Ask Joseph Lofthouse Anything -- Live Zoom Q&A

General Discussions Events
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Feel curious about landrace gardening? Want to discover how to grow resilient, locally-adapted food with less fuss and more joy? Join Going To Seed for a live Ask Me Anything Zoom session with Joseph, author of Landrace Gardening, on Tuesday April 29th at 5 PM Pacific Time.

Whether you explore Joseph’s work for the first time or continue along your own landrace journey, this session offers a chance to connect directly, ask questions, and hear stories from his experience. Bring your curiosity, your wildest gardening questions, and your seed dreams — Joseph welcomes all of it.

Mark your calendar and enjoy this rare, real-time conversation! :herb:

I’ll also watch this thread for questions to incorporate into the discussion.

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I’m curious about how your practices are evolving. I remember you used to prepare your annual beds with regular tilling, but more recently you’ve spoken about being inspired by no-till and regenerative methods. Are you moving toward more polycultures and companion planting guilds as part of your landrace systems? And do you think this direction could be overwhelming for beginners who are just starting to explore adaptive gardening?

What’s one mindset shift that helps everyone — whether you’re planting your first seeds or managing a farm — move toward more adaptive, resilient, decentralized growing?

Editing to add another question that really hits home for me personally, and that I am struggling with the most at the moment.

How to make an income and support ourselves financially? Can you elaborate more on your “taking a vow of poverty”, while helping those who no longer want to live in poverty? One barrier to entry into the world of adaptation gardening that I see when i try to share about it is the money aspect. As soon as people around me get any hint of there not being good ways to make $$$, they seem to disregard it, not take it seriously, or no longer take what i say seriously.

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Could you give us an update on the promiscuous tomato project since the book was published?

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I would love to hear how you balance the “I want to feed my family” with “I want things that grow happily here” since that 2nd desire sometimes puts the first at risk for a few years. Yes, having the long view is necessary. Is there anything else that has helped you balance these two?

Alas, my in-laws are in town then, so I’m not likely to make it. Will you record it? Might there be a replay? Please?

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  1. Which Wild Edibles are Worth Domesticating? I’m interested in Domesticating Chickweed for Larger Greens, turning them as big as Collard or Kale Greens, are you too?

  2. Have you tried Mixing pollens to create a 5 squash interspecies landrace?

  3. What are your thoughts different species pollen mixing Tricking flowers into accepting foreign species pollen as to not reject it’s own? Using Mentor Pollination to bypass hybridization barriers.

  4. Is domesticating Bi-Colored Black Nightshades (Solanum physalifolium) worth it? Do the fruits taste good?

  5. What are your thoughts on Grafting Tomato or Black Nightshade Scions onto Super Cold Hardy Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara)? Any Horizontal Gene Flow Potential there?

  6. What exactly went wrong with introducing wild Melons into your muskmelon landrace? and why did you trow them all away? Bitterness is well behaved in Cucumis thus you can easily select it out right?

  7. Have you tried crossing Kiwano (Cucumis metuliferus) x Muskmelons (Cucumis melo)? Any thoughts/ideas?

  8. Can we domesticate Potato Berries for Edible Sweet Melon Flavored Berries? How do I go about taste testing toxicity to I can select against it safely?

  9. Can we select for Early Squash maturity by harvesting unripe fruits? Can we gain the best of both worlds doing this? Will it Work with Melons, Tomatoes & other “ripen off the vine” fruits too?

  10. Have you tried freezing Pollen to remedy off sync flowering hybridization barriers?

  11. Have you tried crossing all 6 Brassica species into 1 landrace? Have you also tried intergeneric crossed with Raphanus x Eruca x Diplotaxis x Sinapis? All are possible & fit into the Brassica Triangle!

  12. Is there a point where you can’t landrace garden your way out of a Natural Selection pressure? Deer & Rabbits keeping eating everything, spikey, nasty even slightly poisonous plants. You solved Racoons going after Corn unintentionally via taller robust corn stalks.

  13. Can Turnips (Pastinaca sativa) cross with Cow-Parsnip (Heracleum spp.), both phylogenically close to each other.

  14. What are your thoughts on speed breeding pumping out Multiple Generations per year to speed run a Landrace? Method involves Blast Plants for 22 Hours of Sunlight per day to get to seed quicker (Or shut off sinlight to trigger short day flowering).

  15. Have you tried Mentor Grafting? Grafting Facilitates Horizontal Gene Flow & a Young Wide Hybrid Scion on a Mature well established rootstock can Mentor the young hybrid scion to resemble the rootstock because Young Wide Hybrids are very Plastid.

  16. Have you tried breeding Carrots for the Edibles Greens, Shoots, Flowers & seeds as a spice? Queen’s Anne Lace wouldn’t hurt this selection landrace right?

  17. How do you taste a Root Crop but also select for it at the same time? In most root crops the stored energy from the root gets sent into the shoot thus can we just taste the shoot to select for good tasting roots? Does Shoot Flavor translate into Root Flavor?

  18. Are Hybrid Swarms simply Speciation Events? Is Landrace Gardening Evolving the crop species or re-domesticating them?

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Results in the garden can vary for many different reasons. How does one prove to themselves (and others) that an adaptation gardening project has been successful?

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Great questions. We’ll talk tomorrow.

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pastinaca = parsnip.

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good catch, I meant to say Parsnip instead of turnip

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I missed this, I guess no recording was made?

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I have the recording. I’m working on turning it into a podcast. I travel to Baker Creek to present at the Spring Planting Festival on May 3. When i get back, i expect to post the podcast

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Why was your role in developing Round Up not made publicly available until recently? Do you feel it was deceitful it was not disclosed in the beginning? For those of us who supported the program under this false pretense is there any path of recourse?

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Julia BohemianHerbology:

The darkness that shadowed my early life plays a central role in who I am, and why I advocate for adaptation agriculture. As I step into the role of elder, I feel compelled towards open communication and clear warnings about the dangers we face. Dangers that I have experienced in my own body and soul.

Glyphosate was already well established before I started working as a chemist.

While in high school, I worked on developing a boron analog of glyphosate, in which we replaced one of the carbon atoms in the molecule with a boron molecule. We then tested it on beans to see how it would react differently than glyphosate. We published that work in the chemical journals. It’s there for anyone to look up.

After university, I spent 9 months in the QA department at a pharmaceutical company testing the peritoneal dialysis solution for defects in manufacturing.

Then I worked for 9 months, before Internet, reading Russian language publications, and compiling a dossier (spying) on Russian firms, and people.

Then I returned to the lab, doing pesticide registration studies.

Early on, I received plants from around the world. I extracted the oils and alkaloids from then, and submitted them for testing to isolate biologically active poisons. Neem oil spray became commercially available because of my work. Mostly though, my work focused on synthetic poisons. I became aware of the deep lies of corporations.

Then they transferred me to the chemical weapons department. My work transitioned into black ops. I had to keep secrets from my loved ones. I became aware of the deep lies of politicians.

Then they transferred me to the biological weapons department. That very day, I walked out of the building and never returned. I haven’t used pesticides since then – 26 years, 10 months, and 23 days. And have only used one pharmaceutical, (5 days of antibiotics).

I continually strive to become more aligned with life, with community, and with full conscious awareness. I smile, when people accuse me of hypocrisy, because it fills my bumbling, crazy life. I get to smile at myself, and at them, and then move forward as best I can with my current understanding on how the world works, and the role I might play in helping things work more harmoniously.

Telling my full story seems like a way to continue my penance for the dark choices of a foolish child.

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You probably would not even be here doing this if you had not lived the experiences you did.

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Is there any way to see the video? It wasn’t a good hour for us Europeans! :sob:

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Joseph will make it available as a podcast in a couple of weeks. We’ll announce it when that happens. Thanks for your interest!

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wow, is it really that cuttroat?

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Arthur Wierzchos:

Europe transformed my thinking towards no-till and regenerative agriculture.

As a child, I was brainwashed by my society into turning my fields into a moonscape before planting, and dosing everything in poisons. I dropped the poisons decades ago. Now I move towards dropping the tilling.

As I get older, I’m moving more towards horticulture, and less towards agriculture. That means fewer annuals and more trees and perennials. I move towards milpa and/or food forest. It’s easier for me to keep trees weeded and watered adequately than fussy annuals.

Since adapting landrace methods, poly-cultures have been common for me, but that’s things like beans with foxtail grass, lambsquarters, red-root amaranth, and bindweed. I’m moving more towards intentional poly-cultures.

A mindset shift that I think would help everyone is to stop fussing with things like purity and isolation distances.

The transition to no-till seems overwhelming to me. This spring, I tilled 1/3 of my garden, instead of the whole thing. Hedging my bets. I’ll struggle through it.

My vow of poverty is only about me, and my redemption from living a wicked life as a chemist. I don’t expect anyone to follow my lead, though it has been a beautiful and satisfying journey for me, filled with grace. Many farmers make plenty of money growing genetically diverse landraces. World-wide, 80% of seeds that get planted never touch the commercial seed markets.

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Patate

The Profoundly Promiscuous and Totally Tasty Tomatoes Project continues. It captured my heart. No matter how old and feeble I get, or how distracted by my duties as an elder, I expect to continue that work.

In 2021, 2022, and 2023, I selected heavily for a self-incompatible population, and stabilized a selfing population for great flavor.

I expect that a major seed company will release a self-compatible descendant of these tomatoes for spring 2026. We haven’t named them yet. They taste amazing! They thrive in damp areas with high disease pressure.

In the 2024 growing season, Going To Seed arranged for 6 farmers to grow out the most elite promiscuous lines of these tomatoes. These farms subjected the tomatoes to fierce disease tolerance trials that I can’t conduct at my place. We culled heavily to eliminate selfing-type flowers. The seed was shared through the Landrace Seed Share. Hopefully, some of the people that got the seed will find amazing things, and share the seed back into the seed share.

In the 2025 growing season, those same six farmers grow the pooled seed again. We intend to subject them to even more rigorous selection for self-incompatibility, flavor, and productivity.

There are two other populations that I really love due to flavor: The self-incompatible line crossed with Solanum pimpinellifolium, which I call Hummingbird (which I shared widely), and a similar line crossed with SunSugar, which I haven’t named or shared.

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Rachael

If I buy seeds from a catalog, 50% to 75% of varieties will fail. With tomatoes, 95% will fail.

For me, the only safe path forward is to plant locally-adapted, genetically-diverse landraces. They lived well enough to produce seeds last year, they are very likely to do it again this year.

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