Landrace gardening survey

I’ve been binge-watching Joseph Lofthouse’s and other’s content on YouTube regarding landrace gardening. I hope to try this myself next year. For anyone who has been land-racing or who plans on doing so,

I’m curious…

1) What species are you landracing?

2) What varieties/cultivars of heirlooms/hybrids are you starting with and why?

3 What will you be selecting for?

4) What is your location/growing conditions?

😃

My corn started in 1997 I think. A mix of several varieties over the years.

I don't recall the last time I bought tomato plants, at least ten years and maybe 15. Five years ago my daughter gave me a purple tomato and that is the last commercially produced plant. Since then all volunteers.

My squash are Japanese kabocha grown from seed starting maybe 5 years ago. Not enough genetic variety there I think. Zucchini is saved seed maybe 5 years. The different varieties seem to be blending.

Most are saved seeds except carrots which I buy seeds. Pepper seeds come from store bought peppers that I save seeds from.

Hi Jonathan, if you haven't run across it yet, you probably want to check out Going to Seed's Adaptation Gardening course. It's free and has a lot of video of Joseph.

Basically everything I grow, I'm trying to landrace by planting a mix of varieties all together. But I've only been doing this for four years and getting crosses is sometimes hard -- I'm not sure how long it'll take before I have something distinct from my starting grexes.

When I'm assembling a grex, I look for varieties that are one of: already a landrace, specific to my cold climate and short season, especially rich in micronutrients (or a weird color), a bearer of some other interesting trait.

When I'm selecting for what to save, the greatest criterion of course is what survives to produce seed. The environment does that for me. After that, I'm mostly looking for strong and unusual flavors and colors. I mostly don't prioritize yield except that I don't want a fruit-plant that's mostly seed. (High yield seems to correlate to low nutrient density, so I sort of want the opposite of that.) Sometimes I do things like prioritize corn has the snotty nitrogen-fixing aerial roots or, following Joseph's goals, tomato flowers seem especially promiscuous.

Jonathan de Revonah wrote:
1) What species are you landracing?

I'm trying to grow some basic vegetables in my 'simple farming' area. It's been a bit more challenging than I had hoped, but like Christopher I'm only about three years in. The problem I have is compacted, acidic, silty soil and a short cool growing season - mild and wet though, so some advantages too. So I'm trying to adapt grain crops - bere barley and black oats, root crops - parsnip, carrot, swede (rutabaga), and legumes (peas and fava beans) along with potatoes (saved tubers so far, but I have aspirations for True Potato Seed (TPD) potatoes too. Maybe in a few years I will think about what I grow elsewhere, but 'annual' crops are my focus just now.

2) What varieties/cultivars of heirlooms/hybrids are you starting with and why?

I just started with everything I could get my hands on that would grow! I only excluded F1 hybrid seed where possible because some species include a trait for male sterility which would affect the ability to pass on genes to future generations. I was limited a bit by budget - it's amazing how much a few seed packets can add up! but I did manage to get a few landrace bean grex which give a good head start. It may take a bit longer including varieties that grow more poorly here, but maybe those might have disease resistance or ability to grow in exceptional weather seasons that might come in useful.

3 What will you be selecting for?

At the moment I'm really just selecting for viable seed! Really I'm happy to have had a plant grow to maturity, particularly in a cool wet summer like we just have had! Anything that does grow to seed will be more likely to do better in a more normal summer, and is a variety that is tolerant of my conditions. Once I've got enough plants growing that I can afford to eat a few more, then I will select for size and disease/pest resistance.

This year was my first season of land racing. I had big plans in the winter, and followed through on some of it. I started with moschata squash, sweet corn, hot peppers, and musk melons. My challenges here are a very long, hot, humid summer with a great richness of sap sucking insects. I expect to be selecting for pest tolerance and flavor. My growing season is long, so I only care about time-to-maturity as it relates to pest resistance.

I planted about 10 heirloom varieties plus one grex/landrace from elsewhere of each of these. My squash was very successful --- I got a year's worth of fruit in a diversity of shapes. I will save seeds from those that taste good and keep well. I hope next summer will be better, but this year was already good. The number of squash bugs in my garden now is extraordinary. I think this will test my plants earlier next season than they were tested this year.

My sweet corn was a bust in that we got very little to eat. But I did get enough seed to plant next year, so I am hopeful. When the corn was young, we got some big thunderstorms. All of the plants I saved seed from were able to stand back up after being knocked over three times. This is not something I planned to select for, but with hindsight, it will be a valuable trait here.

The musk melons were similar to the corn. They just didn't grow that much, and the rats usually beat me to the fruit. I saved seeds from two fruits that had ok flavor, and one that had outstanding flavor. Hopefully next year is better.

Hot peppers were successful. I got excellent productivity out of them and saved seeds mostly from larger fruited shapes with milder heat. I hope to select for peppers that can handle our summers and continue producing through the season. So far, they go pretty dormant in late July through August.

In the coming seasons, I hope to try landracing dent corn, cowpeas, tomatoes, tomatillos, bitter gourds, cucumbers, and possibly some wheat, oats, or barley.

I don’t really have enough land that I could really claim to be “land racing“ my crops, but I have been saving seed from my open pollinated varieties of vegetables and supporting volunteer plants in my garden for many years.

For tomatoes I’ve gotten several “promiscuous”  outcrossing varieties that I save the seeds from year to year. I used to separate them by type, but now I just throw all the seeds together. I end up with some brandywine type slicers and some smaller golf ball size low acid tomatoes that grow in bunches, likely due to principe borghese ancestry.

Radishes, arugula, and amaranth I just let seed themselves.

I grow a variety of pole beans all mixed together too, but they do not seem to cross, which I guess is to be expected.

Mk Neal wrote:

I grow a variety of pole beans all mixed together too, but they do no
t seem to cross, which I guess is to be expected.

Just this year I got some pole beans that appear to be crosses. At least they don't look like anything I had before, and appear to be a blend of the old seed. So, it does happen.

Just came from the Sow your resistance convention in Antibes. It was awesome, Joseph Lofthouse had great success and our stand with Going to Seed was the most visited one. We had lots of seeds to share with people and gained members and seeds from all over the world.

I am a broad slow land racer. I 've got the usual stuff and grow grexes of peas, beans, runner and bush favas, aubergines 20 lettuce 100 ,  cucumbers 15 , potatoes unknown nr varieties, a grex of wheat from marginal soils 2000 varieties,  but I strive for diversity in herbs as well corianders dille, arthemisia etc.

I don't know how quick adaptation gardening delivers new varieties, but I noticed I have so many more veggies that grow well for me now since I change hugely variable populations. And I'm sure it will only get better in time as more people will join the online seed trains/packages going through differing continents.

Noob here. Can someone differentiate a grex vs. a landrace for me please? Maybe my original question should’ve been regarding “grexes”?

The way I use those words (which I think is sort of technically wrong in a number of ways, but mirrors a common parlance of the day):

A grex - A mixture of varieties that should be able to largely hybridize. I also like “hybrid swam”!

A landrace - A genetically diverse population that continues to cross and develop and interbreed while maintaining some diversity. This is much more narrow than a grex genetically, but much much wider than an heirloom.

To landrace - the process of developing a landrace from a grex or from another landrace that is custom-tailored to your climate, environment, and growing practices.

Christopher Weeks wrote:The way I use those words (which I think is sort of technically wrong in a number of ways, but mirrors a common parlance of the day):

A grex - A mixture of varieties that should be able to largely hybridize. I also like “hybrid swam”!

A landrace - A genetically diverse population that continues to cross and develop and interbreed while maintaining some diversity. This is much more narrow than a grex genetically, but much much wider than an heirloom.

To landrace - the process of developing a landrace from a grex or from another landrace that is custom-tailored to your climate, environment, and growing practices.

Thanks Christopher. That helps. Then I guess what I meant in the original post is: what are people using when they first get started? What did you use/are you using to create your grex/hybrid swarm (with the ultimate goal being a landrace)?

I guess I need to just buy the darn book! And/or take the free course! 😊🤣

Also, in my answer above, I provided the heuristic I use for assembling a grex rather than the literal varieties because I thought it would be more useful. But also, less boring. In case I'm wrong, for instance, here's what went into my common pole bean grex:

Rio Zape, Eye of the Goat, Tarbais, Marvel of Venice, Blauhilde, Purple Podded pole, Bogen, Bosnian Pole, Breganzer, Brejo, Corn Planter's Purple, Cresnjevec, Deb's Creek, Emelia's Italian, Eye of the goat, Fagiolo Viola Di Assiago, Forelle Fliederfarben, Ga Ga Hut, Gila River, Graines de Cafe, Hashuli Brown and White, Hemelvaartboontje, Hiawatha, Illinois Wild Goose, Jembo Polish, Kifl Mucko, Lambada, Lynnfield, Mariazeller, Manachelle Di Trevio, Mona Lisa, Osborne and Clyde, Poletschka, Selugia, Seneca Cornstalk, Splash Trout, Succotash, Tamila, Volga German Siberian, Witzenhausen, Yellow/Orange, Pink Tip Cornfield, Red seeded cornfield, Purple Podded pole, Mayflower, Ideal Market, Connecticut Wonder, Climbing French, Iroquois, Rice River, Raven, Blue Shackamaxon, Neckargold, Hidatsa Shield, Monte Gusto, Turkey Craw, Good Mother Stallard, Cherokee Trail of Tears, Crawford, Louisiana, Whipple Organic, Lazy Wife Greasy, Tiger Eye, Margaret Best Greasy Cut Short, Bertie's Best, Carolina Red Stick, Fatman, Jeminez, Roark, Dry (from Lofthouse), Mariazeller Landrace, Sacre Bleu, Brighstone, Pole Bean Party Mix, Pole Bean Landrace (mostly dry), Hannah Freeman, dry semi-runner, Ippoliti Family Heriloom, Colombian, black and white, Columbian red

I track the incoming varieties (mostly so that I can avoid doubling up, though I don't always check) with a spreadsheet that looks like this:

Another resource for starting seed mixes is Going to Seed's Seed Share Program (full disclosure: I run that program). We mix together multiple varieties in a single packet, for lots of diversity. Here's a link: https://goingtoseed.org/pages/seeds

Our 2025 seeds will be available to all on February 1. Contributors to the program get early access in January.

1) What species are you landracing?

2) What varieties/cultivars of heirlooms/hybrids are you starting with and why?

3 What will you be selecting for?

4) What is your location/growing conditions?
…………………………………………………….

1) I’m currently growing a pumpkin landrace and a salad tomato landrace. Both of these landraces have been developing more than 10 years.

2) pumpkin— started with a kombucha and several wild looking pumpkins purchased at various farmers markets around Big Island.
    Tomato- started with a volunteer cherry

3) flavor, pest resistance, disease tolerant, productivity

4) Hawaii / tropical

The pumpkin landrace shows variation in fruit size and shape. Flavor is consistent. I still cull plants that fail the pest resistance and disease tolerance.

The tomato landrace was propagated via seed for several years. Once I identified several plants that excelled, I now propagate via tip cuttings. Every 6 months cuttings are taken from those plants that showing good pest resistance and disease tolerance, plus are producing larger sized fruits. Yes, I taste test before taking cuttings. While I’m no longer propagating via seed, there are several gardeners around me who are doing that. So the developing goes on.

While developing these landrace, I culled heavily. A small gardener is limited when it comes to culling. I’m fortunate to have the space to grow dozens of pumpkin plants, leaving just the best to grow on. I plant close to 100 tomato plants (at various stages of growth) and thus have lots of flexibility to chop out the plants that don’t  measure up without it affecting the yield much.

Personally, I like the "Landrace Everything" mentality, and can only suggest you start with what you have available to you.  Then, as new seed options that can contribute something useful to your goals become available, incorporate them.  Everyone has different goals, different growing conditions, different garden sizes that can limit what you can grow in a given year, different seed availability, different tastes, etc.

I can count on losing some seed I plant, some sprouts that emerge, some seedlings while still tender and fragile, some weak plants that are too slow to produce well get culled, some do great until pests invade, some make fruit, but it rots or gets damaged by pests, some are lost to wet/dry conditions, some don't shade their fruit well & sun scald, some have any number of undesirable traits that I don't want to replicate, some survive this onslaught right up until they get a second wind in the fall, then a frost takes them out just before making seed, and some biennial plants just don't survive a deep freeze in winter.  

I do put some of my own parameters on certain mixes rather than incorporating everything that can possibly cross-pollinate, and that is simply because I have specific goals in mind.  These goals can change over time as I see fit, and some are done in stages by my own design.  Just because a plant makes viable seed, it doesn't always make the cut if I'm then selecting for other traits, that's only one factor.  

For me, this is a long-term plan and I enjoy the process.  I could definitely advance my successes faster with more land, but I'm one person managing it.  It gives my mind something to ponder constantly, and I'm always excited to see how things do.  

I think we're on the precipice of great things as a seed sharing community, and the more people that take up this mindset, save their own seeds, and learn how to teach others, the better.

Chinese broccoli and rapini were the ancestors

Making an effort one year to eliminate a turnip type weed in the weedseed I got for free, so as not to destroy my feral brassica:

It seems I have managed to get a consistent 30" wild brassica that has tender mild leaves and pops up all over the place, and they rarely get eaten by slugs which I still haven't understood why.

1) I landrace everything: annuals, perennials, trees, animals.

2) My starting varieties/cultivars arise from chaos: Whatever I can get from whatever source.

3) The ecosystem does 80% of selection. After that I select for reliability and flavor.

4) High elevation irrigated desert.

I've *kind of* begun landracing Vicia faba, to the extent that is possible on the quite small scale I can work on - depending on other uses of the garden I have had between 70 and 140 plants every season for five years, and even smaller scale for a few years before.
I have saved seed from plants that grow fast, don't fall over, have comparatively dense foliage, produce beans early, and have at least an average number of pods and beans pr pod. This selection of course is easier to to while the plants are still in the garden, but after the beans have been dried and shelled I additionally remove any that are smaller than average, more wrinkly or misshapen, and definitely any that even *might* have signs of disease or pests.
Up until this season I only used seed that I had grown myself, after I started with a little handful of Witkiem (I think) that were bought ca. 12 years ago. While I was happy enough with these in most respects, I had the impression that the number of pods and beans pr pod had declined slightly. Because of this, and also out of curiosity, this season I got hold of some other varieties and sowed them with my own saved seed, about 1/4 of the former. These were already mixed, and I don't know which varieties the mix contained, but it looked like about 10 visually distinct types. I saved seed from this years mixed beans again, and am very eager to try them again next season. I tried to apply the same selection criteria as described above, but additionally I have tried to keep a good variety of seed types. Next season, or possibly after a few more generations, I may return more strictly to the "functional" criteria and possibly to some extent disregard the appearance of the beans.
My main goal is to have more beans! The general robustness of the plants (in growing fast, staying upright and outcompeting weeds) I assume will contribute to this goal, so that is a "sub-goal". Also important is getting rid of broad bean beetles, which is also necessary in getting more (edible) beans. I wrote a bit about my experiences (so far) in reducing broad bean beetle damage in another thread: permies.com/t/149600/permaculture/Natural-pest-control-broad-bean#2657998

In a way I'm landracing my human body and mind to see how I endure thru the seasons in my attempt of being a gardener :) So, it's very haphazzard. I created my first garden just 6 or so years ago, and this is only my 3rd year of even learning the basics of seed saving, so I got a ways to go.

1) Everything in the garden, with a special interest of corn, squash and beans. Got a good crop of cabbage and collards overwintering now tho so we'll see if they seed next season? I need to go watch the videos mentioned above, for sure!! Tomatoes and peppers in the works too but I might be doing something wrong as you'll see in the next answer :/

2) You name it I'll try it...if it's free or super cheap. I'm horrible at understanding scientific methods and terminology so anything goes here. I read some stuff about hybrids not being great in certain species/varieties but they were already in my seed collection so surely they get planted among the others?

3) At this stage I select for health - no weird soft/dark spots, don't need babying, etc. But, I'm personally fond of early and late producers as well, and things that even just simply survive a drought.

4) North eastern Kentucky - full swing climate from 10°F snowy winters to 95°F dry summers.

What's cool is that even tho "landracing" is essentially just the tried and true "way" since ancient times, it's new to me and a breath of fresh air - as some of my first experience came from working at a veggie farm - which is a very nice place, well ran and environmentally minded, certified organic etc...but they do no seed saving and buy it all in every season. I thought that was just the way things were but thank goodness for folks like Lofthouse for putting the words and info out there to spark change. The "ultra productive" profit driven plastic dependent market garden scene is just insanity if you ask me, and landracing is a sigh of relief that I think will work on my scale for personal consumption and modest outside sales.

E Nordlie wrote:
my experiences (so far) in reducing broad bean beetle damage ..  :
permies.com/t/149600/permaculture/Natural-pest-control-broad-bean#2657998

Oh cool!

You know you're a permie when...

Broad bean mixed breed landrace

Gotta go read....

1) What species are you landracing?
I suppose I landrace all of mine or more like none at all. I follow what to me is a more logical definition of landrace presented by Dr. Alan Kapuler years ago.  It goes something more like, it's a crop that has been brought into and cultivated in a geographical area for a long time and might, maybe probably, originated from wild ancestors. That may not be exactly what he said, as I didn't look it up to make sure. A grex as he described it, is a family where crosses took place and each successive generation which he called G1, G2 and so on, includes members of the previous generation(s). I don't really do that though, as I make little effort to replant original strains along with their descendants each year, unless I want to reproduce one of the original phenotypes, just with renewed vigor or improved flavor, disease resistance or better production.  

2) What varieties/cultivars of heirlooms/hybrids are you starting with and why?
I guess I have two primary criteria for selecting new varieties for my garden. One is, I want some indication they may do well here, so I focus, but necessarily exclusively on those with an historical connection to North America east of the Mississippi river and north and south up and down the Appalachian Mountains. Second is a description of short season maturity. For example, when I decided to grow peanuts, I purchased all I could whose catalog descriptions said 100 days or less and bypassed those that said 120 days. I choose that area because varieties with history from there and especially if the seed currently for sale was grown there, it offers a higher chance, but not a guarantee, it will do well for me. As long as they meet my initial criteria, I include both heirlooms and F1 hybrids.

With species that easily cross by wind or insects, heirlooms can mix up and start adapting on their own to yield new things I can select from. With the easily crossing heirlooms or F1s, assuming you can collect up a number of them, maybe only three or four will do well but they have been pollinated in all ways. Some are pollinated with their own kind; some are pollinated with the other (good) and some with the (bad). Some genetic inheritance, although I don't completely understand it, is carried only from the mother side of a cross and all of the offspring have it. Some that I might consider bad and don't want could have hidden genetics that might show up as good later on. If in the event a particularly bad plant shows up, I cull it from the patch to eliminate its genetics entirely. That works best if I can tell it's bad before it flowers. So, I save my seed from the good mother plants and discard all else. All of those seeds will have all of any (mother only) inherited traits and a broad mix up of other traits.

That has worked well for me with heirlooms and F1s of things that easily cross on their own. I avoid F1s of a lot of things that don't easily cross on their own and that difficult to cross pollinate by hand. Those are mostly things with a lot of tiny flowers like carrots or onions. The producers of those hybrids utilize techniques and genetics that I don't want in my garden.

3 What will you be selecting for?
I select first for reasonable success in my conditions, like others have mentioned conditions, in the first season or two, do most of that for me. Next, I just favor superior production and flavor. Most all of the other things like drought or disease resistance fall under the umbrella of the afore mentioned, conditions. I rarely select or breed for any one specific thing.

4) What is your location/growing conditions?
I'm in southern Indiana and also have a full range of seasons from sub-zero F in winter to 90 +, occasionally even 100 + and often dry periods in summer. I've been gardening for over sixty years and for over thirty years have used no chemicals, fertilizers other purchased inputs of any kind. About fifteen years ago I eliminated the use of petroleum powered machines and was greatly surprised at how much easier and productive gardening is without them.  

Anna Mieritz wrote:Another resource for starting seed mixes is Going to Seed's Seed Share Program (full disclosure: I run that program). We mix together multiple varieties in a single packet, for lots of diversity. Here's a link: https://goingtoseed.org/pages/seedsDrift Boss

Our 2025 seeds will be available to all on February 1. Contributors to the program get early access in January.

Great, I am new and want to buy your seeds