Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
On my way back from the Oxford meeting this year, after taking Tom to London Heathrow airport, and then arriving in Dover a little early for our ferry connection, we ended up in a nearby park in order to have a picnic before getting on our boat.
Besides the ruins of a WWII bunker, the main feature of this park were an unusual breed of cows, uniquely suited for the white cliffs of Dover.
Waist high, and only a little larger than a very large dog, they were really kind of interesting cows.
Okay, so here’s what I know.
I made this post a year and a half ago. It seems the EU has quietly put through a directive that may allow the relaxing of seed laws in some cases, but it’s still not very clear what it means. It does however seem like different countries are free to interpret the directive in different ways.
A few months before this, Association Kokopelli in France was fined for selling unregistered seeds. I’ve since heard some conflicting information on the size of the fine and don’t know if there were appeals. What I understand was at issue was a per variety registration fee for the 1000 or so varieties on offer at Kokopelli.
About a year ago, Søren left a comment here and mentioned some seed companies in Denmark were experimenting with selling some unregistered seeds and it was expected Denmark would go in the direction of Sweden, which allows the sale of unregistered varieties in small packets to home gardeners.
I’ve now just had an email exchange with a local friend, who is planning himself to register several hundred varieties here in the Netherlands. He gave me the impression the organization he is a part of plans to register many more varieties, and he says this can now be done for €25 per variety. He said money was available to pay for these registrations, so he won’t have to pay it himself. I don’t know where this money is coming from, but I have the impression it’s a lot, and they are trying to register as many new varieties as possible.
I was also in a food store a few days ago, one that was not likely to be selling unregistered varieties. I was in the produce section and I had a choice between different kinds of beets; chioggia, yellow mangel, golden and standard red. As far as I know, other than the normal beet, these are unregistered varieties in Holland, unless they were recently registered.
Further, I had a conversation with someone in the UK this fall, who mentioned an effort was under way to register UK landraces, apparently as part of this EU directive. I was under the impression it was being done in kind of a stupid way, and in reality the UK has just not decided if and how they want to relax their seed laws.
If, as it seems, this EU directive is so vague it in effect allows countries to relax their seed laws as much as they want, there’s a bit of a chaotic situation going on with seed laws in Europe. It’s really hard to get any information on this kind of thing, because it tends to be in out of the way places and in local languages.
Does anyone have any idea what’s going on in other places in Europe or have any information I don’t have? Please, let us all know!
Low Cost Registration No Solution
Just for the record, I don’t consider low cost variety registration to be an acceptable compromise in the debate over EU seed laws. Any registration needs to meet the so-called DUS standards, meaning breeding materials and genepool mixes would remain illegal no matter what. In addtion, the profit involved in selling heirloom seeds is too small for independent seed companies to be able to afford these registration costs. Low cost registrations only ensure large seed companies will control the distribution of these seeds.
The garden is a winter wonderland now. While we aren’t breaking any records yet, it’s pretty darn cold. The snow is about a foot (30cm) deep. The canals are all frozen.
Everything is covered in ice crystals.
Even the cobwebs under the shed roof didn’t escape the ice crystals.
The view in the distance just fades, because the whole area is covered in a winter mist. No footsteps in the snow, because I’m the only one crazy enough to visit their garden. Mine were the only human footsteps visible. Otherwise there were tracks from the hares and birds that live in the area during the winter.
Planning is already underway for a possible Elfstedentocht this year! We need another few weeks of cold winter to make it possible…
I grew two kinds of yacón this year. The first you see on the right is an unnamed variety with brown roots, which seems to be the most common kind at the moment. The other variety, on the left, is called yacón morado and has red roots. You can see yacón morado also has reddish leaves.
The unnamed variety is significantly more productive, yielding around twice what the yacón morado does, or about 10Kg per plant.
Yacón morado has an abundance of small flowers throughout most of the summer. While the unnamed variety can bloom from time to time, it usually only does so as a result of some kind of stress.
The flowers also attracted large numbers of bees, but for whatever reason every time I was ready with the camera all the bees went away.
Here are the harvested roots. Either something changed in the way it grew, or perhaps I was a little rushed during harvest, but it seems like the tubers broke off more readily this year during harvest. Anyway, the one sure thing about yacón is the harvest is big, so even with a few pieces broken off there’s still lots left. I’m not sure if the broken off pieces will rot before I have a chance to eat them or not.
I also haven’t had a chance to taste these two varieties side by side, so I’m not sure if the flavors are different.
For me this is the year to start getting into fruit tree grafting. I’ve purchased a few fruit trees already grafted onto rootstock, but also extra rootstock, a grafting knife and grafting wax. I hope in the coming years to start trading scion wood with others, and doing my own grafts.
I’ve already had an offer of a trade from Søren!
If any of you have tips, tricks or favorite fruit tree varieties, I’d love to hear.
By the way, I bought my fruit trees from Blackmoor Fruit Nursery in the UK, and so far I’m a very satisfied customer. Everything arrived in very good condition, and the varieties they offer are interesting ones, and not just commercial ones. For me it’s very important they were willing to ship to mainland Europe, as not all nurseries in the UK will do that.
I even changed my order in the middle of everything, something not a lot of online companies appreciate. It didn’t phase them a bit, and my order arrived just as I expected it. If you live in the UK or mainland Europe, I would recommend them as a place to look for soft fruit and fruit trees.
