Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's and Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving

by Carol Deppe

All gardeners and farmers should be plant breeders, says author Carol Deppe. Developing new vegetable varieties doesn't require a specialized education, a lot of land, or even a lot of time. It can be done on any scale. It's enjoyable. It's deeply rewarding. You can get useful new varieties much faster than you might suppose. And you can eat your mistakes.

Authoritative and easy-to-understand, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's and Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving is the only guide to plant breeding and seed saving for the serious home gardener and the small-scale farmer or commercial grower. Discover:

- how to breed for a wide range of different traits (flavor, size, shape, or color; cold or heat tolerance; pest and disease resistance; and regional adaptation)
- how to save seed and maintain varieties
- how to conduct your own variety trials and other farm- or garden-based research
- how to breed for performance under organic or sustainable growing methods

In this one-size-fits-all world of multinational seed companies, plant patents, and biotech monopolies, more and more gardeners and farmers are recognizing that they need to "take back their seeds." They need to save more of their own seed, grow and maintain the best traditional and regional varieties, and develop more of their own unique new varieties. Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's and Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving shows the way, and offers an exciting introduction to a whole new gardening adventure.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Plants, Food, Science, Agriculture, Reference

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Adam Shand · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the mixture of story, with teaching, with reference material. Unless you already know a bit about genetics you'll need to read it with the internet handy. She introduces some technical words without explaining them and skims over some topics which are crucial to later explanation. In the end I skimmed most of the technical genetic explanations figuring that I could reread when I actually have my own project I need to understand.

Over all it's astonishingly readable and enjoyable for what is basically a textbook. My main complaint is that many of the interesting seeds she discusses aren't aren't available in NZ and some of them don't seem to exist anywhere (why?).

[John Chadwick]

Fascinating tour through the subterranean world of heirloom seeds, soil science, local food, organic gardening and non-commercial plant breeding and breeders!

A life-long reference!

[Brad Belschner · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining and useful book. Even highschoolers can (and do!) breed their own official plant varieties. Why would you want to do that, you ask? Simple: who else is going to make the perfect variety for your needs? The vegetable varieties you buy in the store are mostly designed for industrial uses across wide regions, and they're designed with different goals in mind. As a home gardener, you probably don't care if your variety of tomato can be transported long distances without bruising. And why would you care if you can grow it across many regions? All you care about is *your* region! Each home gardener has unique soil, weather, desired tastes and textures, and intended uses for their crop. What if you want a drought-tolerant tomato that matures early in cold weather, with loads of flavour and a resistance to verticillium wilt? You'll have to develop it yourself. Or what if you need chickpeas that you can fry like popcorn? Or a special variety of beet that ferments especially well, and grows well without any fertilizer in really damp weather? Professional plant breeders simply don't have the same priorities as you (how could they?), so if you want something specific you'll need to make it yourself.

Apparently breeding your own varieties can be quite easy; it can be done as quickly as 2-3 years. At its most simple, it's merely saving seed that you like and thereby gradually selecting better varieties for your purposes. At its most complex, you could be isolating and hand-pollinating different varieties, strategically outbreeding/inbreeding, or even finding ways around inreeding defense mechanisms in brassicas! Carol Deppe is a Harvard geneticist, so she knows what she's talking about here. But this book isn't just dry details; it's got plenty of random anecdotes (e.g., 'One time I accidentally bred a prickly version of mustard...'). In the future I plan to grow blue-fleshed potatoes and purple cherry tomatoes and pink carrots. I also think it would be cool to grow 20 ft corn, just to see if I could. Thanks to this book, I see that all of that is (perhaps?) within my grasp. I recommend this book to anybody who loves gardening.

[Sen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book for first time amateur plant breeders

Would 100 percent recommend to anyone starting out as a hobbyist plant breeder.
My only problem was the amount of repetition, but that was kind of fine for me since most of the info was new to me and needed some repetition to stick or sink in.

[Rachel Wolf Pease · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative But Rambling and Repetitive

This book was very informative, but it rambled and repeated information. I was hoping for something more concise and advanced. I already knew some of the basics, so the repetition of the same basic information wasn't helpful for me. I did find some of what I was looking for, though.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is another great gardening book by carol deppe. as is obvious from the title, this one focuses on plant breeding and genetics, and the subject matter gets a little complex, but deppe is very good at conveying potentially dry and boring material in an interesting way.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and fascinating but, in Deppe's trademark style, also very conversational and easy to read. Huge book, but I whipped right through it. If you want to breed vegetable varieties, this is the place to start (and, if you're short on time, the place to start AND finish).

[Erik Cote · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book turned me into a state and county fair ribbon winning juggernaut, one to be feared in the cut throat world of vegetable showing. Thanks Carol!

[Lisainoregon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful in understanding seed saving and vegetable breeding.

[Sen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good beginner's guide

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything you need to know about how and why you should breed your own vegetable varieties. Informative, a little dense at times and very dense at others.

[Geert Deweerdt · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to select plants, save seeds, breed your own varieties. Excellent guide, great writing style, many practical tips.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of valuable information. My biggest complaint is that the kindle addition I haven’t isn’t indexed and doesn’t support searching, which is a bummer because sometimes the informational nuggets aren’t where you expect. For example, I found the sections on each specific vegetable to be light because Carol already shared a particular tidbit or anecdote somewhere else.

[Kat McMullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a greatly informative book and pleasantly conversational, though it does do some detailed diving into genetics that some readers might find daunting. Many of her personal examples focus on breeding cold-hardy vegetables because she’s in the North; I’m in the South, so while I benefit from thinking about how to apply her techniques to breeding heat-tolerant plants, Northerners might find her examples especially helpful. She gives me hope for breeding better pimentos for my area. :)

[Edgar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a pretty good reference book for plant breeding. It refreshed my memory of many of the plant breeding tricks and techniques. This is a good companion for "Seed to Seed."

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

seen on feathers' shelf! very exciting!!!

[J.S.]

Plant Parenthood
I've never really cared for tomatoes, which is unfortunate because I end up having to pick them out of the salads my wife makes (she insists on putting them in). But what if I could find a tomato I actually liked? There are way more varieties out there than what you can buy in stores and they're fairly easy to grow. Possibly there's one I might like?

But maybe the more important question is: why don't I like them? I mean, besides the fact that they're mushy and taste too acidic or bitter or gross or something. Whatever it is, I just don't like them. I never really have. And what about you? Is there some vegetable you don't like, but wish you did? Maybe peas, or green beans, or brussels spouts, or broccoli? Why, and what is it you don't like about it? Maybe you could find a variety you like that you could grow in your own garden.

But if you couldn't, would you think it was fun to try to develop a better tasting (or whatever your criteria is) vegetable on your own? After all, gardeners who came before us didn't wait for seed companies to do it for them - they did it themselves. Why can't we?

That's the idea behind this book by Carol Deppe. She tells of a teenager in northern Idaho named Glenn Drowns who wanted a watermelon – not a store-bought one – but a home grown watermelon. The problem was that the growing season was too short in Idaho. But when he learned about hybridization in a high school biology class, he got the idea of cross-pollinating plants with the hope of getting a watermelon that would ripen in his shortened season. And in only 4 years of gardening he developed 'Blacktail Mountain,' an early-ripening watermelon. And ordinary gardeners like you and me are doing the same thing with potatoes and peas and other veggies, and it doesn't have to be limited to taste or how early it produces – it's up you you and me.

The place to start is with varieties that already do well in your particular area, and Deppe not only talks about where to find plant material and how to conduct your own simple trials, she also explains plant genetics in a fairly easy to understand way. But in all honesty I'm not really interested enough in a better-tasting tomato to breed my own. Still, it sounds interesting and like it could be fun, so when I get a little more time and more familiar with what's already out there – and better at growing those things – maybe I'll think about it again.