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Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada/Salt Spring Seeds

Several bloggers including me have been writing about their favorite seed sources for a little while now.  Even though I haven’t ordered anything from him in a while, because I’ve found alternative local sources, one of my favorite places over the years has been Dan Jason on Salt Spring Island, off the west coast of Canada.

Dan has two ways of requesting seeds, the first being a traditional online seed company Salt Spring Seeds.  Some of my longest held plants come from here including a few garlic varieties and the Egyptian Walking onion.

The other way of requesting seeds from Dan is through his plant charity Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada.  In this way you can become a member and gain access to some varieties not available to non-members.  If you are looking for a worthy organization to make a donation to, consider this.

With either way of ordering seeds, don’t be surprised if you get a personal email from Dan.  He likes to chat and get to know his customers, as well as let you know he isn’t a faceless corporation.  Dan has written a number of books where he discusses growing and cooking techniques, as well as seed saving and politics.  I’m pretty sure these can be found on the Salt Spring Seeds website or on Amazon, or ask Dan for details.  A few years ago, I did a review of one of them.

Especially if you live in Canada, Dan is someone to keep in mind when you are looking for seeds to grow.

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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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Avoiding Seeds from Monsanto

I’ve recently published some posts pointing out a very high percentage of garden seeds come from the ‘big six’ seed companies, and how it’s very important to buy your seeds from a trustworthy source or you won’t know where they come from.  Retailers that sell any seeds from large seed companies are almost always required to enter into very extensive marketing agreements.  These usually make it impossible to label the origin or F1/OP status of any seeds they sell.

You can be sure any company that sells seeds from Monsanto will be bound by such an agreement, as it’s a well publicized tactic of Monsanto to hire private investigators to track down and sue, or even just threaten to sue, farmers and others who Monsanto suspects are using their seeds in violation of these agreements.

Remember too this is the company that prevented the retail labelling of dairy products containing their rGBH hormone, and their GMO products.

Do you think Monsanto wants their garden seeds labelled for what they are?!

So how do you know what seed companies can be trusted to sell you seeds that don’t come from the agricultural giants?  In the case of Monsanto, most of their garden seeds in North America are sold through a subsidiary called Seminis.  The Seminis web page has a useful list of seed companies that retail their seeds:

http://us.seminis.com/products/hg_dealer.asp  (sorry no link, cut and paste into your browser)

As of the time of making this post the list included the following (with some very familiar names!):

Burpee, W Atlee
Warminster, PA 18974

Dege Garden Center
St Paul, MN 55119

E & R Seed Co.
Monroe, IN 46772

Earl May Seed
Shenandoah, IA 51603

Garden Trends
Rochester, NY 14624

Gardens Alive
Lawrenceberg, IN 47025

Germania Seed Co.
Chicago, IL 60631

Johnnys Selected Seeds
Winslow, ME 04901

J.W. Jung Seed Co.
Randolph, WI 53956

Lindenberg Seeds
Brandon, Manitoba

Mountain Valley Seed
Salt Lake City, UT 84115

Nichols Garden Nursery
Albany, OR 97321

Park Seed
Greenwood, SC 29647

Rocky Mountain Seed Co.
Denver, CO 80229

T & T Seeds, Ltd.
Winnipeg, Manitoba

Tomato Growers Supply
Fort Myers, FL 33902

Willhite Seed Co.
Poolville, TX 76487

When you buy garden seeds, and you want to save and regrow them, it’s very important to buy them from somewhere that doesn’t sell any F1s at all, because otherwise they won’t be honestly labelled for what they are!

Likewise, if you want to buy garden seeds that don’t come from the large seed companies like Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, etc., it’s very important to buy your seeds from some place that doesn’t sell any seeds from these companies, because they won’t honestly label them for what they are!

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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.