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

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.

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.

He next selected for flavor and color, and even selected plants that were raccoon resistant (!).

Episode website: https://ThrivingtheFuture.com/landrace-gardening

Get Joseph's Landrace Gardening book here

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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. https://amzn.to/4c7Dhve