Passionate Plant Breeding – Editorials


Passionate Plant Breeding

by Relentless (small “i”)

We’ve been brainwashed… conditioned by a $$$ driven techno-culture seemingly hell-bent on instilling the belief that only academically-trained and corporate-sponsored specialists are capable of breeding new and superior plants. My reply: “Who died and left you boss?”

i have no degrees in horticulture, let alone plant breeding. But, i’m breeding up an ecological storm and having a great time in the process. Not only that, but i’m getting results. i believe some of these results are as good or better than those from the multi-million dollar corporate breeding section and they’re my creative vision, not GroupThought Inc. My budget is nil compared to theirs, wouldn’t even show up on their budgetary radar screens. You know what? i like it that way because no one’s looking over my shoulder, no one’s saying this is where i should be heading, no one’s saying “you’re over budget,” no one’s saying “it’s not commercial enough” or “you’re taking too long” or “it won’t ship well” or “it won’t store well” or “its taste is too intense for the mass market” or “it’s too tall” or it’s not this or that or “where are the results” or, or, or… i only have to satisfy myself, not some inhibited committee. Even this dang word processor program, compliments of corporate central, is attempting to inform me that the last sentence was too long. Hey, i’ll make that decision! Plus, i don’t have to lose sight of why i’m doing this in the first place: i love the magic of being a real human being, part of the Whole (more on that later), not part of the pressured System.

If you enjoy working within the corporate, commercial-driven, results required to survive system, fine. It’s simply not for me. i enjoy what freedoms we still have remaining in this whacked-out human-dominated world of GATTs and NAFTAs and WTOs and LSHFWCDTEBs (Let’s See How Fast We Can Destroy The Earth Brigade). i couldn’t work within a structure that makes all its decisions based on the bottom line or what its competition is up to. i could care less about what the competition’s up to – we’re on different planets.

And just who are the We of the first sentence above? For me, We are the gardeners, farmers, eco-growers, nature freaks, guys who don’t own suits, women who don’t either, humans who sweat and enjoy it – not in some pseudo-antiseptic gym or wrecking their knees on pavements but getting their sweat from nurturing the fertile soil as best we can. We are often technological outcasts, rebels with an ethical clue, the instilled-with-wonder types, the radicals for sanity in an insane human world, the solitary converts attempting harmonious escape from the incessant, discordant machine, refugees within our own country, stationary nomads, lovers of peace, sufferers for all those living unloved. Still, We remain a happy, joyous, mostly contented lot most of the time. You know who you are.

In essence, the We are simply passionate beyond measure. We do not kowtow to the sinister corporate beat, the political hacks or the media machine. We don’t even choose the path less taken. We take out our mental machete and hack out our own paths…standardized and regulated society be darned. We just couldn’t be passionate within a corporate or institutionalized structure – it’d be a contradiction in terms. We’d wither away.

If you’re a small-scale diversified gardener/farmer/eco-farmer, you’re already on your way to being a plant breeder — even if you don’t know it! You may just not realize that the breeding is going on all around you yet and only requires, for starters, your observation, perseverance, patience and passion… plus the assist – always the assistance – of mom Nature.

Why? For one reason: you’re not up in a tractor all-day or encased within other humongous fossil fuel burning whatevers, too removed from the teeming with life actual world to notice its transcendent magnificence. You’re closer to the living soil, to ground zero. You actually touch and smell the sweet Earth during the growing season instead of being contaminated with the acrid smell of pesticides and diesel fumes. You’re not just walking from a tractor to a pickup truck or doing research in glass or plastic-enclosed sanitized with pesticides facilities or other controlled environments as devoid of diversity as imaginable—you’re not simply one petal of a flower. It’s far more pleasurable and healthy smelling and touching the natural reality. And, it’s more enjoyable being temporarily out of control (i doubt that controlling everything is really our mission on Earth. What is your mission? i have no idea but for me i can’t escape the peaceful words of the hippie gardener Adam Turtle: “What if the purpose of life is living? Then we can’t miss.”), not contained by artificial and mechanical distractions so utterly rampant in our grating, in-your-face, whether you want it or not world!

To the point: If you’re a natural gardener/farmer, more of nature is going on around you. You’re not a mono cropping this or that any more than you’re a one tomato kind of grower. Thus, the more diversity – plant varieties, insects, soil organisms, varied weather conditions – the more chance of, well, chance crossings happening. Natural crosses. Then all you need to do with natural crosses is to let nature rip, observe and select what you’re after and hopefully stabilize that wondrous evolutionary event that was presented to you. Then you’re a plant breeder 101. Your only degree? Being a real human being, doing what has come naturally since Homo sapiens first caught the passion for selecting what the Earth has given you. This is one form of plant breeding. Look around your garden or farm and check out what nature is continually doing: changing, evolving, and surprising. Something wondrous may be lurking, patiently awaiting your recognition.

If i’ve learned anything about plant breeding, it’s to completely ignore the naysayers who parrot the party line: “You can’t breed new plants, you’re not trained, you’re no expert, what do you know?!” Blah, blah, blah. Neither were all our ancestors who developed some puny wild grass eons ago and got what we call corn today. Not teams of specialists with million dollar budgets, huge research facilities, 30,000+ growouts of a single species (!) but individuals with small plots and plenty of passion and perseverance. i’m discovering ways to overcome the massive growouts the pros utilize. Mass growouts can produce results but they’re not the only way to obtain what you, the passionate breeder, desire. Keep reminding yourself that you’re not in competition with the Big Boys and Girls; our agendas are completely different. Refer back to the We mentioned before for each of us has another advantage: each one of us sees and feels the world with different eyes and unique senses, with what i can only call creative, passionate innocence. Use this to the Earth’s advantage, which is to your advantage as you are that one wondrous unrivaled aspect of your world. No one is like you, no one is you. Bask in your singular uniqueness. i can’t help but wonder how well our professional plant breeders would do today if they had to start from scratch with the wild form of zea mays? First, I doubt their corporate sponsors would see the possibilities and second, it would take far too long to get a return on investment: “Dead end, not worth the time or $$$. We need results quick-like; we’re not running a gambling casino here.”

i don’t see breeding as a specialized, compartmentalized, sanitized, pasteurized, homogenized subject. i think it really helps to be more renaissance-like, open to all of your surroundings, connected to the Earth’s diversity and wonders at minimum and the Universe and beyond for maximum beginnings. As Buckminster Fuller said: “If humans were meant to be specialists, they’d have been born with one eye.”

Reconnection to the Whole – allowing oneself to not only realize the Whole exists but that you are one aspect of the Whole. Your doings and not doings affect it as does the Whole affect you. We’re not outside the Whole. What you choose to do has an effect on that Whole, however minute. i don’t want to dig myself into a hole, i want to be engulfed by yet part of the Whole.

i look at it this way: those who pull a flower apart, break it down into all its possible miniscule parts, analyze it for years and then attempt to know it find out (and lose sight of the real reality) that they can’t put that wondrous flower back together again – the Humpty Dumpty syndrome. They’ve long ago lost sight of the flower itself, let alone the Whole. i think of this person as a standardized scientist. They’re everywhere in Technoland whether they’re called scientists, technologists, MDs, computer programmers, etc. – specialists who can’t see the Whole from its parts they’ve ripped apart. Forever locked into one language, one “religion,” one eye, one prison of their own choosing.

Then there’s the one who looks at the flower as a miracle, who at first observes the flower from afar and eventually decides close up is better. But then one moment of pure light zaps and surrounds you and you discover (it was always there just awaiting one’s reawakening) it’s best to become the flower, see the Universe within that flower and as that flower relates to the Universe. To touch the cosmos surrounding it… never considering tearing it apart because you know it’s sacred and can never be reassembled. This person i would call a miracle amidst the machine age. The techno-culture would no doubt call this person a throwback. Think of a throwback as our ancestors who developed corn.

i strive for the latter within this plastic, asphalted, polluted, disconnected, ever more digitalized synthetic world. It isn’t always easy in this one size fits all system, as we well know. (Yes, i do appreciate much of modern existence until it believes it can disconnect from, destroy at will and outmaneuver nature. That’s where i part company.)

Attempting as best i can to live this way, reconnecting with the Whole, has, to use corporate speak, produced and procured positive results. The two dozen plus breeding projects currently underway at the EcoWeb not TM (my term for our farm’s diversified ecosystem that can connect with thousands of other diversified ecosystems until the whole Earth is once again connected in a healthy way – a revolutionary act indeed!) are demonstrating to me that such a natural philosophical outlook works, even without the piece of paper from the System. i’m getting results (and yes, failures) in the eyes of the System. But the failures really aren’t failures. They’re evolving opportunities. i’ve learned more from the failures than the successes. If something i’ve bred is of interest to others, fine – i’ll use the money to have more time at the EcoWeb and attempt to breed, with the assist of Nature, more evolutionary magic.

Successes: new and unique chile peppers, new tomatoes (one appears to be a potential winner even for the mass market though I only breed for myself and family and friends, the pleasure it gives and in hopes that I can remain an integral aspect of the Whole), an electric orange chard, a bi-colored bachelor button, a Magic Pumpkin, a new fragrant sweet pea and many more. I’m using many systems of breeding including the “let ‘er rip” natural cross method to hand-pollination and my own hybrid system of mass chaos interaction – utilizing many species and varieties of my choosing (and whatever Nature throws into the mix). This seems critical: your imagination, your creative input, your choices, working with, not against, Nature.

So i’ve become a fanatical plant breeder sans degree from the System. No one’s tried to arrest me yet for impersonating a plant breeder. i realize my degree comes from a higher authority—my world, not the System’s structured prison. It’s a retro-revolutionary creative act. And it’s an evolutionary part of the whole scheme of things of which i’m a minor but integral part that doesn’t want to be pulled apart and analyzed like that flower in a scientist’s lab or statistically lumped in some convenient camp for the demographers who are trying to sell a new toothpaste or forever polled for the latest idiotic opinion. Creatively, it allows me to dream and scheme of a nirvana tasting tomato, a glowing delicious chard, a beautiful fat chile that reaches skyward to touch the sun, a no-beef OP tomato and an exquisite sky-blue cleome. In reality, i’m well on the path i’ve hacked out for myself to all the above except for the cleome — that’ll take a while longer. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” Thanks John.

Be observant, be one with the whole, be persistent, patient, happy, dream a lot, get your hands dirty, sweat, love a lot, try this, try that, make use of all 6 senses – especially your 6th sense, go for your creative urges – not what the pseudo-world of contaminated mass think-alikes is attempting to permanently imprint into your skull so you’ll graciously surrender and become a consuming drone. In short, be what you’ve always wanted to be: lovingly, wildly passionate beyond measure – and just do it. No corporation or institution can compete with that.

Our ancestors did it… so can you.



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