Renewed greetings and agrarian practicalities

Ina

Ina

The Living Force
Dear ALL, hello again.

I would like to thank Laura and the Group for all the work, for thoroughly documenting and referencing it, and for making it available.

Just to let everyone know, I am re-reading Stripped to the Bone (e-book), two years after getting it, and the material only now started to make sense, so much so that I have recognized patterns of programming in my raison d'etre (a term I use to sum my daily life fuel).

Somewhat while reading I had a seed related question pop into my mind. If one uses the first seeds and then uses the seeds of the next generation and so on, taking into account all the factors like soil depletion and weather, the veggies and the corn seem to have an attenuated capacity of growth both in size and in number and a lower resistance to bugs and fungi. I am using only organic seeds, natural compost and fertilizer. Has anyone had any experience with using seeds from previous crops? Perhaps my imagination is playing tricks on me but, is it possible to think in terms of energy attenuation that can correlate to DNA malfunction?

As I am putting the questions, I am starting the search for more information,perhaps proper studies, so I shall update, this post just in case someone finds it useful.

kind regards
 
Hi Ina,

I don't know much, if anything about gardening but I'm sure others will be glad to jump in and help. Just wanted to say welcome "back". :)
 
Thank you Ambassador. I'll try to make more contributions this time around. :)
 
Hi, Ina!

Ina said:
Somewhat while reading I had a seed related question pop into my mind. If one uses the first seeds and then uses the seeds of the next generation and so on, taking into account all the factors like soil depletion and weather, the veggies and the corn seem to have an attenuated capacity of growth both in size and in number and a lower resistance to bugs and fungi. I am using only organic seeds, natural compost and fertilizer. Has anyone had any experience with using seeds from previous crops? Perhaps my imagination is playing tricks on me but, is it possible to think in terms of energy attenuation that can correlate to DNA malfunction?
Click to expand...


What your describing sounds like it could be a product of inbreeding. Inbreedling leads to more homozygous alleles, meaning the plant has less diverse DNA each generation. This increases vulnerability to pathogens/disease, worsens growth, etc.

The severity of this would depend on how diverse your original corn stock is (whether it's an heirloom variety for example), as well as the presence of other corn fields in the area, which may either help the stock (if heirloom) or pollute the stock (if it's a conventional or GMO monocrop) via wind pollenation. I know many organic farmers organize seed swaps in their town or region to share seeds and genetic material. Perhaps this would be worth looking into? :)
 
Dear whitecoast,

My corn crop, is grown in my back yard in a residential complex, suburban setting. My immediate neighbours have lawn, however there might be a possibility of informal corn crops in the area (at least 15 km radius). Thank you very much for your help, and advice as I haven't thought that I could get in touch with the farmers. (Once a city folk always a city folk).

Kind regards
 
Hello Ina and welcome back.
You could check out "Terminator Seeds" on your favourite search engine to see what TPTB is up to in this respect.
They are genetically modified so that you get one crop out of them, and the next generation will fail, so that you have to buy more seeds from the supplier.
They are trying to outlaw common practice such as seed sharing to try to maximise their profits.
 
As whitecoast mentioned, corn is especially vulnerable to inbreeding depression. 200+ plants is the minimum amount of plants to generate seedstock that is usually recommended.

Edit: That is, you'd have to save seed from 200+ plants just to make sure that your stock has a sufficiently wide genetic pool for the next planting - not that you can only use 200 plants to cross-pollinate and then gather seed from, say, 10 of them
 
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