She spent January reading books about vegetable breeding borrowed from the library. Some were written for hobby gardeners, others for small seed companies, and several contradicted one another so thoroughly that she read the same chapter twice to be certain. She called Lena Ortiz with questions and learned that a selection line could show promise for years before its characteristics were predictable enough to sell as stable. She learned to think in generations rather than individual seasons and to separate observations she could prove from things she merely hoped were happening.
The hardest concept to accept was that selecting the right fruit was only part of the problem. A delicious tomato grown on a sickly plant could pass on weaknesses that made it impractical for future growers. A robust vine covered in beautiful fruit could disappoint every customer who tasted it. She needed to observe both the plant and the fruit, not choose from appearance alone.
Mary Ann laid a large sheet of brown paper on the kitchen table and drew columns for seed source, emergence date, plant health, flavor, and fruit defects. She assigned temporary names to the lines so she would stop confusing them: Red One, Yellow Stripe, Dark Shoulder, and Little Paste. She also kept three other groups for comparison, although they had performed less well. Each line had a dedicated envelope and a separate page, with enough empty space for several seasons of notes.
She thought about buying a greenhouse. After checking the prices, she bought inexpensive shelves and a set of grow lights instead. Walter would have approved of the practical choice, though he might have complained about the electricity bill. Gus watched the installation from the hallway and moved when a shelf nearly tipped against the wall. Mary Ann laughed aloud, a sound that startled her because there had been nobody present to encourage it.
In early spring Larry brought another small load of clean cannery material, but Mary Ann was already changing her approach. Instead of spreading indiscriminately, she gathered samples and tried separating seed from the pulp in a controlled way. She remembered Samuel's jars, the change in smell, and the way he used to look for seeds that settled when the gel loosened. Her first attempt was a disaster. She left a batch too long, lost track of the date during a busy stretch at the feed store, and found it spoiled when she returned.
The smell alone sent her out onto the porch with the jar at arm's length. She disposed of the ruined batch rather than trying to salvage it, then scrubbed the work surface twice. Later she wrote the failure down in the notebook with unusual precision, embarrassed that after all her winter reading she had managed to repeat such a simple mistake. She put a calendar beside the next set of containers and paid more attention to cleanliness, timing, and drying before storage.