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Seed Network Update February 2009

New Members

There are a couple of very important new members for the seed network this month.

Brown Envelope Seeds of Ireland joins the list.  While a couple of smaller seed companies have already joined, this is probably the largest.  A special note is they are particularly interested in trades.  If you have something special that could turn into a product a seed company might offer, I think they would love to hear from you!

They have a new blog as well: Brown Envelope Seeds Blog.

A Blog Called Fuggles also joined.  She has a great list of beans, peas, tomatoes and peppers.

Frank in Belgium, with his website called The Vegetable Garden is also offering his seeds as part of the network.  I posted recently about his new website and amazing collection of plants.

Making Requests or Joining

You don’t need to be a member of the seed network to request seeds, just contact the people directly by following the links near the bottom of the Seed Network page.

The seed network is open to anyone who wishes to share their open-pollinated, or self-made hybrid seeds.  See the Seed Network page linked to above or from the front page of this blog for details.  The most important things to keep in mind are seeds offered may not include commercial F1 hybrids, and if you do charge for your seeds it should be a small amount of money.  There’s no preset maximum cost, but you should be thinking along the lines of a few dollars per variety unless there are special reasons why it should be more.  Several people in the Seed Network offer their seeds for free.

You do not need a blog to offer seeds in this network.  If you have another place on the Internet to publish a list of seeds, just send me a link and I will include it in the list.  If you don’t have a place on the Internet to do this, just send me your seed list in an email and I’ll post it here.

Seed companies are particularly encouraged to join!  Understand however that you will be offering your seeds along side people offering free seeds, and in addition you should read this page explaining some of the background and reasons for starting the seed network.

If you have any questions please contact me!

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2009 SSE Yearbook

2009 Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook

It’s that time again, the 2009 Seed Savers Exchange yearbook arrived yesterday.  Not only was it earlier than last year by a few weeks, but I paid my dues late, meaning it was really quite a feat for them to get it to me so quickly.  The payment for my dues hasn’t even had a chance to clear my bank, but I have the seed listing!

As usual, lots of exciting things to look at.  Nearly 700 people offering more than 13,000 varieties.  These figures are down from previous years, but still impressive nonetheless.  Are you looking for that perfect tomato to grow in your garden this year?  If you become a member of the SSE, you can choose one of the 6000 different ones on offer!

Together with the yearbook, was the news this will be the last printed edition. WooHoo!!  I will be so glad to see this printed listing go.  Not only is it cumbersome to search through and wasteful of resources, but it was too expensive to ask their members to pay for the printing and shipping of it.  I think this decision represents a maturing of sorts of the SSE, and an acceptance it’s time to move forward.

There was also the news that member dues would rise by $5 next year.  I think that’s a little unfortunate, given they will save money by not having a printed seed listing.

Those of you who have read my posts in previous years when the SSE yearbook arrived will know I often complain.  While I guess I’m about to commence complaining here, everyone reading this should realize what I want most of all is for the SSE to mature into an organization that best serves it’s members and customers.  It’s goal is to preserve and promote garden biodiversity after all, and I think it should adopt the most universal methods of doing this.

Move Away from High Membership Fees

While you have a lot of projects well deserving of funding, doing this through member fees is going to backfire.  For providing the service of seed exchange, matching people looking for seeds with those offering, you are too expensive.  This can be done for free over the Internet, and there are many other organizations that do it for a lower cost.

Many of your members belong to other seed saving organizations, and having to pay for several expensive memberships simultaneously doesn’t make sense.

While the seeds on offer from the SSE are always varied and impressive, it’s not what it used to be compared to other sources.

Consider centralizing seed requests and charging a per request fee instead.  This will make your seed offerings available to more people at a more reasonable price.

Put Your Seed and Plant Listings into the Public Domain

Keep your member details secret, but allow unlimited access to your seed listings.  Let the power of the Internet give you the publicity you need to become known.  If you make your listing available for download as raw data, then this can be incorporated into other seed listings and talented Free Software computer programmers around the world can design applications for everyone to make the best use of this data.  It will also become a valuable public resource, that even non-members can make direct use of.

In addition, consider cooperating with other seed saving organizations for combined listings and reciprocal recognition of membership.

Stop with the Rhetoric and Attempts to Control People

Your publications are full of statements like

This yearbook is not a seed catalog

or

Some people still use the yearbook as a seed catalog

What does this mean?  Of course this evokes warm feelings, and it’s such a broad statement that no one could possibly disagree with it, but it doesn’t mean anything.

There are certainly a number of members, perhaps the majority, that would like to see their plant material grown in as many gardens as possible.  I also think that given the cost and complexity of ordering say 10 varieties from different people would not be an attractive alternative to buying the same thing from a seed store. Even if someone did this, what exactly is the harm?  Exactly what percentage of your members have expressed objection to someone doing this?

I agree the yearbook is something special, but your members are too smart for such an empty statement.  If there are real issues at stake, make real policy decisions.  If there are no issues at stake, grow up and drop the rhetoric.

The same thing is true with this:

SSE’s Listed and Non-Listed Members[sic] are strictly prohibited from immediately dividing and reselling samples of seeds…

So this is like sharing the unused portion of a packet of seeds right?  What exactly does this mean anyway?  Do you really think your members are going into business selling their samples one seed at a time?

The same thing here:

It is illegal to send plants or cuttings between countries, so no international prices are listed for plant materials.

Just who are you to know this?  The world is a complex place, and this just isn’t true in many cases.

Concentrate on real policies for real cases of abuse, and otherwise think about putting your members’ offerings in the hands of as many people possible, so they can make use of them in the best way possible.  Let your members work out the terms of trade themselves.

Fix Your Published Seed Saving Information

Seed Saving: Tomatillos will not cross-pollinate.  Select fully ripe fruits to save for seed.  Pick at least one ripe fruit from each of several plants.  Squeeze seeds and juice into a strainer and wash, spread on a paper plate and dry.

You’ve listed this information for tomatillos for years now.  Hasn’t anyone ever verified the seed saving information you publish?

They most certainly will cross pollinate, in fact they require a pollination partner in order to set fruits.

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Sustainable Seed Company

A new seed company will soon open it’s doors in Northern California, the Sustainable Seed Company.  Opening day is February 15th, but you can start placing orders now.  You might be thinking why a new seed company is such a big deal, but this one has a few interesting things going for it.

Some of you reading this will know some of the seed growers, in particular Sarah and Andrew also known as the Seed Ambassadors, who travelled through Europe recently collecting and sharing seeds.

Their philosophy is to try to source their seeds from as sustainable as possible places and to provide good information on how the seeds you buy were produced.  Of course all of their seeds are heirloom and/or open pollinated, so you can save and regrow your own seeds if you want.

One of the neat things about this seed company, is their offer for you to participate in their business:

Looking for new heirloom vegetable seed for our catalog is a passion for us. Do you have a vegetable seed that would like to see saved? Send that heirloom seed to us, with it’s complete story so that we can propagate it and share it with the world.

Products from small companies are always something to be treasured.  People who start new businesses are full of energy and motivation, and they really appreciate your patronage in order to get a good start in the world.  I think this seed company is going to be a valuable resource in the coming years, and I would really encourage anyone who is looking for garden seeds to browse through their online catalog and consider buying from them.

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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.