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Epigenetics
7 Dec 2021 12:20 pmEpigenetics happens to plants when the weather or climate causes a gene to switch on or off. It allows the plant to survive in an every changing environment. Humans learned that by saving seed from plants with traits you like, you can breed very tasty produce. Once those traits are passed down generation after generation, you have an heirloom variety. That might be an oversimplification. You can listen to Bill McDorman (Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance) talk more at length about this on the Urban Farm Podcast (Greg Peterson) https://www.urbanfarm.org/2021/11/19/646-seed-chat/
Bill likes to tell the story of an area of the county were broccoli is prone to a black mold. No farmer in their right mind would grow broccoli there. The experimental farmer bought every kind of broccoli seed possible and planted fields of every kind. It was a wet year. The fields of broccoli were ruined, except for one plant. That is the plant that all of the mold resistant broccoli strains are now based on. That in a nutshell is epigenetics. That plant had the type of gene that could survive the black mold. Without diversity, we would all starve. We need as many plant genes as possible if we are to survive. (ie another reason mono-crops are bad)
Today I am pondering epigenetics and whether to save seed. I grew two types of heirloom pumpkins this year. One is a New England Pie Pumpkin. It's in the c. maxima family. It's a small pie pumpkin. It grew early in the year and was allowed to come to full ripeness. As a pumpkin, it is not overly moist. I thought it had an awful lot of seeds. It cooked up similar to an acorn squash. The flesh was not stringy. There just wasn't as much flesh as I'd expected. No, we didn't have a drought. I have never grown this variety before and did not know what to expect. If I add butter and sugar, it will taste like butter and sugar. It has no flavor at all. As a variety, I would not be inclined to grow it again. Each vine took a lot of space and only yielded one small pumpkin each. (under 4 pounds)
Switching over to the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin, it's a variety I've grown again and again. It's in the cucurbita moschata family/genus. I had some I planted from older seed. I had some the squirrels planted for me. I had some that were obviously a cross between the butternut and Long Island Cheese. Any Cucurbita moschata will cross with any other c. moschata. Maximas will cross with other maximas. C. pepos will cross with C. pepos. There are four or five different cucurbita families. A watermelon doesn't cross with a pumpkin and a cucumber doesn't either. Like that. But within their own family, they will cross readily. In the back yard, I knew I grew a pure strain. I also grew some seed the squirrels planted in a different part of the yard. The early pumpkins I have not tried yet, but I had one that I harvested late season as a hard freeze was coming. It ripened in the window. There was a little green on it. I really think these late bloomers will not have the longevity to last on the shelf over winter. So I carved into it today. It was no longer green. I prepared it for roasting by peeling it and cutting away the hollow seed section. This pumpkin too, was mostly seed. Now, I can see, if you are a late pumpkin, taking advantage of the second season, blooming well after the stupid heat of summer is over, you have a shorter time frame to produce seed. Therefore, genes that create the nice normal edible fleshy part of a pumpkin, might be turned off in hopes of getting out viable seed before frost. Here's a normal pumpkin from a different year-
That one got left too long on the shelf and started growing. But, you can see there is a good inch of fleshy pumpkin to eat before the center full of seeds. That is a typical Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. It also has flavor, much more so than the stuff that comes out of a Libby's can. Today's pumpkin had between a quarter inch and a centimeter of edible flesh. It had mature seed in abundance. It barely was worth the effort to peel and roast it. The roasted bits did have flavor, but what a contrast from years prior! I will be watching all of this year's harvest to see if this trend is a result of too much CO2 in our atmosphere. If the entire harvest is this way, it looks like the plants are devolving to survive. If not, I will suffice it to say, late pumpkins are not worth the effort unless you want to carve them for Jack O'lanterns.
I know a lot of you are thinking, well you should roast the seeds. I'm glad you all have teeth. We don't. Dental care is not considered necessary by the US healthcare system. Chewing seeds hurts to think about it. So, please don't go there.
Let me toss out some more information for you from Barbara Pleasant (Home Grown Food Pantry) who has researched and compiled a list of heirloom pumpkin varieties and their traditional traits:
Pumpkin breeds for flesh:
Baby Pam (c. pepo)
Long Pie (c. pepo)
Jarrahdale (c. maxima)
Long Island Cheese (c. moschata)
Dickinson Field (c. moschata)
For thin skinned seed with a higher oil content:
Kakai (c. pepo)
Lady Godiva (c. pepo)
The zucchini or courgette is also a c. pepo and will cross with your seed pumpkins. Seed pumpkins do not have any flesh that tastes good. So be careful.
Meanwhile, I am keeping an eye out for new traits for whatever reason. Twenty years ago, Cornell was working at the AZ Biodome on the effects of CO2 on vines. They were investigating beans when I toured. I would be interested to hear their conclusions. Meanwhile, for us gardeners, here is what they recommend
https://cornellbotanicgardens.org/explore/gardens/climate-change-demonstration-garden/
Bill likes to tell the story of an area of the county were broccoli is prone to a black mold. No farmer in their right mind would grow broccoli there. The experimental farmer bought every kind of broccoli seed possible and planted fields of every kind. It was a wet year. The fields of broccoli were ruined, except for one plant. That is the plant that all of the mold resistant broccoli strains are now based on. That in a nutshell is epigenetics. That plant had the type of gene that could survive the black mold. Without diversity, we would all starve. We need as many plant genes as possible if we are to survive. (ie another reason mono-crops are bad)
Today I am pondering epigenetics and whether to save seed. I grew two types of heirloom pumpkins this year. One is a New England Pie Pumpkin. It's in the c. maxima family. It's a small pie pumpkin. It grew early in the year and was allowed to come to full ripeness. As a pumpkin, it is not overly moist. I thought it had an awful lot of seeds. It cooked up similar to an acorn squash. The flesh was not stringy. There just wasn't as much flesh as I'd expected. No, we didn't have a drought. I have never grown this variety before and did not know what to expect. If I add butter and sugar, it will taste like butter and sugar. It has no flavor at all. As a variety, I would not be inclined to grow it again. Each vine took a lot of space and only yielded one small pumpkin each. (under 4 pounds)
Switching over to the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin, it's a variety I've grown again and again. It's in the cucurbita moschata family/genus. I had some I planted from older seed. I had some the squirrels planted for me. I had some that were obviously a cross between the butternut and Long Island Cheese. Any Cucurbita moschata will cross with any other c. moschata. Maximas will cross with other maximas. C. pepos will cross with C. pepos. There are four or five different cucurbita families. A watermelon doesn't cross with a pumpkin and a cucumber doesn't either. Like that. But within their own family, they will cross readily. In the back yard, I knew I grew a pure strain. I also grew some seed the squirrels planted in a different part of the yard. The early pumpkins I have not tried yet, but I had one that I harvested late season as a hard freeze was coming. It ripened in the window. There was a little green on it. I really think these late bloomers will not have the longevity to last on the shelf over winter. So I carved into it today. It was no longer green. I prepared it for roasting by peeling it and cutting away the hollow seed section. This pumpkin too, was mostly seed. Now, I can see, if you are a late pumpkin, taking advantage of the second season, blooming well after the stupid heat of summer is over, you have a shorter time frame to produce seed. Therefore, genes that create the nice normal edible fleshy part of a pumpkin, might be turned off in hopes of getting out viable seed before frost. Here's a normal pumpkin from a different year-
That one got left too long on the shelf and started growing. But, you can see there is a good inch of fleshy pumpkin to eat before the center full of seeds. That is a typical Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. It also has flavor, much more so than the stuff that comes out of a Libby's can. Today's pumpkin had between a quarter inch and a centimeter of edible flesh. It had mature seed in abundance. It barely was worth the effort to peel and roast it. The roasted bits did have flavor, but what a contrast from years prior! I will be watching all of this year's harvest to see if this trend is a result of too much CO2 in our atmosphere. If the entire harvest is this way, it looks like the plants are devolving to survive. If not, I will suffice it to say, late pumpkins are not worth the effort unless you want to carve them for Jack O'lanterns.
I know a lot of you are thinking, well you should roast the seeds. I'm glad you all have teeth. We don't. Dental care is not considered necessary by the US healthcare system. Chewing seeds hurts to think about it. So, please don't go there.
Let me toss out some more information for you from Barbara Pleasant (Home Grown Food Pantry) who has researched and compiled a list of heirloom pumpkin varieties and their traditional traits:
Pumpkin breeds for flesh:
Baby Pam (c. pepo)
Long Pie (c. pepo)
Jarrahdale (c. maxima)
Long Island Cheese (c. moschata)
Dickinson Field (c. moschata)
For thin skinned seed with a higher oil content:
Kakai (c. pepo)
Lady Godiva (c. pepo)
The zucchini or courgette is also a c. pepo and will cross with your seed pumpkins. Seed pumpkins do not have any flesh that tastes good. So be careful.
Meanwhile, I am keeping an eye out for new traits for whatever reason. Twenty years ago, Cornell was working at the AZ Biodome on the effects of CO2 on vines. They were investigating beans when I toured. I would be interested to hear their conclusions. Meanwhile, for us gardeners, here is what they recommend
https://cornellbotanicgardens.org/explore/gardens/climate-change-demonstration-garden/
