Reverend Seed

Modern headlines in newspapers, magazines and websites often mention seeds.  From the doomsday seed vault to the “terminator gene” to genetically altered and patented plants, language about seeds and the world seed situation has captured our attention if not our imagination.  Fear abounds.  Calls for corrective action echo across the internet.  The seed market has reacted with banners claiming to point gardeners down the correct path toward salvation.  Rarely, however, do I read something that actually begins to explain what this all means to home gardeners and their need to find seed.  The following signposts are meant for guidance and are at best the place where discussions about correct action begin, not end.  None are ends in themselves.

TRADE FOR LOCAL SEEDS

The best way to find the seeds for your garden is to trade some seeds you have grown for the seeds you need.  I attended a pot luck dinner in Siberia held once a year by seed savers.  Price of admission was a dish for dinner and some seeds saved from your own garden.  Over the next 2 hours or so I saw the most efficient, most complete system I have ever seen for exchanging seeds and the important stories and information needed to go with them.  Gardeners with seeds for the earliest and best tasting tomatoes ranked right up next to the gentleman with rare watermelon seeds.  They could trade first for anything they wanted.  I heard mumblings of plans for next year when gardeners would return with more of the hard to find.  If you really want to be a successful gardener and seed saver, attend one of these events in your region.  If one is not available, start one.

BUY FROM SMALL REGIONAL SEED COMPANIES

If you cannot save or trade for all your seeds yet, buy from small seed companies.  The seed industry has become so centralized, only a handful of chemical and pharmaceutical companies now own the majority of the world’s seeds.  In the late 1970’s, a number of small regional seed companies started to reappear.  All were dedicated at some level to regional self-reliance.  All helped maintain our precious genetic diversity.  All sell some treasures that could probably grow in all of our gardens.  Support these people.  They do good work.

OPEN-POLLINATED

Open-pollinated seeds offer gardeners a predictable path to save their own seeds.  Gardeners can actually improve a variety from year to year  by selecting seeds from open-pollinated plants that do best in their own conditions. You can find free seed saving instructions online on the website of this 20 year-old non-profit: http://seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html

HEIRLOOM

Heirlooms are treasures.  Heirloom seeds are open-pollinated varieties with a history, a story.  Not all open-pollinated varieties are treasures for everyone, everywhere.  Get as much information as you can.

ORGANIC

Buy organic seeds if you can.  We want, we need an agriculture that uses no biocides (pesticides and herbicides).  However, the vast majority of the world’s seeds are not yet certified organic.  We also need diversity.  The sustainable strength of our agricultural ecosystem will depend on its diversity.  We need to find, grow and test as many different varieties as we can before they disappear.  If we collectively stop buying seeds now because they are not organic, we risk losing the diversity we so desperately need.  If the seeds you really want are not organic, buy them anyway.  Grow them yourself organically and save the organic seeds.

UNTREATED

Buy untreated seeds.  Treated seeds are seeds coated with chemical fungicides or inoculants.   Fungicides are meant to increase germination in cold and wet soil.  Treated seeds, by law, must be dyed.  Chemically treated seeds are not allowed for use on certified, organic gardens and farms.

NATIVE

Collect your own native seeds if you can.  Local native plant societies are a great place to learn where and what to find and what to leave alone.  Buy natives to experiment with in your own landscape.  Start small.  Expect the project to take longer than you think.  Learn to manage the natural plant succession.  When looking to buy natives remember the following:  The definition of what is native is imprecise.  Natives may take 3-4 years to bloom.  The native seeds and plants you want may not be for sale.  Many non-native plants like lilacs are adapted and easy on your environment.  Avoid non-native pioneer species.

We are getting more and more requests for survival seeds. Buckets and cans of hermetically sealed garden seeds are being promoted on survival websites. Frightened citizens want backup in case our fragile food system is disrupted. The thought of growing a garden if necessary is comforting. This leads to calls and emails to heirloom seed companies like ours.

Having extra food and seeds around is something we promote. I’m just not sure it has anything real to do with survival. The thought of being the only family with a bountiful garden in an ocean of hungry neighbors, many of whom own guns, is informative if not somewhat disturbing.

Real food security is at best a regional issue. The emergence of modern terms like “foodshed” are evidence of the serious thinking involved in this issue at neighborhood, community and regional levels. We even hear the USDA has grants available now for assessing the food security of each region.

We try to encourage everyone who addresses this issue to get involved in finding out where their food comes from. We encourage them to work with others in their “foodshed” to explore the larger issues involved in food security. While important, this doesn’t address the immediate need for something that will make a difference in how people feel now.

To this I speak only to the issue of seeds and survival. After starting both nonprofits and corporations to disseminate open-pollinated seeds and seed saving information over the past 30 years, I now think the best answer is relatively simple one. Don’t buy anything.

Do this instead. Every concerned farmer and gardener should attend an annual seed trading event in their region. If you can’t find one, organize a seed saving pot luck dinner. Once a year after the gardening season is finished, (November or December are great months), invite all the gardeners and seed savers in your region to come together to trade seeds and stories and important growing information. The ticket to admission should be a dish for dinner and some seeds for trade.

In this way, gardeners can gain direct access to best seeds adapted to their own backyard climates. They gain direct access to the information necessary to grow, save and select new seeds from the ones they have planted. No nonprofit or corporation or USDA study is necessary. Meet folks as excited as you are about seeds and survival. Learn what the community really needs in the way of seeds so you can begin to plan for next year’s potluck. Stuff into your pocket some seeds that can’t be bought. Invaluable some would say.

None of this is new. It is actually a modern adaptation of a ritual that has taken place in some form since the dawn of modern agriculture more than 10,000 years ago. Original community strength was arguably a function of the strength of its agriculture. Its agriculture rested solely on how well seeds were selected, saved, passed on and planted. Our modern insecurity about food is rooted in our current national ignorance about where our food comes from.

Planting, growing, saving seeds and trading them with your neighbors may be one of the most important steps you can take to help reassure regional food security. Enjoying your own fresh-picked tomatoes could be the immediate payoff. Saving seeds from your own special plants may cement your legacy or at least give you more seed trading material for next year’s pot luck. If you need them, you can find seed saving instructions for all the common vegetables on the website of our 20 year-old non-profit: http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html

I add my views to the cacophony rising like electronic dust shaken from this newly wired blue-green planet. Seeds are the single most amazing things I have discovered in my productive life.

Plant a seed saved from the previous season and you rejoin a 10,000 year-old ritual, the ritual responsible for civilization. Try to find new seeds to plant in a new place and find yourself involved in questions about heirloom treasures, regional autonomy, corporate consolidation and the unprecedented, patented control and manipulation of life forms.

Hold a seed in your hand next to a 4 gig memory chip and wonder. The seed not only embodies the hardware and software for a feedback system with the environment to change and improve itself, it can self-replicate, endlessly. A chip is a chip. A seed has millions and millions of potential seeds packed inside.

No seeds, no food.  75% of all human calories consumed come from 4 plants, wheat, rice, corn and soybeans.  No diversity, no long-term agriculture.  The strength of any ecosystem is ultimately a function of its diversity.  The sad fact is humanity is allowing the centralization of agriculture to ignore and destroy the majority of the genetic diversity handed to us from countless generations of seed savers.