Joseph Lofthouse, author
Joseph Lofthouse, Landrace Seedsman
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Adaptation Agriculture: How to grow abundant food without buying seeds, fertilizers, or pesticides.
Join my free video course, online community, or seed share at Going To Seed.

Land-race Tomatoes

DX52-12 tomato Summary
I grow my own variety of genetically diverse open pollinated land-race tomatoes on my farm in Paradise, Utah.

Method

The foundation of my land-race was DX52-12, the famous Hamson's tomato. This great tomato was developed specifically for Northern Utah by Dr. Alvin Hampson of the Utah State University Extension Service. DX52-12 is the standard by which I judge every other tomato grown in my garden.

Each year I grow a dozen or a hundred other varieties of tomatoes. If any of them grow as well or better than DX52-12 they are incorporated into one of my sub-varieties. If the tested variety grows passably it may be incorporated into my 'seconds' landrace. I trial many kinds of tomatoes. I include heirlooms and modern hybrids. I have trialed seeds from cutting edge breeding programs, from ancient landraces, from the Amish, and even from wild plants.

Sub Varieties
I collect several different sub-varieties of tomato seed.
An abundant tomato harvest Current Status
In the 2011 growing season 7 new landraces were trialed along with more than 88 named varieties. Four varieties of wild tomato were also grown. I searched the Internet and the seed catalogs for the earliest most cold tolerant tomatoes.
Varieties trialed in 2011 included: Joseph's first of season landrace, Joseph's early slicers landrace, Joseph's Main season canners landrace based on DX52-12. Varieties thought to be very early: Anmore dewdrop, Bradley - early one with small fruits, Buckbees New, Fisher's Cherry Salad, Fisher's Prarie Fire, Glacier, Kilino, Ida Gold, Latah, LISP Raymond's Canada Extra Early, Micro Tom. Varieties thought to be early: Bloody Butcher, Cold Set, Dwarf Red Heart, Early Annie, Kalinka, Matt's Wild Cherry, Microbeicum Occemus, Mountain Princess, Oregon Spring, Sophie's Choice, Subarctic plenty, Sungold, Victorian Dwarf, Vilina. Tomatoes that I screened because they were recommended. (Some of them on this list were grown for novelty.) 4th of July, Azoychka Balkanstar, Beefsteak, Big Beef X Eva Purple Ball, Big Sungold, Black Prince, Box Car Willie, Bradley (think it is the later one), Caspian F2, Delicious, Demidor, Eva Purple Ball, Everglades Wild, Fireball, Furry Red Boar, Hazelfield Farm - Red, Health Kick, Hillbilly Tomato Leaf, Ispolin, Jack White, Kulka F1, Legend, Lg Gold Oxheart, Lida Ukranian, Maui, New Yorker, Ola Polka, OSU blue, Peruvian Wild, Pineapple, Pixie, Purple Cherry, Purple Red Slicer, Red Tomato - Plum Slicing, Sibirskiy Skorospelyi, Spudata, Sugar Lump, Sweet Baby Girl, Tidig R??d, Yubilenski Taresenko. And probably a half dozen others that are in the mail, or mis-filed. Then a few landraces: 27 variety landrace, Hip-Gnosis Red Grex, Hip-Gnosis Olde 101 Red Slicer, Roller Coaster Cherry, Mer De Noms, Bishop's Homegrown Yellow Orange Grex, Joseph's Seconds.
Collaboration
I am always looking for an earlier tomato. I am willing to swap a dozen seeds with anyone that thinks they might have a tomato that would mature quicker in my garden with it's cold-nights and short growing season. All seeds received go into a common pot, so I won't be able to provide a report about how your seeds grew for me. Due to the currently strange economic conditions, I am not selling seeds. Some varieties of my seeds can be obtained from:

Going To Seed

Experimental Farm Network

Giving Ground Seeds

The Buffalo Seed Company

Snake River Seed Cooperative

Wild Mountain Seeds

Seed Savers Exchange

Resilient Seeds

Baker Creek Seeds

Miss Penn's Mountain Seeds

Hawthorn Farm Organic Seeds

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Global Seed Directory

After my book came out, requests poured in for varieties mentioned in the book. It takes me at least an hour per request to handle the correspondence, find the seed, package it, and get it to the post office. If you ask me directly for seed, or information about varieties, please consider making a donation large enough to cover an hour or two of a celebrity's time.

My Other Landraces

Landrace garden crops

Warm Regards,
Joseph

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