Are You Frightened of Landrace Gardening?
Joseph Lofthouse talks about landrace gardening and promiscuous tomatoes.
Joseph Lofthouse had hundreds of jars of seed around his house when he began market gardening.
He saved seeds from each variety…a time-consuming task.
Today he has far fewer jars of seed. Today he practices landrace gardening.
Lofthouse no longer focuses on keeping pure varieties, but instead uses genetically diverse lots of seed.
His is the author of the book, Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination.
What is Landrace Gardening
Landrace gardening is not new. It’s a traditional method of growing using locally adapted, genetically variable seeds. The genetic variability makes it more likely that some plants will perform well even if there are adverse conditions.
“What I’m doing was standard practice through all of human history up until about 60 years ago, until people started farming with machines instead of human effort,” explains Lofthouse.
How to Start Landrace Gardening
Not having pure varieties feels strange to some gardeners. But Lofthouse points out that uniformity isn’t important in small-scale operations or home gardens.
Here are his tips for gardeners who want to try landrace gardening:
Grow and save seeds of a favourite variety
Then grow another variety of the same crop with desirable traits next to it
Aim for 2 - 5 varieties of the same crop from which to start your landrace
Lofthouse notes that there are some crops for which he avoids certain mixes. For example, he does not mix his popcorn with his sweetcorn; or his hot peppers with his sweet peppers.
