Greenstorm
Mine were unexpectedly planted in sand, that part of my new field must have had some sandy fill put in it. Luckily there’s plenty of organics in there.
Did you plant the same mix in both different soils? Or different mixes in each?
That can be frustrating, is the critter skipping any or taking them all? Are they bitten off high enough for the plant to resprout? I wonder what it’s thinking.
Matthew P
@ Greenstorm Same mix in different soils, so it will be interesting to compare.
The critter hasn’t taken them all and (I think) seems to be skipping some so it ends up being a selection factor. I’m hoping it gives up once they reach a certain size. But yes, they do seem to be resprouting quite quickly, even when bitten off at the base.
The taproot is pretty impressive already. Their drought tolerance will be tested in the newer, unirrigated field.
Greenstorm
Roughly how large is your planting area/how many plants?
Matthew P
A) In the clay-ish field, I planted around 240 seeds.
B) Then there’s a 6m garden bed that was planted with around 70 seeds (35 x 2 rows). Same mix of seeds as in the clay field. [this was kind of a “back-up” in case they struggle in the newer clay field]
C) Finally there are two, wide ~3m garden beds that I planted early on with only red and purple seeds. Here there are about 80 seeds (20 x 4 rows; with radish in the middle rows)
Greenstorm
You’ve got about twice the population I have, I think. That should make a fabulous mix.
I put mine in the ground after a soak awhile ago and covered two of my three beds. The crows came along immediately upon emergence and pulled a bunch of them up from the exposed bed, or if they couldn’t pull them up they pulled the tops off and left the seed in the ground. I can see selection for deeper, sturdier-rooting-before-shooting being a part of this project.
Matthew P
Foreground-left are some of the small beds of the red-purple favas (with radish in between).
Weather has been cool/cloudy so many crops are very slow to develop. But favas doing okay and it seems to be warming up a bit.
My main (more diverse) fava landrace is in a field nearby. They are even slower to develop and maybe only 75% have germinated… likely due to the clay soil and and maybe the cool weather. But some selection is very welcome as I want to continue to plant favas as early as possible each year.
This is one of my favourite individual plants so far… the veins on the leaves are slightly less pronounced so it always stands out. Reminds me more of a house plant:
A lot of growth in the past week. And now some flowers!
This is another photo of my favourite plant (above)… the stalk is much thicker than the other plants and it has a hint of red, so it continues to be an anomaly. Excited to see how it continues to develop.
July 10 update on the same anomaly plant as above (centre-right in photo).
It’s now about 180 cm tall and head and shoulders above the rest of the crop. Still growing too!
The uniqueness of this one plant has distracted me to a large extent (and made me a worse landrace gardener). Instead of paying close observation to the entire crop… I’m usually just checking on how this one plant is doing. ¯_ (ツ)_/¯
Julia D
Charles Darwin wrote a book called Cross and Self Fertilization of Plants that I’m reading right now. He had a plant he called ‘Hero’ that appeared one year randomly. Anyway, your writing about this plant reminds me of the book 
I think you’d like it. At least parts of the book are very interesting, if you can get through all the numbers and repitition.
Matthew P
@Julia D
I really appreciate the reference. The otherwise dry scientific writing becomes more of a dry humour: “The average height of the thirteen self-fertilised grandchildren of Hero is 79 - 76 inches…” And I picture Darwin scrawling H E R O on hundreds of plant id tags.
Of course, I now think of this fava plant as ‘Hero’. It’s still growing, but it seems it (and all the others) stopped setting pods when we had a week of 30 C. So it might not offer 2 full meters of offspring this year, but it still has plenty of decedents closer to its base.
Greenstorm
You’re ahead of mine!
Matthew P
My main planting isn’t so far ahead… a grex of ~35 varieties. These were planted late April, but have been outpaced by a mid-May planting in better soil.
There’s some organic matter on top (from growing potatoes last year) but a lot of clay below that. At the least, they will do some good work on the soil.
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