Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, by Carol Deppe

The Gardener's and Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving

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.

Oregon plant breeder Carol Deppe has a BS in zoology from the University of Florida, a PhD in biology from Harvard University, and specializes in developing public-domain crops for organic growing conditions, sustainable agriculture, and human survival for the next thousand years. She is author of Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's and Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving (Chelsea Green, 2000) and Tao Te Ching: A Window to the Tao through the Words of Lao Tzu. See www.caroldeppe.com for news and further adventures. Deppe lives in Corvallis, Oregon.

* These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.