Ep. 122 – Food Security through Landrace Gardening with Joseph Lofthouse

Joseph Lofthouse is the author of Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination.

Landrace Gardening

Landrace gardening is adapting crops to your land and climate, and then saving seeds, while also selecting for the best flavor, color, and pest and disease resistance.

Joseph lives in the high mountains of Utah – a mountain valley with cold air coming down out of the mountains, yet sun almost every day in the Summer, and low humidity. He grows for the farmers market and for himself and friends, and with a shorter season and these conditions he had difficulty growing warm weather crops.

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Seeds have a memory

Seeds have a memory and they “remember” where the plants grew and the seed was saved.

Heirloom crops did not grow for Joseph because the seed was from far away and not grown in his climate. Hybrids had low germination rates and did not thrive because they did not like the conditions and the plants that they were saved from were used to lots of inputs.

He saw 80% of the crops that he planted die. He saved the seeds from the ones that survived and planted the next generation. And it only takes about three generations for the crops to get really happy about growing at his place.

It only takes about three generations for the crops to get really happy about growing at my place.
Joseph Lofthouse

Selecting for flavor and color

He next selected for flavor and color, and even selected plants that were raccoon resistant (!). He selects for squash, and even watermelon, that have a lot of orange, meaning that they are higher in beta carotene. They taste the best to him.

Joseph might take 10 varieties, put them all in a field and allow them to cross pollinate, however they will. And the offspring tend to have traits that are halfway in between the traits of the parents. “And so if I start with great parents, I get great offspring.”

He doesn’t fight pests and predators – he lets them eat the crops and then he saves the ones that were resistant.

We also talk about farming vacant lots in town.

Get Joseph’s Landrace Gardening book here:

Gear that I use and recommend: Meadow Creature Broadfork 14. I have used this to turn over sod for new Milpa garden beds, and even hand dug swales with it. Bulletproof.

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What I really liked:

The Backyard Forest Garden e-book
Agroforestry
Restoration Agriculture: Designing Your Perennial Farm presentation from Permaculture Voices by Mark Shepard
Permaculture Thorns, A Book About Trying to Build Permaculture Community, by Paul Wheaton.
Plus 2 books by Nicole Sauce.