Authoritative and accessible, this is the guide to plant breeding and seed saving for the serious home vegetable gardener and the small-scale farmer.

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.

Inside this comprehensive vegetable gardening book you will discover how to:

• breed for a wide range of different traits (flavor, size, shape, or color)

• grow for cold or heat tolerance, pest and disease resistance, and regional adaptation

• save seed and maintain varieties

• conduct your own variety trials and other farm or garden-based research

• 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 shows the way, and offers an exciting introduction to a whole new gardening adventure.

"Deppe invites you on a journey of discovery to reclaim the lost lore of our ancestors, to relearn the traditions of seed-saving and seed-breeding and to take back control of the seed. . . . Within you will find information not available in other garden books or anywhere else. ."—C. R. Lawn, Fedco Seeds