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I think that’s a kind of funny way to put it… after all, seeds do not process data; microchips do not grow into computers (which then spread microchips around the room hoping to spawn new computers). But they do things funny in the mainstream press. At any rate, I thought that it was worth noting that the interest in seeds and vegetable gardening has really hit the big-time: this article from USA Today contains some pretty wild information; e.g.:
What’s more, the number of homes growing vegetables will jump more than 40% this year compared with just two years ago, projects the National Gardening Association, a non-profit organization for gardening education.
I suppose it’ll take another year or two (or maybe more) for the interest in buying seeds to become an interest in saving seeds. But it’s a start.
Another handy online resource with some very good basic information about planting and saving seeds from some common plants. Lots of good info about ornamentals as well.
Here is a detailed and useful post from Sharon Astyk with some good basic info about seed-saving. Here is her advice about where we might think about getting seeds here in the PNW:
For the Pacific Northwest, the obvious leader is Territorial Seeds www.territorial-seed.com. I like them, and I’ve had good results using varieties adapted to their region in the Northeast. I will say that I’ve had difficulty getting good information from their customer service over the years – they have declined to reveal the source of seeds, are sometimes slow to send things out, and when they listed two varieties I had seen elsewhere as hybrids as open-pollinated, I was pleased to think that someone had stabilized them, and then called and was reassured that yes, they definitely were open-pollinated varieties. Well, oops, no they weren’t. Their prices are also high – too high to give mediocre customer service. But they do provide an important service in their region, and offer some varieties you won’t find anywhere else.
Other Northwestern options are www.saltspringseeds.com a tiny company I’ve ordered from and liked and the wonderful Northern CA Bountiful Gardens Catalog. Bountiful Gardens is a terrific small seed company that is run in part by John Jeavons, the person who has most devoted himself to figuring out how to feed the world in small spaces. Not only do they have great seed, but they are a great cause. They also have a remarkable variety of compost, fiber and other uncommon crops. For those of you in northern CA and the Pacific NW, this is probably the place to buy, but all of us can get some wonderful things from them. http://www.bountifulgardens.org/.
She also links to another one of her posts about designing a seed-saving garden, in which she mentions the book by Carol Deppe that Kevin got a hold of:
The two most useful books for seed savers past the very beginning stage are Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed and Carol Deppe’s Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties — I strongly recommend that these be part of every gardener’s library. The second one may sound intimidating, but even if you have no intention of breeding, it is full of fascinating and useful information about plant genetics, presented in an accessible and fun to read (I know that sounds nuts, but it really is) way. The reality is that seed saving is plant breeding – each subsequent generation becomes better adapted to your region and its conditions.
Sharon Astyk’s latest blog post is right in line with what we’re thinking about. As is always (always!) the case with Sharon’s writing, the whole post is worth reading, but this part in particular caught my eye:
And make this the year you really commit to seriously learning how to save garden seeds – I know it seem strange to most middle class Americans, but the world is full of people who can’t afford to buy seeds every year, and we may be joining them. Moreover, seed savers have seed to share with their neighbors, and are a link in our community food security. Join www.seedsavers.org, and commit to taking responsibility for one variety that may be lost – an economic crisis means that some of the people who have been doing this work may need to do other work, so we need to pick up the slack.
More and more, I feel that this little project has big potential to tap into people’s growing realization that many of the things we take for granted, especially in our food supply, are not as stable and secure as we have been taught to believe. At last night’s Kale Force meeting, there were three new people (new to Kale Force, anyway), all of whom expressed their feeling that they really needed to get more serious about growing food, since the global food supply is in a pretty worrisome condition lately.
Something as simple as saving seed has the power to draw a lot of people in and spark discussions about seeds, who controls them, how they work, why we need to save them here (and everywhere!), why we should be growing more food wherever we can, and so on. And I’m certainly glad that we’re starting this now. We cannot wait until the crisis worsens before we start defending our capacity to grow food in this region. With luck, the food and seed availability crises will not get out of hand too quickly; but we need to be prudent and prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.
I’ll give Sharon the last word:
Most of all, pay attention to the little seed. Like many other tiny things, it is far more important than most people realize.
Here is another cool online resource, which I found via the wonderful blog Homegrown Evolution: Mother Earth News has created a Google Custom Search engine to help people find the exact variety they’re looking for, by consulting 500+ online seed catalogues. (The photo they chose to accompany the post is priceless!)
Here are the ten results for cannellini beans, a type of bean which is very much in favour in our house and not so easy to find.
It would be nice to filter the results by country or (even better) by whether or not they are certified organic. Still, it’s a good tool for finding those tricky-to-find seeds.
On Saturday November 29, 2008, the Vancouver Sun published this story about the importance of seed-saving, featuring Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds and also mentioning Brewster Kneen and efforts to counteract the threat posed by terminator seeds and consolidation of the seed supply in the hands of a small number of corporations:
For Jason, the solution is simple: learn to garden. As an experiment this year, he took 12 of his best and most reliable crops, which included wheat, barley, tomatoes and garbanzo beans, put them into a Zero Mile Diet Seed Kit and sold it for $36. It was wildly successful. For those seriously concerned about food shortages, he suggests a mix of grains and vegetables, including quinoa, amaranth, wheat and barley.
“Until now, people thought seeds were part of the common ownership forever and ever,” he says. “People in other parts of the world already collect their seeds. In general, we’ll be thrown onto ourselves much more in future to provide our food. We might as well start now.”
I discovered another potentially useful online resource, so I thought I’d share it with you all.
Here is the website for The Seed Ambassadors Project. And here is what they say about themselves:
The Seed Ambassadors Project, based out of Oregon in the USA, is an independent, not-for-profit seed stewardship initiative. Over the winter of 2006-2007 we orchestrated an ethnobotanical exploration of nine Northern European countries to collect and distribute seed, information and friendship. We met with many of the region’s finest seed stewards and breeders: from Danish Seed Savers to the Russian Vavilov Institute, from Lithuanian government offices to ‘ancient grain’ outlaws in England. In February 2008 we went on a similar journey to Transylvania. Please read more on our blog.
I am subscribing to their blog and have joined the Google group in case there is good information to be gleaned there.
I just added another link to our list of Weblinks: BC Seeds. This is an initiative of Farm Folk/City Folk and a bunch of seed producers and other friends of sustainable agriculture in BC. The coolest feature is the database of organic seeds, which allows you to search for the source(s) of any kind of food plant you’re interested in finding seeds for.
Here is their list of suppliers.
There are some glitches. For example, a search for “tomato” turns up an entry for Lutz beet, because the information from the Salt Spring catalogue entry for this variety comtains the sentence “We bake both the greens and the roots with caramelized onions in a tangy tomato sauce for a mouth-watering harvest dish.”
Here is some tantalizing information:
BC Seed grower Patrick Steiner has just published his first seed growing book: Small-Scale Organic Seed Production. This publication is not so much a “how-to” of seed growing as it is a “what to expect” when embarking on a journey of seed growing.
Patrick interviews several small-scale seed growers from Canada and the United States to get a glimpse of their experience over the years – their successes, their challenges, and what to expect in the future. Their stories are inspiring and do a wonderful job of preparing the reader for the world of seed growing.
Patrick himself is an experienced seed grower, operating Stellar Seeds (www.stellarseeds.com) in Salmon Arm, BC. He is well-known for his high-quality seeds as well as his involvement in seed growing education. Patrick has worked for the last several years on seed security issues in Canada and abroad, including serving on the board of USC Canada (www.usc-canada.org)
Organic seed production plays a vital role in developing sustainable food systems. With chemical seed production often being heavily reliant on pesticide use, the energy savings alone with organic seed production is huge. Furthermore, growing seed crops in organic conditions helps ensure that the plants that sprout from those seeds are also better adapted to organic systems.
Funding for the manual came from the Organic Sector Development Program. The 40-page manual is available for $10 as a print copy or $5 as a an electronic copy in pdf format. To get a copy of the manual, contact FarmFolk/CityFolk at admin@ffcf.bc.ca.
We ought to get a copy of this manual.
I found this very handy online guide to saving some of the more common plant varieties, part of the International Seed Saving Institute. Also, down at the bottom of the page are some links to useful info to get you started saving seeds. They’ve very thoughtfully broken the vegetables down into three categories, depending on the complexity of the process required for saving seed: beginner, experienced, and expert.
The Seedy Saturday committee of the Powell River Farmers’ Institute met yesterday, and we decided that the new seed-saving pilot project will eventually need a blog in order to keep people connected and sharing information. So here it is.
