I asked this question 8 months ago, and love the answers here so much, and I hope we can keep collecting more. It is similar to the other question ‘What caused you to change the way you garden’ but slightly different-- so hence the two threads.
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2022-05-11T07:00:00Z
I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but:
Diversity is beautiful and compelling and valuable and landracing allows me to experience it; I can grow so many different varieties at once and in return the plants give me the gifts of new forms. Joy in the beauty and in observation and in the experience of natural processes would go a long way towards reconnecting many people with the natural world, which would benefit us all.
Evolution is better at solving most complex problems than I am. I want to use the most powerful tools I can to achieve my results. I wouldn’t be able to think and deliberately breed something this adaptive in this amount of time without using this kind of selection.
Preserving diversity is important for future generations and landracing is more sustainable than growing (as Joseph said) a thousand beans in a thousand separate bottles. I want to pass on something that might help someone some day.
Saving (rather than buying) seeds is a long-practiced part of the human experience and it links us to our past and the people in it. I value participating in that human endeavour.
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2022-05-18T07:00:00Z
- I found myself relishing accidental crosses that other people in the hobby would freak out about when I was just a pepper grower. Breeding a new thing is a gift to me and to the world. And to imagine that every possible combination of genes has been tried is crazy – who knows what’s still out there to discover?
- No one else is custom-breeding for my piece of land, so I have to.
- I’m not rabid about self-sufficiency, but where possible, it’s a good thing. Producing one’s own seeds seems like an obvious element of that.
- It’s a cerebral pursuit that doesn’t require a lot of technological intervention or rigorous organization. I’m becoming a serious gardener but I’m not interested in balancing minerals based on soil tests and other high-tech practices. I get to approach my plant breeding intuitively or artistically or something…I think I haven’t quite articulated what I mean, but words are failing me and maybe you can get an idea of what I mean from this.
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I’d second Erin’s comment about observation - I think this way of gardening forces you to stop and actively observe and consider the ‘whys’. So much of horticulture seems to be following a long ago written rule book that is totally human centric and focused on control, not unity. Doing things because it’s ‘that time’ and because it’s ‘always been done that way’, without respecting natures own abilities. Landrace gardening encourages the grower to pause and observe, and ask why, and I think these are all vital in reconnecting us with nature and having kinship with the more than human world.
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I am rabid about self reliance lol. Without going on a rant about my crazy ideas, I’ll share what fits in the scope of this discussion.
With my small land base, true self reliance is impossible. There are many things I have to buy, like hay and grain, rice, and beans. Even if I devoted my entire yard to hay or dry beans, I would still have to buy more.
Instead of focusing on those bulk items, My goals focus on what I can change, and on those changes that will be most effective. For me, that is to increase quantity and quality of what I do grow. And to eliminate the need to buy things that I can produce myself. Such as seeds, green vegetables, milk, eggs, and tomatoes. I still have inputs to buy, but I minimize those to things that store for a long time, and things that are grown locally.
I feel that landrace gardening fits perfectly into my goals of self reliance, and especially interdependence with my neighbors. I still have to go to the store all the time, but I’m working on it haha.
Eventually I want to have my own farm, and sell food to my community. I think that a super colorful mix of veggies will sell better than the standards. That is why I want to have colorful landraces, while using that diversity to boost productivity.
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I know my biggest drivers are growing nutritionally dense and diverse foods for my family. I had to undergo a major dietary change about 5 years ago due to some major digestive issues that left me taking a ton of prescriptions (which didn’t help anything) and no diagnosis my 9 month daughter around the same time was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer that was eating is way through her upper jaw bone before we found it.
We change our diet to a Plant based on and that fixed all of my issues and my daughter went into remission from her cancer very soon after the change. I know people are going to argue how it’s anecdotal and that I don’t know if the diet change and the cancer remission are linked but it was a powerful enough message for us to see we were going in the right direction.
After going to down the rabbit hole of nutrition finding out the lack of nutrition that is in our modern grocery store I decided I need to grow my own and after lots of research food which led me to permaculture which led me down a long winding path to end up at landrace plant breeding.
After leaving a decade long career that I found become toxic to now live in what most would consider poverty in pursuit of a better life for me and my family. After struggle through my first couple of years with plants failing due to extreme weather we can get in my area I felt like I was hitting a brick wall until I discovered landrace gardening which opened up so many doors for me. Since I deal with limited water and financial resources Landrace gardening seems to be the solution to all of my problems.
My goals are to be 100% self sufficient in food for my family which I feel like I might get close this year after going all in on landrace gardening this year. Also with all the unrest in this world relying on yourself and your community is all you have, so growing your own food is a giant step towards security for the future.
This might not be exactly what you asked for but this is my why.
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Megan G. 4/15/22
I relate to your incredibly story. Nothing is more powerful than a strong why such as this. Change can be the hardest things we go through. I’m proud of you for enduring and adapting to a better lifestyle.
I’m going through something similar myself. No matter if I eat subjectively “healthy”, I’ve continually gained weight and can’t seem to lose it no matter my effort - diet and exercise, calories in & calories out, limiting salt, fat, sugar while increasing vegetable intake. These approaches have not worked for me historically. This has been one of my whys to start gardening 4 years ago and continues to be a why for me today. I come from a long line of Germans and our main health issues are obesity, particularly in females, and heart disease. It’s a struggle some days to even get up for the day.
Kevin, thank you for sharing your story, your why, it gives me hope and reminds me that change is temporary and life is a journey. If we don’t go through these hardships, I feel we wouldn’t always fully understand our situations and generally will not change our habits as the outcome.
“Without conscious and deliberate effort, inertia always wins”
― Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Going through hardships (stresses), like plants, can help make us stronger as we develop our own resiliencies.
On Julia’s recommendation for the book Eating on the Wild Side, I bought a copy. It has since moved to the forefront of my reading list. I started reading it this morning and have only put it down to write this comment, if that’s any indication of its value.
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2022-05-31T07:00:00Z
I started down the route of preserving our heritage varieties. At the same time I started looking at getting the best of the plants I grew. First of all it was plant nutrition. Without the right mineral balance healthy plants just wouldn’t happen. This never really appealed as I knew from the little bit of geology I did at university that it was a rare soil indeed that did not have everything a plant could want in terms of minerals. Then came Elaine Ingham. Yes. This was the answer, microbes. It was the wee beasties that fed plants. Add carbon to feed the wee beasties. I did this but noted with some consternation that the brix levels didn’t change significantly. Not the wee beasties after all. What was it then?
Adaptation. Plants need time to adapt, to get to know the microbes and be comfortable with my growing practices. Save seeds, that’s the answer. Indeed, this has made some difference but not a great deal and not very quickly.
I came across Joseph’s ideas about landrace gardening via one of the forums he used to frequent and realised that this offered a much more effective approach to adaptation. It was this course though that really put the fire in my belly. Reading about other people’s experiences really motivates.
Of course, having fabulously healthy plants involves everything - minerals, microbes and adapted crops. I don’t think we really need to worry about minerals as there are virtually no soils that are truly deficient. And microbes (read soil life in general) will turn up if we keep up the organic matter, refrain from turning the soil over as much as possible and keep a diversity of living roots in the soil as much if the time as is possible. That leaves adaptation and landraces seem the obvious way to achieve this.
I can think of no better way to meet the challenges facing us (climate change, depleted soils etc).
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I like hanging out with Seedy People.
Saving seeds and sharing them is joyful – I like the thought of spreading that around.
I’ve been amazed at the diversity of life in my gardens since I started focusing on planting a lot of diversity, so I’m hooked on the concept.
I love research and collecting information and thinking about connections, but I’m not naturally great at following prescribed rules once I have the information. So this way of growing/seed-saving feels good. There’s room for art and intuition here.
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I don’t think I understand the question. What is my why?! (Why what?) Or is it an acronym?
For me, there are several whys.
First: I love positive surprises! Knowing exactly what I’m getting is nice, but not knowing exactly what I’m getting and feeling like I can trust it to be at least okay and possibly awesome is way more fun.
Second: I love plants.
Third: Plant breeding is art. I love art.
Fourth: Researching and recording plant breeding is science. I love science.
Fifth: I’m very concerned about the way the world is going. I don’t think we live in a sustainable society; I think we’re in, essentially, a bubble that is going to pop eventually, and that’s going to hurt a lot of people. When that happens, I want to be in the position to take care of my family, and I want to be in a position to help other people around me.
Sixth: When I discovered all this stuff about landrace gardening, it was like a light bulb went off. If I can adapt tasty edible plants to grow well here with very little help, that will scratch almost every itch I have.
Seventh: Years ago, I lived in a townhouse community with a very expensive HOA and loads of burr grass in the communal lawn. The HOA was not pulling out the burr grass, so it kept spreading and spreading. I asked them to do something about it. They said it would be too expensive to do anything about it. And so anyone who walked on that grass got burrs driving into their feet. This included a lot of new neighbors, small children, and dogs – those who didn’t know any better than to walk on the grass that looked so harmless and inviting.
I was intensely frustrated. Then one day, I had a life-changing realization:
“I can complain that somebody else isn’t doing their job, or I can get to work.”
So I got to work. I started spending about 10 hours a week pulling out burr grass. I came to be an expert in recognizing it and removing it. Nobody asked me to do it. I certainly didn’t get paid. Occasionally someone would effusively thank me, and I’d smile and ask if they would help for a bit. (I didn’t care about thanks; I wanted help.) They’d immediately say no and hurry away. Nobody else was willing to put in even a few minutes of work, and it was impossible for me to do it all. The burrs always spread faster than I could pull them out. The lawnmower kept spreading them further to all the uninfected areas. Yet, I was slowing the tide a little bit, and every patch of burr grass I removed was a hundred burr plants who wouldn’t be tormenting my neighbors later.
My goals here are similar. I think the time will come when people around me will need to grow crops in order to eat, and there will be no more irrigation available, and most people in my community will have no idea how to feed themselves in that paradigm. So I’m going to grow plants that make seeds I can share. Plants that can handle our growing conditions without being coddled. Plants that can save the lives of my neighbors.
Most of my neighbors don’t currently care. I think eventually, they’re going to care very much. And I won’t say “I told you so” or even ask for thanks. I’ll just hand out the seeds and tell them how to grow them.
There’s probably somebody out there right now working on something I haven’t even considered important that will help me someday.
So, my primary goal is to take care of my family. My secondary goal is to help everyone else in my community who needs it. My tertiary priority is to have fun.
Landrace gardening accomplishes all three things.
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That’s what I would have said.
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When I came upon landrace gardening the first thing that attracted me was how much different these crops were than what everyone else in my area was doing- maybe it was the novelty of it. Then as I read more I realized I could adapt or breed something that would do well in my garden rather than picking some seeds from a website and hoping this year would be different.
Around the same time my wife became very ill and would need to be much more careful about her diet for the rest of her life. I feel like I can grow vegetables for her that are healthier and more natural than what I was growing before.
Now that I’ve belonged to this group for a while and taken the landrace gardening course I’ve seen the community aspect of landrace gardening and realized that if I grow my own landraces I can share them with neighbors and coworkers.
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