'Landrace Gardening' -- alternate outreach -- 'Adaptation Agriculture'

General Discussions
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Landrace is a useful word, it’s easy to use, it sounds good, but in terms of meaning it’s a bit limited.

  • it’s very hard to translate to other languages (e.g. french)
  • just like heirloom, it sounds like something old that developed over many decades somewhere without having the goal to create a landrace or heirloom
  • it may be limiting in terms of meaning. Does my population have to be attached to a specific piece of land? What if I have a seed population that does well on my land AND on someone else’s land across the country? What if I’m not attached to some land?

If you look at the GTS website front page, the word “landrace” is not there, and I think it’s a good thing. Instead the page promotes adaptation, community, diversity, etc. What we’re doing is based on many concepts which I think can’t be summed up in one word.

Maybe if I was forced to choose one idea to promote it wouldn’t be “landraces” but instead “seed saving”. Once people save seeds (without all the restrictions imposed such as purity, population size), then we have a form of adaptation, we have the first steps towards landraces etc.

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I’ve noticed that some of the big seed companies have F1 crosses of poplar heirloom tomatoes :tomato:

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True…, often times they take advantage of a sever disbalance in an ecosystem. For example excessive fertilizer/nitrogen run off creates the right conditions for algae blooms. Abundance of deer favor “Invasive Species”.
Sometimes it’s not fair but eventually everything balances out again.

I’ve heard in the UK, the Japanese Knotweed there is all just a single clone!? Crazy how such a lack of diversity gets encouraged in an ecosystem but I wonder if it’s just a matter of time until a disease wipes it all out like how it did with the Irish Potato Famine.

There’s always that risk with severely inbred/low geneticly diverse populations.
At the same time, so many wild populations could benefit from diversified genetics.
But it’s really hard to diversify your way out of an Animal Abundance problem, like deer unless it’s too strongly flavored or crazy thorny.

I agree, altho if taxonmist notice them first, they would call them subspecies/varieties. We would call them Landrace Populations. In many reguards, there is no big distinction between a subspecies/variety or a landrace population. Even no big distinction among species of a species complex or section. Of course it all depends on which crop/species you are talkin about. Not every species weighs the same, some species taxonomic boxes contain more diversity than 5 “different” species.

Just look at Brassica oleraceae, Cucumis melo, and Cucurbita pepo, each just a single species yet contain more diversity than a single species of the Solanum nigrum Complex or the Amaranthus hybridus complex. It would take all species of the Solanum nigrum complex to even match the level of diversity in Cucumis melo.
This is cuz domesication often involves crossing many different species/subspecies/varieties, then other people also did the same thing in some other part of the world, they meet, trade seeds & Landrace it to their taste buds & preferences.

In some ways, we a Landrace Gardeners are doing the same thing. Very thankful for the GoingToSeed Organization, it’s truly like a living seed bank. Because of GTS, so many local subspecies are created!

I see, but do see people call them Hierloom mixes instead of landrace mixes? They’re using the term heirloom even tho what they have is a grex/potential landrace?

Ah… that makes so much sence! That’s probably where all the fear of F1 Hybrids come. They probably think something is wrong, like the seed companies did something to these seeds to prevent you from saving seeds. CMS doesn’t help that case.

I agree, Very good point, but then we also shouldn’t complain that Landrace Gardening is a very niche subcommunity of a bigger gardening/permaculture community.

In someways, the slow growth is more managable than an viral explosion of everyone getting on board. As is often the case when things explode in vitality, the core gets lost anyways. Foraging became somewhat viral and now Amazon is flooded with Fake Ai written Foraging Books. I wouldn’t want that to happen to this community, it’s a very special unique place we built here & I’m very thankful to have been part of it.

ooh! Now that’s a really good point. maybe then it would be a landrace complex? Much like how a species complex can populate a whole region. Who said land had to be limited to your garden plot? It can encompase the whole County/State/Country or just eco-region.

There’s also the term, Ecotype? But not sure if it fits here.

Bingo! I keep telling many seedsaver that they are also plant breeding too!
The only seed saving rule we need to remember is to not trow away the seed :sob:.
Yes seed saving is literally that simple.

ooh! perhaps consumers want improved herilooms? Makes me all the more excited to make landrace x heirloom tomtoes.

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I have read informal reports that some seed catalogs are intentionally listing heirlooms as F1s. The theory put forward is that it discourages customers from saving seeds. I think there could be some truth to that, I’m not sure what I think. I have seen many unintentional errors in seed catalogs so I could believe it’s another example of that.

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Heard of those but never experienced it personnally: some friends market gardeners telling me they were testing the next generation (F2) just to see if diversity showed up, and frequently not. So it was either hybrids of not much difference, but what would be the point? Or a scam, so which should be. Would make sense also as those seeds are pricier.

I’ve tried 4 grafting material, with a dominance of sol. habrocaites this year in F2 stage, and they were hybrids: so much diversity is showing up this year. Arnold, Bowman, Fortamino, Maxifort : all were real F1s last year.

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Interesting… does majority of the customer base not understand? I think I live under a rock :sweat_smile:, more specifically a Landrace Plant Breeding Rock. I keep forgetting almost no one knows about this stuff. I think it says a lot about this special community we have built here (I keep forgetting outside this community, everyone still stuck at “Can’t save seed from F1 Hybrid”).

I hope this is the case, I want my heirlooms diversified. I’ve also heard rumors that the Kumato is secretly a heirloom, I got this great tasting tomato from the grocery store.
I’ve also saved other grocery store tomatoes that I know contain F2 hybrids seeds inside. Super excited to create the craziest hybrid swarm ever, Heirlooms x F1Hybrids x Grocery Store F2Hybrids x Landrace x Wild Species x anything else with good tasting fruit. Then to generate even more Diversity, mentor grafting x mentor pollination to create wider intergeneric or intersection hybrids.
So far removed from “True-To-Type” that new species are created, not just species but whole new genus too! Eventually maybe even a whole new subtribe too!

wait… so in other words the commercial F1 Hybrids lack diversity?
The way Heirloom Seed Saver theory goes, I thought F1 Hybrids was a crazy explosion of diversity because of things like “You don’t know what your gonna get”.

I keep hearing the F1-hybrid Sungold Tomato is like the BEST Flavored Cherry Tomato but I don’t understand how much of a difference it will make in the following generations? You still get a good tasting tomato right? How much “True-To-Type” are Heirloom Seed Savers expecting? Probably wayyy less than a Wild x Domestic Tomato right?

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What time is about 40 years younger I used to love to save the seeds of hybrid F1 tomatoes just to see what I could get and then save the f2 of them and they by then usually you get a lot of different ones and weren’t really f ones at all they were just marked if once so you never know what you’re going to getbut they always came out the same

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115

Impressed that this thread is still going, and i admit that i haven’t read it all, but i just want to throw my hat in with the “locally adapted" or “local adaptation" camp as a descriptor for “gardening". The word “agriculture" makes me think of “big ag” or just some big tractor operation in general. If you want more people involved, keep it simple: GARDENING, and who doesn’t love LOCAL? Local honey? Local outdoor organic? “Locally adapted” is about as good as it gets without risk of sounding pretentious or being involved with something that has a barrier to entry.

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Not a plant, but I have wondered for a long time if giant pandas are in desperate need of more genetic diversity. They’re highly specialized — too specialized — and thus are in serious danger of extinction. And on top of that, it’s really tough to get them to breed in captivity. I think it’s possible they have become way too specialized and way too genetically uniform to be able to adapt to changing climate conditions. Which is a crying shame, because they’re such nifty creatures.

There are probably a lot of plants in a similar situation — and I’m worried that many of the best native food species of the North American prairie may be in that position by now, given just how close to extinction so many of them have been driven by the monocrop agriculture paradigm over the past hundred years. :sob:

As far as F1s go, yeah, I know what you guys mean — I just blithely ignore that label these days. If it’s really an F1, that’s a bonus (more genetic diversity to work with!), and if it isn’t, okay, I’ll get something true-to-type that I liked. I’m fine with it either way!

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Fantastic! That abides by K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) principals.
After all that is the end goal of a landrace.
Hopefully “Locally Adapted Heirlooms” isn’t confusing & useful to others who don’t know this?

You’re right! So many “Native”/Wild crops are at risk of extinction, mostly because of all the available land is used for agriculture. Prairie Turnips (Pediomelum spp.) are a really good example of this in action + so many others.

I really hope more gardeners start growing these, they could function as a living seed bank, following the same example as heirloom seed savers (Many stories about a variety thought to be extinct was found in an abounded garden or like 1 person still growing it).

There’s also the idea that many wild species may be very genetically uniform kind of like Nature’s version of a heirloom (Altho typically not as genetically inbred) and could really benefit from diversification/hybrid swarms. Some species are of course highly specialized within their niche (Like the equivalent of Bush Beans crossing with Pole/Vine Beans, there’s a reason why gardeners keep these separate & likely similar reasons why American Hazelnut species are kept separate from beaked hazelnuts.)

:laughing: exactly! Usually by a small present-age (Compared to wild x domestic crosses) but still good!
It’s all about how much “True-to-Type” you value. I’m sure there’s many people who like certain crops as heirlooms and others as landraces. For example Many heirloom gardeners let their basils or wildflowers go wild & cross but are very strict on Tomatoes.

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Prairie turnip is the first species I thought of when I was saying that, too. It’s soooooo rare, and the seeds are so hard to find, and it’s such a valuable food species — and it used to be incredibly plentiful! I’m so incredibly grateful to the Lakota people for continuing to grow it and keep it thriving on the (very little) land they have been allowed to control. I wish that when the European settlers had come to the Americas, they had approached with humility and a desire to learn from the indigenous people and to create mutually beneficial relationships for all humans and for all ecosystems. The potential for win-win-win-win was always there. This planet would have increased in greater and greater abundance for all. Can you imagine the extraordinary domesticated plant (and animal!) species we might have had by now?

We can’t fix the mistakes of the past, but we can start working to build a better future, and I recommend we all do whatever we can to move in that direction. As humans who love growing plants, one way we can help everyone is to look at endangered ecosystems with similar climates to our own, research what species grow there that we and others value, and try to find as many of those species as possible to introduce to our homes.

We can’t be the Svalbard Seed Vault, but maybe all of us together, doing our own little piece, can do something even better: keep those plants alive now, not just as seeds that were adapted to yesterday, but as adult plants that are adapted to today, making seeds that are ready to adapt to tomorrow.

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So are they maintain a landrace of it? Perhaps this explains the “other species” which might actually be cultivars/landraces bred by the Lakota people that Botanist now classify as separate species?
This kind of thinking makes me wonder how many “Species” are actual feral/semi-wild domesticates crops. Pawpaws & Mayapples come to mind, why do certain patches of pawpaws taste so good & have significantly larger fruit compared to others? Maybe they are the feral decedents of cultivars/landraces bred & selected by Native Americans?
Perennials have a longer “revert back to wild state period” than annuals, hence why most lost of crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex are annuals (Surely perennials like Pawpaws were part of it too). Well at least that’s my thinking.

Me too! I’m sure some did but Humans aren’t perfect. They had a lot to teach each other. What sad is most of the knowledge/seeds are lost/forgotten (Especially on the east coast since they were hit first). This is why there is more Knowledge preserved on Wild Edibles in the west vs in the east.

:heart_eyes:, but thankfully we can know create/continue it ourselves while preserving what was loss. I want to domesticate so many wild edibles because they have potential to be fantastic crops. The same love, energy & attention put into what made our domesticated crops great can be put into the wild edibles to make them great too!
Of the wild edibles I want to domesticated, here’s a just few I think have HUGE potential! (Not including all others + many others domesticated crops that could benefit from diversification/further selection)!

  1. Mayapples (Podophyllum spp.)
  2. Hog Peanut (Amphicarpea spp.)
  3. Fuzzy Bean (Strophostyles spp.)
  4. Woodnettle (Laportea canadensis)
  5. Mitsuba (Cryptotaenia spp.)
  6. Lambsqauters (Chenopodium spp.)
  7. Purslane (Portulaca spp.)
  8. Wineberry x Black Raspberry (Rubus spp.)
  9. Highway Mustard (Coincya monensis)

Fantastic! Living Plants + Living seed exchange network (Functioning as a living seedbank) + Cold/storage seed bank all help further the goal of preserving valuable genetics & seeds for everyone!

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And let’s not forget Canada lettuce (Lactuca canadensis), which Samuel Thayer says is better-tasting than any domesticated lettuce. Let’s breed that for even better flavor (and adaptability), too!

Yes, I think you’re right that there are probably a ton of plants that indigenous people were breeding. And, joyfully, a lot of those treasures are still out there. Whenever we find something wonderful, I think it’s well worth assuming we are standing on the shoulders of giants, and take time to feel profound gratitude for their hard work that created that legacy. And then ponder our hopes that our own creative work will someday benefit other people far off in the future who have never even heard of our names.

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Yes! I was also thinking the same thing, especially as some one who finds regular lettuce very boring & eh (With a faint bitterness sometimes).

I keep wondering why Sam Thayer says it taste even better than domesticated type? I feel like this can’t be but then again it’s the only species with Bronze Latex right? I just never tried and I need to taste it to believe it. If it taste good, it might actually interest me enough to seriously breed lettuce (Cuz it always was a boring crop for me)!

Indeed, some however are lost (Altho maybe not fully as some may still be living in soil seedbanks (Like how 30-50 year old weed seeds show up after tilling) or claypots not yet discovered).

I think we are, most of them are forgotten but the impact they leave is still here with us.
We have so much to learn, everyday I’m learning something new, it’s fun!

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My suspicion is that the bronze latex has something to do with the flavor (maybe it’s sweeter and/or less bitter?). But I don’t know! I just know that I want to try that species. :grin:

I quite like lettuce, so I’m trying to turn it into a volunteer weed. I’ve got a green-and-red phenotype that is willing to volunteer in places I don’t water, even in full sun, and seems to be doing quite well — it’s got a mild bitter aftertaste, so I’d rather have something that doesn’t, but it’s still a promising start to a volunteer landrace. My main challenge with lettuce is that prickly lettuce is a very, very, very, very common weed in my ecosystem, and it’s both nastily thorny and tastes nasty, so I have to be really on top of pulling it out of both my yard and my neighbors’ yards to make sure it doesn’t cross with my domesticated lettuce population that I want to eat. Still, the presence of prickly lettuce as a weed is what convinced me that domesticated lettuce could probably be turned into a weed here too, so I won’t complain about its prevalence too vigorously. :wink:

It’s fascinating how the remnants of the past can sometimes become both ingredients and inspiration for creating new beautiful things, isn’t it? I love how much wonder and joy there is to be found in adaptation plant breeding! :blush:

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If cultivated x prickly lettuce crosses happen, can’t you just reselect?
I remember lofthouse was working on that & realized he couldn’t test them all because he didn’t feel good afterwards (From the bitter types, even just tasting & not really eating a bunch).

I don’t know anyone who tried crossing the bronze latex good lettuce with the domesticates, you might be among the first. Unfortunately I never found them :sob:, only the Prickly Lettuce.

Same here, the possibilities are truly endless! So much potential & that potential gets multiplied with collaborators sharing the same goals.

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Sure, I could reselect, but I don’t particularly want to have to. Prickly lettuce is covered in thorns, and is inedibly bitter (and also mildly poisonous). If I get any crosses, I intend to cull them. I do not want thorns or inedibility in my landrace. Especially since I seem to be doing all right with tasty domesticated lettuces that aren’t crossed with the prickly ones at all. :smiley:

As Joseph Lofthouse pointed out in his book: if you don’t want a trait in your landrace, not introducing it in the first place will save you a lot of work down the line. :wink:

I certainly do want to try Lactuca canadensis, though. I doubt I’ll actively try to cross the two lettuce species, because I’m likely to think it’s too much bother during the time they’re flowering, but if a cross does happen, I’ll either go, “Oh, neat!” and make note of it and save extra seeds, or else not notice it at all and eat and save seeds from all the plants happily. :laughing: Whether the two species cross or not, I want ’em both to be feral and delicious in my garden. I have pretty much exactly the same attitude with everything, especially Brassica oleracea, rapa, and napus. :wink:

That’s one of the things that’s so nifty about landraces. If you want to, you can choose to actively cross things, which is nifty — and if you want to, you can choose to lackadaisically just introduce all the species that interest you and save seeds from plants you like and not bother about whether the species happen to cross or not, just so long as the plants are happy and you are, too. I love how adaptable gardening can be! :seedling:

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I think they do not. Understand. Much of anything. I had a discussion with someone who was a longtime gardener, and reasonably intelligent person…They complained about some things not growing well for them. I brought up seed saving to develop plants adapted to their growing conditions, and oh no, they won’t come back true. Umm, true wasn’t working, remember? But mind was shut. Discussion over.

I’m not familiar with the Prairie Turnip, although the internet tells me it should be growing where I live. I will watch for it next spring.

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I think the change will come from open-minded and experiment-driven type people teaching the younger generations.

It’s difficult to break through the years of propaganda that has been ingrained into the majority of the population.

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True, but sometimes a trait you don’t want comes with a trait you do want.

That’s also why i love it, Plantbreeding as an artist vs a scientist.
Both methods will result in valuable but uniquely differnt combos.
The more people saving seeds & making crosses, the better!

oh no… so it’s still very common :cry:, well hopefully attitudes continue to change. I live under a rock here, I forget not everyone else does landrace gardening.

I’m guessing we are all part of that generation? I think this is a goal of GoingToSeed.

Hmm… so it’s just like an old tree is hard to shape because it’s “set in it’s ways” vs a Young Seedling tree that hasn’t yet set it’s ways is very plastid/moldable.

Interesting how plants have real-life examples/analogies for these scenarios.
Perhaps every problem can in fact be solved in a garden.

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