A blog to add to the post I made a few weeks ago on bloggers who share seeds from their gardens is Bishop’s Homegrown.
This is a great new blog, located in Indiana, USA, I stumbled across after following a link on Agricultural Biodiversity. Not only do they do their own plant breeding, they sell their creations at local farmers markets!
I don’t honestly spend as much time as I should hunting out new blogs, and instead hope they find me somehow or that I read about them on other blogs. It’s when I find ones like this that has gone unnoticed for a year that makes me realize I need to spend more time looking around the Internet.
Bishop’s Homegrown seeds are different from others in our Bloggers seed lists in that they are mostly from ongoing breeding projects, and so you may still see some genetic differences in the plants grown from his seeds. Some of what he offers seem to be stabilized new varieties. For those of you who know Lieven, some of the seeds he offers are similar, and of course these are also the sort of pea seeds Rebsie is working on and melon seeds Søren is working on. As long as you understand what to expect, it’s potentially an exciting opportunity to experience some genetic variation in your garden without having to do the cross-pollinating yourself. It’s a great opportunity to do some selection and create your own variety. It also gives you some insight on what another plant breeder is working on.
Like all the other seeds offered via the Bloggers Seed Network, these seeds are for everyone! You don’t need to be a plant geek or have a blog, you just need to be a little adventurous and interested in trying them in your own garden.
I’m still waiting on an answer from an email where I asked if he will send his seeds outside of the US, but regardless of his policy on this he is still offering them to people within the US.
Patrick,
Alan will send seeds to Europe, but most of the things aren’t stabilised yet, some are,
Frank
I can confirm Alan will send outside the US. I suggest contacting him in advance to sort out the details.
I agree, Bishop’s Homegrown is excellent. And it’s a great idea to be distributing seed from ongoing breeding projects. That’s something I’ll be doing myself in the future, though I’m not ready to do so just yet.
It’s in the nature of breeding projects that a huge amount of “surplus” seed is generated. You have to be extremely selective about which lines you want to pursue and which you don’t, which means you end up with a lot of seed which is of no immediate use to you but which may contain all sorts of exciting and worthwhile variations if you only had the time and space to grow them. Giving them away to others seems like the ideal solution. There are a lot of people who are interested in plant breeding but don’t really have the time or inclination to do their own projects from scratch, so as you say it’s an opportunity for anyone and everyone to experiment with new varieties by “lucky dip”.
Alan is doing great work. Might I also take this opportunity to mention a tomato and potato breeding forum run by Tom Wagner of TaterMater, the breeder who brought us Green Zebra tomatoes? Some of the users on this forum are exchanging seeds from ongoing projects, as well as sharing a lot of useful information.
http://tatermater.proboards107.com/index.cgi?board=general
Hey gang, I’m more than happy to send seeds outside of the us, and don’t be intimidated by Pay-Pal or even feel the need to pay for seed, I only put that up there as basically a donation to gain capital to continue my work with seeds in the winter greenhouses but I love sharing what I have and trading as well and will send seed as it is available to anyone interested.
I think we are on the verge of some great things in the sphere of agriculture and plant breeding on an independent and self-sustainable level considering the number of breeders showing up recently on our message boards. It was only a couple of years ago that the majority of all conversations held on gardening web-sites based on organic/eco-logically grown practices were based on only open pollinated/heirloom seeds and their conservation and it seemed like any talk of breeding work using these varieties or commonly available hybrids was heresy condemned by forum arguments and the general shunning of plant breeders, little did people realize that the seed planted by folks like Alan Kapuler, Ken Etlinger, Frank Moreton and Tom Wagner had already began to sprout and suddenly experienced heirloom gardeners were becoming interested in plant genetics and alternatives to the available heirlooms.
Looking back I suppose it was only a matter of time as the general problem within the heirloom seed movement was that there was a growing contingency of what I call “seed snobs”, that is to say completists whom thought they could grow any heirloom seed anywhere and it would be better than anything on the market, OP or not, that was considered new and possibly trendy.
The problem with that line of thinking is as we all know that Heirlooms are adapted to specific climatic and micro-climate conditions and have been adapted to those conditions for generations, something you can not change with only a year or two of work, this of course led to any number of disasters with both experienced gardeners trying heirlooms for the first time and new gardeners giving them a go in their earliest attempts at food production, something that just can’t be done with much measured success from my experiences.
I think this more than anything has opened gardeners up to looking for local heirloom seeds and regional ones and then looking to independent plant breeders for segregating and unstable genetic material and the direction to make selections from this material that is young enough in the Filial chain for them to make educated decisions in selection criteria in creating their own variety or strain adapted to their area. In this way they can fill in the gaps in their locally sourced heirloom seeds, create an alternative to what’s available, and generally “Wow” not only their neighbors but even experienced heirloom gardeners.
Of course this isn’t discounting the work being done with alternative crops such as Quinoa, Amaranth, Yacon, and Oca by new up and coming independent plant breeders, it is often us who first find an interest in these crops and then introduce them to the wider heirloom growing audiences. We set very good examples I think.
In the near future I look for this to be the next big gardening movement, thanks in part to Carol Deppes book which changed the perceptions of heirloom gardeners in response to plant breeders, I think we will see many more backyard plant breeders coming up with unique innovations, a very good example of this is Ken Allen and his Tetra Baby watermelon which Michael Lachume (canadamike) turned me on to this previous season, be sure to look it up as it is a very interesting work of “art”.
All in all everyone who was mentioned in your article and the comments above are responsible for some very terrific things in regards to plant breeding, we are the future of gardening really, particularly when it comes to “Functional Foods” or as I call them “Value Added” seeds.
-Alan Reed Bishop
Not to long ago I got a big sack of seed from Alan and his other buddies. It was a very generous amount and i’m excited because my sweet delight melons are coming up. We do some back and forth trading and I find this to be a much better alternative than the all soon to be useless American dollar. I’m anxious to start saving seed from my garden after the harvest so I can return the favor to you guys. Thanks again Nick (Mayfinn Farm)
Hi Nick! It’s great to hear from you. It’s getting to be an invasion from Pekin, Indiana here on this blog. Soon you’re going to outnumber everyone else!