What are your grandiose hopes for your landraces?

General Discussions
,
1

Let’s talk about our long-term hopes!

How would you describe your landraces, let’s say ten years from now, if a seed company were selling it?

I’ll start!

  • Thornless Pepo Landrace. Delicious pepo squashes with every good flavor, every shape and color, and every growth habit represented. Variable texture: some are stringy, and some are stringless. Highly drought tolerant, having been bred to be dry farmed in a desert. Highly powdery mildew resistant. Parthenocarpy is a common feature. All plants are completely thornless.

  • Winter Queen Banana Landrace. Wildly mixed population of Musa banana species that have been selected for delicious flavor, cold hardiness, and quick fruiting. Grows from seed to mature fruit within 180 days. Perennial to zone 7. Can be grown as an annual in colder climates and still bear fruit.

  • Desert Sweet Melon Landrace. Super sweet and flavorful melons, bred to be dry farmed in a desert. Aromatic scent that makes it obvious when it’s time to harvest them. Excellent shelf life. Flesh has a soft, smooth texture. Many colors, shapes, sizes, and rind textures represented.

  • Winter Snap Pea Landrace. Delicious snap peas that can be grown through the entire winter in zone 7. A rainbow of colors in peas and flowers.

How about you guys?

Let your dreams go wild!

1 Like
2

By thornless do you mean no hairy-prickly on the plant? I have plenty of thorned plants around but never thorns on squash lol.

1 Like
3

Most pepo squashes have small thorns on the stems and the undersides of the leaves. Some have really nasty ones. Tatume and Early Prolific Straightneck had nasty ones. Black Beauty zucchini has moderate ones. It’s easy to miss them because they’re on the underside of the leaves. I wondered all through 2021 why my arms kept having mysterious, sore scratches all over them after harvesting zucchinis. In 2022, I finally noticed the thorns because they were so pronounced on the Early Prolific Straightneck plants. I looked closer and saw them on all of my pepo squashes. Every last one.

So I’ve bought two completely thornless varieties from Johnny’s Selected Seeds: Spineless Perfection and Slick Pik. Apparently thornlessness is controlled by two recessive traits, so I’ll need to do a lot of deliberate crossing to make all my squashes thornless, but I’ll certainly try. I suspect that it’s a case of incomplete dominance, so every recessive allele present makes the thorns less pronounced.

Unfortunately, Tatume is my favorite flavor so far, and those thorns are horrendous . . . so I’ll be deliberately crossing it with Spineless Perfection next year, and hoping for good stuff to segregate out of the F2, F3, and later!

1 Like
4

Hmm interesting. I’ll have to look at my pepo plants this year. I’ve never noticed it being a problem.

1 Like
5

It’s entirely likely you’re a lot more graceful than me! :wink:

Especially since it would be hard to be less graceful than me. (Laugh.)

6

I was going to put this in the frost tolerance thread but it really fits better here.

Ok trying to make sense of this, even for myself…

Average frosts are listed as May 15 and October 15. 154 days.
But different places also list it as April 28 and October 15. 157 days.
Or May 15 and Oct 1. 140 days.

In my experience we can have the last hard frost at the beginning of April or have hard frost and snow near the end of May. So it’s kind of a month-plus wiggle room and you just have to hedge your bets based on the current weather each year.

I could rant about this all day (and doing my best not to now) but trying to shorten it. I plain don’t know what the winter will be. It varies so much if I explained it people wouldn’t know if I was in Kentucky or northern Wisconsin.

My landraces are going to face alot of different challenge because it’s different every year now. Plenty of below zero? Only hovering around freezing? Lots of deep snow? Barely any snow cover? Plenty of winter rain?
I think the only thing they won’t be exposed to is the very very low precip, like yall out west, and different soils than my clay.

Especially overwintering things like root crops and brassicas. I’m hoping to try leaving some in the garden and storing some in a clamp (maybe root cellar) as backup. Plus grains I’m going to be trying, most of which need overwintered.

I’m going to be selecting for shorter DTM not because I have a seriously limited window to grow at all… But because it is so up and down here that I want to know I can seed stuff early, early flirting with on time, on time, on time flirting with late, and late. I want to cover my bases. Whether it’s due to a really early spring… or later and later frosts… or being busy and just planting when I can… or succession planting… or really early frosts… or really late frosts…

1 Like
7

Reliability, great taste and fully able to fulfil their culinary destiny.

8

Even though I now live in an area with plenty of precipitation (relatively), I still want to work on drought tolerance. Most people around here water their gardens as much or more than at my old place, and complain endlessly about everything dying.

I want plants that will establish a good root system in the cold wet spring, survive the summer with minimal water, produce copiously in the late summer and fall and otherwise thrive without my assistance.

I want trees that tolerate little water, have an extended bloom time, and have a bush form to deal with high winds and animal predation.

That’s for other people. For myself I want plants that will either perennialize or reliably reseed every year. I want trees and bushes that produce young, grow easily from dropped seed, and aren’t susceptible to disease. Natural dwarf forms would be fun as well.

Add taste in there and so on. I think that piece is implied?

9

Goals are awesome, this is great, thank you Emily!

Potatoes: Purple pink and yellow flesh colors with good yields in the first year (2 lbs or more). They thrive in sandy soil, without much water, and don’t get blight. Fast growing from the start so I can avoid weeding them.

Most squash but mainly maxima: Fast growing in poor soil with little water, early maturing, intense flesh dark colors, smooth texture and complex squashy, moderately sweet flavor. Medium size and not a hard rind.

Tomatoes: Survives the summer and tastes good (low bar because this won’t be all that easy!)

I have to stop procrastinating on a project I got up early to do, so have to come back to this later :slight_smile:

10

My crops already taste great. I should learn to be a better cook.
I was already on my way to distribute more and more reliable seeds to people who want to be selfsustainable.
Landrace gardening will make it easier for me to sélect for better resilience against climate chaos, and better growth by selecting in the direction of plants that are well adapted through their root system for coopération with soil life on our poor soils.
I do love color differences as well if i see pix of people proudly showing their landrace harvest and would love to see that diversity in my crops ideally.
And as well i love the idea of having a garden which provides fresh produce on a prolonged timescale.

I’d love to see people become a happy healthy gardenering community with love and respect for nature and themselves because i’m sick 'n tired of the sad and hopeless, stessed out masses.
Gardening has done a world of good for me. I wish that for everybody else too! I believe more folk would get out and produce abundance when seeds would become more reliable and low input.

1 Like
11

I love your goals for your trees, Lauren. Extended bloom time would be an excellent way to still get some fruit if there are late frosts, and to also get fruit ripening over a longer period, rather than all at once. Trees and bushes that produce young is something I really want, too.

I think it was the Regenerative Agriculture guy who said, in a YouTube video, “Do you know how long it takes to find a tree that can produce a harvest in one year? One year.”

I went, “. . . OH!”

Obviously that requires planting a lot of seeds, but if you can do that, and then cut down the ones that don’t produce quickly, and plant new seeds in their place from the few trees that do . . . I mean, that sounds very promising.

Bush form to deal with high winds and animal predation is an interesting one I hadn’t thought of! Are you planning to coppice them and/or prune out the central leader in order to encourage that?

1 Like
12

Nope. I have found that a small percentage of each kind of fruit tree naturally has the bush habit. Right now I have a seedling almond that has multiple shoots from the base. No apricots doing that yet, but I’ve seen it before with peaches, apricots and apples.

Some do it spontaneously, others only after the main trunk dies or is cut back (such as winterkill).

Commercial growers select against these traits. For a commercial nursery they want trees that all bloom in a short period, have an upright habit, ripen in a short period, don’t send out shoots from the base, etc. Home growers would be better off with trees that bloom and ripen over a longer period, since they don’t have the “advantage” of mechanical harvest and processing.

At this point I am planning to plant everything, but I am guessing that eventually those with an upright habit might self eliminate.

2 Likes
13

I can see that. Or they might get their central trunk eliminated by the weather and then grow back in a bush form, which would be fine.

14

My future ideal:

Alkaline Loving Blueberries - sweet berries (some of them not blue) with full flavor that grow plenty of berries in alkaline soil

Ground Cherries - larger ground cherries that are sweet and prolific with a lot of fun changes in flavors throughout the years, self seeding, and give berries throughout the year. I’d love to be able to mix a perennial nature into this instead of self seeding.

Sweet Corn - honestly I think these are already there. I just want sweet corn that grows reliably and doesn’t fall over. I think joseph’s already meet this pretty well.

Hardy Artichoke - something that grows as a perennial here and gives plenty of artichokes a year.

Red Tomato - something that grows a wonderful standard tomato flavor for cutting and eating with salt and pepper, that grows from seed right in the ground

Cherry Tomato - something that grows a nice sweet tomato flavor that grows from seed right in the ground

Fruity Tomato - every flavor we can find out of tomatoes that is fruity i’d love to have (similar i’m hoping to ground cherries).

Peas - that grow well and quickly that I can plant in winter right after or near the first frost

Fava Beans - something that grows quickly and gives a lot of seeds. I use these to cut and provide nitrogen to my corn and I’d love to be able to cut 9 out of every 10 plants for that purpose (leaving the biggest best grower means that this project might just select itself)

Brassicas - Something I can plant close to winter that will make flower stalks through the winter (and through the summer would be amazing too depending on when they’re planted) (really I just want the brocclish but adapted to my soil and my gardening)

Utah Melon - a watermelon that grows well here, sweet and full of flavor (not just sweet) and a prolific grower.

Muskmelon - basically joseph’s landrace + all the other colors and shapes that we can get. I want full flavor even if it’s different based on color, and sweet

Rollatini Eggplant - An eggplant that is a uniform shape as close to a cucumber or zucchini as possible. Color and size don’t matter, but being able to get full uniform sheets would be ideal.

Utah’s early Peach - An heirloom peach tree that grows sweet, full peach flavor, and is resistant to peach borers. I put early because it’d be nice to have an early, mid, and late

Utah’s Sweet Cherry - A sweet cherry tree that is resistant to those stupid maggots that get into every cherry around here :).

I think that’s the whole list. I don’t know if i’ll get to the peaches and cherries (i’ll likely quit as soon as i get 1 or 2 good ones in my yard)

3 Likes
15

I love those goals. They’re awesome.

Have you gone to your local farmer’s market and bought peaches and cherries there? I bet that would be a great way to get seeds to plant for those trees.

Ooh, blueberries with other colors would be fun! Have you seen the Pink Lemonade blueberry bush? That’s one I’ve been eyeing for awhile.

16

Also, your watermelon and melon goals are pretty much the same as mine, as we live quite near, so we should definitely swap seeds of our favorites at the end of the season! :smiley:

2 Likes
17

Some very generalized landrace goals for what I’m doing up here. It’s interesting to think about how these goals would change if I moved into a different system:

To speak to your first post, no seed company selling the seeds because they’re already grown freely throughout the community and surrounding communities, and everyone is proud enough of how well they grow that they want to share.

Many self-seeding crops, or crops that exist in a system where the seeds pass through a pig or goose and then grow. This would combine with ability to grow in polyculture (this is my greens seedbed project basically, but I also want squash and maybe tomatoes to be able to do it).

Here there are wild plants that start growing under the snow before it’s completely off; I think the snow passes light and maybe even heat through in the spring, to act like a protective greenhouse. Both perennials and annuals can benefit from this window that exists before it’s physically possible for me to sow seeds, and I want the things I eat to use it (right now crabgrass adores it!). These need to be fall-sown or self-seeding, obviously.

Lots of flavour, especially in tomatoes but really in everything, especially the ability to eat things raw (I’m lookin’ at you, maximas!), whether that’s standing in the garden eating or taking them inside, chopping them into a salad with some salt and fat, and eating the whole mess with a spoon and some nice bread.

Grain (wheat, barley, corn) I can easily thresh, and that I don’t have to pick through for ergot issues (if I can get rye to do that, great, but I’m not sure I can).

Potatoes that hold through the winter in the laundry room without growing 3’ sprouts?

Fruits that store on a shelf for improbably long times: squash all winter, tomatoes several months, stuff like that.

Variation in fruit and leaf colour across all groups.

Anything that doesn’t self-seed should be able to grow from planting around last frost (Say June 1st) to somewhere around 1st frost/3rd frost/equinox (depending on crop) and not need fiddling around with planting at specific, calibrated dates where I need to guess at what the next three weeks will do or run out to cover things. So I guess that’s at least light frost tolerance while in the soil and at first leaf, and 90 dtm in my climate.

Things that produce good food and seed despite weather conditions 9 years out of 10.

Minimal infrastructure plants: maybe I can handle putting out row cover, but nothing that needs staking, plastic, crow cannons, spraying, a ton of pruning, fencing, windbreaks, or daily watering.

1 Like
18

I love your vision of your landraces spreading freely around friend-to-friend, because people enjoy them so much that they want to share them. That’s ideal.

You mentioned fruits that can store on the shelf for improbably long times. I bought an Arkansas Black apple tree for precisely that purpose: I love the idea of apples that can store on the shelf for six months. Once I get fruit from the tree that I bought, I’m sure I’ll be planting some of its seeds. :wink:

I was pleased that the apples from my friend’s tree stored on the shelf for three months, up until I finished eating the last of them. They were starting to feel a bit soft on the outside, but they were still just as sweet and crisp and juicy inside when I bit into them. If I can get a hundred to two hundred apples per year that can store just as well for twice as long, that would be great for me and my family.

1 Like
19

A friend just sent me some arkansas black apple seed. No idea what else is growing in his neighbourhood, but he’s high elevation in Revelstoke so it should be hardy. I’m kind of excited.

Here apples dry out when they’re stored on shelves so I just sauce them, but apples I could stick in a bucket (maybe nested in straw?) would be amazing. I know Stephen Edholm was working on apples that could be stored on the tree through the whole winter even through California frosts. Rose hips will do that here, I have no hope for apples, but maybe they’d work for you?

20

Ooooooh. That sounds fantastic!

I see a lot of apples rot on the trees here – by January, I don’t think there are any that are still good. Probably too many freeze/thaw cycles. However, they tend to still be fine in mid-November, after several frosts. Sometimes even into mid-December, depending on the tree. Both years I’ve lived in this house, my next-door neighbor has decided well after frost that she’s not going to get around to hravesting the rest of her apples, and so invited me to do it.

Her plum tree seems to hold fruit for awhile, too. She invited me to harvest her leftover plums right before the last frost, and I forgot for three weeks. By the time I went to harvest them, they were . . . all still good, and mostly still on the tree! I picked them, brought them home, and my kids chowed down.