Hi from southern Finland. I have been gardening for more than a decade, last 4 years more and more intensively. I did read about landrace gardening I think 3 years ago and I have (as well as plants) done some crossing towards starting a landrace, but this year is maybe first year I’m fully embracing it. Atleast in my own style. My main interest, besides growing my own food, is cold tolerance. I have always loved the exotic and that drives me in gardening too. I got started in c.moschata just because I read someone say in local facebook group that they need more heat and should be started early. So I take it as a challenge to make something that can be direct seeded and this year I have thousands of seeds from my own plants to trial. Summer here is similar (besides neigboring countries) to parts of Alaska, central Canada, parts of UK and possibly coastal central Europe. Season is basically june to august, although might not be as long and even if it’s longer temps in may/semptember are mostly well below +20C. Even the hardy plants like brassicas struggle to grow before mid may or after mid september. I only grow outdoors with plastic mulch and cloth when needed, which I loath to do, but you gotta start somewhere. Plan is to reduce use of plastics step by step. Most what I grow is considered impossible outdoors and usually grown in greenhouse so even growing them outdoors with little help is a win.
Tomatoes; one the easier “heat loving” plants I grow. Plan is to do something similar to Joseph and I do have some of his seeds to use as a base. This year I have dozens of varieties and some wilds that I plan to cross and next year re-cross to have 4 way crosses. Ultimate goal is to have something that could be direct seeded or atleast have as short transplant period as possible. Cropping period needs to be short so that there isn’t many green fruits to ripen indoors. At some point might divide to different groups based on fruit size and shelf life, but that comes later. This year I have some F2 crosses that plan to direct seed just to get feel how it works.
Peppers; I would like peppers to grow as well outdoor as tomatoes do at the moment. I have tested dozens of varieties over last few years and found some that have some potential. Have made some crosses, but main focus is this year. For this year I think I have around 80 varieties, about 20 baccatum and 60 annuum. Some wild too, including praetermissium that I include in the baccatum complex. Plan is to have landrace for both annuum and baccatum, although I’m not isolating them.
Melons and watermelons; I have grown them for 3 years now and have some mixing. So far I have used transplants except for a small direct seed trial last year that went well enough to do mainly direct seeding next year. Some new varieties I will start from transplant. They are still quite far from thriving here, but I can see path forward. Although cold summers are looming. Last year was quite hot by our stantards and direct seeded watermelon ripened barely in time. Melon took just little too long (but ripened after cold weather had setled).
Sweet potastoes; Have been growing them with some success for couple years, but they need quite a lot of help. Have had clear plastic tunnel to get them started, but last year I trialled 5 new varieties with just cloth. This year I should have around 15 varieties atleast and focus is in getting seeds, but also curious to see how well some varieties do that have quite a lot of hype for cooler climates.
Squash; as said, moschata is considered quite hard to grow here. Two years ago I tried direct seeding and although it was hot year only fruit had 7 viable seeds. This year I used those seeds and some previous years seeds, but instead used small transplants to reliably get seeds. Of those 7 seeds two were a lot more strong than others once they made fruits I could see that they were crosses with other squash I later realised was moschata also. There was also another type that was clearly from other type (green striped cushaw) I grew couple years before so it had crossed atleast couple times. This year I have quite a many new varieties to add to the mix. Maxima and pepo aren’t as hard to grow here, but there really aren’t varieties that are bred here. I would have enough squash to eat even with moschata, but can’t help myself now. 2021 I gave some pumpkin to my brother who grew from it’s seeds last year and it was an interesting cross between more normal round pumpkin and candy roaster. So ofcourse I have to grow those and got some 10 more varieties to add to the mix. Pepos I don’t like as much, but some to grow as summer squash. It could do better in our climate. many times they stop producing if it gets rainy and cool (which might be to do with pollinators).
Ground cherry; have some 4-5 species, some of which I have couple varieties/acceccions. There don’t seem to be that many domesticated varieties so mainly starting with wilds or half wilds. Goal would be to have little bigger fruit and more determined growth and cropping. At the moment what I have grown do make quite good harvests even outdoors, but they use too much energy to make flowers and fruits that never have change to ripen.
Corn; no big plans, I just like to grow it. Sweetcorn was one of the first heat loving plants I have been able to grow. I have grown sweet painted hills landrace from my own seeds so I’m landracing it to my climate, but I haven’t added to it so far. Flint/flour corn (not sure which) I have grown atomic orange which has been fastest in my climate. Might try to mix it with painted mountain, but timing is a bit problematic as I don’t have isolation distance to sweetcorn and I don’t want them crossing. So whatever I grow needs to do flowering 10-15 days before sweetcorn which means they need to be really fast. About 40 days for tassel to emerge even in cooler conditions.
Eggplants; I was surprised how well some of them grew last I year, although many had quite expected results. Even got some viable seeds which I was not sure about beforehand. So this year I have many more varieties and plan to make as many crosses as possible. I had never really grown or eaten eggplants before and I found that I like them more than I expected. I grew them just because they are supposed to be hard to grow outdoors.
Basil; it can grow quite well if it’s warm summer, but might struggle or die on cooler summers. Bought several varieties and species. One was F3 grex, one was interesting because it had quite big flowers for basil. Next year try to get as many seeds as possible, make seed increase next year and then possibly direct seeding to see which survive.
Okra; this is slightly crazier experiment. I have tried okra couple times with not good result, but I thought I could give it another go with kandahar pendi landrace.
I was not going to do others, but it’s a long winter here and you get all sorts of ideas when you have too much time to think. Many things I grow in any case so I thought I could get more varieties and save seeds (or root to plant next season for seeds). So now I have dozens of varieties in salads, spinach, radish, carrots, beetroots and parsnips plus some broccoli and fennel. Salads, spinach and radish are in a way tolerant to our climate, except they bolt easily. Especially now that there has been many hot and dry summers. We don’t really have spring season so I need to be able to grow them through summer if I wan’t to grow them. Atleast they should be easy to get seeds from. Fennel also bolts easily because of long days and I’m not sure if varieties that I have do well here. I have grown one variety several years because it doesn’t bolt as easily and now try saving seeds from it if others fail. Carrots should be easy to grow, but they have lot’s of damage from carrot root fly and hopefully can fix that. Parsnips and beetroots are fairly easy to grow. Season is maybe slighly too short for parsnips, but mainly growing just to have something that is bred here.
So far I haven’t started much, only some sweet potatoes that didn’t have sprouts yet. I generally try to use as little effort as possible and rather have plants take most of our short summer. I have some seeds to trade/give away, even more after this season.
