What Is Landrace Gardening?

all of the food crops that you enjoy eating today were grown over tens of thousands of years usually by smallscale Farmers that were illiterate and had no knowledge of genetics whatsoever they would just simply collect the seeds from whatever plants had the traits which they desired so whatever plants survived long enough to produce seed generally were ones that were resistant to pests and disease and various weather conditions and then from whatever survived the farmer would just save the ones from the plants that were the tastiest had the best texture uh stored longest those whatever factors were important to the individual farmer so over generations and generations of of replanting these types of seeds the benefit would happen is that this specific uh strain was perfectly well adapted to that very specific location that's what is called land race gardening so when they develop these land Races they would have something that like I said was perfectly adapted to their environment now they would then grab their neighbors and uh uh nearby people would also have land races and they'd collect seed and exchange back and forth and introduce some of those genetics which were uh very positive plants and introduce those genetics into their own crop and let them breed with each other and get the benefits from both strains both their own land races and their neighbors and such it really was only about a hundred years ago with the rise of these huge chemical corporations and they started telling everybody that you need to buy very specific seeds and then well in order to get that seed which is not well adapted to your environment to grow you've got to do all the work to change your environment so I wanted to give my highest recommendation for this book called land race gardening by Joseph loft house he outlines uh in great detail what all this is but it's really simple reading too you don't need to know biology and chemistry or nothing it's just really simple laid out this is stuff humans have done for tens of thousands of years it's really simple to do and I would say the greatest takeaway from this book is he explains that changing the genetics of your crops is way easier than than changing the environment around you but modern humans for whatever reason we we just like to make things more difficult on ourselves so in order to get that one plant to grow we go through all the work of watering it when there's going to be a frost we cover it up to take care of it we shelter it from the wind uh if there's a pest on it we we spray it with stuff all these things we weed around it and it's just so much work where it's so much easier if you just breed your crops to adapt perfectly to your environment so you don't have to worry about all those things now I I think it'll be pretty controversial for me to say amongst the the prepper community in that but I personally think that the single most valuable self-sufficiency skill you can have is seed saving now there's other skills that seem like they're more pressing on a short-term basis people would bring up you know being able to make fire or being able to purify drinking water things like that and yes in an immediate survival situation you need to know those things but but the thing is is is they're relatively easy to learn and figure out I mean anybody with a little bit of Common Sense can find a way to make a fire and boil some water I mean it's not that hard whereas seed saving is something that you kind of need to devote your life to you know it takes years of practice to do but in a survival situation when you talk about what kinds of people you would want in your group me I want somebody that's well experienced in seed saving and has a whole seed bank that they've been saving and working from that's that that's your guy right there so there's it's just the the simple land racing is the low Tech way of doing things okay so you don't you don't have to go and buy any crap from the store any of these products that the the chemical companies have been telling you you have to do uh and it's really the lowest output as far as physical effort cuz I know for me I'm lazy I am lazy as all hell you know I want to find the easiest way to do things possible I don't want to spend 12 hours a day out working my garden I I mean there's so many other things I could be spending my time on instead I understand there's some people that get enjoyment out of doing that but that's kind of a luxury we have in the modern world being able to just make things harder on yourself than you have to because in a true survival situation like I discuss everything is going to come down to producing the maximum number of calories while expending the fewest to do so so to me a method like this is really the way to go I will be implementing this here on my property I'm going to spread all kinds of seed everywhere and just see what grow now my expectation for the first year especially is failure but that's okay my goal in the first year is not to produce the most food that I can I would be doing things more differently and putting in all that extra effort but my my focus is instead seeing what survives long enough to go to seat and that's what I'm looking for that seed survived that's a good first step then replant it the next year while introducing more genetics to it letting it pollinate with each other and eventually over a few years you're going to start breeding varieties that are absolutely perfect for your specific location and I'm not going to water it I'm not going to cuddle it I'm not going to do anything to it if it can't survive my conditions I simply don't want it here you know when you coddle your plants or or your livestock you're really breeding weakness you know you see people that will start their plants in the greenhouse and then when they go to put them out in the ground a little breeze comes through and it kills the plant and breaks it because it's so tender I don't want that I I want plants and animals that are hearty and perfectly suited for my location here so this book is I can't stress enough the important of this one and I see a lot of people weeding too which I never say anything because I don't mean to be rude U but I'm always thinking to myself what are you doing that for I I don't see it you know most of what people call weeds are actually edible or sometimes medicinal plants so why pick them usually they have more nutrition to them than the plants that the person's trying to grow instead so I'm always a proponent of learning about those weeds in learning to eat them you know you look in an ecology book there is no such thing as a weed what you call a weed is just simply a plant whose attributes you don't understand yet so I had done a video on the five most important books for wild edible PL plants and it's interesting that of all the videos I've done I believe that's my least watched one yet in my opinion I think it was the one that was the most informative I'm the most proud of that one so if you missed it I'm going to put a link down in the description below the video so you can uh check that one out I'd say between those five books and this one it get you a good start you know if I plant all of my seed out here and the only thing that comes up is an entire field of weeds great mission accomplished you know I wanted to grow food and then if that's what happens a bunch of edible wild food grows great that's what I'm looking for if I get a bunch of pests attacking my food great that's going to weed out the the stuff that I'm not looking for if I get a disease hit in my plants great I hope so you know I welcome Pest and disease because it's going to weed out the poor genetics and whatever does survive is going to be strong and I'm going to continue that on and that's going to be the start of my land races here and I'm going to try to find local people around who also save seed and try to take their seed and breed it in with mine and eventually start developing super strains you see those named varieties like if you look in a seed catalog there's always those named heirlooms what those were was a land race from some specific location in some specific time now so many people want to preserve that heirloom but you know just because that specific variety grew perfectly in Rhode Island in the 1850s does not mean that it's perfectly suited for your property and your climate Okay now it's great to get those genetics because it obviously if it survived this long people have continued breeding it because it has good features so take those genetics and add it in and start developing your own land races I truly believe that if if you are interested in self-sufficiency prepping uh survivalism anything I mean you've got to get into growing your own food and and producing land race I can't stress this enough I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people who watch my channel probably believe that the old ways of doing things are are typically better than the modern way so if you do believe that way ask yourself why are you still using the modern way of gardening just because that's what you're told to do no this is the way that's been proven for tens of thousands of years it worked and brought all the foods that we currently have to us now and long after all these seed and chemical companies close down and and fall apart and poison the Earth this method is still going to be feeding us

Channel: TheBackwoodsHermit

Views: 633

Keywords: landrace gardening, joseph lofthouse, seed saving, gardening, growing food, self sufficiency, homesteading, preparedness, prepper, survival, survivalist, shtf, prepping, growing crops, homestead, no till, wild edible plants, wild edible foods, heirloom seeds, homesteading books, survival books, gardening books, sustainable agriculture, permaculture

Id: jaSQ6LnktMI

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2024