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GardenRN
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Joined: Wed Jan 12, 2011 10:01 am
Location: Chesterfield, Va

when hesitating about thinning plants...

I have been reading a very good book lately, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" for anyone interested. And without delving into what the book is about I found a couple of quotes for some of us to remember when we are self defeatingly refusing to thin out our seedlings. Forgive me if they are a little lengthy.

"...Many changes of plants under domestication resulted from such changes in conditions and hence in the favored types of individuals. For example, when a farmer sows his seeds densely in a garden, there is intense competition among the seeds. Big seeds that can take advantage of the conditions to grow quickly will now be favored over small seeds that were previously favored on dry unfertilized hillsides where seeds were sparser and competition less intense. Such increased competition among plants themselves made a major contribution to larger seed size and to many other changes developing during the transformation of wild plants into ancient crops." -Jared Diamond (author)

This stuck me as to just how important it is to get rid of the weaklings. And how much stronger your garden will be every year because of it. It just goes back to survival of the fittest. Or at least the fittest in your specific garden environment. Here's one more.

"...I have seen great surprise expressed in the horticultural works at the wonderful skill of gardeners, in having produced such splendid results from such poor materials; but the art has been simple, and as far as the final result is concerned, has been followed almost unconsciously. It has consisted in always cultivating the best-known variety, sowing its seeds, and, when a slightly better variety chance to appear, selecting it, and so onwards." -Charles Darwin

Again, growing only the best of what you have from your own garden and being ready and prepared to take advantage when a slight mutation occurs in one of your plants. Either the rid your garden of the mutation of it is not beneficial, or maintain it if it is. Of course this only applies to those of us who save our seeds from year to year. But think of the tradition you are carrying on when you are thinning your seeds. It's how man first started producing food instead of just hunting and gathering. And why we have all the species of plants that we do today.

Hope some of you got as much out of it as I did. I found it quite striking.

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hendi_alex
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Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:58 am
Location: Central Sand Hills South Carolina

I thinned and spaced my leaf lettuce this year. So far the lettuce has been both better,more productive, easier to harvest, and cleaner by far, than those previously crowed rows and mass planting areas. I didn't thin and discard however. I thinned, spaced, transplanted. Most all of the transplanted and re-spaced plants thrived and turned into near specimen plants. So as it turned out, none were really weaklings which needed to be tossed in the compost bin.



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