If you’re wanting to have a garden that produces a harvest more consistently each year then landrace gardening might be what you are looking for! Landrace gardening is gaining popularity with permaculturists and homesteaders alike and something you can try in your backyard too!
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What is a Landrace?
A landrace is a local cultivar or variety of plant that has adapted to grow in the local climate. They thrive in the region, often growing or harvesting more quickly and germinating much faster than other seeds, even heirlooms or hybrids.
A landrace vegetable or fruit has a huge amount of genetic diversity which means that there are differences from plant to plant. This is an advantage because the plants can adapt to changes each year. Have you had a long wet spring or a super cold winter with 8 feet of snow? How about drought and scorching summer sun? Landrace plants adapt to these changes year after year which means you are going to be more successful with a harvest each year.
What is Landrace Gardening?
If you’re already busy with work, chores, family and everything else life throws at you then landrace gardening is the gardening method where survival of the fittest in your garden reigns supreme. Landrace gardening works with nature and the natural movement of pollen between plants and means you can grow from seed saved from the best plants in your garden to sow the following year and save those seeds.
It’s a more traditional way to garden and means you can happily grow multiple varieties of a plant and not worry about spacings and isolation to maintain true-to-type seeds like gardeners must do with heirloom seeds.
It’s a great gardening method for anyone, even if you have short-season and high altitudes like we do here in Utah as well as areas with large changes in temperatures and seasons.
Benefits of Landrace Gardening
There are some great reasons to try your hand at landrace gardening!
- reliable harvests
- plants establish quicker
- reduced costs in seeds
- stress resistance to climate, pests and diseases
- no isolating varieties for seed saving
- less input from the gardener
You can even select plants that grow well in your currenr soil conditions using this method of gardening!
How to Start a Landrace Garden
Scouring through the internet and reading about gardening, there seem to be 2 kinds of a gardener; they hybrid gardener and the heirloom gardener. When it comes to starting a landrace garden, you need to think in terms of expanding the gene pool and bringing in diversity.
Developing locally adapted, landrace varieties can take a few seasons of saving seed and replanting but, it will be worth the effort when you have a resilient garden and a reliable harvest year after year.
Start with the Seeds
To start your landrace gardening project, you need to start out with a bunch of different varieties. Then plant them out, a few feet apart. If you have space, plant out as many as you can but a few of each seed variety should be sufficient for the average backyard.
It would be best practice to label your plantings or take plenty of notes in your garden journal so you know which are duds for your area and which ones germinate and grow well. Let’s start with the seeds and a little bit about types of seeds. Don’t be afraid to pull out the ones not thriving!
Heirlooms
Heirlooms have genetic depression (also called inbreeding depression). It means that they have been inbred for generations and sometimes lack the ability to adapt to stresses like pests, disease, and climatic changes but, they can be a great source of genes for traits that you love like color or flavor.
Hybrids
Hybrids like those you see with F1 on the seed packet or in the seed catalog, offer some additional traits such as disease resistance and although growing out seeds saved from hybrids is often nothing like the original hybrid you grew, plant breeders often cross these with other varieties and stabilize the variety to create new and exciting cultivars to grow. Some of these new cultivars might even become heirlooms in the next 50 years or so!
See more about seeds in this video:
Landrace
Plants in a landrace garden avoid gene depression because they are allowed to cross-pollinate making them become genetically diverse. The cross-pollination creates naturally occurring hybrids with vigorous growth known as hybrid vigor.
Key Watch Outs for Success!
Be sure not to include seed varieties that are protected as I show in the video above. If you aren’t sure because it’s a fruit or veggie from the grocery store, for example, skip it. We want to stay legal and some seed companies take their patented gene sequences very seriously…..
Skip using commercial F1 hybrids of beets, broccoli, cabbage and cabbage family (like turnip, Brussel sprouts, kohl rabi, bok choi etc), carrot, cauliflower, radish, sunflower and onions in your landrace development. These plants can have male sterility traits that cause problems with seed production in the following generations and shows up as no anthers in the flowers. The anthers are the fine thread structures covered in pollen in a flower. Use heirlooms or open-pollinated seeds as the base for these crops when developing your landrace and check that the flowers have anthers on them.
Check they have pollen by lightly brushing your finger over them, you should see pollen on your finger. Pull out any plants which do not have pollen.
Sources of Seeds
Some people stock up on seed packets at the end of the season when they are on sale, add grocery store or farmer’s market produce seeds to the mix which is pretty easy to do for tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash and watermelon and get seeds from a seed swap. Try asking your gardening friends and neighbors if they live nearby and tend to save seed. These seeds will be on their way to being adapted!
If you’re brand spanking new to gardening or just straight up don’t want to be asking neighbors don’t worry, I get it. Some great places to start are those seed suppliers which are part of the Open Source Seed Initiative:
- Adaptive Seeds
- Brown Envelope Seeds
- Common Wealth Seed Growers
- Experimental Farm Network
- Fedco Seeds
- Sand Hill Preservation Center
- Fertile Valley Seeds
- Great Lakes Staple Seeds
Other great places to start are heirloom seed suppliers such as:
- Amishland Heirloom Seeds
- Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
- Botanical Interests
- Mary’s Heirloom Seeds
- Native Seeds SEARCH
- Seed Savers Exchange
- Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
- Victory Seeds
Prepare your garden bed just as you would normally, add some compost and worm castings
Watch Them Grow
You want to keep an eye on those seeds which germinate first and flourish right off the bat. Plants that are slow to germinate, look spindly, puny or are being overrun by the weed seeds should be pulled from the bed. You want the best of the best, you’re looking for the Marines of the plant world, the ones that get in there, get established then thrive on minimal support and input!
Leave Them Be
The whole point of this gardening method is to select seeds from those plants which thrive and grow well despite adverse conditions in the garden such as:
- drought
- prolonged wet weather
- cold
- heat
- weeds
- pests
- diseases
You don’t want to pamper your plants because it becomes difficult to see those plants which are fitter and better than the rest or those that are responding to your care and nurturing. It’s ok to tend to them a bit, your usual watering, weeding and feeding schedule for the first few years so you can have some assurance of a good yield at harvest time.
Keep notes about the growing conditions in your garden and how the different varieties are growing.
Harvest
You need to eat some of the plants to see if you like the flavor or texture. You might want to assess other characteristics like how well the plant stores, winter squash with a thick, hard skin might mean the mice and voles leave it alone or it stores throughout winter into spring.
Save the seeds from those which you like. Make notes about why you loved this variety in a garden journal or on the seed packet to remind you next season.
Try to save seeds from a number of plants to keep a diverse gene pool. Remember, diversity is the key to adaptation!
Grow the Saved Seeds
The following year, grow the seeds you saved along with seeds from other sources. You might want to try growing seeds from a similar growing region. For example, if you are in the Pacific Northwest you could try growing a heirloom or open-pollinated variety from the UK which will grow well in those cool, wet conditions.
You want to maintain the genetic diversity of your plants so you want to keep adding in other sources of seeds each time you grow out. This ensures that you won’t end up with genetic depression and a crop that is at risk of failing if climate conditions change.
Rinse and Repeat
Each year, keep selecting, planting and saving the seeds from the fittest plants in your garden. Keep notes on the characteristics you are selecting the seeds for and make notes on the new varieties you are adding in each year. This is so that you know how you created your unique landrace variety.
Store seeds from previous years so you can add a little bit in each year’s plantings as well as new sources of seed. Adding seed from a couple of seasons previously helps to avoid the genetics being thrown out of whack with an unusual growing season. For example, if you are in a hot wet climate then one year you have a drought, the plants surviving the drought are going to be different from the plants that have adapted to the heat and humidity.
Maintaining a Landrace Garden
Be sure to share and swap landrace seeds with other local growers to enhance the local adaptability of the seeds. You also want to grow out a big number of plants from time to time to save seed from a number of them to maintain genetic diversity.
Save seed from multiple plants with different:
- shapes
- sizes
- colors
- textures
- days to maturity
- flavors
Save less seed from those plants which look like they struggled to grow in the season.
You might think that a landrace garden means no work gardening but, you still need to do a little weeding here and there and water on a schedule that suits you/your climate. Be sure to keep your soil healthy by adding nutrients back into the soil with compost each year! Like all plants, landraces will do better with healthy soil and practicing good crop rotation.
Keep your seeds cool and dry in the ever-useful glass jars
What will be your first crop to develop into a landrace in your garden?
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