Our dear friends, Dan and Kathy, stopped by last night for a dinner to celebrate a recent award and brought with them, not wine or flowers or chocolate or some other traditional hostess gift but rather a treasure trove of seeds. I am talking 439 seed packets!!!! And not just any seeds but heirloom, open pollinated, rare variety seeds, painstakingly place in categories and even entered into a computer program with information on planting times and so on. The seeds were not all for me of course but Kathy is starting to pass them around to those of us who are serious gardeners in the hope that we will plant the seeds, harvest and eat the food and save the seeds for the next generation.
One of the goals of our permaculture guild is to start a well-organized seed bank and library. I heard a disturbing statistic this week. 6 seed companies control 98% of the seeds in the whole world. As most of the seeds sold are hybrids, they will not breed true and can not be reliably saved from year to year. If there is any bigger threat to the survival of the human race than the lack of genetic diversity in our food system, I don’t know what is. I also read that although there are hundreds of thousands edible plants, most people only eat about twenty varieties on a regular basis. What are we missing? I aim to find out. Kathy and I spent hours going over the seeds in her collection. I took samples of as many as I thought I would be able to get in the ground this year as well as some that will store well for future plantings. Onions are the only seeds that only save for one year. I now have 22 varieties of tomatoes and 15 kinds of dry beans. I can’t wait to try the new (old actually) leeks and the many kinds of lettuce. Today, I have tomake a run to town. I am going to stop at Staples and pick up some small manilla envelopes so I can begin my seed library. I will also be on the lookout for a file cabinet to hold them. Some seeds will be vacuüm sealed in mason jars and held in the freezer. I am also thinking about a file card system that can be collated by starting date and cross referenced by category. This may sound like overkill but when I read about Monsanto and Dow and their death grip on my food supply, I do think this is too much. Preparedness for the future means having a way to grow food. The time investment now will be my investment in my future and yours. If our kids are to have food security, we can not afford to let our biodiversity go the way of the dinosaur.
January 28, 2010 at 7:47 am
WOW! What a wonderful gift! I have switched to non hybrids for the most part (FEDCO), but I have trouble with finding the right tomato variety. Early on, I chose Early Girl and had such good luck with it that it’s hard to give it up! I have had many “volunteers” and they seem to breed true, but it’s supposed to be a hybrid. Ah well, hopefully, this years choice will be a good one.
January 28, 2010 at 9:21 am
I wholeheartedly agree. I ordered OP heirloom seeds for my mom too. She usually buys starts, but I got her into starting her own lettuces and I’m hoping it’s the thin end of the wedge. I did allow myself one hybrid tomato (out of four), and one hybrid carrot (out of three), but the rest of my order is OP seeds. I like Fedco seeds because they absolutely refuse to have anything to do with Monsanto, even though they are mostly resellers of seeds. Seed Saver’s Exchange also has my loyalty for their commitment to saving OP heirloom seeds.
I may have to think about a personal seed bank such as you suggest. But it would be much better if this could happen at a community level. I wonder if freezing seed with a desiccant pack, such as from vitamin pills, would make onion and parsnip seed last for more than one year?
One caveat though when freezing seeds. Don’t open the package until the whole thing has fully come to room temperature. Otherwise moisture will condense on cold seeds and hasten deterioration. Best to leave it sealed for a full day at room temp if the seeds are vacuum packed. I have to be careful with this when working with frozen flour.
January 28, 2010 at 9:36 am
Thank you so much for pointing this out and for giving us an actual statistic. I brought it up to my husband to explain why I wanted to support certain companies, but I didn’t have hard numbers for him at the time. He didn’t mind but I did – good practice for those contacts who want “evidence”, not just passion for heritage breeds or organics.
January 28, 2010 at 10:22 am
Can you tell me the best place to buy heirloom seeds? I wish i had your wealth of knowledge. Thank you for continuing to keep us informed and educated on survival topics.
January 28, 2010 at 1:21 pm
My seeds all come from either Seeds of Change, Fedco, or Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. (or my friends). I am sure their are other companies but it can be a chore to track down the parent company.
January 28, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Great post! Seed diversity and sovereignty are global issues that we can do something about in our own backyards. We started our Seed Library program for New York State and gardeners in the Northeast about 4 years ago and it has grown very quickly. We hold seed swaps, teach seed saving workshops, and the like. We also have an online catalog of open-pollinated and heirloom seeds for sale. Since we are small, we can’t afford to print and mail a catalog. There are more and more small seed spots like us- it’s worth taking the time and searching around in the internet to see if there is someone local growing seeds.
January 28, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Here in MO we do use some hybrids just to ensure a crop. It gets so hot that most varieties of tomatoes won’t set fruit but Early Girl always does. Caspian Pink is OP and it does good here but the popular Brandywines don’t put out enough leaves to keep them from cooking on the vine!
Hope people try saving onion/leek seed. So easy. Heck,most years I miss an onion or to in harvesting and find a nice seed stalk growing come spring. The bees adore onion blossoms. We get a fine crop of onions every year with our saved seed..don’t know what the seeds are now but probably an old standard yellow long storage onion.
We make a trip over to Baker Creek…fabulous place to visit–hard on the pocketbook though! You just want one of everything and when you go to pay they throw a few pkts. in free. DEE
January 28, 2010 at 7:24 pm
What a wonderful thing to do!
I wish I had the means to do this.
What I am doing instead is this. I am a total doomer, I expect a hard crash… so:
I am buying bulk seeds to share with my friends and neighbors if the doom comes down soon. All open-pollinated seed, most heirloom. I won’t buy anything else anymore!
January 29, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Thanks SO much for this post…as well as your blog (and the book was great too:)
Can I ask how you decide which seeds go into envelopes and which into jars (or freezer)? I’m new to seed-saving, plus I ordered a bit more than I can use and would like to make sure they are stored properly.
January 29, 2010 at 4:16 pm
The seeds I will use this year go in envelopes. The ones for longer term storage will go in the freezer.
February 3, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Ok, I have a question…
When you have 15 kinds of beans and 22 varieties of tomatoes, how do you save seed without getting a headache finding separate places in the garden to put them all?
I think that I’ve read that both tomatoes and beans are self-fertile, but that they can cross. Do you just not worry about it and hope they don’t?
And on things that do cross, do you only have one variety flowering at a time, or do you really work to put them all over the place?
Whew, I got a little long winded there, but it sounds like you have quite a bit of seed saving experience under your belt. Since you mentioned your many, many varieties of seeds, I’m hopeful DH and I won’t have to give up our new seed buying addiction.
February 4, 2010 at 7:13 am
Tomatoes and beans don’t cross (at least in my experience) Pumpkins and squash do and I don’t save seed from those plants. I just have a lot in storage. I don’t have that much experience saving seed. I mostly save the stuff that’s pretty fool proof. What crosses are some of the GMO varieties of corm, soybeans and wheat. The crop will be fine but the seed will not reproduce as it may have a terminator gene. If you really want to save seed, get a copy of the Seed Savers Handbook or Seed To Seed for up-to-dat information. I am really a novice.
February 5, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Thanks for the info, I’ll look it up!