Hello

Hello, new member here. I’ve occasionally used the site as a resource for information, but wanted to join to interact with all of you. I’ve been interested and attempted to practice Permaculture for 20 years. Just 3 years ago my husband and nearly grown kids and I moved to a home on 5 acres in Washington. I’ve recently become interested in creating new varieties and landrace breeding.

A big welcome to Permies Bethany!  So glad to have you with us all.

Hey Bethany, welcome! I'm a newer member as well and am looking forward to getting more involved on the site. I studied horticulture for my bachelor's but wasn't familiar with landrace breeding, and upon first glance I love the concept. Is there a particular plant type you'd like to start doing this with?

Hi, nice to meet you! I can’t decide on one thing. I am trying to save all the seeds I can from plants that grew in my garden. Sometimes I leave cucumbers or tomatoes to root in the garden so I will get volunteers. Today I picked pumpkins and laid the seeds out to dry. I have many more seeds than I can plant in my fenced garden, but I have about 4 I unfenced acres to work with, so I will plant some for the deer to browse and see what survives, if anything. One of the plants I’ve saved seeds from is a butternut squash that I bought from a farm about a mile from me. I planted seeds from that squash in 2020 and then saved seeds from that plant to plant in 2021. I didn’t get a harvest in 2021 (deer ate it). This year I planted a 2020 seed, got two squashes. Obviously, I will have to deal with the dna bottleneck. I’m also looking for varieties of wild tomatoes to add genetic diversity to the heirlooms that I have.

Hi, Bethany.

I'm trying to do the same, but I have less success at growing on my site. I can tell that I had more success with seeds that were given to me by other neighboring gardeners than anything I could buy in bags. So if you have this option, I would try to ask for local seeds first, landrace them second.

I'm also trying to do landrace gardening on a small plot, but don't really have the space for the full diversity, so instead I'm trying to add diversity over time, mixing in new DNA every generation.

Good luck! Glad to have you here and interacting!