I like to try to mention all initiatives promoting non-commercial seeds, large and small. Peter Brinch recently sent me an email telling me about his initiative and website, Open Pollinated Seeds in the UK, promoting the use of OP seeds as well as seed saving, seed swapping and plant breeding. It all sounds great to me!
Seedy Penpals
Mel and her friend Carl Legge are organizing Seedy Penpals. The basic idea is to match you up with someone for a seed exchange. The details are laid out here. Importantly, this is mostly for people in Europe, but if you live other places she might be able to put you in touch with something similar happening locally. I think she’d like to hear about similar initiatives in other places, so she can find ways of cooperating.
One of the best things about this is Mel is in Amsterdam! Woohoo — another garden blogger in Amsterdam! That makes two of us. Amsterdam doesn’t seem like such a lonely place anymore.
Actually Mel has been around a while, I just never noticed her before. It’s not like we’re welcoming a new blogger, but I still hope you stop by and say hi to her and Carl anyway.
Important Message from Al Kapuler
Both Peace Seeds and Peace Seedlings now have blogs for the posting of annual seed lists.
Hence PeaceSeedsLive.blogspot.com and PeaceSeedlings.blogspot.com are preferred destinations for the availability of our organically grown, open pollinated seeds. Some of our seeds come from public domain plant breeding and contribute to our work of supporting and developing a sustainable food system based on roots and tubers. Thus we continue to grow and select Andean South American and Pacific Northwest USA food plants that have been used for food for thousands of years.
For many of you Alan Kapuler needs no introduction.
For others who may not be familiar with his seeds, in my opinion he has one of the most exciting collections of seeds available. Many are products of his own breeding work, or that of other public domain plant breeders. In particular Alan is known for his work with corn, beans, peas, tomatoes, tagetes, and certainly other things too. Both for beginning gardeners as well as the more advanced, their collection of seeds is a fantastic resource not to be overlooked.
Please consider supporting their work by buying, growing and sharing their seeds.
Kokopelli Ruling
Yesterday the EU Court of Justice made a ruling in the Kokopelli case. I posted about this earlier here.
It’s not great news I’m afraid.
I’ll leave the full interpretation to others out there, but on the surface Kokopelli seems to have lost most of their arguments.
The good news is that farmers cannot themselves categorically be prevented from growing saving and selling their own seeds — but this is not really completely clear in the ruling. This would appear to legalize what companies like Kokopelli do, but not make it much more likely traditional varieties will become more widely grown or slow the erosion of agricultural biodiversity in Europe.
This is perhaps a small step in the right direction, but far from a complete scrapping of the DUS related marketing rules that’s needed.
The fight goes on!
The Snail of Happiness
I came across this site a few days ago, and thought I’d mention it here.
I think it’s written by a she, who’s interested in permaculture, sustainable living and gardening. In her most recent post she mentions she has a PhD in land reclamation:
…which involved studying the re-creation of vegetation systems on restored open cast coal sites. I am fascinated by looking at natural relationships and seeing how these can be applied to physical and social systems created by people. For me, the easiest way to think about this sort of design is in my garden, because I understand the value and function of things like soil structure, micro-organisms, micro-climate, water, pollinators, decomposers and vegetation. But I am increasingly intrigued about how I can apply systems-level thinking to other aspects of my life: starting a new business, working with other people, designing a course for adult learners…
Her blog is already bringing back memories of the first few years of this blog, and I think it’s going to be very interesting to follow as she goes along.
