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

[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.