Landrace, Evolutionary Gardening, "Biotic learning", Biomomicry, Whatever

[greenstorm]

What's calming? Writing about the principles of landrace gardening.

The principle is, it's more likely that a plant will be able to determine if it can survive there its own self than that I can predict what will grow well based on generalized descriptions from unlike soils/climates/water regimes/altitudes/biotic communities/growing styles/etc. Give something three years of trying to grow and by the end of it you will know whether it will grow well there.

More excitingly let genes mix. They won't be shackled to the rest of the genetics in that one variety. Over time the genes that aren't suitable will drop out of the mix and ones that are will combine in new ways. Each plant will have a larger and larger percentage of genes that work well on your site, for you, in your situation.

There needs to be some survival and some mortality for this to work. Genes need to be propagated at different frequencies. If you carefully save every seed from every plant, and keep every plant alive, there will be no change in frequency of surviving genes and thus no selection. Obviously if no seeds survive to make the next generation there will also be no propagation of genes.

For a gardener this means that things will often look bad or die. A garden grown this way is a garden that, on walkthrough, displays visible failures. Maybe some of the food tastes bad before it's removed from the gene pool. Maybe locusts or aphids descend and eat 80% of the crop.

Up to a point more failure of individual plants means more success for the project. When only 10% of the plants are dying out you're not getting tremendously strong selection; that's when you can step in and remove something that sprawls over the pathway or is too upright or doesn't look pretty or is bitter without erasing the whole project.

I think this is a different paradigm? We like nourishing the little plants, taking great care of them, feeling pride and love when they thrive. It can feel like a loss if they die, because of course it is. Those genes might well be propagated elsewhere but the individuals are what we get attached to. It is a different feeling to pivot from caretaking the individual to a fierce curiosity as to what the next generation will be, and to caretaking this balance between genes and hyperlocal spot of land.

In any case it's a much humbler and more intimate interaction with natural processes. Instead of doing all the intellectual and physical work to keep nature out and thereby create a perfect specimen myself, I am partnering with a cloud of resources and processes that function all around me whether I'm there or not and will grow something whether I am there or not. My goal becomes half guide, steering the process of selection to include my own needs layered on to those of the specific spot of land; but also half student, leaping along from development to development and trying to decipher what just happened and why. The process is in some ways more violent - there's more death, after all - but also less hubristic and narcissistic. We cease warring with nature when we cease warring with death. I suppose that makes sense.

So basically my garden will now always have things dying and failing. That's how new things are born and how new life comes forward. My garden will also likely always have things held static, preserved out of sentimentality or utility or just lack of energy to change them. Balance, right?

This doesn't feel complicated or hard to me, even though it kind of is complicated. Lots of sources and varieties and uncertainty as to particular outcomes is part of this process. I am created to love this kind of thing and to resist one-to-three-cultivars-that-get-planted-every-year-forever.

Is it hard for you to think about? Would it feel wrong?

Comments

[yarrowkat]

it is not hard to think about. it's weirdly challenging for us to keep good records of what we plant (sometimes even of where we plant it), or how well it did, though we do have observation from over the years, and i think landrace gardening is greatly assisted by record-keeping.

[greenstorm]

That's super interesting. I don't fully understand how record-keeping would help?

Most of the folks I've talked to like landrace gardening because it doesn't need much record-keeping; nothing needs to be labelled, just save seeds from the tastiest healthiest plants and put them all in a jar together for next year (as opposed to single-variety gardening where folks have to label each plant, record which ones did well, and then be careful to replant based on records next year).

I actually feel a little out-of-place because I like keeping the different results separate sometimes, checking on how each family of descendants is doing, or keeping some varieties separate.

[yarrowkat]

i guess i have never thought of it that way - if i just keep what i like but don't keep track of what that is, how will i be able to recreate it if we run out of seeds or something doesn't perform well in a freak weather year, etc? but then, we really do need to get away from purchasing seeds, which we still do a fair amount of. i'm feeling more financial pressure on that end wrt birds: we need to get an incubator, breed our own everythings, and break our relationship with the hatchery. we're specifically planning to keep a pair of Muscovy ducks as breeders this year (we ordered 4 muscovies & 4 jumbo pekins and gosh, ducklings are expensive compared to chickens. so we'll see if the ducks can make more ducks for us for the cost of food & care instead of more hatchery purchases.) we've had trouble when we tried to breed turkeys in the past - specifically, tom turkeys are aggressive little bastards, and one attacked Gawain when he was maybe 4 years old, so then we rehomed the bird and stopped that experiment. but G is bigger than a turkey now (he wasn't, really, at the time) so maybe we should revisit that idea, too. chickens and ducks for sure, though. seeds cost a lot less. >.

[greenstorm]

One technique to avoid fluke years and spread out the genetics is to take 50% of the seed out of your save jar, plant it, and then replace it at the end of the year and shake it up. Then you will have a bunch of last year's seed, a lesser amount of the previous year's seed, etc, etc. In case of crop failure you still have the half-jar of seed (and honestly probably also a stash in the freezer from a couple years back?) and in case a weird weather event impacts genetics you get some but not total impact on your genetics altogether.

Oh gosh, I wish I could offer you some ducklings.

Benefit of breeding your own animals is you can find local folks who have friendly males, and continue to breed for that? When you hatch them out you have an awful lot to choose from.

[yarrowkat]

oh, i wish that about ducklings, too! we could have some fun trades if we were proximate. we haven't found local duck people yet, though i imagine we will, given enough time. hopefully we'll get a friendly male in the batch but if not we'll keep trying. we probably should call the turkey farm in Estancia and see about getting tom poults from her friendliest tom, when we decide to overwinter turkeys again. we're definitely selecting for good-tempered animals, as well as flavor and size, when we get to that point. well and with the goats we're already doing it. (the current plan is to sell Rose this winter and keep her kid does, because of her temperament.)

that's a good idea for the seed-saving.

[greenstorm]

I wonder how much of our differences come from growing in such different climates, and how much comes from the nature of our interests. I mean, if we were proximate we might have less to trade.

A rooster that came with last year's bought-in chicks attacked me today. I've never been attacked by a rooster before, but they've all been my chantecler lines. He will be a definite cull.

[yarrowkat]

maybe so, maybe no - i think interest is a lot of it. we aren't raising geese because of lack of interest (and a couple of us were attacked by geese as children and it left an indelible impression), but people here totally do raise geese. for instance. same with pigs (minus the attack part).

[greenstorm]

I am so curious. I mean, I'm raising geese in large part because I have access to a ton of water, and because I need an animal that can handle extreme cold. Now I love them, but I have trouble imagining irrigating land for them. OTOH I guess any animal feed from the land would require irrigation there?

[yarrowkat]

yes, it does. we flood irrigate the back acreage, moving the goats off it first; geese and ducks would love that. 4" standing water across the fields once every two weeks. of course it starts soaking in immediately. the red-wing blackbirds have a party wading in the water and eating bugs that come up with it. i love listening to them. when the mud starts to harden (2-3 days) we move the goats back to the field. alfalfa is grown with flood irrigation, and corn, buckwheat and so on. it's river water, essentially, though pulled out through a network of ditches that starts north of the city.

[greenstorm]

Geese and ducks would love it but if the soil is clay I'd worry about them destroying the texture; depends on their density I suppose.

You've described that network to me before and I love it. I tried to find it on google earth imagery but failed.

[yarrowkat]

this is north of us: http://www.riverrestoration.com/la-plaza-ditch-off-embudo-creek-near-dixon-nm/

but a clear example/image of how it works.

here's what it tends to look like in my area, from a walking view: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/380132024767719418/

this one shows some check-gates & turn-outs, so you can see more of the infrastructure of how water movement is controlled: https://newmexiconomad.com/acequias/ i didn't look at the text. :)

[greenstorm]

A lot of those photos look very familiar, but it's because similar-looking ditches are used to pump water out of the low-lying lower mainland/Fraser River valley and delta around Vancouver. The water is going the other way in those cases!

Amazing where we choose to build and how we support it.

[yarrowkat]

that's neat! it makes sense that drainage from wet places would be managed just as intensively.

[greenstorm]

The plane going into Vancouver usually is pretty low over the cranberry fields as it comes in to land. Those are straight up flooded for harvest, I guess it's basically the same thing.

[yarrowkat]

cranberries! i remember seeing a video of flooded cranberry fields being harvested.

[squirrelitude]

It makes sense, it just feels a little funny to me. When I think of seed-saving I automatically think of record-keeping just because that's what my dad did. But he is also pretty into selection and specific crosses, aimed at getting particular attributes (or backcrossing them from one variety to another).

This gets particularly complicated for plants where you normally eat the seeds. So maybe you grow some plants from generation 1 seeds and perform crosses, save those generation 2 seeds, plant *some* of the gen 2 seeds, evaluate the plants and their fruits and seeds, then go back to your saved gen 2 seeds and plant just the ones whose grown-out siblings did well. Cross those, etc. Complicated! (And I don't know the name for it. Maybe you do?) You could do selection without tracking multiple years' worth of seeds, but apparently it's a lot slower.

I think the only time this technique is actually *required* is when you're making unstable, uniform hybrids, which he's not into and neither am I. My hazy memory is that he has instead done it for an heirloom variety that had gotten very polluted with off-types and that he was trying to shape up again.

I think record-keeping just appeals to me, too. I like the idea of being able to trace the ancestry of a variety. :-) I'm keeping track of all my citrus, and I plan to keep track of the lineages of any crosses I make.

But... the feeling of obligation that comes with the record-keeping is a minor source of stress, so if I can drop it then it might make some kinds of gardening more fun, which is good.

[yarrowkat]

i think if my for-pay job weren't heavily into spreadsheets and data tracking, i would be more interested in doing it for fun for the garden. instead it is, as you say, a minor source of stress and since i can avoid it, i do. ha.

though the way the climate is going, maybe i should just buckle down and do the data-keeping work as well as the hands-in-the-dirt work.

[greenstorm]

What is its function, for you?

[yarrowkat]

i think, to ensure we actually know what we're planting, beyond "tomatoes". because when we tell ourselves "oh, we'll remember that," we often don't, or we each remember different things, and record keeping helps avoid that. to have a more complete understanding of how we got there.

[greenstorm]

I am 1000% subject to "I like this plant, therefore I will remember its harvest dates and yield favourably" bias to the point it's ridiculous. Someday I'll be better at recording exact yields. Meantime it would be fascinating to be doing that in a group and seeing how much space there was between my rememberance of performance and other people's.

[yarrowkat]

that would be a great community experiment! especially if two people committed to memory and the third person wrote it down and then you compare notes the next year and see how variable those impressions are. Jenny and I regularly have very different tomato experiences in the same garden in the same year. we end up with conversations like "the cipolla's pride were the best red slicer last year" "did we have a red slicer? i don't remember those at all" "remember, we ate them in that salad at X event" "was there salad? oh, wait, those! did we grow those?" etc

[greenstorm]

When I learned the term "gaslighting" it was revelatory, until I remembered/realized that two people rarely have the same memory of an event to start with. I'm not exactly sure how normative society handles this; folks often don't have the same idea of a shared experience but it doesn't sem to be culturally understood that memory works like that either?

Though your narrative seems to have room for sort of nudging each other into mutual agreement on events?

I've had some experience with internet conversations like this, where we can go back to the written record and learn that, in fact, it was super different from what we remembered. I definitely wonder whether the sensory engagement of gardening/eating would anchor memories better.

[yarrowkat]

we do develop group narratives about certain kinds of events, over time. and listen to each others' stories a lot. very possible the physical experience of gardening/eating is an anchor!

[greenstorm]

I love this way that culture forms by discussing things and coming to this (I think invisible to most people) shared narrative. It's such a subtle process that papers over the way our memories work and creates such unsubtle results. Humans are -neat- and weird.

[greenstorm]

I wish I could pull the sibling planting group video out of that course for you. I think it was mainly used to pull out recessives in the video, but also to collect a little more information about which traits flow together.

I admit I'm struggling to think of a plant where 1) you eat the seeds and 2) there aren't enough seeds to just taste them and keep the rest from that plant.

I mean, for someone talking about landracing I have an awful lot of deliberate crossing (tomato and pepper and corn mostly) planned for this summer. My windowsill pepper cross is still the most fun thing I've done this winter, matchbox to hungarian black. So excited!

Record-keeping lets me check my own biases, meaningfully compare more than I can remember, and come up with pretty statistics. It's why I love the RED Gardens guy on youtube-- that's the level of comparison I aspire to.

[squirrelitude]

I may be misremembering the conditions under which this approach is useful, and was kind of guessing. I thought it had to do with eating the seeds (maybe you don't get enough beans from one bean plant to really try them out?) but I could just be totally wrong!

[squirrelitude]

I'm looking at my bedside table, which currently contains:

- 6 citrus and citrus-related trees
- A bay laurel
- A pineapple plant
- A kalanchoe
- And a whole bunch of dead things that got killed off by spider mites over the course of the winter (mostly basil and scallions that I'd hoped to have fresh)

Different species so it's not about breeding, but... yeah, there's the half-dead garden for you, and some selection happening. (I'm not going to try overwintering basil again. The one time it worked it was only because I bought predatory mites.)

[greenstorm]

Spider mites are the devil. Have you tried bucket-dunking anything you bring inside in safers/alcohol mix once a week for three weeks, every couple months? I suspect it's futile since once they inhabit a space they kind of inhabit it, but I also did indoor plants in office towers for many years and never actively lost anything to spider mites while I was being paid to maintain (ssafers spray + wipe) them.

I am totally envious of your citrus. What is citrus-related?

My mom has a bay laurel planted outside her marina and they hack off something like 4' of hedge every year to maintain the neighbour's site line. I'm always astonished at how good they smell and how well they overwinter outdoors. Does it not do for you there? Your climate escapes me, I tend to think of that part of the US as "warm, grows anything that bugs/disease doesn't eat" based on almost no actual info.

Is it a pineapple from the top of a pineapple, or a fancy bought one?

[squirrelitude]

I've tried misting, and also Neem spray, but I get lax about it and then there's an invisible population explosion and... well, they usually get ahead of me. I'm not disciplined enough. I haven't tried dunking. How does that work? Submerge the whole plant and pot in a huge tub? I don't think that would work with the basil, which is usually in a decent sized pot and then 30+ cm tall itself.

Citrus-related are the curry leaf trees! (Murraya koenigii, which are in the Rutaceae along with citrus.) They have a really distinctive smell to the leaves, which are used in Indian cooking. Compound leaves, but otherwise some visual similarities to citrus. Funny little fruits that look like wonderful purple berries but have zero sweetness and taste medicinal instead. I bought one small tree from Logee's and now I have a couple of them. :-)

None of my citrus are fruiting yet, but maybe if I pamper them this summer they'll start flowering. I keep starting new ones, too. (Just found some seeds in a blood orange, which I'd like to cross with something. Long term project, even if I manage to learn grafting...)

I think in the Boston area we're juuust on the edge of where bay laurel could overwinter. We're USDA zone 6b, -18 to -20°C extreme. And I think that's about the lowest it will tolerate. With more climate instability, I'm guessing we'll see colder snaps as well. But... I should totally take a cutting and see if I can get one to overwinter as in in-ground perennial. It would be awesome if I could.

Pineapple is from a pineapple top. :-) I planted one, but the meristem/center had already died, resulting in a funny "hollow" plant. It put out about 6 or 7 pups from the outer soil line before dying after maybe a year. I gave some away and kept a couple. They seem pretty robust and I guess like it dry, but I'm not sure. I don't think I'm going to give them what they need to flower and fruit, so I should probably give them away to someone who wants to try for that. (They also take up a *lot* of horizontal space with their long, spindly leaves.)

[greenstorm]

If you can get them once a week for three weeks it tends to break the reproductive cycle for awhile. Dunking is just... place your fingers over the top of the pot with the stem coming out between your fingers, invert the plant so you're holding the plant upside-down, keeping in the pot with your hand, and just dunk the top part up to your fingers in the soapy (non-fancy, non-anti-microbial, etc etc) soapy water with a little rubbing alcohol in it. It uses a lot of soapy water, so it's not great for expensive pesticides if you use that kind of thing, but it gets every crevice of the plant with very little effort and you can do many plants at once.

Oh, yes, that is pretty cold for it. How are your microclimates? Against a building? They strike me as something that comes back from the roots.

I love citrus so much from afar. No idea whether I'd enjoy actually growing them. If I move, yuzu will be hardy there!

[squirrelitude]

Hmm... dunking seems very messy. I feel like lots of detritus and loose soil would fall off the top of the root ball. I guess I could make sure it falls somewhere other than into the soapy water, but it would add complexity. It also seems like enough effort that I would probably not end up doing it. :-/

I think there are some sheltered areas where the bay laurel would get some protection, including in my neighbor's back yard.

[greenstorm]

It really depends on your potting soil, whether you clear dead leaves off the top of the root ball regularly, and how rootbound the plant is. Generally they hold together really well for me. Certainly what's simpler for me is often much less good for many other folks. :)

Hmm. How likely is it your neighbour would give you continued access? Or can you put it on the fenceline so it overhangs and you need to trim it yearly. :>

[squirrelitude]

Oh, my neighbor and I have an arrangement where I basically just putter around in her yard, which is larger than our postage stamp. It gives me pleasure to do some basic caretaking. She's free to cut access at any time, and I don't do anything too drastic. :-)

I think the bigger issue for me is that I don't know how long she'll live there—she wants to move at some point—and I'm concerned that the new owner might just raze everything. I'm OK with planting perennials as long as I don't get too attached to them, but I have to avoid making investments in that property. (One possible future is that we buy it, but who knows!) But I guess if the bay laurel would be an experiment anyhow, that would be fine.

I like the way you think re: the fenceline. :-D

[greenstorm]

And honestly if it's on the fenceline the new ownrs might clear the property but leave the fence, because who wants to replace a fence?

That's such a lovely arrangement. I love knowing that there are folks who get along well enough, and navigate conflict easily enough, that they can evolve relationships like this.