{"id":50,"date":"2009-01-08T16:18:36","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T21:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theextremegardener.com\/blog\/?p=50"},"modified":"2015-10-10T13:02:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T17:02:37","slug":"stumbling-into-plant-breeding-cucumber-damascus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/?p=50","title":{"rendered":"Stumbling into plant breeding – cucumber Damascus"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Damascus cucumber is not an heirloom, but it certainly can be called “rare”. I purchased the original seed in 1978 from Nichols Garden Nursery. This variety disappeared from trade shortly thereafter. I had saved seed from it for a few seasons before I noticed that it had been listed as a hybrid. Funny, it has always been pretty stable for me – I guess after 30 years I can safely say it’s been true-lined (meaning it’s now open-pollinated).<\/p>\n

Looking back I’m really glad I didn’t notice that it was listed as a hybrid, because I would have missed out on this variety entirely. In the first place, I wouldn’t have bought it if I thought it wasn’t open-pollinated, nor would I have tried to save seed from a hybrid at that time. Now I know better.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Cucumber\"Cucumber<\/p>\n

Cucumber Damascus<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n

Anyhow, this is a Middle-Eastern type, intended for salads (a “slicing” cuke). Damascus is smooth and thin skinned (no peeling necessary), and crisp with a nice clean cuke flavor (no bitterness or muskiness). I have never grown a better tasting salad cucumber.<\/p>\n

It’s about 57 days to first harvest. Obviously it does well for us here, or we wouldn’t have kept it 30 years. However, I shared seed with a gardener in a warmer clime who had disease problems with it. This has led me to wonder, if this variety is particularly susceptible:<\/p>\n

1. Could it be that disease is present here, but since our growing season is so short, the disease is not expressed before the foliage is hit by frost anyway;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2. Or, perhaps the disease is not present here, again because of the short, cool growing season.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I dunno. I do think it’s a good example of how a variety can be great in one location, and quite unsuited to another – an argument for being skeptical about increasingly centralized “one size fits all” plant breeding. Unfortunately, that’s where the most money is for commercial breeding, not with maintaining or developing oddball local varieties.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Damascus cucumber is not an heirloom, but it certainly can be called “rare”. I purchased the original seed in 1978 from Nichols Garden Nursery. This variety disappeared from trade shortly thereafter. I had saved seed from it for a few seasons before I noticed that it had been listed as a hybrid. Funny, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,42,12],"tags":[53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theextremegardener.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}