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Post by steev on Dec 25, 2011 14:53:41 GMT -5
My gardening priorities, more or less in order of importance are:
Survival; keeping fed
Esthetics; enjoying what keeps me fed
Play; enjoyment of producing what keeps me fed
Curiosity; looking for new things that add to the first three
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 25, 2011 14:56:16 GMT -5
I've been doing some math... I don't have any way of knowing if my community is typical, but I have swapped seeds with about 2% of the families living in my village. By that I mean that I am growing seeds in my garden that they saved from their gardens. (I'm not counting seeds that I've scrounged from farm stands.) The species they have provided to me include: garlic, watermelon, cantaloupe, moschata, pepo, corn, chive, strawberry, cucumber, maxima, potato, beet, swiss chard, carrot, herbs, broccoli, onion, beans, and tomato. So I wonder: Do we live in a hot-bed of plant breeding activity? Or are we just a typical community doing what typical communities do?
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Post by spacecase0 on Dec 25, 2011 19:28:56 GMT -5
joseph,
that is a very good question
if anyone ever figures that out i would love to know
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Post by grunt on Dec 25, 2011 20:30:38 GMT -5
Judging by what I see locally, yours is a unique community. The only seed interaction I see here is on Seedy Saturday, one day a year. I have a market gardener about 1/2 mile from me, and I have managed to give him seed once in 7 years. My local garden club wouldn't know plant breeding from rabbit pellets.
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Post by davida on Dec 26, 2011 10:18:03 GMT -5
I've been doing some math... I don't have any way of knowing if my community is typical, but I have swapped seeds with about 2% of the families living in my village....... So I wonder: Do we live in a hot-bed of plant breeding activity? Or are we just a typical community doing what typical communities do? IMO, especially in the USA, your community is very unique. Although we live in what is called "the garden spot of Oklahoma", I do not believe that even 2% grow vegetables. Your discussions of your community has encouraged me to expand my community. But since I just started seed saving, this will take time. As a reference point, HG now has 958 members. Two percent exchange would be 20 exchanges between members. Beside of you, does the 2% even describe HG excluding the extremely generous Dan, Martin and Holly? David |
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Post by castanea on Dec 26, 2011 11:31:25 GMT -5
Here in the California central valley I dont find that much direct person to person seed exchanging, but what I do find is a fair amount of seed distribution through purchasing items at farmers markets or Asian grocers. I have obtained interesting and unusual seeds in that fashion including waxy corn and Asian melons. And the California Rare Fruit Growers local chapters have winter scion exchanges throughout the state that result in significant redistribution of fruit and nut tree genetics.
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Post by cortona on Dec 26, 2011 12:13:54 GMT -5
here in italy situation are leopard pattern style, in some rural situation seeds excnge from family to family is the norm but in suburbian or semi urban situations it was almost unknow, the seeds savers movement here in italy is just moving is first steps.... but people have the internet resurce..and that give to curius peoples a greath possibility, and for that i thanks hg and all the member here.
i will point that me too i'm offering seeds here and in other webplaces, the work on finding rare verieties here in italy is just started...let see waht we can find!
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 26, 2011 13:08:29 GMT -5
As a reference point, HG now has 958 members. Two percent exchange would be 20 exchanges between members. Beside of you, does the 2% even describe HG excluding the extremely generous Dan, Martin and Holly? In 2011, I swapped seeds with around 47 people on the homegrown goodness forum. (About 5%) Thanks all you clever seed swappers!!! Nearly all of the arriving seed went immediately into one of my selection/breeding projects. Some of them I was very excited about due to it coming from climates that are very similar to mine, or due to it being landrace seed or the offspring of someone's cross pollination project. Others not so much. (I have a hard time getting excited about Okra. I am still acquiring lagenaria seed even though they grow poorly here. And I'm still planting mixta even though I have never harvested a fruit.) Besides what I grew, I am sourcing all of the seeds for my 4 acre garden this year from small growers via person-to-person swaps. They are mostly Internet swaps. Seeds are starting to come back to me that went out from one of my breeding projects. That pleases me. I am adding several dozen new species to my garden next year. There is one market grower in my valley that I consider a local collaborator. We swap significant amounts of seed from many species. She is into deliberate plant trials and crop improvement. The rest of my local swaps tend to be people that have just happened to save seeds from whatever commercial variety or heirloom that they chose by random luck from a seed catalog. Though a few of them are from deliberated choice and long-term maintenance of a variety. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Dec 26, 2011 13:26:51 GMT -5
Oh Duh!!!! It is so easy to get surrounded by something and not even realize it.
My village is very rural. Minimum lot size is 1.3 acres, or 10 acres depending on whether you are in the city or country. The population is overwhelmingly Mormon. The last few years the local Mormon bishop has been strongly suggesting (requiring) every family to grow a garden. It has been a general theme across the whole church since before I was born, but the last few years in my village and the surrounding towns it has become very strongly emphasized.
A few months ago I got a copy of the Bishop's letter to his flock. It was advocating the heavy use of herbicides. A member was offended by that so gave me the letter for my opinion. I will not poison my garden regardless of how much more labor it takes, but I figure that it's better to grow a garden using poisons than to not grow a garden.
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Post by johno on Dec 26, 2011 14:10:28 GMT -5
Seed swaps in my community are practically nil, as far as I know. I'm thinking of setting up something to promote it online. However, I want to give credit to two organizations. First, The Heirloom Seed Shop (where I was the manager for a time). It is a facet of the Food Bank of North Central Arkansas. Baker Creek provides seed at reduced cost so they can sell them locally at catalog prices. This has been responsible for a boom in local interest in heirloom/OP seed. I discovered them in 2002, when the program was in its infancy, and it changed my life for the better. www.foodbanknca.org/The second I want to applaud is Conserving Arkansas' Agricultural Heritage (CAAH) and Dr Brian Campbell at the University of Central Arkansas for starting the Ozark Seed Swap. It began as an annual swap at Mountain View, AR and recently splintered to several locations, making the swaps even more localized. Through this organization I was finally able to easily get in touch with other seed savers in the Ozarks. Before that all my swapping was done via Internet. arkansasagro.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blogThat being said, I recently met some customers at the gun store I work at part-time with whom I swapped seeds. So there is interest locally. There just needs to be a center for contact. |
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Post by synergy on Dec 26, 2011 14:47:34 GMT -5
Joseph, I am glad you cottoned on, I have a branch of my family that is Mormon and while they do not seem to be prolific gardeners that I know of , I do know they were raised with a mindset for preparedness so the idea of seed preservation goes hand in hand. I am doing my first experiments with starting plants from cuttings and so far I have not had the best results but I am going to keep at it and germinating from saved fruit pits , packaged cranberries and dried goji from the health food store etc. Just experimenting to see what I can do . Also I have been investigating this website Plants For a Future for ideas and found it interesting: www.pfaf.org/user/edibleuses.aspx |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Dec 26, 2011 16:58:51 GMT -5
In my immediate local area I'd say that seed saving is almost unheard of. Although a majority of the rural folks in my area do "garden" to a small extent. Usually about 100 to 200 square foot garden chunked in all at once around Memorial Day weekend with seeds and plants from Walmart or Home Depot. I'm not knocking it, fresh veggies are fresh veggies as far as I'm concerned. But that is why I get peeved when people discourage seed saving of rotgut commercial hybrid seed because that is basically what most folks around here are used to, it's pretty much the only likely thing they'd have to work with in an emergency.
Stretching out a bit wider and looking at my farmers market, we've got about 80 or so ag vendors, 45 of which are produce vendors. As far as I know, none of them do much on-farm seed saving other than possibly a tomato or bean variety other than myself and the excellent new farm selling heritage grains and beans. Most of their bean varieties are fairly standard but I'm pretty sure they save all their own seed for their grain varieties as they are old heirloom grains that are not produced commercially. I could be wrong about the extent of other vendors seed saving, but I don't think I am.
Most of my colleagues at market use almost the exact same varieties to such an extent that I can usually look at their display and name the varieties of everything. I'd say 90% of everything grown comes straight from Johnny's or Fedco with the rest coming mostly from High Mowing. I'm pretty certain I'm the only vendor saving seed from biennial crops like brassicas or doing any attempts at breeding my own stuff. One of our big motivations is to help differentiate my display, competition is stiff here.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2011 18:05:56 GMT -5
While I am uncritical of people for having tax subsidized careers, one acquaintance after another gets laid off, and could not figure out why.
Seed swapping is practically unheard of in suburban, southern California. In my town of nearly 40,000 people, I personally know of only two other families, which make a serious attempt at actually eating the stuff.
They will not answer ads for very common varieties, and, in all fairness, oftentimes do not even know what kind of a tree or bush they have, when approached in person. People are pleasant, but surprised that anyone would be interested, because the majority of edible plants were put here, over a generation ago.
Many properties have sleeping areas for labor, the clogged remnants of wells, broken cisterns, cattle troughs, and so on. Larger subdivisions of former farms have property taxes so high that reconditioning them would be cost prohibitive. A third of a city block, comprising only a small part of a once-working orchard, now costs over $1million.
I wonder whether the BLM offers conditional use permits for agricultural purposes, which may lead to a land patent. I'm not greedy but would greatly appreciate the opportunity for a subsistence situation, free and clear of legal encumbrances.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 26, 2011 18:12:22 GMT -5
I'm pretty certain I'm the only vendor saving seed from biennial crops like brassicas or doing any attempts at breeding my own stuff. On the small farm, where I work, I had mentioned that so many baby plants could be free, and this was regarded as a fresh idea. (!) |
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Post by MikeH on Dec 26, 2011 18:46:26 GMT -5
I am doing my first experiments with starting plants from cuttings I'm curious. If you don't mind, what have you been trying to start from cuttings? Regards, Mike |
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