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For our ancestors, saving seed was a matter of survival. For us, however, somewhere over the years we’ve lost the understanding that food self-sufficiency equals survival. With supermarkets filled with foodstuffs and our own kitchens stuffed with tinned, packaged, and frozen foods, we find that hunting, gathering, and growing our own food has simply become a non-priority.
The responsibility of raising food has shifted from our hands to those of the food corporations who modify our food crops so the ‘product’ looks better and lasts longer in the supermarket. Good marketing, but this does not necessarily translate into fruits and vegetables that actually taste wonderful or smell great. Remember those juicy tasty apples from your youth?
The convenience of modern living is causing us to lose our seed diversity and heritage. Take for example all those hybrid vegetable seeds out there. If you plant the hybrid seeds of a cucumber, grow it all summer, harvest cucumbers, save some for seed, then plant those seeds next year, you’d get something like the original plant that was in your garden the summer before, right? Not at all. The seeds do not breed true.
Thankfully, a great number of plant lovers around the world have formed organizations to help protect our heritage seeds, the seeds that you can save yourself and plant again year after year.
An excellent Canadian seed exchange organization is Seeds of Diversity.
The organization site description reads:
Seeds of Diversity is a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to the conservation, documentation and use of public-domain non-hybrid plants of Canadian significance. Our 1700 members from coast to coast are gardeners, farmers, teachers, scientists, agricultural historians, researchers and seed vendors. Together we grow, propagate and distribute over 1500 varieties of vegetables, fruit, grains, flowers and herbs. We are a living gene bank.
The web site has a plant database, as well as a listing of commercial companies that offer heritage seeds for sale. And if you want to take part in saving seeds, then why not become a member?
Membership with the Seeds of Diversity offers these benefits: You receive the 40-page magazine Seeds of Diversity three times a year and the annual Seed Exchange Directory. You can also join the annual Seed Exchange, where members are able to obtain samples of over 1500 varieties of seeds and plants offered by other members in exchange for return postage.
It can be difficult to understand why organizations such as these are so critical to saving the genetic diversity of our seeds until you realize that with hybrids replacing open-pollinated varieties of plants, older plant varieties can be lost completely. Onion seed, for example, is viable for only one to two years. If a specific onion variety is not planted by anyone within that two-year timeframe, that onion is lost forever.
A small sampling of old varieties boasts such tasties as Great Northern, Bacon, and Yin Yang beans. Heritage tomatoes include Amish Paste, Eva Purple Ball, and Ponderosa tomatoes. In the squash category, what a selection, try some Canada Winter Crookneck, Sweet Meat, or Small Sugar squash. Believe it or not, these are only a miniscule fraction of the heritage varieties you may be able to get your garden earth-covered hands on.
When you do get some heritage seeds, care for them and keep them viable. A cruise through the Seeds of Diversity database is disturbing when you notice how many varieties are already ‘rare’ or ‘endangered’ or ‘apparently extinct.’ These seeds are not just our food history, they are the reason we’re here today—the food that kept our ancestors alive.
Photo Credit: Rona Harvey
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