As someone who loves to cook, I've always gotten great satisfaction from growing my own vegetables and herbs. There's something about being able to use ingredients in your meals that come from your own garden. Not that I'm very good at gardening - most of my harvest is due to the plant's ability to survive despite my 'care'.Not so Gramma Trusgnich - the woman could grow anything. She would eat an orange and instead of throwing the seeds out, push them into a potted plant in her living room. A month later there would be an orange tree growing out of the pot. She had a vegetable garden that took up a quarter of her backyard and would grow several varieties of beans, peppers, tomatoes and lettuces. Elsewhere in her yard were lovage, mint, rosemary and sage. Other than the rosemary, I'm pretty sure the others grew up on their own - they just wanted to be there.
By far, my favorite from her garden were the bitter greens that she grew from seed brought with her from Italy. I've never been able to find them in a grocery store, I don't even know what they are - we always called them Gramma's greens. As far as I can remember, she had greens every year, planting seeds that she had harvested from the previous season. I didn't know this at the time, but we were enjoying an heirloom vegetable. Everything else in the garden came from seed packets or plants picked up at the nursery, but the greens were from the old country.
Too bad they're gone now - lost when we lost Gramma unless someone figured out that the old grocery bag in the cellar was garden gold and not trash. And even if I could find the name of that particular variety and then find seeds to grow the greens myself, I'd most likely have to buy new seeds each year. That's because 80% of the seeds available for purchase today are hybrid seeds. Per Wikipedia:
"...hybrid seed is seed produced by artificially cross-pollinated plants. Hybrids are bred to improve the characteristics of the resulting plants, such as better yield, greater uniformity, improved color, disease resistance, and so forth. Today, hybrid seed is predominant in agriculture and home gardening, and is one of the main contributing factors to the dramatic rise in agricultural output during the last half of the 20th century."No big deal, right? In fact, it sounds like industry and science are actually improving on old school farming / gardening. Unfortunately, there's a catch:
"Hybrid seed cannot be saved, as the seed from the first generation of hybrid plants does not reliably produce true copies, therefore, new seed must be purchased for each planting."While it is highly unlikely that I will ever be motivated enough to do so, it concerns me that we are losing the ability to grow our own garden vegetables the way my grandmother did by saving seeds. It is also concerning that the diversity of our vegetable species is being compromised:
"While comprehensive figures are hard to come by, one popular view today holds that thousands of varieties of vegetables and flowers are being lost, due to reliance on commercial hybrid seed. Widespread use of a relatively few mass-marketed hybrid seed varieties, in both home gardening and commercial farming, is said to be eliminating many open-pollinated varieties, especially the local variations that were naturally developed, when local seed-saving was the common practice."In researching this issue, I ran across a number of articles and sites that had more radical concerns - i.e., the agricultural industry is involved in a conspiracy to control the world's food supply. I'm not ready to buy into the conspiracy story but I am ready to buy into heirloom. Once the farmers' markets start up again, I plan to ask for and purchase the vegetables grown from heirloom seeds where available. And instead of purchasing hybrid plants from the local Home Depot, I'm buying heirloom plants from on-line sources. I don't plan to save any seeds but at least I'll be supporting businesses that are doing something to help ensure the diversity of our food.
Sites for heirloom plants and seeds:
http://rareseeds.com/
http://www.seedsavers.org/
http://www.papagenos.com/blog/template_permalink.asp?id=96
Wikipedia sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_saving
Thanks to my sister Amy for the idea for this post and the reference to the rare seeds site.
4 comments:
Great post! And I think it would be a great idea if you and Mr. White made international seed-saving a hobby as you travel.
You could start by heading to Udine province and finding Gramma's greens. :)
And hey, if the conspiracy theorists are right and one day you and Mr. White find yourselves without access to food, you will be welcome to come be part of the Ponce compound.
Thanks! Definitely long post but the whole 'no second generation crops' from hybrid seeds thing was new to me. Good to know that we have somewhere to go if the food supply gets tight!
First of all, I want to know where you're doing all of this gardening. I've lived in your house, and I don't recall a garden there. A river, yes. A balcony, yes. A spiral staircase, yes. No garden to my knowledge.
I'm also a big fan of gardens and growing what you eat. Not that I do any of it at this point, but it's a goal of mine. My mother had a huge vegetable garden when I was very young, and I loved to go pick vegetables for our dinners each night. Something very pure and natural about it.
I also saw a segment on TV a few months ago about seeds. Apparently, the government has an enormous underground refrigerator for maintaining a seed inventory, so that we don't lose species and we have a supply should something very bad happen. Kind of like the Library of Congress, but for seeds. Tried to find some info on it, but haven't. Quite interesting what capitalism has done to our food supply. Can't really argue it though, since it's the only thing that's keeping my employer going right now. . .
Two words - Pot Gardening. And by that I mean put your garden in a pot. This year I had peppers and tons of herbs. Next year, I'm going to put some big planters on the top floor balcony for tomatoes. Maybe I shouldn't use the word 'harvest' - sounds like I have a lot more going on than I do.
And I'm glad to hear about the US seed library - I hope they remembered to save the stuff that re-generates...
I also agree that science and industry have done good things in this area - farmers in 3rd world countries have benefited greatly. I'm not saying we should go back to old school farming, just that we should be careful not to lose the ability to grow crops without seeds that come from a lab.
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