Sick of Bonnie vegetable starts

That sounds promising but because it got started later it would have had an advantage at the end of the season. We do like 5 plantings, the last one in June I think.

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If the formulation is for tomatoes it isn’t a problem. You can’t use Kocide, which suspends the copper in a different way than the copper “soap” products.

I just worry a little bit about copper build up in the soil over the years, but that’s in my head and I haven’t read about it being a problem, but It does encourage me to not over use it.

You may not appreciate it until your Brandywine types are dying and their fruit is starting to crack like clay soil. They say it has the taste of an heirloom, but not the best heirlooms. It’s a good tomato that becomes RELATIVELY great here by the end of the season. The fruit stays sound right to the end and that’s why it works so well ripening inside into late fall when you pic them unripe (but changing color).

One extremely productive tomato that my wife raves about as well as a client I gave a plant to is called Chocolate Sun. It is a large cherry that doesn’t bear early but is a strong grower of exceptionally rich tomatoes that continue as late into the season as sungold, but have more tomato flavor and brilliant black-red color. It is under patent and very expensive from totally tomatoes, but I don’t need that many plants, so one packet lasts me two years.

A 7’ X8’ bush produces an awful lot of fruit. My Brandywine types don’t tend to get that big, but Sun Choc, Sungold, and Country Taste do.

I’m still as cheap as a back-to- the- land hippy, even though just spending time growing a big vegetable garden costs me a fortune compared to using that time working for my rich clients. They always have more for me to do, but I don’t care. My luxury is eating the best food, and that you have to grow. None of my clients have as good an orchard or veg garden as what I have on my own property- where I am at least a couple hours every day.

If I’d wanted to grow a much bigger business, I would have started planting kitchen gardens for the same type of people I install and manage orchards for. You should see the pathetic little boutique gardens these people pay a fortune to have installed and tended to. If many of the people on this forum lived near me, their hobby skills could be highly valuable for hire. The people running these kitchen garden businesses usually aren’t true gardeners and although the gardens are pretty, they have the wrong plants managed foolishly in ways that render the whole projects with a fraction of the productivity gardening expertise could create.

What drives me nuts is when they install overhead sprinkler systems, virtually assuring short-lived tomato plants.

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What the hell am I gonna do with four corn plants? :rofl:

Luckily I have a local nursery that sells starts and sells various 6 packs at a very reasonable price.

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milking Americans. they are good at it!

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Agrium also own a majority of the world’s Potash, among other things.

I would be surprised if this was the case. Things could certainly have changed, but I worked on some projects involving Bonnie Plants a few years ago and they were owned by the Alabama Farmers Cooperative at the time.

Doesnt Bonnie plant but not specifically label GMO veggies?

I don’t think anyone sells GMO plants or seeds to residential customers. Bonnie’s website states that every plant they grow comes from non-GMO seeds, which makes sense (GMO seed is expensive).

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They contract facilities around the country to produce their products for local stores.

Okay its a rabbit hole but it essentially talks about the OP hybridizing of GMO plants ideally accidentally and then the cisgenic breeding to obtain the traits and put it into a F1 with genes you can trademark and seed that is TM also. I could not find anything on the internet of certain hybrid seeds being removed from sale for having TM genes. I have heard of a few suppliers but should not have mentioned something i did not have proof of and i do apologize.

Here is one example of those seeds not labeled GMO but having interesting Trademark able genes

A pretty in depth but anti GMO article explaining this breeding

Other articles talking about hybridization of GMOs into our genetic population

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Yes, and they also own nursery facilities around the country. Not in every state, but pretty close.

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Those aren’t trademarked genes in those peppers. The naming convention is trademarked (which is pretty clear in the article) not the plant itself. You could not, for example, call one of your plants a X3R pepper just because it also has those disease resistances. Companies do this all the times for branding purposes. Just look at the fruit industry and names like Aprium, Nectaplum, or Pluerry (there are many, many more). That doesn’t stop you from breeding and selling a pepper that has those resistances.

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Actually… Biotech companies successfully lobbied to have individual traits patented, not just GM additions that were engineered but virtually any plant trait can be patented now. Salanova lettuce for example has traits patented, multileaf, non browning… The multileaf trait is nothing new, several existing varieties such as Tango already had it, but they were still able to patent it.
https://www.wildgardenseed.com/articles/plant-patent-resources

The buyers contract for Salanova prohibits saving seeds, using pollen, and even giving a public review of the plants without their permission.

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European biotech companies and the EU, and yes, you can patent individual traits (and have been able to do so for some time), but that isn’t the case here. All they did was trademark the name. To be exact, Salanova lettuce is not patented (that is trademarked), but some aspects of certain lettuces branded as Salanova lettuce are patented.

Because it’s a slow morning I took at the utility patent you mentioned above:

US9131658B2: They did not patent the multileaf trait on its own. The exact wording from the patent: “A lettuce plant exhibiting a combination of traits including resistance to downy mildew ( Bremia lactucae ) races B1:1 to B1:28 and CA-I to Ca-VIII, resistance to currant-lettuce aphid ( Nasonovia ribisnigri ), and a leaf trait of 2 to 4 times more leaves of substantially equal size than a lettuce plant not having the leaf trait, wherein the leaves are dark green, and having genetic information for so exhibiting the combination of traits, wherein the genetic information is as contained in the plant, representative seed of which having been deposited under NCIMB Accession no. 42132.”

So I don’t believe something like Tango would infringe this patent as it is the combination of traits that is patented. Many of these patents are really specific to that variety (i.e., the full set of genetics that produces those traits in the lettuce) and not snippets of the genes. I am not a fan of a lot of the IP wars going on in the seed space, but I also think it is a little overblown (especially since these are patents and they will expire). The way these patents are often enforced also doesn’t help things.

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I started veggies from seed for the first time this year and was excited when I had a bunch of cucumbers, zucchini, and snap peas start to come up. I dutifully prepared the raised veggie beds and planted them out. Then the doggies dug up everything. Salvaged what I could and reshaped the soil. Doggies again, but this time just about all the cukes and zucchinis were obliterated and couldn’t be salvaged. I had to turn to a local nursery for their vegetable starts to get something in the ground.

I made an unrelated trip to HD about that time and they had an interesting 6-pack of mixed variety tomatoes, to include Roma, Early Girl, Celebrity, Red Cherries, and a couple of others. I only need and have the space for one of each and there was no way I could get them any cheaper than the 6-pack. I kept 4 of the varieties and gave the other two away.

That plus a little vermiculite/or perlite is what I normally use.

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I used Jiffy starter mix (coir, peat moss, vermiculite, lime) this year, and the tomatoes did great, lettuce did well, but peppers and spinach have struggled a bit, and none of my cabbage seeds even sprouted. I tried three different varieties, and the seeds were new, so don’t know what the problem is. Going to have to try a new mix next year.

Bell peppers didn’t do well at all compared to the hot’s and banana’s so, looks like I’ll have to visit my local nursery for them again this year. I tried Lady Belle (I think a Bonnie plant) last season, and they were very prolific from relatively small plants.

Without trying to get too political about it, patent laws are intended to spur innovation by allowing reasonable compensation for the work required to realize a good engineering concept.

However, even the early English patent laws were highly politicized. Fulton blocked some very useful innovations by other inventors on his steam engine by using the political clout of his financial backer.

I would like to see our own patent laws revisited because corporations are using their money to game the system in ways that are only about profit and not invention and innovation.

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I’ve had cabbage take upwards of three weeks to sprout…even with bottom heat.