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Vegetarian is the New Prius

This article is about a month old now, but Kathy Freston wrote a really thought provoking article on how what we eat can have a bigger impact on global warming and other environmental issues than the car we drive.

For those people living outside of the US, or perhaps North America, a Prius is a hybrid electric car marketed by Toyota. Together with other hybrid cars and light trucks, they have become popular among people who want to drive a more fuel efficient car.

In the US more petroleum products are consumed each year producing food than by private cars. In addition, a stunning amount of water is consumed and vast quantities of chemicals and animal wastes are released into the environment. This is primarily because of the centralized food distribution and processing system that by now feeds almost everyone living in a developed country. Of course these problems are magnified in the context of meat production, because first crops have to be grown for animal feed, then the animals have to be raised, and the amount of feed they consume is enormous when compared to the meat produced.

Almost all of these problems are avoided when we eat foods that are organically and locally produced. If we eat in-season vegetables we grow ourselves or buy from a local organic farmer, the environmental impact is a tiny fraction of what it is when we buy out-of-season conventionally grown produce shipped in from far away. The same comparison can be made when we buy local, organic and grass fed eggs, meats and dairy products, versus conventional products.

Since most of us will continue to eat conventional food products, one of the most important environmentally friendly choices we can make is by eating fewer meats and other animal products. It can be better for your health too!

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It’s here!

Seed Savers Yearbook

It arrived a few days ago, and I’m really excited. The 2007 Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) Yearbook, their annual list of member offered seeds and plant samples. Nearly 500 pages, and 12,920 unique varieties of plants. The number of unique varieties offered by the SSE is at an all time high! I have just enough time to order a few last things for the garden…

With the the excitement also comes some more sobering news, a 4% decline in the number of listed members. A listed member is one who offers at least one plant to other members via this annual yearbook. This decline comes after more than a decade of steady declines.

Statistics

With fewer members actually sharing materials, the long term viability of the SSE is in jeopardy.

In the introduction, a few explanations were offered for the decline in listed members. First the popularity of their Internet sales, and the ease of being able to place small orders without having to pay a membership fee, may have caused some of their less devoted members to drop out. Another is that some members have complained that seeds they go to the trouble of offering, are not being reoffered by other members. Since this in itself is a symptom of not having a large enough base of dedicated listed members, the problem is potentially self perpetuating.

Like we have been talking about on several blogs this year, in spite of all the excitement being seen now surrounding growing heirloom foods and seed saving, the actual numbers of people doing it continues to be in decline.

It takes time and trouble to become a listed member in the SSE. The first year you have to become an unlisted member, read the materials and understand how it all works and perhaps order some seeds to get started with. You have to grow the plants in your garden that will produce the seeds you can offer to other members, and if you don’t have a lot of gardening experience learning this can also take some time. It can take two or three years, or longer, before you can start offering plants. It’s important to get focused on the issue, and get started as soon as possible.

In the meantime, those of you in the US, be sure and visit the SSE website and support them financially by buying products from them.

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Learning Latin

For people who save seeds or breed their own varieties, learning the Latin names of your plants can tell you a lot about them. For example, if you want to know if plants will cross pollinate with each other, the Latin name can give you clues to this. The Latin name can also give you clues about hardiness, cultivation methods and so on. Scientists assign Latin names in order to group similar plants together.

Another reason for using the Latin names for plants, is it eliminates confusion caused by local languages. When a vegetable is called a swede in the UK and a rutabaga in the US, and you don’t know what to call it when talking to a German speaking gardener, calling it Brassica napus eliminates the confusion!

I’m just going to list a few examples here, for a more complete listing you should consult a seed savers manual or a plant dictionary. There are a number of online resources for this as well.

Latin names contain three parts the family, genus and species. For vegetable growers, the most important families are Amaryllidaceae (Onions and related), Brassicaceae (Cabbages and related), Chenopodiaceae (Beets and related), Compositae (Lettuce and related), Cucurbitaceae (Pumpkins and related), Leguminosae (Beans and related), Solanaceae (Tomatoes and related) and Umbelliferae (Carrots and related).

Lets have a closer look at one of these families, for example the Brassicaceae family. Most plants are referred to by their genus and species, so in the above example of Brassica napus, Brassica is the genus and napus is the species. Here are a few more common examples within this family:

Armoracia rusticana: Horseradish

Brassica oleracea: Cabbage, Broccoli and others

Brassica rapa: Turnip, Chinese Cabbage and others

Eruca sativa: Rocket

So how can you use this information? Well let’s say you wanted to grow turnips next to rutabagas (swedes), and you want to know if they will cross. The Latin name for turnip is Brassica rapa, and for rutabagas Brassica napus. By looking at the Latin names it is not completely clear in this case, because they are from the same genus but different species. Again based only on the Latin names you could conclude that a cross would be less likely to occur with Rocket (Eruca sativa), because both the genus and species are different, but in fact a cross between plants of different species doesn’t usually happen, so growing rutabagas and turnips next to each other would probably not result in a cross.

What about other kinds of genetic compatibility? Rebsie on Daughter of the Soil recently discussed grafting potato scions onto tomato root stock, for the purpose of making large numbers of potato seeds (not to be confused with seed potatoes!). A scion is the term for a branch or piece of foliage, cut in a way that is intended to be spliced to the roots of another plant. Let’s look at this from the point of view of the plant’s Latin names. Both potatoes and tomatoes belong to the family Solanaceae, and the Latin names are as follows:

Lycopersicon lycopersicum: Tomato

Solanum tuberosum: Potato

In this case the genus and species are both different, but being in the same family it seems is enough compatibility for the plants to be grafted together. It’s very unlikely these two plants would ever cross pollinate with each other however.