Learn why you should build your own seed bank and start building your seed security today!
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The Final Backup
I watched a couple of documentary movies the other day. Seeds of Time was done in 2013, and Seed: the Untold Story which was done back in 2016. I made my husband watch them too. If you haven’t seen them, I highly recommend that you do. Seeds of Time is about the Doomsday Vault as it is more affectionately known. The seed vault is the world’s backup of agricultural crops.
Now back in 2016 and 2017, way after the Seeds of Time movie was made, Svalbard Global Seed Vault flooded from heavy rainfall and melting permafrost. Yikes! I remember reading this story in the news and this is what led me to start really securing my seeds in my own at home seed bank. This led to a 20 million Euro refurbishment happening there by the Kingdom of Norway to secure the agricultural crop samples and some of their wild, undomesticated relatives being stored there by countries worldwide.
Many countries have seed banks, and many have been destroyed from power loss, floods, fire, and even war.
The First Seed Bank
Nikolai Vavilov is a prominent figure in the seed-saving world. He was a Russian scientist in the agronomy botany genetics field and is best known for the collection and improvement of wheat, maize, and other cereal crops and identifying the centers of origin of cultivated plants. He had traveled the world to study global food ecosystems. Conducted experiments in plant breeding to improve farm productivity and storing seeds.
He talked to farmers across the globe and understood how and why farmers needed seed diversity in their fields and gardens. The Vavilov Institute or Institute of Plant Industry founded in 1921 was located in Leningrad (now St Petersberg) Russia and held many of these important crops developed by Vavilov and his team of scientists.
Now I can’t talk about this without tears so please forgive me in advance. This is something of a passion for what the scientists did not just for their work but for the future of humanity. Now, back during world war II, Leningrad was under siege for 28 months starting in September 1941. The scientists and botanists at the Vavilov Institute barricaded themselves inside their vaults to catalog, count, and protect the seeds they had worked so hard to save.
The Importance of Saving Seeds
Saving those seeds for future generations to protect people from starvation and helping the world recover after the war was more important to them than their own comfort. They were protecting almost 400,000 seeds of plants from wheat and rice to peanuts, potatoes, and thousands of more varieties in their vault in Leningrad.
During the siege, Alexander Stchukin, Georgi Kriyer,) and Dmitri Ivanov died of starvation at their work desk. They were surrounded by seeds working in the bitter cold and they didn’t eat the seeds to survive. Because they know that their efforts to help future generations were far more important. It was more important to catalog and package the seed to try and get it out of Leningrad to another location.
The future of the food supply was more important.
I mentioned earlier that seed vaults around the world have been lost to war, floods, fire, and loss of power. In the Seeds of Time movie, a delegate from the Philipines tells that their seed bank was flooded then on fire. She is overcome with grief she cannot say how many varieties have been lost.
As my husband and I stop crying my husband turns to me and asks this question:
Why are we relying on a seed bank to hold these and not growing the seeds out each year to produce larger seed stocks and sharing them locally or even across the country?
What a good question! I never want to see people go hungry and starve.
Create Your Seed Bank
I want you to go grab your seeds. Seriously, go grab them, I’ll wait right here for you.
Did you go grab your seeds? If you did, great!
Take a look at your seeds
Really look at your seeds. What are they in? Are they in paper, plastic, or mylar foil packages? Is there a handwritten note about how to grow the variety or the story of where the seed came from?
Where did your seeds come from?
Did you get them from a big box store? Maybe you bought them online or did you get them from your Granddad, your parents, your slightly eccentric auntie?
Did you make a new seedy friend on Facebook and did a seed swap with a random stranger? It’s all good, I ain’t judging. I’m pretty sure I’m the eccentric one in my family and I’ve participated in a bunch of seed swaps with people across the US. I’ve got some cool new varieties to try in the garden that way!
How do you feel looking at your seeds?
What comes to mind when you look at your seeds? Excited? Maybe a little nervous or overwhelmed. Like I have too many seeds and not enough space!
Do you think of the possibilities of them growing? Maybe how they look in the garden or what they will taste like. Does it make you feel independent? Like I got this, I can grow food for my family and neighbors right here!
Seed saving might not even come up for you as you’re looking at your seeds. That’s ok, it didn’t for me either when I started gardening, but oh how I wish I had started seed saving sooner!
Choose One
Now we’ve not quite done with looking at your seeds. I know, I know, I’m making you work today in this training! I want you to look at your favorite variety. If you haven’t got a favorite then choose one that you are most drawn to or interested in. If you have a seed packet, look at it. Really look. Can you see if it is something that is an heirloom or heritage variety? Is it open pollinated? Is it a hybrid?
Learn more about seed types in The Ultimate Guide To Choosing Seeds To Grow
Diversify Your Seeds
This year in your garden is a great opportunity to diversify your seeds. I don’t just mean participating in a seed swap but you can totally do that too and we can kick one off in the Facebook group if you’re interested. What I mean by diversifying your seeds is a little bit of seed saving. Start moving your garden to a regenerative, self-reliant garden and never have to buy seeds again. Seriously. Create your own living seed bank.
Now you can save seeds from heirloom, open-pollinated, and even hybrid seeds. So if you have heirlooms or open-pollinated, hang on a wee bit because I want to talk to those of you with hybrid seeds. Because all is not lost!
What is a hybrid seed?
Hybrids are an intentional, controlled, pollination cross between two inbred parent plants that have traits that the breeder wants to combine. They know the outcome that will happen by crossing these plants. Modern farming relies on knowing the outcome of plants growing. It makes for easier, predictable harvesting.
Hybrid seeds might say F1 or hybrid on the packet. If you can’t tell, it’s worth a quick check online like Claire from OSSI suggested on that podcast episode. It’s also a good idea to see if the variety is patented or check and see if the variety states on it that it is a PVP or Plant Variety Protected.
What if they are patented?
If they are patented or they have a PVP (a variety protected by the Plant Variety Protection Act) on them, you can’t save the seed and need to make sure that they don’t cross with anything in your garden that you plan on saving seeds from.
You can still eat the veggies and that’s all great. I’m still working through Legacy Watermelons and Peppermint Swiss Chard that have PVPs on them, I just rotate growing them if I’m not saving seeds or just let them grow like the Swiss Chard and put them in the compost before they overwinter and start to flower.
Saving Seeds From A Hybrid
You can save seeds from a hybrid if they are not patented or have a PVP on them. Just know that you are going to get a fiesta of plant shapes, sizes, colors, and other traits from the hybrid seeds. And that’s a really cool experiment in itself. Growing a bunch of seeds that you saved from a hybrid is diversity on a show right there!
If you try to save seeds from melon, pepper, or tomato for example from the grocery store, it’s quite likely that it is a hybrid. You could save the seed and grow them out if you want to. I like to err on the side of caution though and urge to do a little research and see if the variety is patented or has a PVP. If you plan on sharing your seed with people later or pledging it as an Open Source Seed Variety then avoid the patent or PVPs and the legal hot water later.
So if your hybrid seed isn’t patented or protected by the Plant Variety Protection Act (AKA a PVP), then you have some great experiments coming to dehybridize the seed and create something open-pollinated!
Open-Pollinated Seeds
Ok so back to you with the heirloom and open-pollinated seeds. You can save those and get a plant back that’s going to be like the parent plant.
I think it’s important to help keep heirlooms going, and maintaining those varieties. There’s a lot of information that we’ve lost more than 90% of the original seed varieties and diversity over the last 100 years. Almost all of those varieties our grandparents, great grandparents, or even great-great-grandparents grew is now lost.
Diversity = Success
But, I think what could be just as important and maybe even more important, is to increase diversity for seeds and plants to cope better with changing climates, pest pressure, disease, and soils.
Our climates are changing, I see it each year here in Utah, the winters are not as much snow, the dust and wind are more, the rain is less for example. My friends and family in Texas had an unusually cold winter. Diverse plants in healthy soil can cope better.
So how do we increase diversity in our plants and seeds?
Free Pollination
I want to introduce you to some wild pollination, sexual reproduction. If you have saved seeds before or even if you have never saved seeds before, I want you to not worry about the accidental crossing of plants in your garden. Let the pollinators get in the plants they want to in the garden. Sure, they may cross with another variety you are growing or maybe your neighbor, but equally, they might not!
Not worrying about pollination and where it is coming from is really quite freeing and it starts to make the process of saving seeds a little less daunting. Why wouldn’t you want to try and make seeds and plants growing in your garden a little better?
Reasons to allow free movement of pollen
There’s a couple of good reasons why you should think about it;
- Your plants start to adapt to growing in your garden from that first year you are growing it and saving the seeds. These genetics to help the plants grow in your garden are being passed to the seeds. Each year you grow and save, the more adapted your seeds become.
- It’s a new legacy you are creating! How cool is it that you are growing and saving seeds from something that you can pass on to your children or your grandchildren? No kids like me? How about your friends or even sharing with other seed savers? You could even pledge it to OSSI!
- It is creating new diversity! We need more diversity to ensure food security. I talk about this a lot, a diverse garden can cope so much better with what we and mother nature throw at it.
How to start building diversity in your garden?
So how do you start this in your garden? The answer is easy, peasy, lemon squeezy!
Save some seeds in your garden!
Don’t get hung up on if they might have crossed in the garden. This is a practice run for you! A way to hone your seed-saving skills. Whatever you grow, you can eat. If you don’t like it, you can always put it in the compost bin and you don’t need to save the seed from everything.
Selection
It’s a great way to practice selecting plants that you might want to save seeds from, ones that have the traits you are looking for!
If you are a member of the Facebook group, you might have seen the picture of the Rouge d’Hiver lettuce seedlings that I shared. These are cold tolerant and can be planted out in my garden way earlier than my wimpy broccoli and cauliflower. Rouge d’Hiver earned valuable space in the early spring garden. You betcha sweet cheeks I’m letting these plants go to seed to save this year to grow again.
I want varieties that are tolerant and hardy in cold temperatures to grow in the garden for winter. I want plants that make it through the winter in Utah, that’s why I’m running some breeding experiments with cold-hardy leeks.
Why you are saving the seeds
My drivers for seed saving and selection will be different from yours though. We want to move to be near family and friends in Texas and I want my cold-hardy crops to grow outside with minimal coverage in the winter. You might have other drivers for saving your seeds.
I want to help you step away from buying seeds every year and start taking control of not just how and where your food is grown, but how and where your seeds are grown. Every single time you purchase seeds, you are starting from scratch in your garden. Seeds have been grown from somewhere else and they need to adapt to where you are gardening. Saving seeds locally in your garden and community is how we start to develop seed security and food security.
I want you to choose your drivers and goals for saving seeds from 1 plant type that you will save seeds from this year. Share your goal for seed saving in the Facebook group and tag your post with #2021SeedSavingChallenge.
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