I tried to track him down, and sent the following email to the community he seems to be a member of. I hope I didn’t misrepresent the community/method!
Hello!
On the ‘about’ page of the RED Gardens YouTube channel, this community is listed, so I figured this would be my best chance of getting in touch with the nice gentleman who is in those videos. If you could pass this email on to him it would be appreciated.
So… firstly thank you for your videos. And I like your research-based approach. Then as to why I am writing to you - a member of our community shared your ‘Seed transition’ video, and many of us feel that our approach would be very valuable to you, and that if you were to use it, through you it could be very valuable to others.
Now you might here from many people suggesting their ways to you, so, sorry if this is annoying. But I think it will be worth it for you. And there is zero financial interest for me - I am just a random person in England who teaches classical Japanese music but has come across this method recently.
So then - have you heard of Joseph Lofthouse? His approach is, we could call it, the modern landrace approach. I really think it answered so many of your issues with seeds. I shall briefly describe it to you in case such a summary is useful.
So you mentioned about some worried you had regarding saving seed. So far as I remember this included your worries for cross contamination, such that you could only grow one variety of each species for seed saving, and you were really worried that accidental crosses would mess everything up. That is the normal attitude for seed companies. But it is NOT the normal attitude for traditional seed cultures all across the world before the time of Western seed catalogues. So I would like to relieve your worry about that, in some detail. Another of your concerns was ‘reliability’ and I will address that too.
Ok, then let’s consider how the seeds you used to buy were from England, and maybe often even grown further away than that. Also many likely grown by methods quite different from your growing methods. This means the seeds are selected for generic traits and likely biased towards being dependent on chemical agriculture and so on. So let’s think, what could do better on your land? And in our method, the answer takes a little time. But it starts with a hybrid swarm, or at least a grex. Basically, you want as much variety as possible. Heirloom seeds are nice, but they basically all suffer from genetic depression. That’s why the phenomenon of ‘hybrid vigour’ exists - it’s just a sudden relief from genetic depression from the intensive inbreeding of heirloom varieties.
How did traditional societies deal with this? Well, of course they saved their seeds from their own local varieties, but, take Laos for example - each woman grows about 5 varieties of rice, and each village around 20 varieties, something like that according to the academic papers on that topic I have been reading. So already there will be some percentage of crossing happening, even if only small. On top of that, they regularly make seed exchanges over long distances. So on the one hand, they maintain distinct varieties (or really I should say distinct landraces - this is different from the post-seed-catalogue overly pure concept of ‘variety’), but on the other, there is a certain degree of crossing happening which constantly tops up their genetics on an ongoing basis. Hence they avoid genetic depression. And I see the same habits in traditional cultures across the world.
So then why do we start with grexes or hybrid swarms? Because unlike them, we don’t (generally) have well adapted non-inbred communities of plants for our local areas and our chosen methods of agriculture. I mean, who has Mole Valley clay soil no-dig bok choi landrace seeds for sale?
Then with that initial highly diverse bunch of seeds, for whatever it is you’re planting, your first year of growing is not going to be ideal for harvest. The aim that year is just to save the seed from everything that survives. The next year, pretty much same again though since you have a lot of seed now and are actually encouraging crosses, and saving crosses that you notice, you now have lots of seed and so can be a bit more selective, like making loads of seedlings and letting them fight it out a bit, selecting more of the productive plants for seed and so on. But don’t be too selective. For example if a plant gets a bit of sickness, but still produces a good harvest (tomatoes for example) then that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And could continue to contribute good genetics and disease resistance.
By year 3, you can start selecting for taste. Because by that time, the plants are already becoming well adapted to your conditions. But don’t select for uniformity - diverse genetics are a BENEFIT, not a bad thing! You could chose one of two traits to select for, for example, like with beans you might want them to all having the same cooking time but not worry at all about the differences in colour. Or squash, you might want the same kind of taste but not worry at all about the shape.
So why maintain such diversity? Because
- The population can adapt FAR faster to your conditions
- They can keep adapting as your conditions fluctuate year by year as well as to the ongoing climate change trends
- They will be protected from genetic depression
There are some finer details of this method, like, what percentage of new genetics to add each year once the landrace has been established and become more stable, and so on. I actually did a course in this method online which just started this year, I’d be happy to tell you more about that if you’re interested. Hopefully you can see why I reached out, I think this method really suits your approach and could benefit so many people in becoming not only independent from the big seed companies but also in making far better adapted landraces of seeds for all of our communities, which I personally feel is really important for these times we find ourselves in.
Best wishes,
Justin
[Justin ]
I didn’t want to include any link in case it made my message go to their junk folder. (I really should have read my email to check for spelling before sending it! 
)
[Joseph Larsen]
you already sent this email? I ask because i’ve been slowly introducing him to landrace in comments so he probably thinks this is from me
[Joseph Larsen]
although it would have kinda been nice to discuss out the email, it could have been more to the point after watching 20 or so of his videos to know specifically what things would be more interesting to him. Things like - working on a carrot but only saving seeds from ones that don’t get hurt by the carrot fly - if you have enough diversity in the seeds you’re trying then you can save seeds from the few that don’t have carrot fly problems for whatever reason, and then go from there.
[Justin]
Yeah I sent it already. But all the better if he’s hearing about it from multiple angles I’d think. I don’t know if it will even reach him but I figured it’s worth a try, we’re humans on this planet, may as well reach out to each other.
[Emily Sorensen]
I think it’s a great e-mail, and much better because it comes from the heart from one person. Especially since that person lives fairly close, since local adaptation is a large part of the goal.
(or someone local in ireland).
