I want to talk about landrace varieties, a big topic lately in the permaculture, organic gardening, and regenerative ag worlds. To set the stage, I'm going to digress a minute, but bear with me. I'll be back to gardening in a couple of paragraphs. Much of the modern world is made possible by standardization. From construction to cars, from computers and medicine to shoe sizes, a safe and reliable product needs to be precise and predictable. To make that predictable result, we reduce the number of variables. In our technologies, we want the simplest process, the fewest components, and the most uniform result. Like any successful formula, this approach has limitations. In the living world, long-term reliability emerges instead from complexity, uniqueness, and unpredictability. The more species in an ecosystem, the more stable it is. The more genetic diversity in a population, the more chances it has to adapt to new conditions and stresses. We understand this with animals: inbreeding leads to problems down the road. That applies to plants as well. Much of modern seed production has focused on producing a very uniform, predictable plant every time. We can all see the worth of some predictability, at both a farm and garden scale. If you have a raised bed that fits 45 plants and 10 of them taste bad or don't produce, you've wasted a lot of time and space. A higher level of uniformity might be needed by a farmer with a contract for 1000 heads of lettuce on a specific date. Taken to an extreme--and the market tends to take any trend to an extreme--this has led to a focus on predictable behavior in the field and cosmetic uniformity in the market, to the exclusion of other traits. Many of us got into gardening to escape this situation. But we are discovering that even if we grow our own lettuce in organic gardens, it's going to taste much like grocery store lettuce if we use the same seeds that the guy who sells to the grocery store uses. I see this at my farmers market--lettuce that is locally, organically grown, looks gorgeous, and tastes like cardboard. Or varieties at the local hardware store that only do well if the temperature never goes above 85 degrees, while the temperature outside the store is in three digits much of the summer. Landrace varieties are a big topic right now because they offer an alternative backed by a long tradition. They are a way for ordinary people to start breeding plants that cope with big survival issues like drought and climate change rather than the market issues that most professional breeding programs are focused on. And, to be honest, they offer a name that's more catchy than "open-pollinated, locally-adapted, public-domain varieties," which is what those of us who care about this stuff have been limping along with. A landrace is a plant or animal variety that has been grown in one region for a long time and is adapted to the physical (soil, temperature, rainfall) and cultural (planting, harvesting, storage, and cooking) needs of that region. It is normally not the product of formal breeding programs, but of farm-based seed stewardship and often of geographic and cultural isolation. Mexican corns, Peruvian quinoas, Italian greens, Sri Lankan rices, Afghani cannabis, African melons, and Turkish tobaccos are some types of landrace crops that you may have heard of. With traditional landraces, local farmers select seed plants with several important traits in mind (perhaps earliness, cold-hardiness, or suitability for a certain recipe.) What the community values might not be obvious to a seed company or university breeder. For example, there are corns in Guatemala with stalks almost as hard as wood. They have been selected by the farmers because it allows them to grow both food and fence posts with the same crop. Other traits that are not important to the community can vary widely, because uniformity is not the goal. There may also be some gene flow between cultivated crops and wild relatives near the fields. Thus landrace crops often preserve traits that allow them to adapt to changes from season to season. Landraces typically have yields somewhat lower than modern high-production varieties, but they are able to produce that same yield under both favorable and unfavorable conditions of weather and pest pressure. (In their home region--no landrace is adapted to every environment.) Landraces offer predictability not of size, looks, or days to maturity, but of survival--that there will be a modest but dependable harvest in both good years and bad. This is the kind of predictablity needed by subsistence farmers in the past and by all of us now. What we call heirloom varieties are sometimes landrace types that are being grown outside the land that shaped them (an example might be Kaslasa quinoa.) Most heirlooms available on the American market are more highly selected and uniform in maturity, color, flavor, yield, size, and so on, but the line is a hazy one. While landraces are more diverse than the typical variety, they are not random. Nor are they wild plants. Farmers select their landrace varieties very carefully for traits that are important to them. For example, some parts of Central America have two traditional landrace corns--one that produces small, early, dark-colored ears on short plants; another with long, white ears on taller, later plants. They have maintained these two landrace varieties side-by-side over centuries by careful selection and maintenance, in spite of the fact that corn is wind-pollinated and crosses easily with other corns even at long distances. They prevent crossing and mixing of the two by using only the seed from early-matured dark corn and late-matured white corn, carefully excluding seed from plants of medium maturity that might have have been pollinated when pollen from both types could be in the air. Seed from these medium-maturity plants, and from both ends of the cob where the kernels are smaller, are used for food rather than seed. So what's the story with the modern "landrace gardening" seeds that are showing up in seed companies, books, and online forums? A number of us see genetic diversity as key to a more dependable food supply and a more sustainable agriculture. One approach to preserving and re-introducing diversity is to deliberately create new landrace varieties. This usually involves gathering many varieties of a crop that are available from companies, libraries, seed banks, and swaps, then letting them cross. (Many breeding projects start this way, not just landrace breeding projects.) The idea is that this "wide cross" or grex, will provide a lot of possibilities. If the cross is wide enough, it will include most of the traits available to that variety, which you can select from. Some will work, some will die, and some you'll keep for seed. This is called "mass selection". Once you've grown and saved seed for several seasons in one place, you'll have a variety better adapted to that place. If the selection process has allowed quite a bit of diversity while adapting more and more to thrive in your conditions, you might have a new landrace for your region. This is a big deal if your situation has unusual stresses that common varieties are not prepared for. An example of this process is Dave Christianson's Painted Mountain Corn. He gathered every corn he could find in the 1970's, including some that are now extinct, and allowed them to cross, then subjected the subsequent crops to his brutal Northern Montana climate. The result is a short, early flour corn that can sprout in cold soil; survive heat, cold, and drought; and mature very early in spite of terrible conditions and low fertility. If you can't grow Painted Mountain, you probably can't grow any corn at all. On the other hand, it's not the best-flavored flour corn, and the ears are quite small--the price of extreme earliness. Carol Deppe has used it in her breeding work, this time selecting for her (also difficult, but different) Oregon conditions and for flavor, leaving in as many other variables as possible. If you live somewhere that more closely approximates great corn growing conditions--good soil, plenty of water, and a long season--you don't need Painted Mountain's particular strengths. You might want a landrace for your climate, with resistance to the pests and diseases that often come with more moisture, but variable for color and other things. Maybe you need a taller, later variety that can support pole beans in a Three Sisters garden with very strong side roots to prevent lodging (falling over) under the weight of those beans. Over time, the new variety emerges from the interaction of your soil and climate with your goals. Note that the original wide cross is not the landrace. (It's a cross, a grex, a genepool--there are several related names.) The genepool is the first step toward developing a new variety. It becomes a landrace after it's been shaped by the soil and climate to fit the land where it grows. A landrace variety, like any other variety, is formed both by climate and by human choices. For the farmer or gardener--or for a farming and gardening civilization--there is a balance to be struck between the undeniable economic and culinary benefits of breeding for consistent traits and the adaptability of a more variable population. We know that a mutt may be more vigorous and trouble-free than a highly inbred and specialized breed. However, we also know that if we want a duck fetched out of a freezing lake, we need to have a retriever on hand. Landrace gardening is one facet of open-pollinated, public domain breeding, one that prioritizes diversity and adaptation to local conditions. The most hard-core landrace gardeners use little or no soil amendment, irrigation, or pest control, because that's the fastest way to arrive at a variety that doesn't need those inputs. They are working toward future survival, and it's a very worthy goal. Other breeding projects might prioritize something more immediate, like flavor, ease of preparation in the kitchen, storage without refrigeration, or a crop that's ready to harvest when the farm isn't swamped with other work. Any breeding program that selects plants under organic, small-farm conditions is a positive gain. At a time when herbicides, chemicals, and identical F1 hybrids are the norm in agriculture, it's important to recognize the value of all who are working toward a resilient organic future. We need a diversity of people and projects as well as of genes! Dogma is not adaptive. We need many hands, many minds, many cultures, many approaches and many goals to build a food system that is flexible enough to be viable now while adapting gracefully for the future. Landrace gardening is one tool toward that end. Quail Seeds carries a number of older heirlooms or landrace varieties, modern genepools, breeders' mixes, and variable species. You can see several here.
If you'd like to participate in developing a modern landrace, I suggest getting in touch with the folks at Going to Seed, a non-profit that helps people with both seeds and training, most of which is available at a sliding donation rate. Or donate to help further their work. You can also access wide crosses at the Open Source Seed Initiative's website. Their OSSI Varieties page has a filter feature that allows you to see just finished varieties or just "breeders mixes." Choosing breeders' mixes shows you varieties and genepools that the breeder considers variable enough for further selection. Again, consider a donation to further their work.
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Here in Northern California, we've finally gotten a sunny break. I'm using tarps to cover and kill weeds that have taken over during the long rains. The soil is too wet to dig, but tarps or cardboard can kill weeds without tilling or digging.
I'm also taking advantage of the wet soil to plant the carrot family. Their seeds naturally have compounds on the surface that must be washed off before the seeds can sprout. These germination inhibitors make carrots, parsnips, and parsley slow to sprout. In my usual dry spring weather, it's hard to keep the seeds from drying out during that long sprouting time. In their ancient home in the mountains of central Asia, melting snow would wash the seeds and provide enough water to get established. Then as the dry season advanced, these long-rooted crops had an advantage in finding water. That makes them a good choice in water-conscious gardens today--especially if they're planted where there's some afternoon shade during the hot months. In my hot summers, root crops do well on the east side of deciduous trees--fruit trees or even walnuts, as the carrot family is not susceptible to walnut (juglone) poisoning. I plan to soak the seeds for a couple of hours, rinse well under the tap (in a strainer) and plant in a bed that has been kept weed-free by mulch (pulling the mulch aside.) A light application of compost or crumbled leaves over the seeded rows should prevent surface drying while the seeds germinate. I like to leave the straw mulch heaped up on either side of the row to shelter the row from wind. Carrots, parsley, and especially parsnips can still be slow, so some people intersperse them with radish seeds, which sprout quickly and mark the rows' location. They will be ready to harvest by time the carrots or parsnips are up, but take care not to damage your carrot seedlings. Twisting (rotating) the radishes before you pull upward will leave small root hairs in the ground, and disturb the soil around the carrots as little as possible. Root crops have another advantage for busy gardeners. Many, if not most, summer crops have a narrow harvest window--we all know how far out of hand an overripe zucchini can get! Corn, green beans, tomatoes, and many other crops must be used or preserved right away. Roots are different--they hold well underground, slowly getting bigger. They take some of the pressure off, and even-out your harvests so there's always something to pick. (Just remember to keep replanting to have replacements for what you pull.) There are 3 other kinds of roots in our gardens. I've written here about what they are and how to manage them. "Plant to Suit the Roots." What do seeds need to sprout and thrive? The ancient elements of air, water, earth, and fire (heat and light), in the right balance and at the right time. If you understand plants’ needs, you can intuitively feel what to do.
Here’s what happens when you plant a seed: Each seed has a living plant inside, called the germ. It’s alive, but asleep. The germ is protected by a hard seed coat, and provided with food in the form of hard nuggets of starch. This embryonic plant is dormant (French for “sleeping”) until water, warmth, and light wake it up. The seed absorbs water from the soil, swells, bursts the seed coat, and starts to grow. As soon as the germ wakes up, it makes a root. It senses which way is up, and extends the root downwards. Only after the root is established does it make a stem and start to grow upward. The starchy part of the seed, the fuel, sits on top of the new stem and turns green when it reaches the light. This is the cotyledon. It looks like a leaf, but it’s actually the starchy part of the seed. It feeds the plant until the true leaves emerge. Water Seeds need water to break dormancy, soften the seed coat, and hydrate the inside of the seed. The water in moist soil is enough for vegetable seeds. Too much water is a problem, so go easy. Soil should be moist, not soggy, for both seeds and plants. Instead of a hard seed coat, some vegetable seeds have natural chemicals on the outside that prevent sprouting. These germination inhibitors are nature’s way of making sure the seed doesn’t sprout too soon, when there isn’t enough water for a plant to grow. The umbel family–carrots, parsnips, parsley, cilantro, fennel, and dill–all have inhibitors. Beets, chard, and spinach have milder inhibitors. These seeds will all sprout much faster if you soak them for 2 to 4 hours, rinse them well under the tap (in a strainer!) and plant them while still wet. Air Plants need air, like we do. Seeds that sit more than a few hours in water will rot and die. That’s why a good potting mix is fluffy, to let in air. Organic matter, mulch, and no-till techniques all build soil structure with lots of air spaces from worms and other soil life. If the soil is soggy, water fills all the spaces between soil particles and the roots die from suffocation. Root rot, wilting, and damping off (plants fall over at soil level) can all be symptoms of too much water. After seeds have sprouted, it’s best to let the surface dry a bit between waterings. Moving air is best–plants, like us, get weak if they don’t move.. If plants will be in pots long, put a fan near (not directly on) them. Warmth You may need to ensure more heat for your seedlings than the surrounding air. Starting in the house ensures reasonably warm temperatures, although moist soil will be about 10 degrees colder than the air, so heat mats speed things up. In a greenhouse, heat mats help a lot and are more fuel-efficient than heating the entire space. You can also add heat by using a hot frame, which is a compost pile (or wet wood chips) covered with soil and enclosed to hold in heat. Plant into soil on top of the pile, or place flats of seedlings directly on the pile. Each seed has a minimum sprouting temperature. Asian greens, mache, and miners lettuce sprout just above freezing. Carrots, spinach, lettuce, mustard, beets, turnips and radishes sprout at about 55 degrees. Kale, broccoli, and cabbage withstand a lot of cold as plants, but the seeds sprout best in warm (70-80 degree) soil. In nature, the cabbage family stands through the winter and drops seeds in late summer, so start them warm, then put them outside a month before last frost. If your tomatoes do fine, but your peppers are stunted or sluggish, that’s because peppers need more heat. Eggplants, okra, and melons, which hail from India and Africa, need even more. Light The rhythm of light and dark is a powerful force on plants. It dictates how to plant: Many seeds cannot sprout unless they sense some light–these need planting near the surface, or even on it. Others that need dark we bury deep. The effect of light on a plant’s life cycle can dictate when to plant, too. Onions are very day-length-sensitive. They are planted in late winter or very early spring so that when the long days of midsummer trigger bulbing, the plant is big enough to make a good bulb. Many plants flower or bear fruit when days lengthen or shorten to a certain point. Planting greens when days are short and cold in spring and fall keeps them in vegetative growth, so we get lots of leaves rather than tough stems. Vegetables and flowers need bright light–more than normal home lighting provides. (House plants are usually jungle or forest plants used to very dim light.) The most protected and controlled environment is indoors with lights. You don’t need special grow lights. A cheap plug-in “shop light” with fluorescent or LED tubes is great. With regular home shop lights, the plants should be 6-8” from the light. Stretched-out plants are too far away. Bleached or shriveled leaves are too close. The proverbial sunny windowsill can work, but it can also dry out seed trays and bake tiny plants before you know it. If using a south window, use larger pots that can stay moist longer, and monitor conditions carefully. Most plants need darkness at night. The outdoor light of a greenhouse or cold frame is most natural., but then you will need to ensure enough heat. Soil While plants need air, they also need the firm embrace of the soil around them. Firming the soil after planting ensures that water can get to the seeds from below by capillary action. It holds the seeds in place so they can orient themselves and send roots downward. A major cause of seed failure is when seeds shift position each time they’re watered, so they exhaust their food supply before they can root. Seeds and plants do best in living soil. Beneficial fungi and bacteria form symbiotic relationships with plants as the seeds start to sprout. They help the roots find water, make more nutrients available, and prevent diseases while the seedlings are still small. I use potting soil that has compost and worm castings mixed in. A handful of forest soil or some fungal inoculant helps as well. Sterile seed-starting mix is often suggested in books, but in my experience, diseases and problems proliferate in sterile mix, because it's a vacuum waiting to be filled, and pathogens fill it quickly. Instead, give your seeds a healthy living soil from the start. Time I hear gardeners fretting all the time about planting too late, but planting too soon is a problem too. If you like to gamble on early planting, fine. But the biggest, most reliable yields come from planting when the time is right. So learn to read the clues and not just the calendar. Wait for the oaks to leaf out before planting your main peas and lettuce. Listen for the frogs in spring and the crickets in summer. They live right on the soil, and feel its warmth–or not. The size of the seed, the quality of the soil, and the temperature dictate the timing for fertilization and transplant. Since the food stored in the cotyledon feeds the seedling at first, you don’t need to feed your seedlings during germination and establishment. After the seedling has 2 pairs of true leaves, you can water it with a mild fertilizer like compost tea. A quality potting mix should have nutrients for about 3 weeks to a month of growth. What type of containers to use for seed-starting depends on space available, but even more on your time. If you putter in the greenhouse every day, you can save space and soil by starting seeds in trays and lifting the tiny seedlings into their own pots when they get a true leaf. You can maximize your space by using trays with many small modules. Or use egg cartons and yogurt pots, because you’re watching them carefully. But for busy people who may not be able to check during the day, it’s safer to use larger pots of consistent size. I use 3” pots and rectangular trays that fit a heat mat and allow watering from below. Larger pots give you more time before the seedlings get rootbound, allowing latitude for delays. Balance There’s an interplay between water, air, soil, heat, and light. Each is important, but not at the expense of the others. Disaster happens when one factor is allowed to eclipse the others, like when over-enthusiastic watering drives all the air from the soil. Or when the need for light leads plants to dry out in a hot window or languish in a cold greenhouse. If you understand these needs, you will develop a feel for what they are getting too little of, or too much. This is a green thumb--the human mind and hand in sympathy with the growing plant. It's heartbreaking to see people throw away or burn their best source of nutrients and fertility in the name of tidiness. If you have leaves, lucky you. If you can get your neighbor's leaves, do it. How to use them? If they fall on perennial beds, bulbs, shrubs orchards, or beneath trees, you don't have to do anything except feel smug about the fertility they are adding. If they are on grass or pavement or other places where they are not convenient, rake them up and put them
Traditional English gardeners kept leaves in their own compost area, and used the crumbly dark humus from under the pile for seed starting mix. You can mix 3 parts leaf mold with 2 parts garden soil and one part coarse sand, perlite, vermiculite, rice hulls, or other drainage-promoting ingredient. Want to make a new vegetable bed out of lawn or a weedy area? I do this: 1)Mark out your new bed. Find and wet some pieces of cardboard (any cardboard box is good, as long as it is not shiny and doesn't have colored inks--brown cardboard and black ink are fine.) Remove the plastic tape, if any. Overlap the edges and any holes, so weeds can't grow through. Let the cardboard extend a foot outside the edge of the future bed, to prevent weeds from coming in. 2)Pile on leaves, straw, grass clippings, and other garden "waste" 3) Keep moist and protected from wind. A tarp or sheet can be used if necessary. Or another layer of cardboard and a rock. 4) uncover in spring and plant squash, tomatoes, or potatoes. None of those object to a few lumps and leaves. Keep mulched all season with more leaves, straw, etc. 5) By the next year, you have good garden soil and can plant anything. Leaves to avoid Most deciduous tree leaves are great for your garden. Pine and especially spruce needles are not so good for vegetables and should be left under their mother tree or used on forest plants that can deal with the oils in them. I am not so worried about acidity, but spruce and cedar do have natural herbicides to prevent the germination of other plants, so leave them in place where they will prevent weeds. Oak, elm, cottonwood, fruit trees, maple, and other broadleaf trees are all good. Avoid black walnut and eucalyptus. They have poisons in that not only prevent germination, but can kill adult plants of sensitive species. If you, like me, have a black walnut, you can find lists online of common landscape plants sensitive to juglone, the chemical that walnuts produce. Under my black walnut, a few adapted plants thrive--grass, miner's lettuce, currants, crampbark, filberts, & elder. Vegetables that tolerate juglone include corn, squash, beans, peas, carrots, parsnips, and onions. (NOT brassicas, spinach, chard, or tomatoes.) Since the roots exude juglone as well as the leaves and nuts, don't site sensitive plants near a walnut. Half my garden is in the "walnut zone" and I grow only tolerant plants in that part. If you rake up walnut leaves, they can still be composted and make fertile soil, but if there are a lot of them, keep them in their own pile. You can use it on the many plants that don't have sensitivity. Another great tree-based resource is ramial wood chip. More on that in another post. (The photo at the top is looking toward our garden from the river. Boats are drawn up for the winter. For scale, the greenhouse in the photo is 15 feet tall. The giant oaks are matriarchs that nourish all forms of life here.) What is a farm? What is a garden? The European settlers on this and other continents thought they knew, and so missed out on learning techniques we are just now rediscovering. I invite you to discover some of them with me in this space over the next year.
October is a beautiful time of harvest and celebration. Each ear of corn is like a wrapped present, with different glowing colors within. Each squash will be a sweet treat in the depths of winter. A bag of dry beans is heavy with real wealth. As we lay them by safe for the winter, let's offer our thanks to those who did the real work of creating these crops from unpromising weeds, too small or bitter to be worthwhile food. With a digging stick, an observant eye, and a sharp mind, they created our crops. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, 2022. During our heat waves this year, the nighttime has felt like a refuge of coolness and peace after the daily onslaught of heat.
Most plants feel the same way. During the day, they use sunlight and water to make sugars by photosynthesis. During their nighttime rest, they are able to use those sugars to make new cells. If it sometimes seems to you that your plants get larger overnight, you’re right-- they do. September’s combination of warm soil, sunshine, and longer nights gives seedlings perfect conditions for fast growth, as long as they have access to water. Starting seedlings in trays is one way to give them the conditions they need when the open garden is still too hot, too dry, too windy, too crowded, or too weedy for good seed germination. Or start seeds in the garden and water them often. But start them now, before frosty nights and shorter days slow down or stop growth. In the last decade, research on plants and soils has created a quiet revolution in how we understand growth and fertility. Most gardeners have not heard about it yet, but it turns out that fertile soils get that way not primarily from minerals or from additions like manure, but from plants themselves. Plants use the energy of the sun to make sugars and other carbon-based nutrients. Some of those carbs become part of the plant’s tissues–that’s the story we always knew. But up to 2/3 of these sugars and other compounds ooze from the plant roots into the soil. The carbs in these root exudates, as well as the carbon from decaying plant roots in the ground, are the fuel that feeds soil life–fungi, bacteria, and zillions more. These soil microorganisms make nitrogen for plants to eat. They also convert minerals in the soil to a form plants can absorb. The reason that forests grow so lush without fertilizer or amendments is that the soil is full of undisturbed roots–living and dead. The surface has a constant mulch of dead leaves and other organic matter. No plow or tiller disrupts the web of underground life. Where to start on a garden scale? Leave plant roots (except perennial weeds) in the ground rather than pulling them out. Use mulch. And plant cover crops this month. Don’t wait for your summer crops to be over–scratch in some seed around your tomatoes and squash, then mulch over it. If you want something that will overwinter, feed the soil, and be easy to cut down next spring, try vetch, crimson clover, bell beans, or Austrian Winter peas. With winter peas and fava beans, you can have both a food crop and a cover crop in zones 7-10. Don’t wait for pods–just clip the shoots for salads and light cooking. They taste like peas, and are ready in less than a month. You can even grow them on a window sill. Get them started now, and you will have fresh new flavors when the tomatoes and zucchini are just a memory. Another thing to consider this month is how to use any space you have under cover. A greenhouse, cold frame, or tunnel doesn’t just keep the plants warmer, it also keeps them from getting beat up by wind, muddy, and slug-gnawed. Peas, broccoli, and lettuce respond particularly well to protection; they are fairly fragile plants that like cool conditions but can’t take a lot of punishment from wind and wet. Easy crops that tolerate some cold and wet are turnips, miner’s lettuce, erba stella, nappa cabbage, tatsoi, mustard, mizuna, fava beans, endive, and cilantro. All of these do well for me outdoors. Depending on how cold your winters get, they may need protection, but they are not fussy and are very fast-growing. Miner's Lettuce, Erba Stella, Mizuna, Tatsoi, and Yukina are all hardy enough to grow in tunnels in New England. Even a few plants can make fresh salad material if you harvest the outer leaves every week or so. |
AuthorJamie Chevalier lives and gardens on a river in the Coast Range of Northern California. She has gardened professionally in Alaska and California, as well as living in a remote cabin, commercial fishing, and working with seeds. She is the proprietor of Quail Seeds. Archives
April 2024
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