This dummy's trying his hand at a landrace

Hi, I'm new! New to the forum, and new to the notion of a landrace.

A little background on me and my agricultural motivations: I'm a city slicker (Los Angeles) with a backyard garden. My wife was diagnosed a few years ago with Celiac disease (a.k.a. the only medically-recognized diagnosis to avoid eating gluten). Of course that was a pretty big drag: along with the expected downsides of not being able to eat (for example) real bread, there also came a lot of unexpected side effects - like learning that most commercially-produced beans are inter-planted with (or at least harvested alongside) wheat. That means one of our favorite foods (not to mention a great way to eat healthy and cheap) suddenly became a lot more expensive.

That was the moment that our mostly inactive backyard garden became serious: we decided to grow our own beans, ideally enough to supply our family of 5 for the whole year. (As time and space permits we're also dabbling in tomatoes, corn, zucchini, and potatoes, but beans are our main focus.) Neither she nor I fancy ourselves "serious" farmers, but I figure that since we're probably going to be in this venture for the rest of our lives, we might as well put in the time to educate ourselves and do it right. At first we considered just planting some pinto beans and black beans from the supermarket, but instead I turned to the interwebs for some recommendations. I ended up ordering some Good Mother Stallard seeds (of which I had read glowing reviews on Rancho Gordo) and we quickly fell in love with them, so we set about figuring out how to grow them effectively.

Our first attempt at growing last year barely yielded as many seeds as we planted: our clay soil is nutrient-poor, and my hand irrigation was inconsistent. So I began composting in earnest (both hot composting and trench composting) to gradually improve our soil, but to jump start the process I built some raised beds and filled them with commercial soil; I also invested in drip irrigation. As a result, this year has been much more fruitful: not only did we get enough Good Mother Stallard beans to enjoy for several months, but leveraging our long growing season, we also branched out and grew some Pinquito beans we got from my Aunt in Santa Maria, some Pinto and Cranberry beans we got from the supermarket, and even some Scarlet Runner beans and Black Tepary beans. Now of course the runners and teparies are their own deal, but with four varieties of P. vulgaris in the mix, I started to wonder how I could grow them all in relatively close quarters without risking them crossing.

You might be able to guess where this is story goes at this point: my research introduced me to a "new" school of thought that, far from avoiding crossing, actively encourages it! I started telling my wife about landraces, but still being in love with the Good Mother Stallard beans, she was... less than enthusiastic. I think it's safe to say that she would have been happy to keep the Good Mother Stallards exactly the same forever. I read on about the advantages of genetic diversity for local adaptation (important to me for minimizing water consumption - we've spent most of the last 10 years out here in extreme drought), and about how a properly stewarded landrace could be more resilient to disease (which piqued my wife's interest due to the amount of powdery mildew which our Good Mother Stallard plants attracted). After a few weeks of consideration, last night we more-or-less reached our moment of truth and decided to throw ourselves into developing a landrace.

So we ordered a half dozen new varieties of seeds from Native Seeds Search (which you may know specializes in desert-adapted varieties) to add to the four we've already grown. We have no idea where this is going, but it should be fun! (I've requested Joseph's book from the library, but it's not part of their catalog so it may be a while.)

It sounds like the Good Mother Stallards are close to what you want. They were productive and you like the flavor, but maybe you could develop something similar that needs less water and/or has better mildew resistance. You might start by planting mostly the Stallards and fewer of the other varieties. That way you can potentially keep what you like about the Stallards while tinkering around the edges. Happy hybridizing!

Jake Esselstyn wrote:It sounds like the Good Mother Stallards are close to what you want. They were productive and you like the flavor, but maybe you could develop something similar that needs less water and/or has better mildew resistance. You might start by planting mostly the Stallards and fewer of the other varieties. That way you can potentially keep what you like about the Stallards while tinkering around the edges. Happy hybridizing!

Thanks! I'm a little disappointed in one other aspect of the Good Mother Stallards though: they have a small number of seeds per pod. We averaged about 4 per pod in the last harvest, with 3 being more common than 5 (our grocery store pintos averaged 6-7). I'm hoping that some crossing could help bring that number up.

What varieties do you grow, if any?

Have you looked into cowpeas, Vigna unguiculata?

And otherwise, if you and your wife are disagreeing: you can still have one part of the garden with the variety she likes, and one part with the new landrace. If inbetween the two P. vulgaris you have a bed of cowpeas, the likelihood of them crossing is really low.

hans muster wrote:Have you looked into cowpeas, Vigna unguiculata?

And otherwise, if you and your wife are disagreeing: you can still have one part of the garden with the variety she likes, and one part with the new landrace. If inbetween the two P. vulgaris you have a bed of cowpeas, the likelihood of them crossing is really low.

We looked into them a bit, though our experience eating black eyed peas didn't really interest us enough to plant them. Do you have a favorite variety?

I have been planting whatever beans are available, some 'heirloom' purple beans I bought 15 years ago, supermarket kidney beans, great northern beans etc. The last few years I have noticed changes in seed shape and color, so I assume some crossing is happening, even though beans are said to not cross very often. This year I found quite a few black speckled beans which are like nothing I have ever planted. It's interesting, and I save back and plant everything.

They all make decent to good green beans, and they all make good dry beans, so I don't really care. In your case, I might suggest allowing them to cross and then visually selecting back towards the specific bean your wife prefers. You will still get the mixing of genetics even if they look like one of the original varieties.

It's not a problem either way. If you don't like the results of the crossing, just start over with new-bought seeds of the varieties you like.

1 year update! We squeezed in two plantings this year. Since I only mentioned one last time, here are the ancestral varieties:

-Good Mother Stallard: https://shop.seedsavers.org/good-mother-stallard-bean
-Sawaroame: https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/common-beans/products/pc047
-Vayo Wapibawi: https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/common-beans/products/pc023
-O'odham Pink: https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/common-beans/products/pc063
-Purple Hopi: https://www.nativeseeds.org/products/pc102
-Sonoran Canario: https://www.nativeseeds.org/products/pc082
-Rattlesnake: https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/common-beans/products/ts305

The good news is that my suspicion was right: my wife's reluctance to grow anything but Good Mother Stallard was largely due to the fact that it was the first heirloom variety we tried. Because it tasted so much better than the commercial varieties we grew up with, she was led to believe they were uniquely exceptional. And while their flavor in fact quite excellent, they are not unique: we are in agreement that the Sawaroame, O'odham Pink, and Purple Hopi are every bit as delicious (Purple Hopi is my personal favorite). The Vayo Wapibawi and Rattlesnake are not as exciting flavor-wise, but the Vayo Wapibawi seem to put out new pods for quite a while, and the rattlesnakes grow like gangbusters (in warm weather). Since these are desirable traits, I'm keeping them around to contribute to the gene pool.

The Sonoran Canario was the least exciting of all the varieties. I was intrigued to learn that they are traditionally grown in winter, so I kept them around until after the second planting of the year, when the weather was quite a bit cooler, just to see how it fared. But when it didn't seem to outperform any of the other varieties, nor did I see obvious signs of its influence in any of the crosses that have popped up so far, I decided to not plant it anymore.

Oh yes, crosses. Knowing that common beans have relatively low cross rates, I was expecting to have to wait years before I saw any noticeable differences, but boy was I wrong! I saw one obvious cross after first harvest, and four more after the second!

Generation 1, minus Sonoran Canario (I can't seem to figure out how to attach images):
https://drive.google.com/u/0/drive-viewer/AKGpihbOjHXNF8oKBbtSYcEEdeEOmJed7lBCPQ8oDkTOYS9Vyzx_CQkOVN8FY8UVrqRPak83UJ5jXbMMJMQsz4nJn8pfPFQrVoiz2g=s1600-rw-v1

Generation 2, minus Sonoran Canario and Good Mother Stallard:
https://drive.google.com/u/0/drive-viewer/AKGpihYoTVa9qHfqNnW6OPymxRD2idm0ZEds8KXrz7z4jDucYFzwncFcBGHYUysqQWTjVrnC-OJvpkEMSLIk_toUPyimxDbASZcE7w=s1600-rw-v1

The second planting (with the cooler weather) saw noticeably more powdery mildew crop up than the first, and it was over-represented on the Good Mother Stallard plants. So I decided to try developing two landraces: one for warm weather, and one for "cold weather" (you know, by Los Angeles standards). I'm using the harvest from the second planting as the base for my cold weather landrace, and since we no longer fear for the flavor of our landrace without Good Mother Stallards, I removed them from the mix. And while I may change my mind in the future about maintaining a separate cold weather landrace, for now I've decided to give it a true trial by fire: I just made a third planting of the year (planted November 24)! We'll see what it manages to produce over coldest part of year. We do typically get a few frost days per year, so that may be too much for them to endure. I guess we'll find out!

Lastly, a picture of the trellis I settled on (after trying a few different configurations of bean poles). I have four drip lines running the length of the bed, corresponding to four rows of bean plants. Two rows of plants share one row of twine trellises, equaling roughly four plants sharing a single twine as they climb to the sky (the theory being that close quarters will encourage crosses).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DidB_zFySfpRRIuns8HQ5j82xqY3Ez-d/view

I love crossing things too, but you will get an adapted landrace without any crossing whatsoever just by saving seeds from your best surviving and most productive plants. Subspecies happen without crossing. I've grown Jamaican sorrel in zone 7 for example. 15 years ago the plants barely had time to even make pods before freezes and I'd only get one plant to even make a few mature seeds. Now this year and last all of mine make mature pods and seeds by june. My leaves are completely different from the original also. Beans are hard to naturally cross. I've grown beans side by side for decades and still have the original kinds. I hold fast to the fact that my beans have adapted to my region better each generation of seeds saved. If you only save seeds from the mother stallard pods with the most beans per pod you will have more beans per pod the very next year. I've done wonders in 26 years with a tomato variety I have. I just save the best tomato and from the best plant. Each year it becomes noticeablely better in every way. My tomato and my Jamaican sorrel are landrace to my region now. With crossing you get a hybrid, with time you get a landrace.  Most important of all is simply selection of the mother plants. You will also find bizarre mutations you might wish to select for that just happen even in pure stock. I am 59 and grew my first beans at 4. I think rancho gordo has the best deals on beans but alot of them won't even produce beans at all in my area due to photoperiod I suppose. The only lima to produce in Alabama black eyed lima. You gotta find what grows in your area and tastes best and stick to saving seeds to get your landrace. If you cross your landrace then the next year it is very possible you will lower resistant traits and they will suddenly become prone to pests and sensitive the harshness of your climate. This happened in India when a large chemical corporation talked local farmers into investing in so called improved cotton. Thousands of local farmers committed suicide because of debt from crop failure.

My definition of landrace has four limbs.

Genetic diversity

Promiscuous pollination

Locally adapted

Community oriented

Using this definition, I feel reluctant to call inbred local-varieties a landrace. Even though they might be locally-adapted, they lack the other 3 traits that I feel are necessary before I'd call something a landrace.

I think that a lot of the local adaptation that happens with plants has more to do with the microbes that live in and on the plants than it has to do with the DNA of the plant itself.  I'm finding it really difficult these days to think of plants as something separate from the ecosystem. Seems to me that the real entity that I call a tomato actually consists of plant, fungi, microbes, and insects in some sort of intertwined mesh-network that can't really be separated into individual beings.