[Community_garden] pumpkins

[Alliums]

Hi, Folks!

Yeah, yeah, yeah on the cross-pollination thing (Listed Member of Seed
Savers, every edition of Suzanne Ashworth's books on my shelf) -- however,
I'm leaning more towards the "landrace" theory of veggies as I get older.

I'm finding that while my stuff doesn't "breed true" if I save the seeds of
veggies that perform as I want them (pest resistance, taste, length of
storage), even if the veggies they produce don't always LOOK the same, they
are a heck of a lot more reliable than some of the heirlooms I've planted in
the past.

Now, this just plays havoc if you're growing to sell, as ESPECIALLY with the
squash, you can get some really weird looking results.  But if you are just
growing to eat, I've found that by creating your own landrace, you can get
reliable and when it comes to pest resistance, as an organic grower, I
really like reliable.

Heck, I've got some type of acorn squash that come back from the seeds I put
in over the last 10 years -- it varies between green to orange to striped,
but that plant can be 3/4 ripped apart by squash borers and it STILL
produces squash.  I like veggies that produce when I do almost nothing! ;-D


Dorene

PS.  Glad the eye thing is behind you and you're back to your feisty self!
:-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike McGrath [mailto:MikeMcG at PTD.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 11:22 AM
To: Alliums; community_garden at list.communitygarden.org
Subject: pumpkins

Maybe; maybe not save the seeds--I'm working on a new 'book' (its actually 
more of card deck kind of thing) on seed saving and am now reminded that 
many squash readily cross pollinate, so you can only 'safely' (i.e., 
guaranteed) save those seeds and get the same pumpkin if nothing else in 
that C. species (pumpkins belong to a few) was growing anywhere nearby...
                                    ----newly educated McG

PS: I also now realize why my saved pumpkin seeds once produced white 
monster gourds many years back....