I am in my 60s and I live in North Alabama. I am still growing a variety of beans my grandfather called "Cherokee Indian Beans." He said they were very common in Lawrence County, Alabama when he was a young boy. They look like Cherokee trail of tears beans, but they are brown, not black. I feel like I am keeping a little history alive.
Another thing that's inspiring about Joseph Loft houses book is that it's not just about plants that are adapted to your climate is also about plants that are adapted to your gardening habits. For instance, some gardeners use trellises some gardeners let plants sprawled on the ground. Some gardeners use irrigation , some gardeners depend on rainfall. His book and your work have been very inspirational to me in my garden and journey. Thank you for everything and God bless. I am praying for your family and the loss that you have suffered
I was doing this with garden beans long before (by accident) I knew about the value of breeding for a land-race, by simply being lazy and forgetting to collect some beans and I realized that year after year I had volunteers that had come up and could survive my half-of-the-year flooded and half-of-the-year dry Northern Arizona climate and now I have a climber that looks like a tiger eye with the occasional purple showing up and produces like a hybrid, now to do this with my chickens by breeding Sumatra, olde English game and American game into my leghorns and marans'
I have purple Amaranth growing wild like a weed in 4 years time, started with 3 or 4 seedlings that someone gave me, l even thought l lost it last year due to heavy mulching but after moving some mulch within a week or so it popped up like a thick carpet of seedlings, this year l’ve added a brown variety to mix it up..lets see what happens..
After losing a whole flock of barred rock last summer to a mamma hawk I found that some mutt bantams scooted from bush to bush and the hawk doesn't even know they are here. I'm mixing them with the black old English, they are smart as a whip and all the little eggs are tastier. Like a concentrated egg in a little package. 👍
Sorry about the flock you lost. Cook that you are breeding the chickens to be better able to survive. How’s the chicken breeding going now, a year later than the comment.
My tomatoes are invasive in my garden after only a couple years of doing that. Now I don't even need to plant any, there's so many that have come up I'm thinking of putting a box by the road labeled free tomato plants. 😄👍 Landrace gardening book is now on my shopping list.
I'd been landracing sweetcorn and beans and lettuce and whatever else I saved seed from for a couple of decades. After reading Lofthouse's book I felt affirmed that I was doing something good rather than just being sloppy.
Very interesting! I'm a novice gardener. This year I planted spaghetti squash seeds, some from a new package and some that I had saved from one I grew and ate last year. I labeled them, because I assumed the new pack would grow better --- not. My own germinated better and came up much faster! I'm very impressed!
I want to save seeds just so I have the knowledge of being able to do things for myself. I don't have a cow, but I learned to make all types of dairy products. I learned how to can several types of foods, just so I could if I grow extras( or freeze) just so I can if I need too. Every year I find at least two new veggies, herbs and flower to grow just for the knowledge. Don't wait until you need knowledge to learn, learn something new every day!!! God bless and keep growing ( your brain will thank you). Thank you , David for all you teach us!
Thanks for sharing! I agree 100% that the Landrace book is a must read 📚 one. It is bringing nature back to what she does best. "Mix, plant, observe, collect, repeat" that's the model!
Saving money is the LEAST of the reasons to save your own seeds! Here are two related books, one showing our main gardening system, and the other inspiring you to create your own landrace varieties. GROCERY ROW GARDENING by David The Good: amzn.to/3IWg95U LANDRACE GARDENING by Joseph Lofthouse: amzn.to/3WSfDf0 For the last few years since we got back to the states we've been growing our own varieties of seeds. Right now we're working on corn, daikons, cucumbers and watermelons. You can do it too! Love you guys. -DTG
I've been saving seeds for decades but only really started paying attention to the results in the last few years. I haven't segraggated varieties in years. This is going to sound gross but, I have a bucket toilet and the aged humanure sprouts hundreds of tomatoes every year. They are the hardiest, most prolific tomatoes I grow.
I turned free packs of county seed library,peas ,beans and cowpeas into summer cover crops aplenty. Also I have a pumpkin sitting in my storage grown from your seeds harvested fall of 21. Still chilling
I have saved seeds from Calendula for years and years. I have now started saving from other plants as well and even from wild plants. I love free stuff :D
When I was listening to one of your videos I wasn't sure what you meant by landrace. Now it all makes since. Thank you for all you teach us. Even this young senior gardener.
I like how you had the guy in the background cued up to drive by - revving his engine & switching gears, right after you said "landrace gardening" ... pretty cool.
I love this whole idea - within a few years to have seeds we know grow well here. No more trying to figure out which cucumbers, which tomatoes, which squash, etc - just plant them and know they'll produce well and provide for our family.
This method will be a game changer. And it makes more sense. It will produce strong plants that's what we all want. Since we always deal with pest and harsh climates.
I have some pepper seeds I regrow each year. Had some swiss chard from my grandmother. Grew them for years. Did loose that line but started again a few years ago. Also have volunteers of several things that come us each year climatized to my garden.
then you spread those seeds out to all your neighbors, and have them add their favorites so that you never get inbreeding in your own landrace. Pretty exciting stuff
I live in Georgia, east of ATL, and a few years ago I grew several varieties of cherry tomatoes in my railing planters on my side porch. The next year, I had some crazy looking tomatoes come up in the side yard and none were really viable - they were kind of Frankensteinish - and they didn't really taste that good. Last year, only one plant came up, in the middle of the side yard, and it produced a lot of delicious little cherry tomatoes all the way until November. I threw down a lot of the overripe ones, saved some seeds (just in case) and sure enough, I noticed the other day that there are a couple of tomato plants growing in the same spot. Looking forward to seeing what develops and if they're as good as last year.
Hi Diana, I’m also east of the ATL metro. We plant multiples of cherry tomatoes every year (black, red & yellow) and am trying to isolate the winners. Hit me up, we can trade seed pretty easily. Thx, Ken J.
Totally agree 😊 No good having heavy cropping initially if they can't survive and generally do well in your specific area. Been doing the same sort of growing policies as you since I was a kid and encouraged by my parents and siblings, despite it being against the general narrative. Experiment, observe the little idiosyncrasies and results, think for yourself. Thanks for your excellent content and "Hi" to all the family from Australia 😊😊😊 Happy green thumbs up.
This is exactly how I've grown for several years. I plant anything and everything and semi-neglect it to see what can grow where and thrive. Next year, I plant those things and lots of it. Anytime I've moved to a new place I grow a "skillful neglect" garden the first year. I've been a seed saver since my first garden in the 70s. 😁😁
It’s that ancestral connection maaan! 😂 but seriously it is! At least for me. It’s what our ancestors did, if they didn’t they didn’t eat. I’m not saying that’s how it should be but look around….
Oh my goodness, David! I ordered some landrace kale, cucumbers and dry bean seeds from Going To Seed and have planted them. They seem much more vigorous than others. Particularly the kale!
When I learned the term 'landrace', I went, "Oh! That's the term for how Dad saves seeds every year!" We save seeds from our favorite squashes and plant 'em out (or let them do their thing in the compost heap), and every so often bring in a new variety in the hopes of improving our line further. He also lets the lettuce and radishes go to seed and sow themselves every year. It's nice to have the vocabulary for what we had termed 'UFO squash'. As for me, I've been growing out corn and several types of beans the last few years, and put them all together in a 3 sisters garden this year, so we'll see how that goes! I am a lazy gardener, so if plants can survive my lack of will to water and weed, they definitely get replanted the next year. I'm working on a landrace yard-long bean, continuing Lofthouse's tepary bean landrace, and growing out a (hopefully) drought-resistant variety of flint corn. For sure, whatever corn survived last year's mega-drought is worth planting again! Next year I may try working on a landrace melon.
You can see this kind of thing happen even with common weeds. I live in basically a desert and I still see dandelions, lambs quarters, stinging nettle, and a whole bunch of others that have over generations bred and adapted to the dry hot climate! pretty cool.
Great video! We have had better success growing volunteer landraces coming from the compost than babying some of our annuals in the raised beds. 😅 Learning what to grow in your area is so important!
This makes great sense, not so common at all!! Thanks! Been saving seeds for awhile, but haven't had enough room for varieties to mix, maybe soon! Increasing my growing areas , but slowly, the rocks and the clay are surely a challenge! But I started my weed water and dried and crushed eggs, bananas, and coffee grounds, supposed to be like a 10-10-10. Thanks, David, prayers of comfort for your family.
Saving seeds that cross pollinate and planting them out every year you will eventually get a landrace that you can name after yourself. I'm a little old to start that now but I'm going to do it anyway. My offspring might one day have a Mary tomato or a Mary cucumber etc.
Met Walter and Verna Zill yesterday @David The Good and I have some of their mangos on my counter ripening. Love this video we will need it for the future when we might not have stores. Gardening the Crazy easy way, lol Or Lazy Way.. lol
Also they know all about seed saving and growing them out and he showed me the technique he uses to propagate the mango he wants again onto another mangos root stock. So cool!
You should absolutely consider selling all your landrace seeds. It would be a great benefit for people in the Southeastern US, and we’d be willing to pay good money for it. 😅
2:02 it’s also about readiness. I’ve been saving seeds from Beans to pumpkins, tomatoes, physalis and lots more. Besides being adapted to the environment, my own seeds will sprout in just a few days, compared to bought seeds which may take 2-3 weeks. physalis will actually seed itself every year. Just have to thin out between my tomato’s. So it’s also about convenience.
I love the idea of seed saving for land race gardening. I had a volunteer tomato plant in my compost heap last year that grew so well that I kept the last tomato from it. Squashed it some and put it in the window in a cup of soil this winter. The cup was full of sprouts by the spring and after uppotting them, planting some at the assisted living where my Mom lives...planting some in my own garden and giving some away, I still have a few more left! What fun a fun and rewarding experiment it has been for sure! And I was glad to share the tomato plant wealth with others.
Oh my gosh this answers my question to what was that HUGE mustard plant looking plant? It was so tall and wide and grew to be a seed beast! It was a volunteer that grew in the same place i planted mustard greens last spring. I searched all over for a mustard plant at the flowering stage that was ginormous like our volunteer but coukd not find it. It's probably crossed with broccoli) brussels/cauliflower and all the other brassicas haha i was sure it was a giant mustard until seed harvest time. The pods were small balls, not bean-like pods 🤔 i wish i could post the picture on here, it was insane.
Even though land race gardening is not a new concept, I feel like it's the next level of gardening for us. I started 'gardening' when I was 9 ~ am 71 now, and L.R.G. is my next expansion🥬🥦💚💚. Thank you, DTG, you make learning so much fun. I continue to pray for your family🙏
Another new level of gardening involves the use of biochar, or basically, an organic charcoal that is porous enough to hold a lot of nutrients and moisture, and helps make those micronutrients available to your plants and to the life below the soil as well (the soil biome). Scientists first learned about it while studying tribes in the Amazon basin, and found that the soil in their gardens was way higher in plant nutrients than the surrounding soil. Recent experiments are finding huge benefits to creating and using biochar in the garden. I have not tried it myself yet, but I hope to.
You are spot on. I had heard about landrace but didn't know there was a book. Will have to look for that. The older i get the less I want to coddle plants.
It was great interview with Joseph, nice to see and hear you guys discussing landrace gardening. Congrats to your kids for successful projects, watermelons look fabulous. Good luck with your new seed saving projects.
I wish you the best of luck. Mendelian genetics are a great primer on this topic. Developing a true breeding variety through uncontrolled crosses could take many generations. It takes many generations with controlled crosses.
Wow this is mind blowing since all I’ve ever read and heard is to only plant one of a species if you wanted to save true seeds. I’m going to rewatch several times lol.
Magic! ! am reading the Landrace Garden book! Growing landrace tomatoes, pole beans, bell pepper and field corn as wee speak. Hard not to go and smother 'em with love and get survivors!
Ive been saving seeds my whole life and was acclimating to my new climate n soil..i was introduced to land race n laughed. I didn't know it had an official name 😊I've now joined his site n newsletter !! Awesome info.
I used the term landrace and very few knew what i was talking about.Landrace term not only applies to cultivars of plants but to livestock as well. You need to try south anna butternut bred by commonwealth seed,i promise you will love it. I am growing an old variety of watermelon that the seed is hard to get. its red-n-sweet bred at LSU station near you in deep south back in the 80's(its closed now to my understanding). The deeper colors of red flesh affect the flavors too in watermelons. Red-n-sweet has a high sugar content as well.
I did this(let them tough it out on their own) with my okra and they did GREAT! THEN I sowed the seeds😊 --but the SLUGS are such BIG fans, they just aren't making it 😢... except for 2 little guys that are still hanging in there 💪
This is what happened to me with the pac choi and tatsoi. I always try not to cross paths and now I can hardly tell which is which. I have been saving Pac Choi seeds (I don't know what variety or hybrid) that I obtained in a seed exchange with an older man. That was in 2007. Your videos are an inspiration, I am from Costa Rica.
just knowing there are other weirdoes out there in the garden with a mixing bowl makes me really happy. I love your content. landracing til i die. seeing what grows. her in southeastern VA on the Peninsula
Death marches reminded me of the Trail of Tears (Native Americans) and Bataan Death March (my great grandfather)…. Anyway, here’s my engagement. Thanks for the video. Inspirational towards trying again with my garden this autumn.
TIP- A Gardening Fertilizer success. We first made our own bio char. Filled several large plastic bins 1/2 full of the Bio-Char. Then we put Choir/soil mix with Red Wigglers on top.. These Tubs were maintained feeding and watering the Red Wigglers (worms) on top of the Bio-Char for approx. 1 yr. We dumped three large tubs in the Planned garden area this year and our Tomato Blooms look like Dandelions-(Super Blooms). The other plants thriving include Squash, Cucumbers, Peas, Corn, Swiss Chard, Beats. This is a first year garden (1250 SF). Heavy Clay Dirt, the kind that is cement in the summer. Good Gardening from The Hipps
I finally found out where my radishes were going. A sneaky bunny rabbit from across the road.😊 I put a water source over there and haven't seen any bunnies at all.
Rated with red candy onions, walls, Texas sweets, Italian red onions, in the winter my onions don't always keep so I start putting them in the winter garden when spring comes theses onion go to seed so I dry them and plant the seeds in the next January indoor for March planting. This has been wonderful this year I have about 8oo onions so excited.
An eye-opening video! Saving seeds Landrace style is such a crucial concept that is simple but little understood. Thanks for introducing this concept to so many people! I just started my own cucumber, field corn, and tobacco breeding projects. I'm excited to see the results over the coming years.
This is something that we are going to do with more seeds this year. I've never thought about doing this with hybrid seeds before and letting them find where they like to settle out. We have been doing this with squash and pumpkin and last year had a Maxima crossed with a butternut squash that we enjoyed eating a lot. This year we are adding red/orange squash that we got really cheap from the markets and have been really good eating. I did like the idea of getting to a squash that only grows in our yard that we like. This is fairly low risk because because i can always get cheap squash and pumpkins in autumn. We are also going to save potatoe seeds this year, i never knew what those little fruit were on the potatoes and have only started seeing them in the last few seasons. One of the ideas we got from an old lady that sold us a cheap peach tree, she had lettuce in her yard that they were eating and letting go to seed and they never had to buy lettuce again. I really liked the idea and have also done it with silver beet and spinach so that we always have some growing now and it just grows by itself as long as we leave a plant to seed that part of the bed.
Thanks for this video. I was wanting only to grow certain strains so they wouldnt cross. I wanted to keep the original lines. Now im going to sprout a lot of my seeds before they go bad and not trip about it.
Another good reason to save your own seeds is if you eat micro-greens ...or have animals that eat greens. ... or if you're saving seeds that are used as spices (mustard), or snacks (sunflowers). It takes a lot more seeds than what comes in one packet to make just one meal from microgreens. And my rabbits eat about a half pound of greens every day, year-round. So sunflowers, mustard greens, kale and herbs like cilantro are great to be able to harvest quickly for the rabbits as I thin out the beds. They also love corn greens; I could fatten up a bunch of rabbits on the greens you showed there :)
Thanks David great video n information definitely getting the books started seed saving 2 years ago So gonna try your methods God bless you n your family n gardens 🙏 ❤ 🇺🇸
Didn’t read them all the comments, just piling in… Planted 4 varieties of elderberry in the yard / food forest, FYI Had 2 “wild” plants pop up (one in a flower bed, another next to our pony’s run-in shed). Transplanting both this week, wish me luck
That’s an amazing garden! 🎉 Would love to tour your farm. Love the idea of lazy gardening but I like the term stewardship it inspires us to strive for better results. The rewards and surprises are so amazing! Happy gardening! 🎉 😊
David the Good I went to the Etsy shop though no canna’s there I see the landrace watermelons fun!! I just bought your book, and the landrace book! Yay earlier that watching your videos I planted 72 pumpkin seed with one of my twins for a fundraiser for college !!
Good one! I am doing a lot of seed saving now for the very reasons you stated. I’m going to do what your son did with lettuce. That seems to be a hard thing for me in South Central Texas.
I am in my 60s and I live in North Alabama. I am still growing a variety of beans my grandfather called "Cherokee Indian Beans." He said they were very common in Lawrence County, Alabama when he was a young boy.
They look like Cherokee trail of tears beans, but they are brown, not black. I feel like I am keeping a little history alive.
🙂Yes you are ! Teach your family how to grow them, especially the grandkids !
This is amazing!!
I'd be proud cause that is so cool.
If they are the beans I think they are, they are practically extinct. Kyle from the native habitat project has a video on them.
I live in Jefferson County. I would love to grow this bean variety in my fields if you were kind enough to lend some.
Another thing that's inspiring about Joseph Loft houses book is that it's not just about plants that are adapted to your climate is also about plants that are adapted to your gardening habits. For instance, some gardeners use trellises some gardeners let plants sprawled on the ground. Some gardeners use irrigation , some gardeners depend on rainfall. His book and your work have been very inspirational to me in my garden and journey. Thank you for everything and God bless. I am praying for your family and the loss that you have suffered
Good comment bro!
I was doing this with garden beans long before (by accident) I knew about the value of breeding for a land-race, by simply being lazy and forgetting to collect some beans and I realized that year after year I had volunteers that had come up and could survive my half-of-the-year flooded and half-of-the-year dry Northern Arizona climate and now I have a climber that looks like a tiger eye with the occasional purple showing up and produces like a hybrid, now to do this with my chickens by breeding Sumatra, olde English game and American game into my leghorns and marans'
Good luck and let us know how the mixing all works out! The growing and hatching. The Nanas growing out of Central Florida
I have purple Amaranth growing wild like a weed in 4 years time, started with 3 or 4 seedlings that someone gave me, l even thought l lost it last year due to heavy mulching but after moving some mulch within a week or so it popped up like a thick carpet of seedlings, this year l’ve added a brown variety to mix it up..lets see what happens..
After losing a whole flock of barred rock last summer to a mamma hawk I found that some mutt bantams scooted from bush to bush and the hawk doesn't even know they are here. I'm mixing them with the black old English, they are smart as a whip and all the little eggs are tastier. Like a concentrated egg in a little package. 👍
Looks like this comment was a year ago. How’s the “land race” chicken breeding going?
Sorry about the flock you lost. Cook that you are breeding the chickens to be better able to survive. How’s the chicken breeding going now, a year later than the comment.
My tomatoes are invasive in my garden after only a couple years of doing that.
Now I don't even need to plant any, there's so many that have come up I'm thinking of putting a box by the road labeled free tomato plants.
😄👍 Landrace gardening book is now on my shopping list.
I'd been landracing sweetcorn and beans and lettuce and whatever else I saved seed from for a couple of decades. After reading Lofthouse's book I felt affirmed that I was doing something good rather than just being sloppy.
Very interesting! I'm a novice gardener. This year I planted spaghetti squash seeds, some from a new package and some that I had saved from one I grew and ate last year. I labeled them, because I assumed the new pack would grow better --- not. My own germinated better and came up much faster! I'm very impressed!
That's great! It's so exciting to grow your own.
I want to save seeds just so I have the knowledge of being able to do things for myself. I don't have a cow, but I learned to make all types of dairy products. I learned how to can several types of foods, just so I could if I grow extras( or freeze) just so I can if I need too. Every year I find at least two new veggies, herbs and flower to grow just for the knowledge. Don't wait until you need knowledge to learn, learn something new every day!!! God bless and keep growing ( your brain will thank you). Thank you , David for all you teach us!
Amen! I still have a seed addiction but we are buying less and less from the big companies.
Thanks for sharing! I agree 100% that the Landrace book is a must read 📚 one. It is bringing nature back to what she does best. "Mix, plant, observe, collect, repeat" that's the model!
Saving money is the LEAST of the reasons to save your own seeds!
Here are two related books, one showing our main gardening system, and the other inspiring you to create your own landrace varieties.
GROCERY ROW GARDENING by David The Good: amzn.to/3IWg95U
LANDRACE GARDENING by Joseph Lofthouse: amzn.to/3WSfDf0
For the last few years since we got back to the states we've been growing our own varieties of seeds. Right now we're working on corn, daikons, cucumbers and watermelons. You can do it too!
Love you guys.
-DTG
Seems we might also avoid roundup-ready seeds by seed-saving, too.???
I've been saving seeds for decades but only really started paying attention to the results in the last few years. I haven't segraggated varieties in years. This is going to sound gross but, I have a bucket toilet and the aged humanure sprouts hundreds of tomatoes every year. They are the hardiest, most prolific tomatoes I grow.
I turned free packs of county seed library,peas ,beans and cowpeas into summer cover crops aplenty. Also I have a pumpkin sitting in my storage grown from your seeds harvested fall of 21. Still chilling
I have saved seeds from Calendula for years and years. I have now started saving from other plants as well and even from wild plants. I love free stuff :D
When I was listening to one of your videos I wasn't sure what you meant by landrace. Now it all makes since. Thank you for all you teach us. Even this young senior gardener.
I like how you had the guy in the background cued up to drive by - revving his engine & switching gears, right after you said "landrace gardening" ... pretty cool.
I just went down the bean rabbit hole with Joeseph and it's good stuff.
I've been a seed saver for years. David is right, you get the best seeds for your personal conditions by saving seeds.
Growing your food is a long process for reasons like this. We need to invest time in the process to become successful, never give up!
For sure.
Hit the thumbs up ya'll 😊
I like the death march for watermelon comment!
I love this whole idea - within a few years to have seeds we know grow well here. No more trying to figure out which cucumbers, which tomatoes, which squash, etc - just plant them and know they'll produce well and provide for our family.
This method will be a game changer. And it makes more sense. It will produce strong plants that's what we all want. Since we always deal with pest and harsh climates.
I have some pepper seeds I regrow each year. Had some swiss chard from my grandmother. Grew them for years. Did loose that line but started again a few years ago. Also have volunteers of several things that come us each year climatized to my garden.
I love this! I've been saving seeds because it's fun and saves a little money but now I'm even more excited about it
I love all the garden experimentation you do! Yay science!🎉
then you spread those seeds out to all your neighbors, and have them add their favorites so that you never get inbreeding in your own landrace. Pretty exciting stuff
hey david, are you in the discourse group yet for landrace gardening. I know we share your videos there, but it'd be cool to have you join us
I live in Georgia, east of ATL, and a few years ago I grew several varieties of cherry tomatoes in my railing planters on my side porch. The next year, I had some crazy looking tomatoes come up in the side yard and none were really viable - they were kind of Frankensteinish - and they didn't really taste that good. Last year, only one plant came up, in the middle of the side yard, and it produced a lot of delicious little cherry tomatoes all the way until November. I threw down a lot of the overripe ones, saved some seeds (just in case) and sure enough, I noticed the other day that there are a couple of tomato plants growing in the same spot.
Looking forward to seeing what develops and if they're as good as last year.
Hi Diana, I’m also east of the ATL metro. We plant multiples of cherry tomatoes every year (black, red & yellow) and am trying to isolate the winners. Hit me up, we can trade seed pretty easily.
Thx,
Ken J.
Power to the garden people!!! 🌱💕
Totally agree 😊 No good having heavy cropping initially if they can't survive and generally do well in your specific area. Been doing the same sort of growing policies as you since I was a kid and encouraged by my parents and siblings, despite it being against the general narrative. Experiment, observe the little idiosyncrasies and results, think for yourself. Thanks for your excellent content and "Hi" to all the family from Australia 😊😊😊 Happy green thumbs up.
You too.
This is exactly how I've grown for several years. I plant anything and everything and semi-neglect it to see what can grow where and thrive. Next year, I plant those things and lots of it. Anytime I've moved to a new place I grow a "skillful neglect" garden the first year. I've been a seed saver since my first garden in the 70s. 😁😁
It’s that ancestral connection maaan! 😂 but seriously it is! At least for me. It’s what our ancestors did, if they didn’t they didn’t eat. I’m not saying that’s how it should be but look around….
Oh my goodness, David! I ordered some landrace kale, cucumbers and dry bean seeds from Going To Seed and have planted them. They seem much more vigorous than others. Particularly the kale!
Appreciate all you do and I enjoy my garden but when I feel down or sluggish I watch your info videos and get motivated to do more 🍓👍😎
Thank you. You all encourage me too.
@@davidthegood I'm glad I found your channel this is top notch information nobody else on you tube compares to the knowledge your handing out
Welcome back mr the good.
Thanks, John.
When I learned the term 'landrace', I went, "Oh! That's the term for how Dad saves seeds every year!" We save seeds from our favorite squashes and plant 'em out (or let them do their thing in the compost heap), and every so often bring in a new variety in the hopes of improving our line further. He also lets the lettuce and radishes go to seed and sow themselves every year. It's nice to have the vocabulary for what we had termed 'UFO squash'.
As for me, I've been growing out corn and several types of beans the last few years, and put them all together in a 3 sisters garden this year, so we'll see how that goes! I am a lazy gardener, so if plants can survive my lack of will to water and weed, they definitely get replanted the next year. I'm working on a landrace yard-long bean, continuing Lofthouse's tepary bean landrace, and growing out a (hopefully) drought-resistant variety of flint corn. For sure, whatever corn survived last year's mega-drought is worth planting again! Next year I may try working on a landrace melon.
I have been wondering about this. I figured plants would adapt. Glad to see that someone has had success.
You can see this kind of thing happen even with common weeds. I live in basically a desert and I still see dandelions, lambs quarters, stinging nettle, and a whole bunch of others that have over generations bred and adapted to the dry hot climate! pretty cool.
Great video! We have had better success growing volunteer landraces coming from the compost than babying some of our annuals in the raised beds. 😅 Learning what to grow in your area is so important!
GoodThink!
1984 gardening
This makes great sense, not so common at all!! Thanks! Been saving seeds for awhile, but haven't had enough room for varieties to mix, maybe soon! Increasing my growing areas , but slowly, the rocks and the clay are surely a challenge! But I started my weed water and dried and crushed eggs, bananas, and coffee grounds, supposed to be like a 10-10-10.
Thanks, David, prayers of comfort for your family.
Saving seeds that cross pollinate and planting them out every year you will eventually get a landrace that you can name after yourself. I'm a little old to start that now but I'm going to do it anyway. My offspring might one day have a Mary tomato or a Mary cucumber etc.
Loved Landrace and love Florida survival guide. Thanks David! I also really appreciate the Gospel at the end🥳
Thanks DTG and Rachel! Good information! Looking forward to seeing your harvest. 🌽
My family saves seeds and we need plants that can survive high wind and drought. That's part of the advantage.
Awesome Video David! Keep up the amazing work!🤩
A video with man’s hand in mind for a change, good job!
Met Walter and Verna Zill yesterday @David The Good and I have some of their mangos on my counter ripening. Love this video we will need it for the future when we might not have stores. Gardening the Crazy easy way, lol Or Lazy Way.. lol
Also they know all about seed saving and growing them out and he showed me the technique he uses to propagate the mango he wants again onto another mangos root stock. So cool!
You should absolutely consider selling all your landrace seeds. It would be a great benefit for people in the Southeastern US, and we’d be willing to pay good money for it. 😅
Love from Texas brother.
Ditto
Thank you Ivan, and Ryan.
@@davidthegood thank you for continually putting out valuable growing wisdom. You're definitely helping save lives.
2:02 it’s also about readiness. I’ve been saving seeds from Beans to pumpkins, tomatoes, physalis and lots more. Besides being adapted to the environment, my own seeds will sprout in just a few days, compared to bought seeds which may take 2-3 weeks.
physalis will actually seed itself every year. Just have to thin out between my tomato’s. So it’s also about convenience.
I love the idea of seed saving for land race gardening. I had a volunteer tomato plant in my compost heap last year that grew so well that I kept the last tomato from it. Squashed it some and put it in the window in a cup of soil this winter. The cup was full of sprouts by the spring and after uppotting them, planting some at the assisted living where my Mom lives...planting some in my own garden and giving some away, I still have a few more left! What fun a fun and rewarding experiment it has been for sure! And I was glad to share the tomato plant wealth with others.
Love this concept. My garden isn’t that big but I could try planting several varieties and work from there.
Keep dropping those pearls of wisdom, DTG!
01:39 when it comes to seed saving for thrift reasons, you also have to factor the costs/savings of what growing means you're not buying
Makes more sense than what most folks propagate.
Oh my gosh this answers my question to what was that HUGE mustard plant looking plant? It was so tall and wide and grew to be a seed beast! It was a volunteer that grew in the same place i planted mustard greens last spring. I searched all over for a mustard plant at the flowering stage that was ginormous like our volunteer but coukd not find it. It's probably crossed with broccoli) brussels/cauliflower and all the other brassicas haha i was sure it was a giant mustard until seed harvest time. The pods were small balls, not bean-like pods 🤔 i wish i could post the picture on here, it was insane.
Even though land race gardening is not a new concept, I feel like it's the next level of gardening for us. I started 'gardening' when I was 9 ~ am 71 now, and L.R.G. is my next expansion🥬🥦💚💚. Thank you, DTG, you make learning so much fun. I continue to pray for your family🙏
Another new level of gardening involves the use of biochar, or basically, an organic charcoal that is porous enough to hold a lot of nutrients and moisture, and helps make those micronutrients available to your plants and to the life below the soil as well (the soil biome). Scientists first learned about it while studying tribes in the Amazon basin, and found that the soil in their gardens was way higher in plant nutrients than the surrounding soil. Recent experiments are finding huge benefits to creating and using biochar in the garden. I have not tried it myself yet, but I hope to.
You are spot on. I had heard about landrace but didn't know there was a book. Will have to look for that. The older i get the less I want to coddle plants.
It is absolutely worth reading.
It was great interview with Joseph, nice to see and hear you guys discussing landrace gardening. Congrats to your kids for successful projects, watermelons look fabulous. Good luck with your new seed saving projects.
I have a ton of radish seeds and have been waiting! Perfect timing!
I bought the Lofthouse book and am really enjoying watching my first landraces happen. Thank you so much for sharing these ideas with us!
Such a metaphor for life...when the going gets tough, the tough gets going! ❤
I wish you the best of luck. Mendelian genetics are a great primer on this topic. Developing a true breeding variety through uncontrolled crosses could take many generations. It takes many generations with controlled crosses.
I do understand that; however, many of our varieties came from wild, uncontrolled, crazy crosses.
Wow this is mind blowing since all I’ve ever read and heard is to only plant one of a species if you wanted to save true seeds. I’m going to rewatch several times lol.
Magic! ! am reading the Landrace Garden book!
Growing landrace tomatoes, pole beans, bell pepper and field corn as wee speak. Hard not to go and smother 'em with love and get survivors!
That sure helps when it comes to the hassle of keeping different types of the same plant far enough apart to not cross!
Yeah, that's a BIG PLUS for me! I hated all the isolation.
Ive been saving seeds my whole life and was acclimating to my new climate n soil..i was introduced to land race n laughed. I didn't know it had an official name 😊I've now joined his site n newsletter !! Awesome info.
Thanks for the shout-out David.
You bet
Wow! Great practical information that makes seed saving worth the hassle of separating seed from mush.
I used the term landrace and very few knew what i was talking about.Landrace term not only applies to cultivars of plants but to livestock as well. You need to try south anna butternut bred by commonwealth seed,i promise you will love it. I am growing an old variety of watermelon that the seed is hard to get. its red-n-sweet bred at LSU station near you in deep south back in the 80's(its closed now to my understanding). The deeper colors of red flesh affect the flavors too in watermelons. Red-n-sweet has a high sugar content as well.
I did this(let them tough it out on their own) with my okra and they did GREAT! THEN I sowed the seeds😊 --but the SLUGS are such BIG fans, they just aren't making it 😢... except for 2 little guys that are still hanging in there 💪
Those are the ones to save seed from! Slug-resistant okra.
Thanks for this, its very logical !!
Thanks for the info
This is what happened to me with the pac choi and tatsoi. I always try not to cross paths and now I can hardly tell which is which. I have been saving Pac Choi seeds (I don't know what variety or hybrid) that I obtained in a seed exchange with an older man. That was in 2007. Your videos are an inspiration, I am from Costa Rica.
just knowing there are other weirdoes out there in the garden with a mixing bowl makes me really happy. I love your content. landracing til i die. seeing what grows. her in southeastern VA on the Peninsula
Death marches reminded me of the Trail of Tears (Native Americans) and Bataan Death March (my great grandfather)…. Anyway, here’s my engagement. Thanks for the video. Inspirational towards trying again with my garden this autumn.
Love the land race book. Started my radish land race this year.
TIP- A Gardening Fertilizer success. We first made our own bio char. Filled several large plastic bins 1/2 full of the Bio-Char. Then we put Choir/soil mix with Red Wigglers on top.. These Tubs were maintained feeding and watering the Red Wigglers (worms) on top of the Bio-Char for approx. 1 yr. We dumped three large tubs in the Planned garden area this year and our Tomato Blooms look like Dandelions-(Super Blooms). The other plants thriving include Squash, Cucumbers, Peas, Corn, Swiss Chard, Beats. This is a first year garden (1250 SF). Heavy Clay Dirt, the kind that is cement in the summer. Good Gardening from The Hipps
That is awesome
Dropping knowledge brother great video I learned something
Thank you, Rico.
I finally found out where my radishes were going. A sneaky bunny rabbit from across the road.😊 I put a water source over there and haven't seen any bunnies at all.
Rated with red candy onions, walls, Texas sweets, Italian red onions, in the winter my onions don't always keep so I start putting them in the winter garden when spring comes theses onion go to seed so I dry them and plant the seeds in the next January indoor for March planting. This has been wonderful this year I have about 8oo onions so excited.
An eye-opening video! Saving seeds Landrace style is such a crucial concept that is simple but little understood. Thanks for introducing this concept to so many people! I just started my own cucumber, field corn, and tobacco breeding projects. I'm excited to see the results over the coming years.
Thank you for validating my instincts!!!! 🤩
This is something that we are going to do with more seeds this year. I've never thought about doing this with hybrid seeds before and letting them find where they like to settle out.
We have been doing this with squash and pumpkin and last year had a Maxima crossed with a butternut squash that we enjoyed eating a lot. This year we are adding red/orange squash that we got really cheap from the markets and have been really good eating. I did like the idea of getting to a squash that only grows in our yard that we like. This is fairly low risk because because i can always get cheap squash and pumpkins in autumn.
We are also going to save potatoe seeds this year, i never knew what those little fruit were on the potatoes and have only started seeing them in the last few seasons.
One of the ideas we got from an old lady that sold us a cheap peach tree, she had lettuce in her yard that they were eating and letting go to seed and they never had to buy lettuce again. I really liked the idea and have also done it with silver beet and spinach so that we always have some growing now and it just grows by itself as long as we leave a plant to seed that part of the bed.
I love the idea of making your own varieties of plants. I want my seeds to be mutts, just like me. Survival of the fittest
Thanks for this video. I was wanting only to grow certain strains so they wouldnt cross. I wanted to keep the original lines. Now im going to sprout a lot of my seeds before they go bad and not trip about it.
Landrace gardening is where it's at!
Another good reason to save your own seeds is if you eat micro-greens
...or have animals that eat greens.
... or if you're saving seeds that are used as spices (mustard), or snacks (sunflowers).
It takes a lot more seeds than what comes in one packet to make just one meal from microgreens. And my rabbits eat about a half pound of greens every day, year-round. So sunflowers, mustard greens, kale and herbs like cilantro are great to be able to harvest quickly for the rabbits as I thin out the beds. They also love corn greens; I could fatten up a bunch of rabbits on the greens you showed there :)
I feel like Drago in Rocky 4 when i plant my seeds " if it dies, it dies"
Thanks David great video n information definitely getting the books started seed saving 2 years ago So gonna try your methods God bless you n your family n gardens 🙏 ❤ 🇺🇸
Didn’t read them all the comments, just piling in…
Planted 4 varieties of elderberry in the yard / food forest, FYI
Had 2 “wild” plants pop up (one in a flower bed, another next to our pony’s run-in shed). Transplanting both this week, wish me luck
That’s an amazing garden! 🎉
Would love to tour your farm.
Love the idea of lazy gardening but I like the term stewardship it inspires us to strive for better results. The rewards and surprises are so amazing! Happy gardening! 🎉 😊
David the Good I went to the Etsy shop though no canna’s there I see the landrace watermelons fun!! I just bought your book, and the landrace book! Yay earlier that watching your videos I planted 72 pumpkin seed with one of my twins for a fundraiser for college !!
Let's not forget it is amazing seeing unique vegetables. My neighbour gave me a pumpkin half butternut and half jap. Totally different taste and look.
This was an eye opening video...THANK YOU David the Good!!
Ive done this with radishes and have got great results and some really cool looking radishes. 😊 also kale and purple cabbage
On my third season doing this it really does work it also works for fruit and nut trees.
Such a great idea, and yet never really spoken about. 👍👍
Very grateful man you always take my understanding and enthusiasm to the next level
It's encouraging to have people as enthusiastic as myself. Thank you.
Good one! I am doing a lot of seed saving now for the very reasons you stated. I’m going to do what your son did with lettuce. That seems to be a hard thing for me in South Central Texas.