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Seed Cleaners Under Threat

While on my trip to the US, Eva (I’m not sure where she’s from) sent me an email telling me about this.  Thanks Eva!  I see a few other bloggers have also written posts on this.

A seed cleaner is someone who cleans seeds after harvest.  You might think this isn’t very important, but in fact this is a critical service for most types of seed.  This is when you separate the seeds from the chaff, which is critical for proper storage as well as being able to properly replant the seeds.  If you are a small gardener, you can generally separate small amounts of seed from their pods, but when you are a larger farmer dealing with pounds or tons of seed, you must use tools to help you. Common tools are seed screens or winnowing machines.  These tools require some skills to operate, and are sometimes expensive meaning small farmers cannot always afford to own them and must arrange for someone else to clean their seeds for them.

It appears seed cleaners are Monsanto’s and other large seed companies latest targets in the US.  By threatening seed cleaners with lawsuits if they inadvertently clean patented seeds, they hope to drive them out of business.  Of course the burden of proof seems to be with the seed cleaners themselves, to prove the genes in the seeds they clean are unpatented, rather than the agriculture companies to prove their seeds are involved.  This is of course an impossible task for the seed cleaners.  Monsanto wants to change local laws to make it easier to threaten seed cleaners in this way.

The Daily Kos has an article on this.

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Seed Network: Crazytomato

Crazytomato is located in the Netherlands, not far from Amsterdam.  His garden is a 400m2 allotment (community garden), one of the largest I know of.  I’m not sure if he wants me to use his real name, so I’ll just refer to him by his Internet handle crazytomato.  He would like to offer his seeds via the seed network, but doesn’t have his own blog, so I’ll include his seed list here in this post.  If you would like any of these seeds or any information about them, please send me an email and I’ll forward your request on to him.

He’s looking for short season, cold hardy tomatoes, preferably those that would survive outdoors in a wet climate where late blight is common.  He’s not asking for too much, is he?  He’s also looking for pawpaw tree seeds.  If anyone can help with these things, please let me know this too.

Seeds Offered

Tomatoes

Akers oxheart
Akers west-virginia
Alicante
Amish salad
Andes horn
Apfelsinn orange
Aunt gerties gold
Aunt ginnys purple
Aussie
Azoychka
Balkon zauber
Bangladesh oxheart
Belarus start
Believe it or not
Bell star
Berkshire polish
Big boy
Big german pink
Big girl
Big orange
Big red from crete
Big zac
Black Ethiopian
Black krim
Blavk mavr
Black mountain
Bloody butcher
Blushing bride
Bonny m
Bonny best
Bradley pink
Brandywine landis
Brandywine suddutch
Brasilian paste
Brasilian beefsteak
Break o day
Brianna
Broad ripple yellow currant
Bulls heart orange
Budyohovka
Bulgarian#7
Calabacito rojo
Calli orange
Carefree
Caspian pink
Cherokee pink
Chervan giant
Chocolate stripes
Chris Ukrainian
Chukhloma orange
Cluj
Coastel pride
Cosmonaut volkov
Costoluto Genovese
Cromson cushion
Croation heart mystery
Cuidad Victoria
Deviz
Diener
Dixie golden giant
Divene maltese
Dokhodny
Dr.carolyn pink
Dr.neal
Dr.no
Dr.wyche
Dutchman no-acid
Dvortsovynot
Eagles beak
Earl of edgecombe
Earls faux
Elberta peach
Everglades
Farmers red
Fax and mary
Federle
Fidelio
Flowerpot
Franks large red
Fumo mr.
Fuzzy peach
Gartenperle
Georgia streak
German red strawberry
Ghianti
Gigante d“oremborg
Giant Italian pear
Giant valentine
Glory of Moldova
Gogoshari
Golden dwarf champion
Golden egg
Golden green
Golden queen
Goose creek
Grandes lissos
Granny cantrells german red
Great white
Green bush Italian
Green zebra
Grimpante x brandewine
Gritipoli corburino
Guernsey island
Guernsey pink blush
Hartmans yellow gooseberry
Harvard square
Harzfeuer
Hawkins
Hayslip
Heatherington pink
Heidi
Heinz
Hermans yellow
Hugh
Humph
Italian heirloom
Islandaise
Ispolin
Jersey devil
Jersey sunrise
Jet star
Joya de Oaxaca
Kellehers oxheart
Kelloggs breakfast
Kiev
King humbert
Koralik
Korneys jelly bean
Koroleva
Krasnodor titan
Kristina vatcheva
Kumato
Large german
Large pink
Leathas
Lemon giant
Lillians yellow
Long tom
Lyana
Lyvdas moms red Ukrainian
Martinos roma
Matina
Matt d“imperio
Matts wild cherry
Metscha lubitela
Mexico
Milkas red Bulgarian
Missouri pink love apple
Mobil
Mong
Monomakhs hat
Morning dew
Multicolour
Myth
Naygous
Nectarine
Nepal
Neves azorian red
Noire russe charbonniere
Nothern crown
Novice
Novikovs giant
Novogogoshary
Old german
Old ivory egg
Oxheart
Pantano
Pata negro
Penn heart
Piccardy
Piccolo
Pink accordion
Pink novicok
Pink potato top
Polish linguise
Pomadorina ciliagia pugallhash
Portugese
Prairi fire
Provenzano
Prue
Purple calabash
Quarter pounder with leaves
Radiator Charlie
Raspberry giant
Red zebra
Rogers best black
Roma
Rose
Rose beauty
Rose de berne
Royal hillibilly
Rozov giant
Ruslan yellow
Russian 117#
Russian big roma
Russian bogatyr
Rutgers
Sashas
Saljut plum
Santa
Santorini paste
Scarlet beefsteak
Sebastopol
Siletz
Slavic master piece
Slavianskii shedevr
Sorrento
Speckled roman
Spitze
Striped stuffer
Sunset red horizon
Super precocissimo marmande
Sutton
Sweet 100“s
Tiblissi
Texas wild
Thessaloniki
Thai pink egg
Tigerlike
Tigers golf ball
Tigrovy
Togo triffle
Top sirloin
Tres cantos
Turkey beefsteak
Tuxhorns red and yellow
Urbanite
Urbinrany
Valentina
Variagated
Vermillion
Violaceum krypni-rozo
Vita gold
Wapsipinicon peach
Watermelon cherry
Wayahead
West-virginia straw
White beefsteak
White tomosol
White wonder
Wild Chiapas
Winns all
Wisconsin 55
Wladecks
Wokoladny
Worlds wonder
W.va.pink slicer

Other Veggies

Runnerbean;
painted lady
Enorma

Polebean;
neckarkonigin
Mrs.fortune
Mr.fearnes purple flowered

Bush bean;
fin de bagnols
Dubbele witte
Saxa

Corn;
luscious
Tasty sweet

Lettuce;
marul yedikule 5701
American brown

Beetroot;
chioggia
Riesenbutter
Cherry belle

Onion;
Bedfordshire champion

Black salsify;
duplex

Savoy kale;
bloemendaalse gele

Swede;
Yellow dutch head

Peas;
kelvedon wonder
Gradus
Lincon
Tirabeque mangetout

Zucchini;
ambassador
Kabak sakiz
Black beauty

Gherkin;
delikatess

Melon;
kavum kirkagac 637
Greek melon

Cucumber;
bush champion
Bush spacemaster

Pumpkin;
white pumpkin
Blue pumpkin

Gourd;
birdhouse

Pepers and chilli;
poblano
Jalapeno m
Biber yalova carliston

Herbs;
great leaf basil
Thai basil
Sweet marjoram
Comman sage
Boquet dill
dill

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Wedding in Washington DC

Still recovering from the jetlag, we’re back from Steph’s cousin’s wedding in Washington DC.  Steph’s cousin works for the Dalai Lama, her husband is a lawyer for the Federal Reserve Bank, and the whole family is full of interesting people.  The wedding was beautiful, with the ceremony held under a chuppah or Jewish wedding tent. It was full of rituals, including a Tibetan prayer.  We had a great time.  Here’s a picture of Steph and I on wedding day:

Of course a trip to Washington DC wouldn’t be complete without a visit to The White House.  Here I am standing in front of the south lawn, future home of President Obama’s vegetable garden:

I know a number of garden bloggers and readers live in the DC area, but I was too busy with family matters to try to arrange meetings with anyone else.  Maybe we can try another time.

I have a huge backlog of emails, posts, comments on other blogs and discussion lists, seed orders and additions to the seed network to go through.  Have patience, I’ll get to them all in the coming days.  A few blog posts or discussion forums might have to go without input from me however…

To everyone celebrating holidays in the coming days, Steph and I wish you all the best.

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Seed Network News, December 2008

The Blogger Seed Network was mentioned in a post on the Observer Organic Allotment Blog!  For those of you who live elsewhere, together with The Guardian, The Observer is a well known UK newspaper.  Thank you Howard Sooly for making a great post on seed saving, and mentioning us too.  By the way, if you aren’t a regular reader of the Observer Allotment Blog, it’s worth having a look.  In the last year or so since I’ve been reading it regularly, they’ve made some excellent posts.

The number of varieties on offer via the Seed Network now rivals the number on offer at the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), the largest public seed saving organization in the world!  This came out in a recent Internet discussion with Dave at World Wide Seed Trader, who himself has roughly 10,000 unique varieties on offer, many virtually unavailable from other sources.  The SSE have around 13,000 on offer.  Since it’s probably reasonable to assume other Seed Network members have a few thousand varieties between them, we are pretty close to parity with the SSE.

Blogs and People

Our seed network not only has seeds, but people and blogs.  Recently several people have made posts relating to the Seed Network or seed saving in general.  It’s worth following the links on the Seed Network page (see the link below the carrot picture on the front of this blog), and reading what a lot of these people are writing.  Here are just a couple of examples.

Anna recently posted about some seeds she received through the network.

Val and Dan recently made some very informative posts about seed saving in general.

New Members of the Network

Jardim com Gatos, located in Portugal, is offering a Portugese radish among other things.  He has just joined a Portugese seed saving organization, so hopefully we’ll see some of their oferings reoffered by him in the coming years.

Lowarth Brogh, a box scheme (called a CSA in the US), has round courgette, anna schwarz winter squash, rainbow quinoa, mexican sour gherkin and maybe some black cherry tomato seed and is interested in anything used to the cold, and anything strange,exotic (and tasty-not asking for much!).

Risks

There was a very brief discussion on the risks of saving and sharing seeds on the Agriculture Biodiversity Weblog the other day.  It’s not particularly my view that in the face of common sense, serious risks exists with trading seeds.  On the other hand I recognise there are some risks present, and others may have a different opinion as me.  I would like to encourage an open discussion on this.  If anyone has any opinions or information, hopefully with some specifics, I’d like to hear.  Please do this either as a comment here or in a private email.  If I get enough concrete information, I’d like to do a post later putting together everyone’s ideas.

Gardeners Wanted!

Most people in the Seed Network are not being contacted by many people interested in seeds.  Throw away those seed catalogs, and get in touch with some Seed Network members!  The seeds are yours for the taking, and many of them are a lot more interesting than what’s available in gardening catalogs.  Even if you’re someone who normally buys your vegetable seeds from seed catalogs, consider trying a few from the Seed Network.

Of course the intention is you will save your own seeds for regrowing, but everyone has to learn sometime, so don’t be afraid to ask for some to experiment in saving with.  I’ll be posting some more information on seed saving later.

While some members in the Seed Network have their own rules regarding who they will send seeds to, most member are willing to ship seeds worldwide.  A few Seed Network members offer some things for free, and most others are flexible on how you pay for the seeds and will usually accept things in trade besides money.  Sometimes local currencies are accepted.

If you will be growing open pollinated or heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables in your garden this coming year, think about saving seeds and offering them via this network.  I’ll be posting some more about this, but don’t be afraid to contact me personally if you have any questions about this.  See the Contact link near the top on the front page of this blog.

Seeds or other Plant Materials Wanted!

If you save your own seeds or otherwise have self-propagated plants to offer other people, please consider joining the Seed Network.  You don’t need to have a blog to join!  If you don’t have a blog or another place on the Internet to list your offering, I will put it in a post here on this blog.  Please contact me if you’re interested.

The amount you have to offer is not important.  Yes, like I mentioned above, there is one Seed Network member offering 10,000 different varieties.  It’s also okay if you only have 1!  Just as important as having a lot of varieties available is having a large base of people, both offering and requesting seeds.

It takes time to learn how to properly save seeds, so if you don’t have any on offer this year, consider offering something in future years.