Baker Creek's Whole Seed Catalog for 2014: IT'S HERE!

Yesterday when I got home from work, I found this really great surprise in my mailbox:

First Seed Catalog of the Year!

It may seem early, but the timing is actually excellent. I've started putting together a presentation on planning the garden for seed saving, to be given in January, and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds' big catalog full of open-pollinated varieties (no hybrids included!) is going to be helpful.

The catalog includes a basic guide to seed saving -- on pages 352-3 -- which I may be able to reference in my talk, but so far I've mostly used Suzanne Ashworth's Seed to Seed in putting together a chart of some important features and seed-saving guidelines of common garden crops. It probably helps that I save seeds from my own garden for some crops.

Anyone going organic and trying to exclude GM foods from the garden is also going to find useful information in The Whole Seed Catalog. For example, on page 61, in the corn section, there's a somewhat astonishing note:

"Each year we have a harder time getting seeds that test GMO-free. It is getting to the point where most heirloom corn varieties test positive for GMO's; even growers in remote areas are having problems with Monsanto's GMO corn."

And on page 11:

"Our company used to carry up to two dozen varieties of heirloom corn, until we began testing for GMO contamination in 2006. Now, we are barely able to offer half that number, since the remainder have tested positive. That's half these fine old historic varieties -- gone, until or unless we can find clean seed for them!"

It doesn't help that corn is wind pollinated. That pollen can probably travel for miles on a strong enough breeze.

There's an old joke about leaving a tip that ends "plant your corn early." That closing line may need to shift to a more serious version: "order your corn early," for people who want guaranteed GMO-free seeds for their corn patch.

Meanwhile, I will keep working on handouts for my talk, enjoying the great catalog, and planning my garden to allow for saving a few more kinds of seeds.

Carrots, Catalogues, and a Mixed Up Plant

What a great time of year it is for gardeners! It isn't meltingly hot outside, but there is still food in the yard to harvest for supper.  The carrots are only just now getting big enough, but it's looking like I can quit buying carrots for a month or so.

The carrots in the yard are extra-sweet, too. These look like they are probably a Danvers-type, but when I planted carrots I had a little bit each of several kinds. I'm not sure when I'll run across a Chanteney or a Nantes, but that will happen eventually, if any of them germinated (some seeds were fairly old).

Other good news is that the seed catalogues have begun to arrive. Seeds Of Change hit the mailbox before Thanksgiving, and Fedco came today. The Fedco catalogue is especially wonderful this year because it contains poems and quotes by Wendell Berry (bio here and a great poem here), one of my favorite writers.

Neither of these first two catalogues is my main source of seeds (that would be Sand Hill Preservation), but they are great for the beginning of planning next year's garden.

Yet more good - or at least interesting - news, is that my key lime tree, a.k.a. "Old Spikey," is in bloom.  The plant is a month or two ahead of its usual flowering schedule, but the year has been weird. How can I be surprised?

Plenty of beautiful, warm weather is forecast for the upcoming week, so we've rolled Old Spikey out of the dining room - its winter home - and out onto the back deck. For the next week, anyway, we will be able to maneuver around the dining room without the risk of being raked by two-inch spines.

Outside this afternoon, Old Spikey was host to some honeybees that must have been grateful, in their own little honeybee way, for some fresh pollen and nectar. The whole plant was haloed with scent and sound - a honeybee oasis!

I hope that everyone else's gardens are lively and productive, too!

The Seeds We Need

I’ve been thinking more about the seed industry ever since reading a copy of The Heirloom Life Gardener, by Jere and Emilee Gettle, co-founders of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.

If you haven’t read the book yet, it contains, among other topics, the story of how the Gettles got started in the seed business.

Jere Gettle noticed back in the ‘70s that seed companies had begun to drop heirloom seeds from their catalogues. It turns out that, over time, seed companies had been adjusting their seed offerings to the public to favor new, hybrid varieties, and, that consolidation of seed companies in the past 20 or so years has reduced, generally, the number of varieties available to home gardeners.

The heirloom varieties are still available due primarily to the work of individuals like the founders of Baker Creek who care about those varieties and who are concerned about the possible loss of biodiversity that we might someday need.

What does this all mean for gardeners?

As the seed industry has developed innumerable hybrids, gardeners have more varieties from which to choose and can select for particular, desired characteristics, such as resistance to common diseases.

Many of the newer varieties are highly productive, but some important characteristics (flavor, for instance) have been sacrificed as other characteristics, such as the ability to produce in hot weather, are selected for.

I’m thinking here of the Heatwave tomato. I notice that this variety hasn’t been on the shelves (at least, not where I've been looking) at the local garden store this year, but a few years back it was prominently displayed and being touted as a great tomato for the South. The year I grew it, Heatwave didn’t perform as well as Rutgers, an open-pollinated variety that was developed in the ‘40s, and no one at my house would eat a second Heatwave tomato after the first one came into the kitchen. I have noticed that a Heatwave II is being offered as seeds in various catalogues, and it may be that this is a newer, tastier version.

Another wrinkle in the seed industry as it is today is that a new, favorite hybrid might disappear from the market at any time, which is annoying. I have had that experience with a canary melon. I found one that I just loved, then one year it was available through only one (expensive, specialty) seed company, and now it is gone from the marketplace.

As a home gardener, it’s hard to know how to address all the changes cropping up in the seed industry. The Gettles started a seed company to insure that a host of heirloom varieties wouldn’t be absolutely lost as the larger seed companies discontinued listing them in their catalogues. Since then, the mainstream catalogues have returned to listing more heirloom varieties, which enables them to keep customers who are looking for a broader range of varieties.

In my suburban garden, I’m working to develop a stable line from my favorite hybrid melon, and when that work is done (in an unknowable number of years), there should be enough seeds to share with pretty nearly everyone who would like to try the newly open-pollinated variety in their own gardens. I’m also saving seeds from my friend The Tomato Man’s yellow and pink Amish tomato. He first grew his Amish tomatoes from seeds he bought more than 30 years ago, and he has been saving seeds from the plants every year since then. He gave me a few plants, and now I’m saving their seeds, too, as backup.

What I’m doing isn’t as far-reaching as what the Gettles are doing, but it’s something. Most gardeners won’t have the resources (time, space) for even this much, but there are bound to be other ways to make sure that the seeds we home gardeners need are readily available over the long haul. It's likely that "voting with your money" is part of the answer, but there is probably more that can be done; I just don't know yet exactly what that is.

Surprise!

The good people at Sand Hill Preservation sent a couple of free packets of seeds with my order. Even though they have included a freebie every time I've ordered from them so far, I still was surprised. Then I read what the seeds were, and I laughed. More tomatoes!

The people up there in the office must know me pretty well and be chuckling mightily (is that possible?) over my imagined reaction, because I had my tomato areas planned out very carefully. Nothing more is going to fit. And yet, as a true gardener, I cannot just not try these seeds.

Luckily, I have time to rework the plan before 20 April (or there-abouts) when the tomatoes go into the ground in my yard.



The seeds are for Olivette Jaune cherry tomato and a red Chinese tomato. According to the catalogue description, Olivette Jaune is an indeterminate midseason producer of "large olive shaped yellow cherry tomatoes. From France." The Chinese is a midseason producer of "4 to 6 oz. red fruits, huge yields." We will learn, soon enough, how disease resistant the two varieties are.

The Wuhib paste tomatoes that were such great producers for me last year came from Sand Hill Preservation (purchased), as did the Yellow Marble cherry tomato (freebie)that produced so much earlier than all the other tomatoes in my yard.

Last year, the Yellow Marble tomatoes were very tart, but I was growing the plant in a container and I have since learned that sometimes the container can affect flavor, so I will be starting a couple of those to plant in the ground, to see if that makes a difference. If they survive (my yard is ground zero for Verticillium and Fusarium tomato wilts), even that will be something to celebrate.