Paquebot recently asked me to update the list of tomatoes he’s offering from what I posted here for him last year.

Emphasis in 2011 was on big fruit so about half were to a pound or more.

Paquebot lives in Wisconsin, USA. He’s offering more than 350 tomatoes, organized into the year grown, giving an indication of the age of the seeds. Tomato seed are normally good for about 10 years, sometimes more, so age isn’t an issue if you plant them within the next couple of years.

He’s offering them as part of the Seed Network, and in particular he said they are available to anyone, anywhere in the world. You have to discuss payment or trading terms with him yourself.

If you’re interested in anything here, send me an email and I’ll forward it to him.

2011 Seeds
1884
1884 Purple
ABC Potato Leaf (ch)
African Queen
Andes Horn
Anna Aasa, Red (ch)
Anna Aasa, Yellow (ch)
Ashleigh
Banana Legs
Believe It Or Not
Big Zebra
Brimmer
Buckbee’s New 50 Day
Cabin
Canadian Heart
Carol Chyko’s Big Paste
Count Banyani
Doubloon
Eli
Gildo Pietroboni
Green Ghost
Heinz 2653
Homer Fike’s Yellow Oxheart
Hunt’s Family Favorite
Libanaise des Montagnes
Magyar Piros Boker
Mirabell, Red
Mr. Tartar’s
New Yorker
Novosadski Jabucar
Orange Oxheart
OSU Blue
Paquebot Roma
Pomodoro di Albenga/Luguria
Red Barn
Rio Grande
Rostova
Sicilian Saucer
Skorospelka
Spark’s Yellow
Stardust Cherry (ch)
Strawberry Margarita
Sun Baby (ch)
Sylvan Gaume
Tangello
Tappy’s Heritage
Tarasenko 6
T.C. Jones
Terhune
Tlacolula
Tlacolula, Yellow
Veepick
White Rabbit (ch)
White Snowball
Wild Rose
Winsall
Winsall Gold
Wisconsin 55
Wisconsin 55 Gold

2010 seeds
Absinthe
Amazon Chocolate
Arkansas Traveller
Armenian
Aunt Ruby’s German Green Cherry
Babywine
Barnes Mountain Yellow
Basket Vee
Beaute Blanche de Canada
Belle Angevine
Big Rainbow
Black Crimson
Black Elephant
Black Ethiopian
Black Zebra
Bonne du Roussillon
Canestrino
Chadwick Cherry
Cherokee Chocolate
Chuda Rynka
Coburg
Copia
Coyotte
Creole
Early Chatham
Falcon
Fidelio
Gary O’Sena
German Gold
Goji Faranji
Goldman’s Italian American
Gold Nugget
Grandma Josie
Hong Yuen
Huayu
Indian Stripe
Jack White
Large Black & Red Boar
Large Red Cherry
Livingston’s Golden Queen
Livingston’s Paragon
Marion
Mark Twain
Mazarini
Meme Beauce
Mule Team
Negro Azteca
Old Brooks
Peaches & Cream
Quingza
Radio
Red Target
Regina’s Yellow
Rita’s Black Pear
Rutgers
Serre Wonder
Shumway’s Sensation
Sioux
Southern Night
Sugar Plum
Super Sioux
Tangella
Tasmanian Yellow
Urbanite
Valiant
Velvet Red
Wagon Wheel
White Oxheart
Wisconsin Chief
Yellow Scotland
Zigan

2009 seeds
Aker’s West Virginia Black
Albany Georgia Heirloom
Amish Paste
Anna Hermann
Apelsin
Apricot Brandywine
Aunt Ruby’s German Green
Banjan Roomii
Belgian Heart
Big White Pink Stripes
Black Sea Man
Bosu
Buckeye Yellow
Carbon
Caro Rich
Chico III
Chocolate Cherry
Cour de Bou
Cow’s Tit
Eagle’s Beak
Endless Summer
Ernesto
Fantome de Laos
Giraffe
Guido
Guernsey Island
Hawaiian Orange Cherry
Hawaiian Pineapple
Hazelfield Farm Red
Heinz 1439
Japanese Black Triffle
Kardinal
Lagidny
Limmony
Marizol Purple
Mirabell, Yellow
Monkey Ass
Moya
Northern Crown
Northern Lights
Pantano Romanesco
Persimmon
Pink Ruffled
Portugal Monster
Principe Borghese
Riesentraube
Rozovii Giant
Sainte Lucie
Siberian
Silvery Fir Tree
Snowberry
Super Snow White
Ten Fingers of Naples
Tennessee Britches
The Orange
Tiny Tim
Togo Trefele
Turks Muts
Volgogradskij 5/95
Vorlon
West Virginia Pink Slicer
Willamette
Yellow 1884 Pinkheart

2008 seeds
Amish Red
Belarusan Heart
Besser
Black From Tula
Black Plum
Black Prince
Bloody Butcher
Boondocks
Borgio Cellano
Brianna
Cherokee Purple (PL)
Chianti Rose
Chocolate Stripes
Dinner Plate
Dr. Lyle
Dorothy’s Mennonite Beefsteak
Dorothy’s Mennonite Bicolor
Dorothy’s Mennonite Big Heart
Douce de Picardie (PL)
German Head
Giant Belgium
Giant Oxheart
Giant Roma
Giant Tree
Gigante Liscio
Golden Dwarf Champion
Hungarian Italian Paste
Japanese Oxheart
King Pineapple
Lancaster Pink
Large Pink Bulgarian
Legend
Long Keeper
Marglobe
Market Miracle
Mexico
Noire Russie
Old German
Preacher
Red Heart Yellow
Red Penna
Red Zebra
Russian Annie
Sandul Moldovan
Spoon
Super Beefsteak
Super Choice
Tater Kin
Taxi
Teton de Venus
Thessaloniki Oxheart
Valencia Pink
Watermelon Beefsteak
White Tomesol
Woodle Orange
Wuhib
Yamal

2007 seeds
Ace 55
Amana Orange
Ananas Noir
Aunt Madge’s
Aussie
Bear Claw
Beauty King
Berkeley Tie Dyed
Black Oxheart
Blue Beech
Boyarsky
Boy Boy
Brown Berry
Bull’s Heart
Burracker’s Favorite
Carmelo
Chateau Rose
Clover Trefle
Costoluto Fiorentino
Crimson Cushion
Crnkovic Jugoslavian
Danish Export
Des Andes Jaune
German Queen
Gogosha
Greater Baltimore
Gregori Altai
Grosse Cotelee
Hartman’s Yellow Gooseberry
Hog Heart
Howard German
Japanese Golden Pear
Julia Child
Kalman’s Hungarian
Korney’s Jelly Bean
Kosovo
Lemon Giant
Lumpy Red
Mandarine
Matt’s Wild Cherry
Mennonite Orange
Merveilles des Marches
Minibel
Nelson’s Golden Giant
Novikov Giant
Oaxacan Jewel
Olive Doree
Orange Giant
Paul Robeson
Peacevine Cherry
Pigmeo
Pipo
Pomodoro Palla di Fuoco
Pomodoro Red Pear
Raspberry Giant
Sausage
Scatalone
Selandia
Super Marmande
Tiger Tom
Tumbling Tom
UC82B
Ukrainian Pear
Wanda’s PT
Wes
Zebra
Zorica’s Croatian Bull Eye

2006 Seeds
Abraham Lincoln
Amish Salad
Amish Yellow
Aunt Gertie’s Gold
Aztec
Balkon Star
Black Cherry
Bradley
Cherry Roma
Cherokee Green
Cosmonaut Volkov
Croatian Heart
Douce de Picardie (RL)
Emeraude
Gardeners Delight
Garden Peach, Red
Garden Peach, Yellow
German Pink
Giant Syrian
Goose Creek
Greenbush Italian
Green Cherry
Green Giant
Green Zebra
Harvard Square
John Baer
Kristina Vatcheva
Leatha’s
Lemon Drop
Lithuanian
Long Tom
Marianna’s Conflict
Marianna’s Peace
Medford
Moby Grape
Mr. Fumo
Novogogoshary
Nyagous, Red
Oregon Spring
Perito Italian
Roman Candle
Segler
Sheyenne
Striped Cavern
Surender’s Indian Curry
Tigerella
Tommy Toes, Red
Tommy Toes, Yellow
Ugly Ripe
Voyage
West Virginia 63
Yellow Pear
Yoder’s German Yellow

Yesterday an EU Advocate-General sided with French seed organization Kokopelli on the provision in EU law prohibiting the sale of unregistered varieties.

In reference to EU seed laws and related French regulations, the Advocate-General said they

“violate the principle of proportionality, free enterprise, free movement of goods, and the principle of non discrimination.”

The Advocate-General said the official seed catalog has

“nothing to do with plant health”

and

“it is up to farmers to decide which varieties they grow”

the Advocate-General added

“the fact that farmers are confined to the listed varieties greatly reduces genetic diversity in European fields.”

Unfortunately the original opinion was written in German, and as of the time of this post had not yet been translated into English.  You can read the opinion in a variety of non-English languages here.

Almost all of Kokopelli’s arguments were upheld, and most of the opposition’s arguments were not.

Margarida of the Portuguese Seed Savers recently sent an email to a mailing list I’m on, telling everyone about the visit to their country by the founders of the Australian Seedsavers. One of the coordinators of the Australian organization is Kate, known to some of you because she has a blog and visited some of us in Europe too.

Anyway, the Australian Seedsavers met more than 400 people in Portugal. They visited food gardens at several locations and taught workshops on collecting and saving seeds, traditional plant varieties, edible seeds, permaculture, activism and kitchen gardens in schools.

You can read more about this in Portuguese here, or in English here.

All I can say is it looks great to me! I think if anyone would like to help out with a donation or tips or pointers, he would like to hear from you.

hi, i was just wondering if anyone has any information about specific brands of non-gmo seeds sold in canada? also, i was wondering if a product is called “organic” but does not have a certified organic label, can i trust that it is in fact organic? One more thing, im a complete novice, so bear with me, do i have to buy organic soil to grow an organic garden? and if so, any credible canadian brands?

Thanks Julie!  Someone just asked me the other day to write more about gardening.

I write new posts like this every year around this time, because they are hard to find again in a blog where things scroll off the front page after a few days.  The gardening world is full of people with different opinions and perspectives on gardening and these are of course my own and those who choose to leave comments here.  You shouldn’t be afraid to look elsewhere if you don’t like the answers here.  In particular, I can’t offer a lot of advice about Canadian brands because I live in the Netherlands, but maybe others can.

GMOs

First of all, if GMOs are your concern, you are unlikely to find any GMO garden seeds, or even GMO contaminated seeds on the market.  GMO crops are mostly commodity crops like corn, soy and canola (rape), and these can’t contaminate vegetables most commonly grown in home gardens.  Also, if you are growing known varieties, for example heritage or heirloom varieties, there can’t only be tiny bits of contamination, it doesn’t work that way.  In order for these plants to be contaminated with GMOs, there has to be a crossing between two plants (a GMO and non-GMO plant) and this would result in a 50/50 mix of genes, giving you a totally different plant.

Occasionally GMO varieties are specifically offered for sale to home gardeners, but this is very rare.  GMO seeds are mostly sold to farmers.  You don’t need to worry about being fooled, because these seeds are very expensive and the companies who offer them expect you to not only pay a lot extra for them, but generally also sign written agreements concerning their use.

As long as you aren’t growing commodity type crops where GMO varieties are already being sold, you grow known varieties like heirloom or heritage ones, you don’t intentionally buy GMO seeds and you don’t eat any wildly unexpected results from your garden, you can’t possibly be eating any GMOs from your garden.

Organic

There’s a very important difference between (certified) organic seeds, and seeds grown for an organic gardener like yourself.  (Certified) organic seeds are grown without chemicals and pesticides and certified GMO-free (even though as I explained above these probably wouldn’t contain GMOs anyway).  On the other hand, heritage/heirloom seeds were bred at a time when chemicals and large scale farms didn’t exist or weren’t as widely used as they are today, and so are much better suited for an organic garden like yours.

My suggestion would be to choose heritage or heirloom varieties over certified organic.  I’ve written a lot about this before, and I’ll link to some of these posts in a minute, but the best way to choose a seed company is by picking one that doesn’t sell anything but heirloom or heritage seeds!  Make sure when you look at the seed listings of a company you are considering buying seeds from they don’t offer any seeds labelled as F1 or hybrid.  It’s not that there’s anything automatically wrong with F1 hybrid seeds, but companies that sell them often have misleading marketing intended to discourage you from buying good quality heirloom varieties, and so this is a good way to choose a seed company.  Some excellent Canadian seed companies that fall into this category are:

Annapolis Valley Heritage Seeds
Salt Spring Seeds
Terra Edibles
Stellar Seeds
Sunshine Farm Seeds
Hope Seeds

It’s worth adding that I’m pretty sure all of these companies grow their seeds without chemicals and fertilizers anyway.  Heirloom/heritage seeds don’t require many chemicals, and most companies like these don’t bother spending the money on them and it would be against their principles anyway.  If they say their seeds are grown organically, I would trust them to be telling the truth. Many small companies like these can’t afford the cost of being certified organic, but that doesn’t mean their seeds are grown any differently.

Here are a few of the posts I’ve written in the past on this topic:

How to Buy Heirloom/OP Seeds
Certified Organic Can Be Bad for Small and Local

The reality is many of the best gardening seeds can be had for free, or just the cost of postage and handling.  I have a list of people all over the world, including some in Canada, who re-save their garden seeds and send them to others:

Blogger Seed Network

While you may not want to start gardening with only seeds from other’s gardens, I would really suggest planting at least 1 or 2 varieties you get this way each year.

I have a lot of information elsewhere on this blog about saving your own seeds, if you are ever interested in that, but this is probably a topic for another post.  If you search around with Google or the search box here, you will probably easily find it.

Planting Soil

Okay, I’ve written lots about this before too.  There’s lots of controversy in potting soil.

To try to give a quick answer to your question, potting soil is nearly always made from peat or a peat alternative, mixed with a few cents of chemical fertilizer, then put in fancy packaging with the price marked up 500%.  By it’s nature it’s not organic, nor can it easily be made organic.  Even if it’s called ‘organic’ or ‘natural’, you shouldn’t believe it!

The fertilizer is necessary, because most plants won’t grow without any nutrients in the ground.

The main problem is commercial potting soil is sterile and weed free.  When you start seedlings indoors, this is important because micro-organisms present in organic fertilizer alternatives like compost will often kill small seedlings.  Even if you buy organic potting soil that’s made with something like compost as the fertilizer, it may not be sterile and it may kill small plants.

You can make your own organic potting soil by mixing peat moss in equal amount with home made compost sterilized in the oven at 400F (200C) for 30 minutes.  The peat doesn’t have to be sterilized, only the compost.  It’s also possible to use bleach to sterilize the compost. I can tell you from experience that cooking compost doesn’t smell very good…

Most people don’t go to this trouble, or the expense of buying organic commercial potting soil, and just accept this is the one non-organic part of their garden.  This is what I do.  I buy normal potting soil when I have to, but otherwise I’m a completely organic gardener.

Okay, I hope I’ve answered your questions, but you probably have a lot more now…  I hope this helped.

I’ve ordered seeds a couple of times from Synergy Seeds over the years, and in 2004 Kent Whealy in his Garden Seed Inventory book identified them as the 13th most important source of rare OP seeds in North America.  Please support George and his work by ordering some seeds from him!

I hope by now there are a number of readers of this blog who understand these two principles are one and the same.  Vandana Shiva famously talked about this in an Internet video, and I’ve certainly talked about this here before too.

It’s not like you can’t grow OP seeds in your garden by day and surf the Internet with Windows at night, but if you do it’s a bit like growing both OP and commercial F1 seeds in your garden at the same time.  There’s nothing wrong with this, but some will see it as a small conflict of ideologies, and often people don’t do it themselves for this reason.

This is because the principles behind non-commercial seeds and non-commercial software are pretty much the same.

Inventorying Genetic Resources

One of both the strengths and weaknesses of today’s genetic resources is they are spread all over the world and tucked away in different places.  There are an estimated 1700 genebanks in the world, most in different localities and jurisdictions.  Probably even more important are farms and gardens all over the world, each with their own important collections of plants.

No less importantly, there are increasingly people offering their own collections of seeds for trade, often over the Internet like the Bloggers Seed Network.

The diversity of locations is a strength because if something happens at one location or with one collection, the damage can be isolated and duplicates that may be stored elsewhere can be used to replace the losses.

This diversity is a weakness because it can both be difficult to locate needed genetic resources, and more importantly it can be difficult to detect when important resources are lost.

Garden Seed Inventory

I’m not the first person to have an idea like this.  Kent Whealy, cofounder of the Seed Savers Exchange, identified a similar problem in the 1980s which led him to compile the Garden Seed Inventory. This is something he more or less kept up to date until the time he was forced to leave the SSE a few years ago.

Kent noticed there was a lot of consolidation in the seed business in the US and Canada, and every time a seed company went out of business or was taken over by another part of their inventory was lost.  He noticed a lot of OP varieties were disappearing in this way, and no one was doing anything about it because they weren’t noticing it.

These inventories published by Kent were catalyst for a number of things.

First of course were the SSE themselves who began to purchase as many of these seeds as possible before they were lost, and added them to their collection.  This became a very important part of the work of the SSE.

A number of other people were motivated to start maintaining them as part of their private collections, and people like George Stevens of Synergy Seeds even started seed companies based on the idea of protecting these seeds that were being lost.  At one time Synergy Seeds was identified by Kent’s Garden Seed Inventory as the 13th most important source of non-commercial OP garden seeds in all of North America.

More Complexities

The world is a much more complex place than it was at the time of the Garden Seed Inventory.  Most importantly the issue of genetic resources has become much more visible in light of climate change and peak oil.  Agriculture needs to change, and genetic resources are key to this.  No longer is the availability of OP garden seeds and consolidation of seed companies in North America the focus of attention, but rather it’s the world as a whole.

Our genetic resources are threatened by personal greed, like we’ve seen at the Seed Savers Exchange and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

We’ve seen massive consolidation in seed companies worldwide, leaving Monsanto owning most of them.

We’ve seen the introduction of a number of very complex treaties and changes to intellectual property rights laws.

We’ve also seen the introduction of MTAs or Material Transfer Agreements, in many ways much more insidious that other treaties or laws.  MTAs are a written contract between you and the person giving you the seeds.  Treaties and laws will change and go away with time, subject to different interpretations in different jurisdictions, but written agreements are always and forever!  These are also usually written with future changes possible, so in fact when you sign them you aren’t aware of all the restrictions or obligations that might possibly be placed on you.  MTAs are also something a company like Monsanto can deal with, and have the money to defend in court, but the administration of these is impossible for an independent plant breeder.

The Task at Hand

On the most basic level an Internet based application is needed for the Blogger Seed Network.  Something ordinary people on the Internet can use search for and trade seeds.

At the most extreme level, it should include all plant varieties everywhere in the world, commercial varieties, garden and farm varieties, plant breeders and plant collectors personal collections, and the collections of the estimated 1700 world’s genebanks, together with their legal status with relation to the various treaties and MTAs that are around, as well as their availability.  We will need to identify duplicates and possible or near duplicates.

Obviously what we end up with will lie somewhere in between, and will very much be an ongoing project.  A lot of this information already exists, and key will be identifying and securing it, then figuring out how to best incorporate it.  We need to be able to keep this information up to date, and identify trends.

The basic application needs to be based on non-commercial software with an open architecture, with the possibility of maintaining some confidential information.  It needs to be distributed for robustness, and to prevent the possibility it could be shut down due to laws in one or a number of jurisdictions.  It needs to be kept up to date!

At one time I was paid to work as a software developer, but I was never very good and those days seem pretty far behind me.  I also don’t have time to do much work on the technical side of this.  I can however help with some of the support, planning and architectural details, as well as acquiring data.  You need to be very self motivated, and most of the work will need to be done by yourself or others you find to help you.  Mostly it will be up to you to implement all aspects of this on your own.

Can I tempt anyone into getting started on what promises to be a very high visibility programming project?

http://bifurcatedcarrots.eu/2012/02/paquebot-2012-tomato-list/

Mike of Subsistence Pattern has been a reader and commenter here for a long time.  One of the things that really stands out about his blog are the discussions he cultivates among his readers.  If you want to chat with him and other well known veggie bloggers, it’s a great place to go.

Laura of Mas du Diablo in France has for many years been an active participant in the Blogger Seed Network here, as well as actively blogging about her garden and cooking.  I recently exchanged some emails with here, and got some links to new blogs she working on, showing off her paintings, more paintings and cooking.  Imagine 4 blogs!  I have a hard enough time keeping up with this one.

Leigh of The Extreme Gardener recently posts about her experiences growing TPS (True Potato Seeds). Great post!

A fried of mine here in Holland, Anita, has a expat blog.  It’s called Greetings from Holland.  I keep meaning to mention it.  I don’t often write about Holland, and in fact Anita and I were recently talking about that.  She thinks I should write more about Amsterdam and the Netherlands, instead of all the difficult subjects I address here, and she’s probably right.  Anita on the other hand writes a lot about Holland, including things about really interesting places she visits.  She has a lot of great pictures.  If you want to learn something about living in the Netherlands, hers is the blog to visit.

Finally, Randy who lives in North Carolina has a blog called Randy and Meg’s Garden Paradise.  He also has an associated blog about his carpentry projects called the Liberal Handyman’s Blog.  He has some really amazing photographs on his blogs, and his carpentry projects look really interesting.

Alas I didn’t have time to organize an event in the UK this year, but maybe next year.  If anyone has any ideas for speakers or anything else related to an event in 2011, please let me know, either in a comment here or private email.

If you have seeds from your own garden and want to offer them to others, please let me know and I’ll be happy to add you to the Seed Network list too.  The important rules are that your seeds must not be expensive (generally less than a few dollars per variety), they can’t be offered with the requirement of an otherwise large purchase, and you must be offering only OP seeds or clearly labelled homemade hybrids.  In particular commercial hybrids are not allowed on the Seed Network.  The purpose of the Seed Network is to help people find reasonably priced seeds they can grow, save seeds from and regrow, and they should be able to send a few dollars to you for this purpose and get some usable seeds.

If you wish to offer commercial F1 hybrid seeds on your website, they must be on a separate page, not referenced from the list of OP seeds and if someone contacts you via the seed network you should not promote the commercial F1 seeds.

If you have any questions about this or would like to be added, please get in touch!

I’ll add my 2010/2011 offerings, as soon as I get them organized and have some spare time.

In connection with Tom Wagner’s visit last year, he gave me a collection of true potato seeds from his breeding projects.  In the seed tray above you see the seeds germinating, with the numbers corresponding with his various breeding lines.  He explained the pedigree of many of his lines in this video.

If you are in Europe and would like to join in on the trials at the last minute, I have a few seeds left over.  There’s still plenty of diversity in these seeds, but you need to understand to some extent you would be getting the leftovers.  If you are interested, send me an email.  As part of participating you would be expected to stay in touch and let us know how things go, good or bad.  Beyond that, there are no strings and it’s a great opportunity to experience potato breeding first hand.  You’ll need probably 20 m2 or so of garden space available.

If you live outside of Europe, you should get in touch with Tom directly.  His discussion forum is probably the best way to do this.

For me this is a very important project in many ways.  Included in many of these lines are late blight resistance, as well as many other exciting tastes and traits that come with the biodiversity selected by a professional public domain plant breeder.  Late blight and the chemicals used to combat it are threatening the environment in Europe and the consumers who eat the potatoes.  It’s the excuse seed companies are using to justify the creation of a GM potato variety that’s resistant to late blight.  This past year Europe commited itself to phasing out the dangerous chemicals used in this way, so within a decade all that’s likely to be grown for human consumption will be blight resistant varieties.  Thanks in a large part to Tom, we won’t be forced to accept GM potatoes without any other alternatives being available.

The sort of plant breeding Tom is doing, public domain plant breeding, is very different from what commercial plant breeders do.  Tom has a single priority; to develop lines of potatoes that people want to eat and grow in their gardens or farms.  While Tom would certainly like to earn some money doing what he does, the varieties he produces are not dependent on this.  He simply does everything he can to create the most exciting and delicious potatoes possible.

This is really a big contrast to large seed companies like Monsanto, who create varieties strictly for profit.  These for profit lines generally have little to do with taste, but rather what makes the perfect Mc Donalds french fry or what grows with the most uniform and blemish free appearance.

Most garden bloggers who grow their own food, and particularly those that read this blog, are very attracted to the idea of growing heirloom varieties.  Most people especially are interested in varieties associated with the history of the area they live.  This is a really good thing!  We all know these varieties taste great, are suitable for seed saving and often grow very well in our gardens.

What people sometimes forget is where these varieties came from!  Someone had to create them.  Like Tom’s potatoes, someone in the past created something they thought was exciting and tasted great, in fact someone not very different from Tom.

The kinds of varieties Tom creates are often called modern heirlooms, and are created exactly the same way heirloom varieties were created in the past.

The Current Crisis

The problem we have now is there are not many people like Tom left around, and many of them are getting old.

There’s been a big increase of awareness in the last few years about the importance of choosing to grow heirloom varieties in your garden, as a way of keeping these varieties alive.  There has not however been the same awareness of keeping breeding projects like Tom’s alive.

Directly and indirectly I know of about 5-10 people like Tom, who do projects like he does.  I know there are others, and there are increasing numbers of gardeners who are experimenting a bit in thier gardens, but the number of plant breeders who are actively involved in producing new varieties for public release is very, very small.  Surely most readers of this blog will know I’m well connected in the world of garden vegetables, and at least in the English speaking world I would probably be in touch with most of these people.  The number is very, seriously, small.

What I find equally distressing about the extraordinarily small number of public domain plant breeders are their personal circumstances.

Without any exceptions all the plant breeders I know have genuine financial difficulties.  They are sometimes living in an apartment without any of their own land on which to grow things.  They lack adequate tools or assistance with the physical tasks that confront them.  Their sole income is often selling the seeds they produce, effectively selling hours and hours of work and investment of personal resources for almost nothing.  Usually they are supported by a spouse that works.  It’s not unusual for them to lose years, even decades of work, because they don’t have adequate storage facilities for their breeding materials and they become ill or have other personal problems.

There is simply no functioning mechanism in today’s world for these people to be adequately paid for the work they do.  They produce seeds that are free of intellectual property rights, sold at the cost of production and distribution or traded between gardeners for free, and no royalties ever find their way back to the breeders.  There’s honestly often no one there to help when they need it the most, certainly not if they aren’t someone who’s very well known like Tom.

What does that say about the world we live in where the people who are creating the food we want to eat, with breeding projects that are the only real competition to Monsanto, and they are among the poorest among us?  There isn’t likely to be genuine transition of modern agriculture to sustainable methods without the participation of traditional plant breeders, and it’s so incredibly short sighted we are treating them this way.

As the US begins it’s anti-trust investigation into it’s domestic agriculture, we are all hoping there will be big changes, and public domain plant breeding is one of the possible alternatives.

As well as growing Tom’s potato seeds this year, I plan to talk a lot more about this problem as well as look for some solutions.

At the moment I can’t accept small donations, but I’m working on ways I might be able to do this in the future.  If you’re someone with a substantial amount of money to invest in trying to solve this problem, I hope you will get in touch with me and see if we can work something out.

While I’m open to any and all discussions, my particular interest is looking for mechanisms that will avoid ownership of the seeds or the channels of payment and royalties to the breeders.  For example, in the past year we have seen an ugly fight for control of the Seed Savers Exchange in the US, we have seen a similar fight for control of Kokopelli Seeds in Europe, and we’ve witnessed the opening of a global seed vault in Norway in which Bill Gates is one of the largest funders.

I am looking for a mechanism for funding public domain plant breeders where control is not something that’s owned, paid for or fought over.  This is the food of our future and our past, and it belongs in the public domain.  In particular I will be looking for a mechanism similar to what’s used for open source software like Linux.

I am not looking to create a non for profit organization controlled by a board of directors.

I will be looking for ways to both provide immediate, direct assistance to plant breeders, as well as provide long term incomes and royalties to the breeders as well as their families.