*Welcome Joseph Lofthouse, author of Landrace Gardening

Welcome Joseph,

I like the concept behind landrace gardening. I sow only heirloom vegetables until I read you. Now I will try landrace besides heirloom and compare the results. I have different seeds from different climates so that landrace gardening might be a good solution.

Welcome! I've been reading for a while but this is my first post. Reading through your book, which arrived last week, and am intrigued and thinking of ways to implement this in our own suburban garden. Thanks for putting it into book form. I've read through many of your threads here (and Dr. Redhawk's, being a soil science nerd myself), but find I like a good old-fashioned paper copy for information that I'll use to refer back to later.

Luke Welsh wrote:
My question feels pretty basic. I think I understand the philosophy but not the application. I bought varieties of tomatoes and cherry tomatoes from my local community garden organization. I understand that I'll use the seeds from their tomatoes as next year's tomato generation. ....

Will the various breeds of tomatoes interbreed naturally by cross-pollination? Will I end up with a mix between a cherry tomato and a heirloom tomato that could be delicious or mediocre?

I've eagerly waiting to read Joseph's book, but I've read enough of his explanations here on Permies that I can take a stab at this question.

Most tomatoes are self-pollinating, and the flowers usually don't even open enough to let insects cross pollinate them. So if you want to grow the same variety again, just save seeds from this years tomatoes, or next spring, welcome the volunteers that come up. Unless this year you were growing hybrid tomatoes, in which case they might not be quite the same next year (I've coddled volunteers from a hybrid and in this case they tasted as good but had other undesirable traits). Planting the seeds of the OP tomatoes you grew last year is saving an heirloom, but won't give you any genetic variety to select from and gradually breed tomatoes specially suited to your preferences and your particular environment.

Joseph has a grand project to promote promiscuous tomatoes, where the flowers open and insects can get in and out and cross pollinate. This will lead to genetic diversity that he (or you, or I) can select from in order to steer them toward our own needs. He is even intentionally crossing domestic tomatoes with other more wild tomato species in the search for useful traits.

Thank you for all of the information you've shared, Joseph. As soon as I saw this post, I ordered your book and can't wait to read it! Your landrace crookneck seeds germinated well for me and I'm looking forward to the harvest and saving seeds. Thanks again! :)

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Squash poison is wonderfully well behaved. It tastes horrid. If it contains even a little bit, people are unwilling to eat the fruit.

Yes, there are documented cases of people being poisoned by squash. The only way I can imagine that happening is some unfortunate confluence of mental and/or physical illness. (Not being able to taste for example, or being pathologically stubborn.)

My nephew has warped taste buds. I had to stop pointing out edible wild plants, because he would go into this frenzy of stuffing as much of it into his mouth as he could, no matter what it tasted like or what it did to him. And no matter how many people were trying to drag him away from it!

Sounds typical for a toddler, right? Except he's 19 years old and in college now.

When he was 9, he ate an entire rosemary christmas tree in one sitting. When he was around 13, I caught him eating entire elderberry clusters, stems and all. It's actually scary the kinds of things he'll eat.

I would not put it past him to eat squash with high levels of squash poison in it. He's a smart kid in every other way, but when it comes to potentially toxic foods, he has no survival mechanisms whatsoever.

Howdy!
Welcome to the group. We all seem to be pretty nice people, so I'm sure you'll find a corner to call home.
It's really a good time to meet you, even electronically, and I will happily see if someone else has started a forum about the questions that pop to my mind. I look forward to learning as much as I can about plant genetics and promiscuous pollination during the next few days!
I hope you have a good time!

Hi Joseph,

Ik have a question about potato onions and landrace.

I got my hands on some potato onions landrace steeds ( not from my region )
I have 3 variaties and they are Growing nicely.

If i get them to flower and seed ( does not happen often i Read)
I would like to "breed" my own landrace.

Do You have Any pointers specific for potato onions?

Hi

Welcome Joseph!  Looking forward to reading your book.

Very interesting topic. It seems I may have been doing this myself for the last 10 years or so with tomatoes and corn. I typically plant four types of tomatoes and select from the fruit. I have a tiny compact tomato plant hat has prolific cherry type tomatoes and is easily identified as a young seedling. It started out with several "tiny " heirloom named varieties but now I just call it my patio tomatoes. I'm still working on a paste type the same way, I am also working with coloured ("indian") corn and sweet corn varieties, looking for a multi purpose sweet (fresh eating) and mature dried hominy use. Not there yet with the corn.
It would be nice to read up over winter on how I could tweak or expedite the process.
At least now I know that the process is called landrace.
Thanks for sharing.

So yes, it was finally easy finding the book here in Spain. I just started it, but jumped first to the trees section.

I find that landrace for trees is similar to the “STUN” method of Mark Shepard or the mass selection of Luther Burbank. My question about your trees, Joseph, is : how do you set up the propagation? Do you direct seed the trees on the final location, do you start them on a nursery bed and place them later?


Gracias!

We have winners!

Congratulations!

Dorothy Pohorelow
Clayton High
Robin Wild
L Anderson

Joseph Lofthouse will be contacting you for your mailing information, so please keep an eye on your PMs and emails!

For those of you who did not win, and need this book in your life, here's a handy dandy link to purchasing his book!

Huge thanks to Joseph for ALL he does around here, for writing this book, and for helping so many people not only this week but every week. You make the world a better place every day, and I'm grateful for all you do.

Congratulations, y'all!!

Thanks for a week of interesting discussions. That sure kept me busy. I appreciate the questions, expressions of support, and the insights that were shared.

I've mailed books to the four winners.

Hi  
Is there somewhere other than Amazon I can get this book?

I am really keen to read all the learning you are sharing with us, but very reluctant to buy from Amazon as they are such an immoral company.

If you go to his website, he says that the book is available from amazon or from lulu.com (which is a print-on-demand service).  He also states that he earns a higher commission from the lulu purchases, so that might be a better place to order from anyway (if you're willing to wait the extra time).

Dan Fish wrote:Thanks Joseph. I really liked the tomato video on YouTube you did with David the Good and the Baker Creek guy!

Does anyone have a link for this?

Any winners yet? Nothing on the "thread boost" link

Hi and welcome!!