Landrace Gardening, International Edition by Joseph Lofthouse

Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination, International Edition in Standard Color by Joseph Lofthouse

Bringing dynamic back into vegetable gardening, seed saving, and breeding of plants and animals. A joyful and accessible approach to growing tasty, productive, and resiliently diverse food.

Landrace Gardening advocates a return to traditional regenerative horticulture methods of gardening and farming, while minimizing the use of current agricultural methods. Focusing on communities, and local varieties of crops and animals. Biodiversity and cross pollination allow selection for crops that thrive under ever changing conditions, while lessening the need for costly inputs, like poisons, fertilizer, materials, and labor. Less labor means more time for friends, family, music, dancing, or whatever it is that brings you joy.

The book includes detailed suggestions for developing a more reliable food system using local crop varieties. The techniques bring self-reliance and sustainable food security to small scale backyard beginner gardens, large scale farms, and permaculture food forests.

A chapter is devoted to pollination and the benefits of encouraging cross-pollination. Chapters are devoted to the specifics of breeding tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, and grains. Tips on growing many other vegetable varieties are provided, and a summary of which vegetables and grains are easiest to work with. An additional  chapter is devoted to extending the principles of local gardening to breeding chickens, honeybees, mushrooms, and trees.