Gregg M
I’ve followed Joseph’s journey from a decade or so ago on Homegrown Goodness.
The shift to landraces in my mind has been gradual - and is still not complete, and there are multiple currents leading in the direction of local adaptation. Many home gardeners have tight limits on their ability to grow, and sacrificing one or two years of harvest might be a leap too far for many. For me getting a bigger garden and being able to dabble in a couple of crops I never had the space to grow - squash and corn primarily - has allowed me to continue with my normal gardening, but allocate an isolated space where I could do some growouts. Additionally, the move to a property with a slightly saline bore for garden water made me examine the need for more adaptability in my lines - particularly peas which are susceptible to saline water.
I’ve also been an Antipodean source for diverse potato onion true seed, and the variability in those growouts (which is desirable) has enabled my to embrace the diversity angle. Additionally, the approach of Wild Garden Seed who make available some of their diverse mixes in lettuce, mustard, leeks, and kale for others to select has been a stepping stone. While my initial approach to these has been to re-select specific lines, it’s a small step from there to just plant everything and select more widely as populations rather than individuals.
Sharing some of my early breeding lines in parsnip and carrot with a couple of market growers has also expanded my horizons - while I was focused on producing uniformity in them, these growers loved the variety - their buyers - CSA and restaurants - weren’t buying a particular named variety of carrot for example - they just wanted ‘carrots’, so a bit of diversity was not an issue. And the growers loved the vigor of my seed, which might be down to freshness rather than any inherent properties.
Global heating is an underlying driver as well. My first 10 years of gardening in Bendigo coincided with the decade long Millennial Drought (we name out droughts in Australia, a bit like tropical cyclones), and the need for more drought-adapted lines seemed like a smart approach. Trouble is, no-one sells drought adapted lines of my favourite vegetables (or any vegetables for that matter).
I’m also getting a bit over the years of selection and growouts, so laziness is also a motivating factor. I can rule a line under some of these projects and consider them ‘finished’ and move on to other breeding projects.
Christopher W
I read Joseph’s landrace articles on Mother Earth News (before I even had space to garden) and it just clicked as obviously correct. So I’ve been waiting to move to land and get going for years; and now I’ve done it. Which probably doesn’t give you anything useful, but that’s my vector into this space.
Jori L
The thing that immediately sold me on trying landraces is thinking about finally getting spinach that doesn’t bolt. Spinach is something I really want, that I haven’t been able to master in this climate, and which seems easier to landrace even in small spaces. I’m growing in a community garden and most gardeners grow only one or two plants of any variety. It may not seem feasible or understandable how to achieve diversity in those conditions. I also second Gregg that giving up a harvest for a couple years would be a definite negative for the growers I know.
Perhaps this is where we highlight the community part in a community garden. Or growing “with” neighbors if you’re in a suburban area to achieve that diversity. Or focus on starting small with something people plant a lot of already.
In terms of long term goals I really want to reduce my inputs into the garden. I already don’t use fertilizer/chemical controls but I love using less water, having plants that can outgrow pests, and breeding for self seeding traits. Landrace gardening seems to be a great way to achieve this.
Matthew P
I wanted to chip-in because I think it is an interesting topic. My thoughts are maybe slightly naïve because this will be my first season experimenting with landraces (and I am a relatively new gardener with no background in sciences), but that is probably okay.
Compared to the dominant or commercial growing paradigms, landraces are quite counterintuitive and so I guess it makes sense that there are probably many established gardeners and growers who are set in their ways and don’t “get it” for whatever reason. Also many probably do not have the space/time luxury to think about anything beyond this immediate growing season.
For myself, there’s a number of interrelated factors that, like Christopher mentioned above, made landrace gardening “click” in a rather obvious way for me.
The obvious ones are:
—Cold adaptation
—Drought adaptation
—Selecting for flavour and vigour
—Reducing inputs
—Disease/Pests
—Local adaptation and longterm sustainability in general
The more subtle (but perhaps equally persuasive):
—Freedom from the cautious and pedantic rules-based regime of gardening (isolation distances, ideal inputs, optimum placement/timing/spacing/support, etc).
—The delights of non-uniformity (i.e. everything else in the world is increasingly standardised… a slightly unexpected vegetable offers a sense of relief).
—Cooking becomes more experimental or adventurous. Instead of blindly following recipes, I think one is forced to taste and improvise based on the size, colour, shape, or flavour profile of each individual vegetable. Carol Deppe writes something about breeding vegetables and cooking vegetables as being deeply intertwined.
—Learning about “landraces” has made understanding seed saving, heirlooms/hybrids, and plant breeding much more intuitive for myself. By looking at “the other side of the coin,” I think it’s easier for novices to understand many other aspects of gardening. Even if one never grows a landrace, I think it offers a useful perspective.
—Community growing of landraces seems more active, present, and participatory than solely the preservation of historical lines. Perhaps because I’m in Europe… but, if not for €€€, a primary motivation of plant breeders and seed savers seems to be historical/national—preserving the past (such that even historical landraces should be grown in isolation and preserved as is). Its fine and good in some ways (and problematic or nonsensical in others) but I guess I just like that landrace projects give an additional rationale that is local, collective, and forward-looking.
—Embarking on an open-ended project (and embracing failure) can be rewarding in itself.
—Joseph’s “whatever” sensibility ¯_ (ツ)_/¯ that pops into some of the videos…
Mark R
I just wanted to start saving my own seeds. That was around 10 - 12 years ago and as a first step I read Suzane Ashworth’s “Seed to Seed”. I was at the time, still a bit stuck on all the romanticized stuff about heirlooms. I was very discouraged at first because of all the rules about isolation distances and population size. I have a small garden and it seemed that between avoiding cross contamination and inbreeding depression that seed saving in a small garden just wasn’t possible.
Then, it finally occurred to me that the much-feared cross contamination in itself would eliminate inbreeding depression. For example, if two good “heirloom” watermelons crossed, the offspring would still be good watermelons, just minus the heirloom romance and since you can’t eat romance, why should I care?
Researching along those lines eventually took me to Joseph’s landrace articles at Mother Earth News. Turns out, not only was I not crazy, but by creating the opportunity for selection and local adaptation the cross contamination does a whole lot more than just eliminating inbreeding.
A small garden does present some problems in seed saving, but they are not insurmountable. Adopting landrace practices eliminated most of them quite nicely.
Holly M
I have been heirloom seed saving for a few years now, and saved multiple varieties of many things, esp ones like tomatoes and peppers, etc. every year, for so long. I loved having variety to suit my desires/needs of taste and function. But I always wondered at how the ‘old timers’ actually did it - I knew they didn’t keep seeds of 20 different tomatoes and peppers each year. I actively wondered and contemplated how they did it, because I have found in my homesteading journey that as we get closer to the old ways of doing things, we get closer to ourselves. But ultimately, I figured it was something lost to time.
But when I heard about landrace gardening, it was just like a ‘click’ - it was the missing puzzle piece that immediately fell into place. There was my answer about how they did it long ago. I mean, I can still have phenotypic differences, while at the same time selecting for environmental and other pressures unique to my area? Increase genetic diversity and resiliency, and also select for further taste and function specialization? Done. Done and done.
It took so much pressure immediately off of saving seeds, ones that you never know when they will start exhibiting inbreeding depression. I had actually started a community seed saving project - where each year I gave my saved seeds to members of the community and they sent me pictures as they grew, to get data on a scale for my seed saving techniques that I needed. So another thing I loved about landrace gardening is how it also had ‘community’ as necessary and at its heart. The more ‘self-reliant’ I become, the more I realize how much we all absolutely depend on each other for true sustainability. Landrace gardening brings all these pieces of the puzzle to me, and makes seed keeping less of an intellectual endeavor for the individual, but more of a spiritual endeavor for and within a community. I love that paradigm shift.
Lauren Ritz
My parents had a variety of zucchini that we’d always grown, and believe me it was a nasty shock to learn that not all zucchini is still soft when it has mature seeds in it. No wonder people hate that stuff.
I think I’ve been a landrace grower (without the title) since I was a kid. I just couldn’t help planting things, from pennies to whole eggs. Heirlooms were the only way to grow, right? But why? Their explanations (mostly along the lines of “plants are different and don’t get inbred”) made no sense.
It wasn’t what I planted that changed first, though. I needed plants that could survive in bad soil, with little water. I started growing in the cold, growing in drought conditions, growing in straight garden soil, deliberately stressing my seedlings. That led to other forms of extreme antisocial behavior : ) and eventually to abandoning the heirloom paradigm entirely.
Gregg M
The real ah-ha! moment for me was an old thread on the Tomatoville forum I think. Some old timer mentioned that their family didn’t grow any specific heirloom tomato, they just grew ‘tomatoes’. They would tear down the vines at the end of the season, stomp the remaining fruits into the ground, and next spring just thin the recruiting seedlings to their required density.
One model for dispersed community based development might be an adaptation of the Cross-Hemisphere dwarf tomato initiative, where seeds were grown out and selected every 6 months and posted to growers in the other hemisphere to grow out and re-select - 2 generations every year. while Au-USA transfer is now off the cards, perhaps some continental-wide transfer of germplasm might be possible between areas with alternate growing seasons? Halves the initial development time and might overcome the beginners’ resistance to year-long harvest sacrifice, at the cost of sacrificing some local adaptation.
For those interested in exploring the community aspect, David Holmgren (co-originator of Permaculture) has published ‘Retrosuburbia’ - a fantastic resource on rethinking how suburban communities might evolve.
david b
That makes me think of all the times my volunteer’s from the compost pile beat my garden tomatoes. And I never did anything to help them just stole their fruit to eat. lol
Have always been open to try things they say cant be done. I am about to finally finish my ag degree and I was lucky way back when I started it in the 90s my Dr.s were very different. I had one that would go find grasses growing in the freeway to grow and breed he ended up with a very drought resistant grass. I can remember him saying if it can live there imagine if I give a chance to live in a field. I have grown a variety of tomatoes (delicious) for years saving seed. Yes I was chasing a dream of a world record tomato in weight lol. But have become tired of starting plants in January indoors to transplant in march to beat the heat of summer. I am switching to determinant variety’s and breeding for early fruit set. I love the landrace idea because it is actually what my teachers talked about years ago. We have bred out the toughness to some diseases for other benefits.
Susan W
I heard Joseph speak on a permies.com podcast and was amazed at how quickly you can get a locally adapted landrace. And how easy it is. Since then I have read his posts on the forum and here I am!