Talk:Season extension

Section titled "Growth, harvest, or both" does not verify

@Quercus solaris: It's a lovely essay but it is original research which you first inserted in 2016 without any citations at all [1], followed by a Coleman citation about two weeks later [2], and Bubel about 6 weeks after that. However, neither Coleman nor Bubel cover the concept of 'harvest extension versus growing season extension'. Re Bubel, I'm sorry, but sprouting from already harvested and stored vegetable roots for mid-winter "green salad shoots" is NOT "extending harvest" and Bubel doesn't label it as such; the author calls it "forcing" (chapter 10). The topic has always been called "extending the season", not extending growth nor extending harvest. Your paragraph attempts to make a distinction between the two when the sources do not make any such distinction.

I have, in fact, previously read the entire Coleman book cover to cover. I also acquired both print books (Coleman and Bubel) from the library earlier this year to work on this article. I then discovered I could read them online at Open Library as well as search for certain keywords, such as "extend". Today I searched again for these concepts in both books, and neither book appears to cover this topic.

I dispute your content. Per WP:ONUS, "The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." If I have missed something in the books, feel free to present a citation showing a page number so that it can be verified.

Grorp (talk) 00:42, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Grorp: Very well; sorry for the snark in that edit summary (regarding "read or not"); that was overly hasty and pissy of me, in retrospect. I feel quite certain that Coleman 2009 explains why a distinction can be made between growing season extension and classes of harvest season extension that are not growing season extension; and that the core concept mentioned in my edit is the core concept that Coleman explains, in paraphrased summation. The Wikipedia article has a lot more value to readers if it explains why rather than solely stating "a distinction can be made" without explaining how, or why it matters. The answer to why it matters cuts to the very core of Coleman's and others' preference for the term biologic as more apt that organic: humans aligning their efforts with nature's forces in pursuit of human interests (a winning battle), instead of humans fighting quixotically against nature, which is a losing battle. That is an important theme in Coleman's thinking, per multiple books of his (eg, 2009 and 2018, passim). I have not read the book since 2016 so I will have to dig into it if I am to provide the requested page ranges. If I get time to do so anytime soon, I will. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:31, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Quercus solaris: I think I see what you meant to describe in the section. Coleman often uses the phrase "extend the harvest season". Too, the wiki article doesn't actually cover any "WHY would anyone want to extend seasons". Coleman's Winter Harvest book covers the topic for both the commercial market gardener (his own operation is fairly large scale) as well as a home gardener. A commercial grower would want to extend the season to keep income coming in through the colder month as long as possible, then earlier in the spring before his competitors, thus shortening that period of the year when commercial growers typically don't have any income at all. And for the home gardener so that the family can have FRESH vegetables [almost] year-round.

Perhaps you were thinking of Coleman's book "Four-season Harvest"? It even has a section about forcing sprouting of root crops just like Bubel. Check out the Open Library copy of it and search for "extend". I'm beginning to think that was the book you meant to cite.

Adding "reasons why" to this article sounds like an excellent idea (rather than a 'comparison' of extended growing season versus extended harvest), then adding some of the Coleman ideas, making sure to knit them with some of the other articles. I've found wiki's gardening articles to be in sad shape (compared with the commercial agriculture articles which are jam-packed with info). Ugh, don't get me started about the Row cover and Cloche (agriculture) articles which are related to this topic; I took one look at how much work they needed and ran away.

Ultimately, this article is titled "season extension" which means extending the growing season one gets by virtue of geography and climate. Whether that means growing tomatoes longer than your native warm months (because you brought them into a hot house, or because you germinated them inside 2 months before planting outside) or whether it means your northerly 6 months summer (because you have 6 months winter) is effectively lengthened by several months because you use constructions that mitigate your cooler months, it's really the same as "growing season extension". "Succession planting" is a "harvest season extender", but does not lengthen a growing season. Maybe we're talking about two entirely different concepts. Can they fit into the same wiki article? Maybe we could construct an outline of how this article should eventually be structured. That would probably be easier to work with. Grorp (talk) 05:16, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Grorp: Agreed that an outline would be good. Regarding covering the "expanded growing window" and "expanded harvesting window" concepts, and whether it would happen within a single article or across two articles — either method can be fine if the WP:Summary style and WP:SPINOFF themes are applied, with links connecting where needed. The term "season extension" is etymonically vague enough that predictably it might always be taken by some percentage of people as inherently hypernymic to both of those concepts, but that assumption (of semantic field breadth) doesn't hurt anything as long as any page titled "season extension" duly handled the ontology ("what is X, what is Y, and how are they related") by pointing with links to the relevant articles (per WP:Summary style). (That theme recurs a lot in natural language, regarding map–territory relations.)

Anyhow, the core of the "expanded harvesting window" concept is that the plant grows/matures during a time window and then enters another time window that is a long phase of still-alive senescence, instead of being harvested right away, for the purpose of storing it in usable condition (that is, warding off decomposition) until needed later. The essence is using the plant's life itself as the food preservation method instead of refrigeration or canning as the less preferable alternative methods.

I too share (1) the goal that Wikipedia would do a good job of coverage and (2) the annoyance at how far away that goal can be (for any of various topics) and that I lack time to build it all myself. Someone might reply, "Who cares whether Wikipedia is built or not, because anyone who wants to know some area of knowledge can just read the cited books themselves?" My answer is commentized inside this page if anyone wants it (important but TL;DR). Quercus solaris (talk) 15:23, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Quercus solaris: Your paragraph 2 makes sense, but para 1 goes completely over my head with esoteric language/concepts. I'm just asking for outline ideas. Grorp (talk) 04:07, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

@Grorp: Hi, That's fine, the concepts in paragraph 1 are directly relevant to the question of "which terms will people label which concepts with." It's just an explanation of how those choices can be validly different, and how the terminology difference is nonetheless overcome anyway. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:23, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Advanced Writing Science 2023

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MangoSpider3000 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by MangoSpider3000 (talk) 21:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)