408 Landrace Gardening

Show Transcript

408 TRANSCRIPT LANDRACE GARDENING

Farmer Fred:

Today, we talk about landrace gardening. What’s that? Landrace gardening emphasizes the cultivation of locally adapted crops for your area. We talk with Joseph Lofthouse, a grower in the high deserts of Utah, who shares his methods of developing diverse seed varieties, seed-saving techniques, and efficient gardening practices in a mountainous desert climate. Techniques that you can adapt wherever you might live.

Today, it’s landrace gardening. We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios, here in the beautiful abutilon jungle of Suburban Purgatory. It’s episode 408 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. Let’s go!

LANDRACE GARDENING

Farmer Fred:

You've heard me say over the decades that all gardening is local. In other words, your yard or acreage has certain microclimates that lend itself to success or possible failure of the crops that you choose to plant. To give you a local example from the area where I am in USDA Zone 9 here in California's Central Valley, your neighbor may be able to grow, oh, let's say a productive avocado tree. But you, no matter how many times you try, you may be able to possibly grow the tree, but there's no fruit. You need to surf with Mother Nature for plant success. Grow those plants that are productive in certain areas of your own yard or acreage. And today's guest is a proponent of a traditional method of growing food in which the seeds to be planted next year result from the survival and success of the fittest in a particular garden in previous years. My guest is a big proponent of this method called landrace gardening, or farming. He's a Utah farmer and writer and yoga instructor, Joseph Lofthouse, who believes, like I do, that life is too short to put up with a problem plant. Joseph, thank you for talking with us from northeast Utah. Describe the area that you're farming in.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 thank you for that nice introduction. I farm at 5,000 feet elevation. I have mountains right next to my garden that are 9,000 feet elevation. And so it's a really cold, short growing season. And one of the problems I have with my growing is that if I buy heirlooms, they are from far away and long ago, and they don't thrive for me. And if I buy the hybrids, they've been selected to use chemicals and fertilizers that I'm not willing to pay for. And so I ended up having to develop my own varieties.

Farmer Fred:

And we're going to talk about that, about how you do that. And I think it's very intriguing and it's something that anybody can do.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yes. Like you said previously, if you save your seeds from what thrived last year, they're likely to thrive next year as well.

Farmer Fred:

What is your definition of landrace gardening?

Joseph Lofthouse:

 To me, a landrace is a variety that is genetically diverse, locally adapted, and promiscuously pollinating. And then it becomes part of the local community of humans, microbes, insects.

Farmer Fred:

So what I like about the way you plant is you might scatter seeds of, let's say, melon plants throughout your property, different varieties of melons, and you just watch the plants. How do they grow? Do they thrive or do they just sort of sit there and not do much of anything? And then you basically label those plants as they grow as something to grow out and save the seeds from.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Right. And it's even simpler than that, because what I have found is that the ecosystem does 80% of the selection, and I just have to stay out of the way.

Farmer Fred:

 That's the encouraging part of all this is that you truly are just trying out all sorts of different varieties and you plant those seeds and see what grows you save the seeds and then you plant those seeds again to see what happens but you don't really know who they've crossed with

Joseph Lofthouse:

Exactly and if i if i'm really trying to control my garden and who's the daddy what I end up getting is inbred plants. And whenever I'm growing inbred plants, they tend to grow less vigorously than the plants that are the mongrels.

Farmer Fred:

 I like what you said about buying seeds from Oregon, that the climate in Oregon where they develop these plants don't resemble your climate at all.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Right. And another thing that happens when you buy seeds from the big seed companies is you don't know where those seeds are coming from. They could be coming from Vietnam or the Netherlands or Oregon. And it's just a pot shot as to whether they might do well for me or not.

Farmer Fred:

Yes, there was the great jalapeno mix-up of a few years ago where seeds grown in China were shipped to the United States, mismarked. And people thought they were buying some sweet pepper seeds. Turned out they were hot pepper seeds.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Oh, no.

Farmer Fred:

 So that was not a nice surprise for a lot of people.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yeah. Well, about 25 years ago, that same thing happened with the delicata squash. They accidentally included some wild squash in with the delicata, and they ended up bitter, like 10% of them or something. and that totally destroyed the reputation of delicata squash for like decades.

Farmer Fred:

 You have a perfect example of one of your developments in the world of squash. If you visit Joseph's website, which is lofthouse.com, he has pictures there of a cross between a Hubbard squash and a banana squash, and it looks totally different. And according to what you said, it tastes great. And it's one of those that you say are promiscuously pollinated.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yes. Well, the thing about hybrids is that when things cross, their traits tend to be halfway in between the traits of the parents. And so if you start with great parents, then you get great offspring. And we have spent 10,000 years as humans domesticating all of these varieties. And so when they cross, we're not seeing spines and poisons and monsters. We're just seeing great parents cross with great parents. You get great offspring.

Farmer Fred:

 Yeah, if indeed the promiscuously propagated plant does have good parents and not from some stranger down the street.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Right. And in squash, there is that one species of squash that has a wild relative that sometimes can cross into like the zucchini and the delicata. But for the most part, we don't have to worry about that kind of thing.

Farmer Fred:

So let's say you do come across a variety you like, like this cross between the Hubbard and the banana squash that is really enjoyable. How many years do you have to grow it before it settles down and becomes true to seed?

Joseph Lofthouse:

Well, see, in my garden, I don't value that things come back true to seed. What I select for is flavor. And I select for productivity. And if I have a variety that's flavorful and productive, I don't care very much about what the shape of the fruit is or what the color of the fruit is. But I do, for example, stabilize to have, say, a 10-pound squash because that fits really good in my baking dishes that I have at home. And I like to stabilize for a soft skin so that I can cut it with my knife. But as far as the exact shape or exact color of the skin, I don't really care. But if I did care, in three or four years, I could stabilize that fairly decently.

Farmer Fred:

And what is your process for stabilization?

Joseph Lofthouse:

Just replant the seeds from the parent that you like. 

Farmer Fred:

And not the offspring?

Joseph Lofthouse:

Well, replant the seeds, the offspring of the parent that you like.

Farmer Fred:

But again, you're planting all sorts of other seeds around it too, aren't you?

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yeah. But like in my butternut squash, for example, I like butternut squash to have a big, long neck. And so I will plant 80% of the seed that I plant each year will be those long neck squash. And then the population tends to stay at the long neck squash. And then I include a few round ones and a few football shaped ones, just so I keep my genetic diversity high. But in general, I'm always replanting seeds mostly from those long neck.

Farmer Fred:

What I found intriguing is that sometimes you'll put some hybrid seeds in that mix to plant.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yes. Hybrids of things like squash or corn or tomatoes will reproduce really well. There are some hybrids like of the brassicas and the beets and the carrots that aren't really useful because they have defective flowers and i like i like to have perfect flowers in my garden, 

Farmer Fred:

Well, that makes perfect sense to do it that way. You mentioned that you have a very short growing season where you are, and it's low humidity, too, in this valley where you are up in northeast Utah. Well, what is your typical growing season dates?

Joseph Lofthouse:

So I have about a 90-day frost-free season. That is like from the last week of May until the first week of September.

Farmer Fred:

 Oh, that's short.

Joseph Lofthouse:

That is short.

Farmer Fred:

And yet one of the first crops that you were trying land-race gardening on was corn, which usually can be a 100-day crop.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yeah, well, I was growing sweet corn, and so that's like a 70-day to harvest. And the sweet corn can tolerate a little bit of frost early in the season. So that worked out okay for me. It was a little harder on the squash and the muskmelons. because they're very sensitive to the frost. And so for them, I only get like the 90 days. The first couple of years I worked on my squash, I had an 84-day growing season and an 80-day growing season, something like that. So that really selected those for short season.

Farmer Fred:

And did they improve as the generations went on to adapt to your climate?

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yes, because the first year that I grew like moschata squash, the butternuts, 75% of the varieties failed in my garden. The season was just too short for them, and a few varieties produced some green fruits by the time they got frosted. But that was enough to jumpstart a population that liked the shorter season.

Farmer Fred:

Exactly, because there are some that thrive, and then the next year you would add some more different seeds to that planting area to see what succeeds and what doesn't.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Right. And another thing I noticed with the butternut squash is that even though some plants didn't produce fruit, they produced pollen that pollinated some of the others that did produce fruit. And so in the long term, they contributed their genes to the population.

Farmer Fred:

 Let's talk about watering and fertilization. I would think that in the remote area where you live, both are commodities that you would rather not use very much of. And I would think that, and you talk about this at your website at lofthouse.com about fertilizing landraces and the work you did with popcorn. And I'm a big proponent of growing popcorn. I've grown that for decades. And I have a favorite heirloom variety called 1886 Pennsylvania Butter-Flavored popcorn. And it has taste. It has actual taste. It doesn't taste like styrofoam like you might find in Jolly Time or Orville Redenbacher. And you found out the same thing, that by crossing all these different popcorn varieties, you can come up with something that is very tasty and can thrive in a short season climate.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yes. One of the mistakes I made with popcorn early on is I crossed it with a flour corn, which doesn't pop good. And then when I was trying to reselect for popcorn it was difficult because the the traits that that will pop are very narrow and and so i recommend that you don't make those super or you don't introduce traits early on that you have to take away later but yeah i really loved having popcorn that's flavorful and delightful.

Farmer Fred:

 Corn needs a lot of water. It also needs a lot of nitrogen. What's your method for taking care of that?

Joseph Lofthouse:

 So I live in the desert. We have no rain at all, usually from during my frost-free growing season. And so I water once a week, just as as regular as clockwork. And I do not fertilize my fields at all. And because it's a lot easier for me to choose the genetics of the plants I'm growing than it is to modify my soil. So I'm selecting for plants that don't require high fertilizer.

Farmer Fred:

 So I would think that corn, which is a heavy nitrogen user, would have to be rotated in various areas of your land where there may be more nitrogen that you couldn't plant in the same spot over and over again without adding fertilizer.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Well, people say that corn depletes the soil of nutrients, but I think it's just the opposite because corn makes tremendous biomass. And if I put that biomass right back into the soil where it came from, then it seems to me like the corn is actually acting as a fertilizer for the garden. 

Farmer Fred:

So that's your fertilizer, basically. You're returning the plant to the soil.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yeah. I grow a lot of weeds and the weeds are next year's soil fertility. The corn stalks, I don't let anybody take the corn stalks out of my garden to feed their animals or for decorations because they're next year's soil fertility. And I don't rotate my crops because as a plant breeder, I want the most disease and the most pests that I can possibly have because those teach my plants how to be strong.

Farmer Fred:

Wow. Tough love.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yeah.

Farmer Fred:

 When do you till in the plant parts into the soil? Or do you just lay it on top?

Joseph Lofthouse:

I till usually in the spring and in the fall.

Farmer Fred:

And that doesn't tie up nitrogen in the soil in the spring for the new crop that's going in? I mean, if you do that in the fall, that'd be fine.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yeah. Well, see, over winter, I have like six months of snow, or five months of snow and so during the winter the garden is just frozen.

Farmer Fred:

 And you're building up the moisture in the soil, as well, to field capacity.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yes.

Farmer Fred:

 All right. So there's your water.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Well, that doesn't stick around past like second week of May. That spring water is all gone.

Farmer Fred:

 You mentioned beans. And I know that beans do pull nitrogen from the air. Talk a little bit about the beans that you grow. 

Joseph Lofthouse:

 So I grow like a genetically diverse crop: Runner beans and fava beans and tepary beans. And there might be 300, 400 varieties of beans in my mix, and I don't separate them out. I just plant them all together. I harvest them together. and some people are horrified by that but like how would they cook they'll all cook different and i'm like that's great because then you get some that turn into mush and a broth and some that are firm with different textures.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Oh because beans are are mostly in-crossing or in-breeding. If you found any one that you particularly liked, you could separate that out and grow it as its own variety.

Farmer Fred:

Yeah, that would make sense. Where do you source your seeds from?

Joseph Lofthouse:

So I haven't bought seeds for like a decade because I've mostly been growing my own seeds. And as a farmer, that saved me thousands of dollars a year by growing my own seeds instead of buying them from the seed companies and i go to seed swaps and share with people on the internet and so that's how i generally get new seeds.

Farmer Fred:

 And they might be from your neighbors, too.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yeah i have neighbors that grow like muskmelons and watermelons and squash; I really value their inputs.

Farmer Fred:

 How do you save your seeds? 

Joseph Lofthouse:

So there's two different ways of saving seeds. The first way for the wet crops, like a tomato, or I'll squeeze the seeds out into a jar and let them ferment for three, four, five days, and then wash the seeds and they're done. And things like that we eat as fruits, like cucumbers and squash and melons, that works good for them and then there's the dry seeds things like wheat or carrots that the seeds are dry when we harvest them and i'll throw those on a tarp jump up and down on them and then winnow them by dumping them from one container to another when there's a slight wind outside, and that will separate the seeds from the chaff. And then I store them in like glass jars, because the glass jars, the, Bugs and the mice can't get into them. And if there's a seed that is prone to having bugs in it, like insects that will eat the seeds, after the seeds are super dry, I'll throw them in the freezer for two or three days so that it will kill the larva from the insects.

Farmer Fred:

 As the horticulturists would say, you're practicing stratification and scarification.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Big vocabulary words. Yes.

Farmer Fred:

But basically, it's just preparing the seeds for storage.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yeah.

Farmer Fred:

 I like the idea of the glass jars. How do you label them?

Joseph Lofthouse:

 So I generally put a piece of paper inside the glass jar. And another thing I do is when I used to, well, I used to work as a chemist. And so I had this idea in my mind that you had to keep meticulous records and so i would have hundreds or thousands of seed packets for one crop, one seed packet for each parent and one day i said this is silly because i'm spending more time record keeping than i am gardening and so after that i started putting every seed from the same species in the same jar. And so I went from thousands of seed packets to just a hundred jars.

Farmer Fred:

And do you put on that piece of paper, do you put their traits like “very tasty” or is “a fine short season seed”?

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yes, I do. I typically put like something that describes the plant or the variety I put the year that it was the seed was harvested and I might put two or three or four years worth of seeds in that same jar, And one thing that that does is if there's a particularly wet year or a dry year that really messes with how the plant grows, there'll still be seeds in the jar that were from an average year. And so that prevents one year from totally skewing the traits of the population.

Farmer Fred:

 You mentioned in one of your pages online that heirlooms typically grow poorly in your garden. And if you grow tomatoes, you know, that's the truth, because if you start planting here in California, start planting Brandywines, you might get one tomato, because that was bred for Pennsylvania.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Right.

Farmer Fred:

 And how do you get around the fact that, well, if most heirlooms grow poorly, how do I increase the vigor of the plant that you want?

Joseph Lofthouse:

Well, see, tomatoes are a special case because when tomatoes were domesticated, 95% of the genetic diversity got left in the wild. And they didn't take their pollinators with them when they traveled from the Andes Mountains to Mexico to Europe and from Europe to the rest of the world. And so they became highly inbred. and so when i started trying to work with tomatoes there just wasn't enough genetic diversity in the tomatoes for me to get a population that would really thrive for me and the way i got around that is obtaining seeds from the Andes mountains that were still the wild tomatoes and crossing those into my tomatoes and then there was enough genetic diversity that I could actually start having success with the breeding project.

Farmer Fred:

 What are the tomato varieties that are successful there? Well, they'd be your named ones.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yes, a lot of them I haven't even named or shared with people. They're just, I call them the promiscuous tomato project, because one of the traits that we're selecting for heavily is the ability for tomatoes to be promiscuous. Because when they're promiscuous, they're basically making new hybrids, every generation, and they're rearranging their genetics so that they can more easily cope with my garden.

Farmer Fred:

 So do you then plant them closer together? Because even you state that tomatoes might have only a natural cross-pollination rate of 5%.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yeah, well, I'm selecting for tomatoes that have a cross-pollination rate of 100%.

Farmer Fred:

So those are big open flowers, I guess.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yes, they're big open flowers and they have a genetic trait so that they won't set fruit if the pollen that arrives is from itself or from a close relative.

Farmer Fred:

Ah, and that way you get around the inbreeding.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yes.

Farmer Fred:

 So you're a big proponent of saving seeds and it's a common thread in horticultural circles, the thought that home gardeners shouldn't save seed because they may not breed true. And you're saying this is a great reason to save seeds.

Joseph Lofthouse:

[29:50] That's the best reason. I don't know how we got into the idea that inbreeding is the way we should be growing our gardens. Because inbreeding results in weak plants. And yes, it results in consistency, but consistently weak plants doesn't really strike me as a way I want to grow.

Farmer Fred:

You even state, “I want to grow a genetically diverse family so that the offspring can become localized to my garden.”

Joseph Lofthouse:

Exactly. And not only my garden, but like my habits and my community's preferences. is, I will ask my customers at the farmer's market to return seeds from me, from any plant that really tastes lovely for them. And when I do that, I'm kind of opening up some ambiguity because what if they don't return my own seeds?

Farmer Fred:

 Yeah, the wrong seeds.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yeah, so you just end up trusting the community. And if they send seeds back that aren't really what i want it's no big deal because i've only planted five percent of their seeds and 95 of my crop is still what i know and love and so it it works out great.

Joseph Lofthouse:

There's a lot of joy in saving our own seeds and developing a relationship with seeds and knowing that who the ancestors, the grandparents, the great-grandparents were of the seeds that you're growing. and there's a lot of joy in doing seed saving as a community and instead of just buying whatever the corporation happens to offer.

Farmer Fred:

 I'm trying to figure out a way to work in the phrase survival seed banks. Be my guest if you want to talk about that.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Well, a few years ago, Utah banned the sale of garden seeds because they were non-essential during the COVID lockdowns. And that seems really dangerous to me to rely on a seed system that could be shut down at any moment. And so if we're saving our own seeds with our community, we're really providing a more reliable and sustainable seed system. And the other thing about saving our own seeds is they just plain old grow better than what you can purchase. And so those two things together contribute to more sustainable, reliable seed sources.

Farmer Fred:

That's a great philosophy. You even state on your website, “I think that the better emergency food strategy is to be growing a garden as part of a day-to-day lifestyle and saving seeds so that they can become locally adapted. Then if the grocery store food becomes scarce, we already have the knowledge, tools, soil fertility, gene pools, and manual skills to expand on existing gardens.” And really, for a lot of people, that's the way to go. If I was back in my 20s, I'd probably be doing the same.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Right. Well, in my community, about 150 years ago, there were some ditch diggers that were digging a canal system like 10 miles long, digging it by hand with horses. And every once in a while, well, their strategy as they were having their lunch was if they had an apple core, they would bury the apple core. and 150 years later, apple trees are growing along the whole length of that canal. They're a food source for my community that's been there. It continues to be there. Nobody maintains it. And it's just because somebody planted something into the wilderness that's still growing and producing food.

Farmer Fred:

Are these crab apples?

Joseph Lofthouse:

No, they're decent, reliable apples.

Farmer Fred:

 Oh, okay.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 They're not red delicious or anything like that, but they're, you know, the traditional apple of 150 years ago with... crisp and a little bit of tartness about the size of a tennis ball, not a tennis ball. I don't know. Anyway, they're decent size. They're, you know, respectable apples.

Farmer Fred:

 There are some varieties that are like that. So what you're doing is true for fruits as well as vegetables.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Yes, exactly. And fruit trees might take five or 10 or 15 years between generations. But families and communities can still do that kind of local fruit tree, local nut tree breeding.

Farmer Fred:

To adapt them to, in your case, a shorter season.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Yes. So I'm currently growing walnuts, which is a breeding project that my father-in-law started like 300 feet lower in elevation. And so over the years, we've been able to move up the mountain to my valley at higher elevation. And I'm harvesting seeds now from the fourth generation and planting those 400 feet even higher up in the mountains so that gradually over the years we're adapting that walnut to our local ecosystem. When do you harvest the walnuts?

Farmer Fred:

October. Okay. So your weather is still good enough that any frost or freeze would not affect that.

Joseph Lofthouse:

Right.

Farmer Fred:

You can visit his website at lofthouse.com, L-O-F-T-H-O-U-S-E, lofthouse.com. He's Joseph Lofthouse. He's a gardener. He's a farmer. He's a writer. He's a yoga instructor who, like I said, believes that life is too short to put up with a problem plant. Make those plants grow in your climate. You can do it. Joseph Lofthouse, thank you for spending a few minutes with us.

Joseph Lofthouse:

 Thank you, Fred. It's been a pleasure.

FARMER FRED’S RIDE FOR THE KIDS!

Farmer Fred:

Coming up on Saturday, Oct 4th, I’ll be riding my bike. “Well, what’s so unusual about that?” you might be asking yourself.

October 4th is the date of the Sacramento Century Challenge, a 100-mile bicycling event along the Sacramento River that starts in downtown Sacramento and heads south through the Delta farmland region and loops back.

And yes, 100 miles is part of the challenge.  Also part of the challenge is me being 74 years old. And no, I will not be riding an electric bike.  Adding to the challenge will be the route itself, infamous for pothole-filled river levee roads, as well as ferocious northerly headwinds that are usually in your face while you’re pedaling on the way back.

I’m doing this for a very good cause, I’m helping out the Sacramento Rotary Club raise money for the Sacramento Children’s Home Crisis Nursery.

The Sacramento Children's Home Crisis Nursery is the only program of its kind here in Sacramento County. It directly prevents child abuse and neglect by supporting families with small children at times of crisis. The nursery allows parents to bring their children, ages newborn to five, for emergency hourly or overnight care and protection during difficult times at home, with the goal of keeping families together and reducing the number of children entering foster care. 

We are calling it “Farmer Fred’s Ride for the Kids”, and we will have a link in today’s show notes with more information and how you can donate to help out The Sacramento Children’s Home Crisis Nursery and urge me onward.

So, how about it? Maybe pledge 10 cents a mile (that’s $10) along with a hearty, “You go, Fred!” Or a more generous one dollar a mile ($100), to help give me the mental endurance for this all day ride. At my age, I’ll take my time, thank you, and enjoy the farmland scenery…and try to stay upright on the bike.

Again, please support Farmer Fred’s Ride for the Kids. Look for the link in today’s show notes, or at gardenbasics.net. Your support will help provide a safe place for local small children in need. 

Thank you for your support, let’s go! (Link: https://bit.ly/4lmr09E )

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER

Farmer Fred:

Gardeners are saying very nice things about the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter:

Tessy says, I’m going to try your coffee filter germination trick to get pepper seeds to sprout sooner. Thank you for this very helpful information in your newsletter. 

Laura writes in to say, You and America's favorite retired college horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, have made me a better and happier gardener with the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.

Tanya says, I subscribed immediately when I read your newsletter about the benefits of NOT pruning tomatoes. I don't, nor do two of my favorite French market gardeners, one of whom is the 6th generation in a long line of successful market farmers. Thank you!

 Robin writes, I work the Help Desk for my county Master Gardener program, and I find I am sometimes overwhelmed by garden problems - disease, confusion, too much or not enough water, gophers… I love the idea in one of your recent newsletters of keeping a gratitude journal based on daily walks in the garden.&nb