Seeds of Change

This is, quite possibly, my favorite time of year.  Now that most things are finished growing (including the weeds), most of the harvest has taken place except for my tomato plants (which seem to have some delusion of immortality this year and persist in staying green on the vine for weeks), and life settles down into the dull roar of trying to get the farm ready for winter.  But there is one job left to be done....picking out and saving next year's garden.

As a kid,  I always thought that seeds needed to be purchased every year.  It was just what we did each spring - looked at the seed catalog and either ordered them or picked them up at the local do-it-yourself store, and while this always seemed to work, it never dawned on me that nature does a pretty good job of doing this for herself.

Almost everything in the garden produces a seed of one type or another that contains within it all the genetic information to pass on to the next generation of seeds.  Amazingly packaged into a tiny capsule that will often survive through a harsh winter and burst forth in the spring with no more than a little coaxing from sun and rain.  What astounds me even more is how, over the course of the last eight years, I have watched many of the species of plants that I like to grow, adapt themselves to this environment and take hold.  Nature's ability to adapt and survive amazes me.  Take the Impatient for example:  Most of these brightly colored, shade loving flowers are hybrids that originated in Africa - and it is a lot warmer in Africa than it is here so they are not expected to survive even a light frost - and yet, I have found that a few of my Impatient plants that I planted two years ago formed seeds that were able to reproduce viable plants and, what's more, they can now overwinter in an Iowa winter. 

My marigolds have literally taken over the gardens and though I curse them in the spring when they appear everywhere, I am happy to have them around at this time of year because they are hardy and can stand up to these chilly nights.  I used to collect these seeds, but now I just let them seed themselves and then I move them in the spring to the places that I want them.

Finding the seeds of any plant is typically not to difficult.  Peas and beans are easy, but I always chuckle in the spring when we are planting them and one of my kids stops and peers at the seed in their hands and says, "Hey mom, these look just like the peas we eat."  The most difficult thing I have found with peas and beans is the importance of not eating all of them - some have to be saved back for seed and usually it is best to pick the nicest looking of the plants to save.

Lettuce can be a bit more difficult to determine what is the seed, but that is only because we don't allow the lettuce plant to typically live out its entire life cycle - we eat it in its young and tender teenage stage.  After it gets too bitter to eat and starts to bolt, it will then form a weird looking flower and then those start to go to seed - save those and you will have lettuce seeds for next year.

Sometimes figuring out where the seed is on a flower takes a little time and observation.  So many gardeners will tell you to "dead head" things that are no longer blooming, which is fine but then you often miss out on the seeds.  Personally, I think this is a bit of marketing on the part of the nurseries that grow flowers - they would rather people didn't get their own seeds because then it cuts in on their business so they tell us to do things like remove spent flowers.  Yes, it makes your flowers look prettier, but then they don't reproduce, and there are several plants that have fairly interesting looking seed pods that you would otherwise miss if you cut them off as instructed.

 There are many horticulturists that will tell you that many of the flowers we buy, or seeds we buy are hybrids and will not produce "true" seeds, and this is entirely true.....the first few years.  But, what I have discovered, often through benign neglect, is that flowers and plants, if given half a chance, will revert back to a more natural variety that does produce seeds true to form.  I am often reminded of the line in Jurassic Park when Malcolm says to the scientists, "Life finds a way" and he is entirely correct.

So, I meander around the garden and pick a handful or two of seeds off of the flowers, or I cut open the nicest looking tomato and, before throwing it in the pot, I scoop out a few hundred seeds for next year.  Some of the plants I simply watch ripen and dry and then shake the seeds out where I want them next year and others I simply let fall and plan on moving them to a new location after they sprout. 



A seed is both a plant's last and final hurrah before being annihilated by winter, and it's boundless hope for the future.  It will have absolutely no knowledge of whether or not what it produced will ever come to fruition, but it produces them just the same.  And I collect them.  I am the bridge to the future for many plants - keeping them warm and dry through the cold winter months and them scattering them in the spring to start over.  And they, in their turn, take care of me and provide me with a bridge to my future in the form of food. 

There have been times, when stuck indoors studying for genetics tests, when I have wondered how Gregor Mendel, the Austrian Monk that established the basics for genetics, could have spent countless days and seasons watching pea plants.....now I understand.

Like a Kid at Christmas

My favorite of all favorite catalogs came yesterday. It comes only once a year and I treasure it all year long. I cut pictures of from it to use in various places, I dream about all the fun stuff that lies within it and I drool over the pictures and imagine what it would be like to have one of each. I am worse than any kid approaching Christmas with a toy catalog in their hands.

It is my Seed Savers catalog. This thing is amazing!

Seed Savers is a company out of Decorah, Iowa that exists to provide heritage and heirloom seeds. These are seeds that will reproduce produce year after year that is of consistent quality.

There are other seed companies in the world, such as Monsanto and Novartis and many others that you will see with their names in very small print on the packets of seed that you buy in the stores-those seeds are raised to provide produce for one year only and if they do happen to come up the next year they are typically of inferior quality and will never make it to a third year.

They have genetically modified the seeds that are produced to be unable to produce viable seeds of their own (sterile seeds), thus ensuring that you will need to buy more seeds next year as well. It keeps them in business. Monsanto has taken this to the extreme and trademarked their modified genes. If any farmers are caught storing their seed, they are sued and not many small farmers can stand up to the agribusiness giant.

Seed Savers is NOT that type of company. They work to provide the best quality seeds they possibly can knowing that if they are saved by the purchaser, they will provide even more seeds for the future. They are dedicated to storing seeds of countless varieties of vegetables to protect them for future generations.

One of the most dangerous problems that we run into with producing crops is the loss of variety. We are turning into a monoculture of vegetables - corn. It is in everything! And much of the corn produced is Monsanto corn (at least in the Midwest). A single culture of anything is not healthy for the environment.

Think of this from a honey bee's perspective. Thousands of acres and only one plant for pollen....corn. And honey bees don't usually use corn for pollen. With the lack of other pollen options due to herbicide use, huge numbers of bees get lost. One day of spraying insecticide on the crops while the bees are busy...more bees wiped out, or worse yet, they take the insecticide back to the hive and pollute the hive with it. A bee, without options, will not do very well. Think of the bees as a the proverbial "canary in the mine"....if the canary comes up dead that is a good indication that the mine isn't safe.....the bees are coming up dead. Colony Collapse Disorder is becoming more and more of a problem - one in which they don't completely understand the cause, but regardless, I think we should be taking it as a warning sign that things are not looking good for the bees.....or us.

So, it is because of their business policy and their mission, Seed Savers is the only place that I buy seeds for my summer vegetable garden. I have purchased many of the seeds and saved many from year to year with great success, yet somehow I still feel compelled to try new varieties and new fruits and vegetables. Their seeds cost a little more, but if you consider that they send with them instructions on how to save them for the next year, it is really more of an investment.

This is the time that the garden starts. Now, while there is still snow on the ground and a ton more to fall yet this winter, while the days are way too short and the nights incredibly long....now is the time that the garden gets planned for the year. I pull out the drawings from the last few years for where everything was planted and I contemplate how much energy I may or may not have. I think about how many kids will need 4-H projects to grow and how much work I can con them into. I count how many seeds I was able to save from last year (or the year before) and contemplate the germination percentage. I read through my garden journal from last year to determine which crops were the best and which ones I should pass over.

Corn....I will need new and different corn. This is one of the problems with trying to raise heirloom quality seeds amidst and ocean of field corn. I had wonderful corn two years ago and I saved the seed. Problem was there was genetic drift from the field corn that first year so the second year that I tried to grow the corn, it had taken on some of the characteristics of the field corn and didn't produce as well. Chances are good that I had acquired some of Monsanto's trademark genes much to my dismay. Don't want them - they didn't do my corn any good.

Heirloom seeds tend to produce very vigorous plants and, if you stick with one variety you can keep your seeds very pure. When the varieties start to mix however, you can come up with some interesting crops....like the 'cuash' that I grew a few years ago - a cross between a cucumber and a squash. Needless to say, these are not typically the seeds that I keep.

And then there are the seeds that are hard to harvest - carrots, for instance, have to be grown for two years before they will produce seeds - this can be a bit of a trick and not something that I typically tackle. It has happened by accident now and then, but that is really more a process of chance and poor tilling in the spring.

This year we are planning to expand the garden. We have just cut into our last onion for the winter, so we will definitely need a few hundred more onions to plant for next year. Carrots we ran out of sometime in September. Trying to grow enough to supply a family of seven through an Iowa winter can be a definite challenge.

The potatoes that I picked out last year - German Butterballs - didn't produce very well and despite the fact that they are supposed to be excellent keepers, you can't keep what you weren't able to produce in the first place, so I will be switching back to Yukon Gold Potatoes because they produced bushel after bushel of potatoes that lasted through most of the winter, and they were huge!

One of my favorite of all crops to grow is tomatoes. I, personally, cannot eat a raw tomato....it's a consistency thing. But any and everything made out of tomatoes are my favorites. I toss them in salads, I make bruschetta, I make pizza sauce and can marinara for the winter. I usually manage to put up about 45 quarts of marinara every year using a recipe that I found in the wonderful book by Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I plant Amish Paste tomatoes that make a magnificent sauce and the seeds have kept and germinated nicely year after year. Typically 13 tomato plants is enough to provide a family of 7 with home made spaghetti sauce every week for the entire year.

I could go on for days about the wonders of the seeds contained within this catalog. There is no other seed catalog that comes that can match it....and trust me, I get a lot of seed catalogs. So, the wind may blow and the snow may fall, but I rest easy in the knowledge that spring is coming. How do I know it is coming? Because the Seed Savers Catalog is here.