Grow diary of 2021 first bulk grow: @Clatsopnehalem

[skychaser]

When growing any heirloom strain of plant for seed, be it tobacco or anything else, I do not try to select seed plants for any particular trait I personally think is best. In fact it is just the opposite. I want a big population of uniform plants to select as seed plants, what ever uniformity represents in that particualr strain. That extra large plant with the big leaves gets culled. And anything else that is not true to type of the overall average gets culled. Even with plants that are often already very inbred like tobacco, I strictly follow the 20/100 rule of genetics for plant breeding. I want both diversity and uniformity. Saving seed from just a plant or two may be fine for your own personal use. But imho, it is a horrible thing to do when trying to maintain a strain as it is, or for re-sale. Bottle necking the gene pool may have disastrous effects in future generations down the line. Or it may not. You roll the dice. It's called epigenetics. You can lose genes not visible in the current crop that may be essential for the plants long term survival.

 

[skychaser]

There is actually some logic to saving seed from multiple instances of the same variety of plant, and mixing them together, to maintain genetic diversity. But this is meaningful only for open-pollinated species (heirloom) that produce relatively few seeds per plant, such as an heirloom corn variety. Consider hundreds of thousands of seed from a single tobacco plant, vs hundreds of seeds from a single corn plant. In addition, Nicotiana tabacum "varieties" are supposedly extremely low in heterozygous genes. That is, they are assumed to be homozygous (no hidden, recessive genes that can pop up from time to time), by their definition--and according to the geneticists at ARS-GRIN.

So with tobacco, I only worry about the safety of that single, bagged seed head. Bagging two of each (which I used to do regularly) can allay fears about the dog eating my homework.

Bob

I strongly disagree. There is a lot more than "some logic" to it. Even with tobacco, and peppers and tomatoes which are often very inbred (homozygous). I have nothing but respect for Jessica and her point of view. But I could line up a few other equally credentialed expects in the companies I work for who would also disagree. I won't junk up someone elses thread with a long discussion that we have already had. I'll just say that in my opinion the science is not settled on this subject and leave it at that.

 

[Clatsopnehalem]

I’m very much interested in using true genetics but I’m also a bit of an experiment trying machine because the best scientists of this world do exactly that experiment vigorously so I’ll definitely be growing my seed right next to there’s and just make sure to top mine so I don’t cross pollinate there’s. I’m going to be going to college eventually here for plant studies as well as chemistry and genetics. So I can’t exactly say much about my experiments yet other than collect data and ask others what there thoughts are. So far it’s obvious to me that if not all plants then a lot of plants carry the ability to adapt to environmental changes and express new traits like being able to survive in the cold for instance there is a banana tree farmer here in Oregon that has a variety of bananas they got to stabilize and stay alive however it’s bananas are much smaller than they normally were. A tobacco farmer in Alaska has been collecting seed from a plant that started looking more oval shaped leaf became more rounded and wider leaf shape and that trait stayed that way for them year after year but they and I don’t know why. I’m just fascinated and if nwseeds lizard tail Orinoco behaves the same then I’m going to look at our soil test results and post them once we get to that point. I’m sure your right though and that I have non pure seed currently. However I do have an attachment to these plants and we’re saving seeds from the best looking like highest leaf count leaf size and so forth. I’d like to grow these again and see what they do after developing a relationship with them here in the field I definitely love how they grow and look whatever they really might be I think there gorgeous

 

[Oldfella]

Very nice looking plants.
Oldfella

 

[Clatsopnehalem]

Well we had a very rough ending to the garden season by losing almost everything we harvested and decided to leave the rest of the supposed (lizard tail Orinoco) and to our surprise there’s a lot of them still trying to survive from the sucker branch sights I still need to get more updated photos because these were taken before snow set in for a bit. I know most of these are gone by now but there is still a few lingering around even after getting flooded with rain and frozen by snow. Such impressive plants for sure. We learned so much from our mistakes as well as all of the wonderful advise from everyone in this community. So thank you very much! Definitely going to try this again with a better idea on what we need before even planting the seeds. And for a first year garden first try on bulk organic I’d say we did outstanding personally and paid for the experience with hard labor and still worth it just looking back at these photos I almost cry cus of how amazing it really is walking through the rows starting the trays ect. Just wow such a hard occupation much more learned respect for farmers and farm workers.

 

[Clatsopnehalem]

We were able to successfully dry and destem and store around 5 pounds of Black Sea sampsun tobacco which had to be air cured indoors which I’m excited to try again when it’s a bit older. And I’ll definitely get photos of that soon as well as later after longer storage probably next year.

 

[Clatsopnehalem]

Oh and just in case anyone was wondering, the picture of the shorter tobacco plant was a sampsun trying to stick around but most of them all started to wither before the Orinoco