Landraces in differing extreme climates will increase food security

It dawned on me after reading a couple of posts of folk in very different extreme circumstances what it would mean to the future of growing food!
I’m lucky enough to be in a temperate climate. The soils are poor, acid, granite. If my landraces take off a lot would be done to help other growers in similar sites, with mainly grass fields and forestry.

But oh boy, the challenges quite a lot of fellow landracers are working on to overcome.

We have people

  • Up north overcoming freezes and short seasons.
  • In forested gardens overcoming semi shade situations.
  • In deserts overcoming extreme heat, differences between day and night temperatures and water and nutrient insufficiency.
  • In wetland areas overcoming acid soils, maybe semi shade and problems with fungi.
  • In semi tropical areas where plants grow well but insects grow much bigger and tend to be more energetic, they’re overcoming problems with these.

I am sure i missed many climates, soiltypes and their problems.

But the point i am trying to make is that this means an enormous leap forward for people everywhere! If people in extremer places can provide themselves with healthy food without inputs this will change the course of history.
And for people in temperate regions it would means even more since people could start growing shaded gardens/north facing places, bogs, create landraces that can outdo climate chaos by combining heat and cold resistant varieties. People could easier buy a bit of land and be sure they could find landraces from somewhere to provide food securely.
Making life free-er, easier and healthier.
Well that was what i had to say on this last day of 2022. Happy newyear and i wish y’all strength in the coming year and happy healthy gardens.

Hugo

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In theory it also means that each individual person can get plants unique to their different micro climates, your shaded areas, your areas that get extra rainfall, etc.

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Yes! Especially since two very different climates may have more overlap than you might think – once you consider that one climate’s spring may match another climate’s summer, etc.

For instance: late winter for me is similar to early summer for many people in the far north. I have plenty of water, the occasional light frost, and no real hard freezes. Since my summers are as dry as a bone, I really want to use my only wet season (winter) to grow things. So I look with great interest at crops that are intended to be grown in summer in places like northern Canada.

Meanwhile, anything I’ve grown through my hot, dry summer, irrigated only stingily, may be perfectly adapted to be dry farmed in a climate with regular rainwater.

There are many luxuries for one climate that are crucially important for another. So when a gardener in one climate focuses their effort around a crucial need, it may have all kinds of wonderful side benefits for people in climates that are less extreme.

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I think there are many under utilized crops or months/seasons just because people have very narrow view of whats possible. People still grow like it is 1900s. Here is still commonly used old advice not to plant frost tender crops before 10.6 that many still abide by. Finland is a big country and it’s usefull in some places, but people use it even in places were it’s very outdated. Or they dont look for weather forecast and just wait for the day. Just checked history for my area and there weren’t single frost that late in the last 25 years. Latest from recent history is 4.6, but average has moved to 21.5. One year had freak midsummer arctic blast that brought snow, sleet and isolated mild frost at summer soltice, but can’t really plan for those kinda events. When climate keeps warming even in warmer climates it might be easier to grow some “warm loving” crops like tomatoes in early season or having a landrace for each season.

From my experience cool weather is used as a general blame when there could be several other reasons with or without it that affect growth as much. It definetely affects, but what for someone is cool in other climate is just a normal summerday. Seed source is probably one big reason, but even varieties from warmer climates might work just fine here. Like last year I had French tomato variety “precocibec” (google translates it earliest) and while it wasn’t earliest, it was one of the earlier varieties around week behind earliest big tomato. So if grown for earliness early in the season it translates quite well even to more northern climate. It’s just about pushing the envelope and also paying attention to traits that tell about earliness.

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We’ve had that, frost past stGlace (saint ice) date, it frosted crazy late. Climate chaos i believe.
I 100% agree with you people are stuck. Winters hère have been great for gardening. People are like “what? How can you have lettuce now?” i’m like"not only lettuce, winter radish, kale, brocoli leaves, Russian Kale, spinach, rocket salade, lambs lettuce, minutina, coriandre and landcress."
It doesn’t grow superfast, but if you have quite some plants it’s definitely worth it
I’ve given some younger people my winterseed collection, hope they’ve put it to use.
Saving lots of your own seed frees one up, oh it froze to death! Bummer, i’ll try again next month. And the few that finally did survive are worth gold!
People do not subscribe at all to that attitude , they’re missing out! Let’s try and change it all.

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@Hugo When is that stglace date? I checked temperature averages close to you (Dijon, I think it’s quite close) and there average and extreme temperatures are so that april is similar to my may, may is similar to my june and june is similar to my july. But I know there might be big variation atleast with lows in close by locations. My citys weather observation place was moved around 1km and the old place had often 2-3C lower lows, but that was more of an exeption on my area. I know even colder areas in this region that will have light frosts in every month atleast some years. For me unseasonal frosts are likely to be in -0.x range so probably not even big set back.

Good question @JesseI. Half mai ish. Dijon is like a two hr drive but correct. I love at Juhannus how the aurinko just dips but keeps shining, eating makaraa drinking Karhu. But i dont like ittika. Haha

@Hugo Thought it might be something like that. More continental climate and longer nights tends to create frost relatively late. I think there must still be fair bit of similar conditions early in the season. My season really starts only in june and even if I get to plant/sow tender crops in late may it usually isn’t very hot and ground is still cool. Usually I dont even have to think about frost because it is still too cool to for tender plants week or weeks after last frost. And if it’s late frost it usually comes with long cool spring that makes me delay planting anyhow.

We live in the Sonoran desert and the first indigenous people who lived throughout the river system have developed landraces…but We don’t live by the river that used to seasonally deposit silt with growing nutrients. On the mesa the sand is even more alkaline so we had to amend a bit and irrigate to get vegetables to grow. We use regenerative and organic practice and save seeds regularly. However, on the edges of the garden there is soil that didn’t necessarily get the full amendment profile and those fruits have still survived to produce seed. We just keep growing, every year, and throughout the year including monsoon season.

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