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Where Your Garden Seeds Come From

98% of the worlds seeds come from one of six companies:

Monsanto
Syngenta
DuPont
Mitsui
Aventis
Dow

If you don’t make a conscious decision to buy your seed from somewhere else, they will almost certainly come one of these companies.

There are two kinds of seed retailers.  The first kind simply resells seeds from these companies, a commercial seed retailer.  While it’s not impossible that some of your seeds may come from somewhere else, these retailers enter into very restrictive marketing agreements and promise never to clearly label their seeds for what they are.  Instead they use marketing terms like ‘old style’ or ‘like what your grand mother grew’ or even ‘heirloom’ (because this is not a legally defined term).

The second kind of seed retailer makes a clear public statement that all of their seeds are non-hybrid or ‘Open Pollinated’.  With these type of seeds you can grow the plants and resave the seeds for yourself or to share with others.  Have a look in the Links section in the front of this blog for ideas of seed retailers like this.  Of course there are others around I don’t link to.  If a seed company sells a single F1 variety, they are a commercial seed retailer, and you cannot trust anything you buy from them!

If you live in Europe you will have a much harder time finding a non-commercial seed retailer.  This is because in Europe we have laws requiring seeds offered for sale have to be registered and on official lists.  Since the big six seed companies control these lists, it makes sense of course their seeds are featured.  There are a growing number of non-commercial seed companies operating in Europe, but they are technically illegal, and may not be around much longer.  If you live in Europe you may need to buy your seeds from abroad, probably North America where there are no seed laws.

The Blogger Seed Network only has non-commercial seeds, and at least some of the members will ship seed anywhere in the world!  You don’t need to have a blog to participate, and while offering some payment to cover the costs of sending the seeds is always appreciated, most people will send seeds for little or no payment.  You don’t need to offer seeds yourself to request them.

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Couple of Things

A few newsworthy things have come up in the last few days.

The Seed Ambassadors have made what looks like a big update to their seed network seed list!  They have lots of interesting looking varieties.  In an email they mentioned a number of the varieties listed are only available via our seed network and are not being offered via the Seed Savers Exchange.  I forgot to mention this in the Seed Network News post of a few days ago.

Alan Reed Bishop of Homegrown Goodness interviewed famous plant breeder Alan Kapuler.  Fascinating reading!  We’ve been promised more interviews with interesting people, but I don’t know how he’s going to top that one.

Kokopelli seeds in France is in trouble again!  They have been evicted from an important historical vegetable garden, which is a serious blow to their work.

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Seed Network News January 2009

Lots of seeds, more gardeners needed!

Consider getting some or all your garden seeds from the Bloggers Seed Network (blog not required), rather than buying them.  There are thousands of varieties available for the asking!

Of course if you have seeds to offer, you’re also very welcome to join the seed network and share them!

It’s important to understand people have one overwhelming reason for offering their seeds to other gardeners, they really, genuinely, want to share them and see them grown in other people’s gardens.  You aren’t imposing on anyone by asking for seeds.  Of course you should offer to send a self addressed stamped envelope if you live in the same country, and/or offer to send a small payment to cover the costs of sending the seeds.  If you don’t have enough money to afford to pay for the seeds, ask anyway, because some people are willing to send them for free.

The expectation usually is however that the person receiving the seeds intends to save seeds themselves and reshare them with others.  You also need to understand what you want.  Don’t just contact someone in the seed network and ask them to send you some seeds!  You have to ask for specific varieties you want to grow.

Different from Public Seed Exchanges

Please understand this network is different from most public seed exchanges.  See my last post as an example of this.  In general people offering seeds via this seed network are not allowed to share half used packets of commercial seeds.  Nearly all of the seeds offered are homegrown and self saved.  All of the seeds you get from this seed network are suitable for growing and resaving!

Commercial seeds on the other hand are generally not accurately labelled, and you won’t know for at least two years if they are in fact suitable for saving because you will have to first grow the plants and save seeds, then try regrowing those seeds and seeing what happened. It’s the intention of most commercial seed companies to cause confusion over the suitability of their seeds for saving, because they would like gardeners who try to fail and become discouraged!  Seed companies make more money when you go back each year and buy more.

Never believe a seed company is selling you seeds suitable for saving unless they have a conspicuous and unambiguous public statement saying ALL of the seeds they offer are suitable for seed saving.  There are very few companies like this around, and you have to hunt for them!  See the links section of this blog for some ideas.

While it’s possible a few members of this seed network may have commercial activities alongside of offering seeds, most are just gardeners offering to share seeds from their own garden.  You won’t be encouraged to spend money on other things, and you don’t need to pay an entrance fee to participate.  Nothing but no-frill seeds, delivered to your door!

Newest Members of the Network

There have been several new members this month.  Lots of people offering tomatoes!

Gardening Fool has a mix of ornamentals and edible plants, but if you read about the stuff being working on, there are more edibles in the pipeline.

Agrarian Grrl’s Muse Located in the Annapolis valley in Nova Scotia, Canada.  A great blog too!

Crazytomato Almost a neighbor of mine, here in the Netherlands, has a great looking collection of vegetable seeds including many tomatoes!

Paquebot Located in Wisconsin, USA, has loads of tomatoes!

Saith Ffynnon Farm Located in north coastal Wales, UK (!) is offering a number of seeds collected from the wild in his area, including a number of edible plants.

Blue Ribbon Tomatoes Located in kentucky, USA, Maria is offering a number of really exciting local heirloom tomatoes!  She also has a great blog.

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Seed Network: Seed Saving and Selection

This post is a follow up to the last two posts.

The last concept in seed saving is that it’s very important to save seeds from the right plant or plants.  This is the easy one!

Always save seeds from the best plant or plants available

That’s it!  What exactly makes the best plant is simply what you think it is.  The strongest plant or most productive.  If you can taste it without distroying the plant, then the best tasting plant.

It’s always best to save seeds from a number of plants, in order to help maintain a good sized gene pool, but if there’s one plant that really stands out or is exciting for some reason, be sure to save seeds from that one apart from the others for separate replanting.  Sometimes new plant varieties are discovered this way!

Many people think when they plant seeds for something all the plants will grow to be exactly the same, but this is only true with (commercial) f1 hybrid plants.  If you’re growing your own self saved seeds, seeds saved in another garden or purchased OP or heirloom seeds, there will always be small differences in the plants.  Perhaps most of these differences will be too small to notice but often there will be good or bad differences that stand out from the others.  It’s very important to preserve the good and discard the bad!

All plants have a sort of genetic drift over time, that left on it’s own will result in plants that are less productive with an accumulation of undesirable traits.

In fact most varieties need periodic ‘grow outs’, where large numbers of plants are grown and seeds selectively saved, in order to clean them up and revitalize them.  By doing this a litte bit in your garden as you go along, you help keep the variety healthy.

DIY plant breeding by selection!

While all plants have chance genetic variations from time to time, plant breeders intentionally create new varieties by cross pollinating two or more plants and creating hybrids.  Once this is done, the genetics of the plants become unstable for several generations.  Arguably the first few generations more plant breeding skill is needed because this is when selection is made for very specific traits.

After the first few generations the basic plant is there, with the traits the plant breeder choose, but the plants are still somewhat unstable.  This is an ideal time for you to take the plant into your garden and finish off the breeding!  At this point the number of chance genetic variations is much higher than usual, so it’s much easier for you to grow a few plants in your garden and choose your favorites to save seeds from.  In this way, you develop your own variety custom made for your own garden.

I’m currently aware of two plant breeders offering plants at this stage:

Ben of Real Seeds

Alan of Hip-Gnosis Seed Development

I’m sure there are others around offering similar seeds, so don’t be afraid to look around the Internet yourself.

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Seed Network: Outbreeding and Inbreeding Depression

This post is simply a follow up from the last post.

I think confusion over cross-pollination and inbreeding depression are what lead most people to give up on seed saving, but it’s really not a difficult concept!  It really comes down to what Real Seeds say in their seed saving guide:

Do your plants breed in groups?

If yes, then you need to make sure the group is large enough and distinct groups are isolated from one another (these two concepts always go together).  If no, than you have a lot less to worry about when you save seeds.

If your plants breed in groups, then they are referred to as outbreeding plants.  Somehow the pollen from one plant travels to nearby plants, usually by way of insects or the wind. Plants that breed in groups are genetically predisposed to needing a large gene pool to stay healthy.

If your plants do not breed in groups, they are referred to as inbreeding plants.  Inbreeding plants usually have entirely self-contained flowers with both male and female elements, the pollen doesn’t leave the plant and they pollinate themselves.  These kinds of plants are genetically predisposed to being tolerant of a small gene pool.

The only slightly confusing part of all of this is that nature is not usually so kind as to give us something black and white, and there are lots of in between situations.  Plants are usually referred to as mostly inbreeding or mostly outbreeding.

Inbreeding Depression

If you save seeds from plants that breed in groups, with too small of a group, you will eventually have problems with inbreeding depression.  This can result in plants that are no longer suitable for growing, but it often takes a number of generations for these problems to emerge.

This can be fine if you’re only saving seeds for your self, and only intend to grow them for a couple of generations.  On the other hand, this can be a serious problem if you share the seeds with someone else who is unaware of the problem.

Plants that do not breed in groups do not develop this problem as easily, but it’s always a good idea to save seeds from a couple of plants to help avoid the problem.

Start with inbreeding plants

When you begin seed saving, you should start with plants that are nearly or totally inbreeding and therefore do not need to breed in a group with nearby plants and do not often accidentily cross pollinate with others.

Popular examples of this are tomatoes, beans and peas.