Landrace Gardening: Racing the Weeds

Reader Contribution by Joseph Lofthouse
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The principles of landrace gardening can help us to grow plants that compete more effectively with weeds. By planting genetically diverse seeds and selecting via survival of the fittest, we can create plant populations that compete better against the local weeds that are common in any specific garden.

One of the earliest things I noticed when I started landrace gardening is that there are tremendous differences in how robustly plants of the same species grow in my garden. Some plants grow vigorously while other plants barely survive. Plants that grow vigorously have a huge advantage over weeds compared to slow growing plants, and that advantage accelerates during the growing season as the vigorous plant chokes out weeds, and the slow-growing plant gets overwhelmed. For example, see the photo of the watermelon plants. They were planted and photographed on the same day. They grew a few feet from each other. The plant in the red box would not compete well with weeds

Slow germination is another issue that can cause the weeds to get a head start over crops. As landrace gardeners we can select among genetically diverse populations for genes that lead to quick germination.  I’ll again use watermelon as the example. This spring about 70% of my watermelon landrace germinated quickly. The 30% that germinated slowly are being eliminated. I drew a yellow box around a slow germinating seed. It was pulled immediately after taking the photo.

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