Course curriculum

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    1. Overview

    2. Monthly Zoom Calls and Community Info

    3. The Benefits of Growing Landraces

      FREE PREVIEW

    4. Modern Landraces- An Introduction

      FREE PREVIEW

    5. The Eight Principles of Landrace Gardening

      FREE PREVIEW

    6. Why we need a different way of growing food

      FREE PREVIEW

    1. Important Definitions

      FREE PREVIEW

    2. Overview: The First Year

      FREE PREVIEW

    3. Growing More with Less

    4. Avoiding unwanted traits, encouraging natural hybrids and cross pollination

      FREE PREVIEW

    5. Inreeding Depression and our Food System

    6. Genetic Diversity in Action

    7. Choosing a Species-- From Easy to Hard

    8. How many plants, and how many varieties?

    9. Recommendations for sourcing your seeds

    10. Landrace Gardening in Small Spaces

    11. Summary of Chapter 1: Growing Your Own Landrace

    12. Further reading about landraces, grexes, open pollination and hybrids (optional)

    1. Squash Selection

    2. Dry Beans

    3. Cucumbers

    4. Corn Selection

    5. Developing a Melon Landrace in Paradise, Utah

      FREE PREVIEW

    6. Potatoes from True Seed

    7. The Exciting Challenge of Developing Landrace Tomatoes

    8. Why Won't my Peppers Germinate?

    1. Declining food nutrient density is about genetics, not soil health (Interview)

    2. What is the Answer?

    3. Other Factors affecting nutrient density

    4. The Role of plant Microbial Partners and Seed Saving

    1. The Selection Process-- Future Steps

    2. Hulless Oats and Sunflowers

    3. Growing delicious locally adapted carrots that out-compete weeds

    4. Garlic and Lettuce

    1. Growing with Less, and Adapting Plants to Harsh Environments (Lauren Ritz)

    2. Growing and Selling Landrace Seeds, by Nancy Kost (Buffalo Seed Company)

    3. Peas-- Manual Pollination with Gregg Muller, Useful Seeds

    4. Mark Reed's Brassica Project (Broccol-ish)

    5. Growing vegetables with multi-species cover crops, and starting a cover crop landrace

    6. Starting a Seed Library (Emma Calvert)

About this course

  • 50 lessons

Instructor(s)

Joseph Lofthouse

Guide

Joseph Lofthouse taught landrace gardening at conferences hosted by the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, National Heirloom Expo, Organic Seed Alliance, Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA-NY), and Utah Farm & Food Conference. He serves as World Tomato Society ambassador. Joseph is a sustenance market farmer and landrace seed-developer. At his garden in the Cache Valley in Utah, he grows seed for about 95 species, and is working to convert every species that he grows into adaptivar landraces. He is the author of the recent book Landrace Gardening, and is a popular speaker at farming conferences around the world. He has been growing landraces and selling seeds for a decade. He is dedicated to helping gardeners and farmers grow healthy plants with less stress. Farming Philosophy: Joseph's style of landrace gardening can best be summed up as planting many varieties together, then allowing them to promiscuously cross pollinate. Through a combination of survival-of-the-fittest and farmer-directed selection, arriving at a locally-adapted population with valued culinary traits. Joseph lives under a vow of poverty and grows using subsistence level conditions without using 'cides or fertilizers. He prefers to select for genetics that can thrive under existing conditions.