Planting the Seed
I was about eight when I started my first garden. My mom helped me tear up a two foot by about ten foot strip of grass next to the west side of the house and we planted beans, carrots, and a few other items. It was a small patch, but I thoroughly enjoyed taking care of it as a young girl. The passion for gardening never left and nearly each home I’ve lived in has had a small garden patch. Lately my hobby has been growing in scope and this year is shaping up to be its largest footprint.
With the winter weather roller coaster we have been experiencing in the Midwest this year I have had the opportunity to get started on building some new garden boxes on the warm days and read up on seed germination and growing plants when it’s been cold. One of the most helpful books so far has been “The New Seed-Starters Handbook” by Nancy Buble and Jean Nick. Towards the end of the book the authors dive into the details of proper seed saving and why it’s more than just a money saving endeavor. Saving seeds can be helpful on a global scale as so many heirloom crops are slowly disappearing.
Our modern culture is grounded in the idea of global markets, high yields, and perfection when it comes to food. This system is flawed because it omits the benefits of genetic diversity and variety. The more plants that grow, the more opportunity to find a variety with the desirable genes to solve a problem. A more local food system also results in getting actual ripe tomatoes at the supermarket instead of green tomatoes in disguise. Only in recent years has the rise in multinational seed companies led to farmers across the world planting a narrow cross section of varieties shipped in from across an ocean instead of planting the heirlooms that have been a farm staple for generations.
The danger is that human activity is rapidly supplanting nature in many of these areas and threatening to wipe out populations. And once they are gone, they are gone, along with all the potentially species-savings genes.
According to a USDA professor, this loss of diversity in fields and gardens has real consequences. Modern crop varieties are often too uniform genetically speaking for good agricultural health. With so few varieties comprising the majority of our crops, the risk for failure is high. The limited number of seed varieties that often are from the same parent have limited capacity to adapt to changing conditions or threats. The need to develop crop varieties that can cope with heat, drought, flood and other weather extremes could be on the horizon with the impacts of climate change getting worse each year.
There are major efforts to save the wide variety of seeds that nature has provided us with seed banks sprouting up in many nations. Most notable is the Crop Trust’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway which opened in 2008. It has the worlds largest collection of crop diversity and has helped replace varieties lost, most notable in Syria in 2015 and 2016 lost during the war. One of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals calls to “maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels…”
For the past 25 years or so I have gone to the hardware store and picked up packets of hybrid seeds or plants shipped in from who knows where to start my garden. In the last few years however I’ve been making a effort to purchase plants from local farms and this year purchased my first batch of heirloom seeds from a small nursery in Texas. It may seem minimal, but supporting small seed companies and local farms that breed, grow, and plant heirloom varieties ensures the diversity of seeds continue year after year. You can also save seeds from these varieties to use in your garden the following year or share them with a friend.
