this just We feed that this Into the a little tube and it drills it in the ground say 7 to 10 inches deep and I just was having fun out there, but Partly they want you on them getting hang up and rip your your tubing out of the ground so then we just bury all our lines and then this next little bit is kind of my unique application primarily for weed control and while my trees are young.

As my trees are older I prefer to move to a different system of irrigation for more for a more beneficial to the long-term biological system of production that I use.

So, after my line's buried, you can see there's my buried line.

And I'm just hooking a spaghetti tube up and Running it over by my tree.

This is a little ways from the tree say like this And we built this so then these these little tubes are made by a company in Angwin, California And they're called by a company that's DRI I think deep root irrigation and I use these to like because because I can bury them under the ground and I don't get root intrusion.

And then I just have a pressure compensated emitter that I put in there that regulates my flow.

How much I'm putting on per hour, per minute, or whatever size it is based on pressure and Then I measure the depth how deep I want it and I built this little jig so I could just Put them in at a same angle on every tree the same distance from the tree So I knew exactly when I came back, although I forgot that summer and I ran a shovel right through them And so I came back to dig something up and I cut my lines.

So That's 1 of the disadvantages But but then I know exactly where my stuff is and every tree is the same and I've got my everything's under the ground.

It takes me time to think through all all aspects of how I'm going to manage things from row spacing, soil type, pruning styles, root stocks and equipment I'm going to use for tree size and the kind I'm planting.

For example, most of my prune orchards are between 16 and 20 feet apart.

I can get away with a narrower spacing in the row if most of my equipment is driving through the width.

So in the row, I may make it 16 feet and 18 or 20 for the width.

My walnuts are placed 24 by 28, but that's not a hard and fast rule.

So I do that to allow room for a bigger tree.

So filling the space well but not too much because you want to have sunlight even to the orchard floor.

So a lot of those Factors are based on tree size and because wallets don't always get the same size prune trees pretty much do so you can't don't vary that that much I Consider mower width and other equipment such as harvesters to allow room and efficiency of time as much as possible So for example, this is a 12-foot mower.

I've got a 10-foot, a 9-foot, a 10-foot, and a 6-foot.

This is the biggest 1 I have, so I can get this through most of all of my fields in the width row.

A walnut harvester, This is a little bit longer length.

This is a prune harvester we use to harvest the prunes.

And you need enough width to drive through, of course, from this way.

We can get by with about a, probably a 15-foot spacing here, but there's other reasons we don't do that.

And then you need enough space this way to get this deflector down between the trees So prunes you know you can plant a little tighter sometimes And it's just a picture of our row spacing here as the tractor goes down in my area when planning a new orchard I will hire a laser leveler to set my slope regardless of type of irrigation because I want the winter rains to flow off the field not just the summer irrigation so as not to have wet pockets that will potentially kill the trees and especially if the soil types are heavy and hold water.

Usually I am putting a 1 to 2 percent grade depending on soil type.

That's 1 to 2 percent, say a tenth or 2 tenths per hundred.

Lynn Hoag

Planting by the Blueprint - Trees

Father in heaven, we thank you for all the things you do for us, and that you've offered to teach us, and to give us wisdom and understanding.

So, we ask for that today and thank you for it in Jesus' name, amen.

We wanna talk about Ellen White's planting method, if we can call it that.

In the night season, she was given a dream.

The angel came to her and told her, explained to her the science of the soil and what the different layers in the soil did.

But then she wrote it out so that it is so simple that even a child can follow this and get great results.

And everywhere where I have lived on Earth since I was about 13 years old, I have planted trees this way.

I used to say they have all done very well, and this last year I lost 3 trees.

There are a lot of different things that we can go over, we can cover.

I was down in Brazil and they wanted me to come down there and teach them how to grow trees this way.

I said, no, no, that's too expensive a trip to go down there and I can just talk to you on the internet and on the phone and you can do this.

So anyway, I went down there and spent 3 weeks planting trees And we planted, I think we planted 400 and some fir trees on the side of a very steep mountain and a little school of the prophets down there, and several thousand thorn bushes.

What on earth would we plant thorn bushes for?

They have a lot of theft and trouble down there, and so our school, they had planted these, we planted these thorn bushes all around the edge.

When those things mature, I went back a year and a half later, and when those things grew up, they're a solid barrier.

Not even a dog could get through them there.

The growth on those trees was incredible.

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Series

Seminar 3

Soil Management in Greenhouses

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Seed Saving Basics

50m

Orcharding

55m

Planting by the Blueprint - Trees

47m

Soil Management in Greenhouses

1h 1m

Sound Doctrine