Why You Should Grow Landraces

the reason i originally started growing land  races is because i live in a mountain valley the   snow on those mountains stays there until august  and that cold air is coming down into my garden   all summer long all winter long and so if i  plant a crop that i get from the seed companies   i might have 75 percent failure rate on tomatoes  i have like a 95 failure rate there's just not   enough heat in my garden for the warm weather  crops so when i became a market farmer i basically   had two choices i had seeds from the mega seed  companies which are really designed for average   conditions and average gardeners so they can send  them anywhere in the country and they'll do okay   and then i i had the heirlooms that i could  grow which were generated for somebody far away   a long time ago 50 years ago my conditions aren't  anything like that farm either and so i basically   couldn't pick up a seed catalog and get anything  that was of value to me as a farmer and so i   had to start growing my own seed so this was the  first land race crop that i became familiar with   and i was just a market farmer that was looking  for something different for my customers   and i thought it would be nice if there was some  colored corn that i could take to market with   me this was a corn that was developed by alan  bishop in pekin indiana what he did is he took   200 varieties of sweet corn and he planted them  all together and let them promiscuously cross   pollinate so when they got to my farm some of  them grew this tall and the pheasants ate them up   some of them grew this tall and and were beautiful  plants some of them didn't even germinate in the   clay soil but many of them germinated and grew  just wonderful much better than the commercial   seed that i had been planting so i saved seeds  from those and in the second year they were even   more fabulous because they were becoming locally  adapted to my farm and there was enough genetic   diversity in them that they could solve all of  those sorts of problems with the soil and and the   insects and the pheasants by themselves without  me providing materials or labor or chemicals   to solve those problems for the seeds after i grew  this crop for two years i decided that every crop   that i grow would be that style of crop they would  be genetically diverse promiscuously pollinating   and locally adapted so this was the first squash  crop that i tried to grow things i want to point   out in it is there's this little pumpkin there the  round pumpkin and there's also the squash with the   green skins on them the year i planted these the  growing season was 88 days long and so the fruits   that were harvested were all immature they were  all green fruits they really didn't taste good   but they produced seeds that were viable  enough that i could plant them the next year   also on the list i put spinach because if i buy a  variety of spinach from the from the seed catalogs   about half of them will grow this  tall for me and then they'll flower   you know and some of them will be these great big  beautiful plants it's really easy to just see in   the first year what's going to grow well for me so  this is my definition here of a modern land race   it's genetically diverse it's locally adapted  and it's promiscuously pollinating as much as the   crop can promiscuously pollinate for example beans  might only pollinate at one percent but if you pay   attention you can find those naturally occurring  hybrids and make sure they go back into your   population there is always some degree in just  about every crop of promiscuous pollination but   for quickest results the crops that are more  promiscuous like the the squash adapt quicker to   my conditions than a species like tomatoes that  might only cross-pollinate five percent of the   time hey the the thing that was most surprising  to me when i started breeding my own varieties   is you get what you select for one of the things  that i always select for is great taste if i'm   having a musk melon i want to smell it and i want  it to seep into my whole body and give me joy   and when i taste it i want it to drool down  my chin because it's just so such a beautiful   experience to me as a as an animal inadvertently  well i was intentionally selecting for taste but   also i select for productivity because  something has to reproduce in my garden   before i can even think about growing it into  the into the future on the inadvertent selection   for example i've discovered that the oranger color  of squash is the more it pleases me as a human   so at first i was inadvertently selecting for the  orange color and then i'm like oh that is why that   tastes so good so my squash have ended up becoming  just super orange and super tasty because i'm a   small scale farmer i can taste every fruit every  generation before i save seeds from it okay so   here's my squash about five years later after that  first photo they all matured they all got ripe   if you look up in the corner there's still  the orange pumpkin hanging around they're   still squashed with the green skins the genetic  diversity is still there but i'm also selecting   for traits that are really pleasing to me um since  this photo was taken i've i've selected for more   of the the longneck squash because that's what  my chefs like we have a community me my chefs   the people that eat our food that really value  that long neck trait and so that's becoming a   local a local custom a local trait that that's  very much associated with our community and the   way we like to do things when seed goes out to  your community you're going to select for what   is valuable to you and what you find appealing  and then you're going to send seed back to us   and in that way we preserve the genetic  diversity each in our own way in our own time   and yet together it creates a tremendously diverse  food system i went to a seed conference recently   a lady brought seeds and she brought a thousand  varieties of bean seed each one of them was in a   little packet in little cases and the whole  two tables were covered with cases of beans   and she said that she'd brought a thousand  varieties of beans and then she teased me and said   i'd also brought a thousand varieties of beans but  my thousand variety beans were all in one bottle   and there's room for both kinds of diversity at  my place i like simple and easy so for me they   can all grow together any time i wanted i could  separate one of those beans out and grow it as   a separate variety so it can be super easy not to  have to worry about purity or isolation distances   grow what you love save seeds from what you  love if your neighbors love something similar   or different or their pollen gets into your  crops whatever you can reselect when i grow them   just as a as a mix of beans they self-select for  what really thrives in my garden okay so what   happens to the dna when we start being promiscuous  about our growing okay that this i prepared for   tomatoes if you cross a regular domestic  tomato what you're going to get after about   four generations is you're going to get genetics  that look like the bottom graph they're mostly   recombining into just a static genetic pattern  where if you grow promiscuous tomatoes what you   end up getting is the genetics are rearranging  in every generation and they're constantly   shifting and what that constant shifting  does botanically is that each one of those   new genetic combinations is a new way to deal  with the bugs the diseases the soil the farmer   and so every time the genetics rearrange you get  a chance to find something really great if the   plants are doing that kind of work for me then  i don't have to do it as a farmer i don't have   to put in the labor i don't have to put in the  the materials the poisons whatever it is to try   to overcome the genetic deficiencies okay how to  get my varieties the best way is to make your own   okay you can make genetically diverse varieties  on your farm that are locally adapted that are   your community seeds and that that's a really  good way that i recommend first and foremost you

Channel: Landrace Gardening

Views: 5,137

Keywords: landrace gardening, joseph lofthouse, save seeds, how to save seeds, landraces, grow food, survival gardening

Id: SyXaSeCIl2A

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022