Organizing Seeds: Alphabetically or by planting date?

Organizing Seeds: Alphabetically or by planting date?

When we start to save seeds (or if we still buy our seed) and are left with extra, the question ultimately becomes, how do I categorize everything?

For some a shoebox will do, or at the very least a rubber band can hold all your seed packets together. On the larger side of things, the granary and what has become commodity trading, is another way to organize seeds. For the plant breeder, some system of organization will prove tremendously helpful–categorizing by year, plot, and pedigree etc., tools of the trade.

Our tomato-melon collection mostly originated from a traveler in New England. We were travelin’ ourselves north from CT and because the community of Brattleboro (VT) was on our way, I scheduled a serendipitous visit with a member offering a large collection of tomato/melon varieties. I remember we had to meet on a Friday, because Saturday was some sort of religious event. Both the smell of fresh baking bread and the mothball seed bombs he used to keep mice and other critters from eating his seeds are forever burnt into my memory. I still have the original bag and seed packets–some even have seeds in the them after almost 10yrs! I wonder if any will still germinate after this long….

Currently our seed display/collection (up-cycled seed envelopes) has evolved  from being alphabetized and is morphing into a seasonal scheme.

I’m thinking of doing some research into biodynamic scheduling based on lunar cycling. Will I finally read Steiner’s lectures on Agriculture and understand that there is something more than just Ag as I know it?….well…I suspect this is true but the question remains…Does planting by meteorological cycles help to support the attainment of full potential within the plant life form?  

The journey down the rabbit hole continues…

How do you organize your seed collection?

Post a seed selfie ‘seedie’ on FB.

Participatory Plant Breeding: Breeding for Organic and Low-Input Farming Systems

Here at Backyard Seed Savers, we breed for resource use efficiency under low-input (compost only) conditions. We do not exactly experience harsh conditions, but we do have a very short growing season and cool nights. Our summers are dry, so we try to grow crops well-suited to our agroecological niche.

So why not use the results from almost one hundred years of modern high-performance breeding? Well, while some of this material is useful, it can be genetically homogeneous and from a narrow pedigree. The comparison of the wild stallion and the thoroughbred is illustrative here. The thoroughbred is elite in that the parents have been selected according to their breeding value.  Their pedigree has been carefully tracked and optimized for certain ‘quality’ traits. Modern crop varieties are very similar—bred to be responsive to high-input environments and possess certain quality traits. Yield potential is often only realized with optimal fertility and within a managed environment leading to crop failure under marginal conditions. Wild stallions on the other hand tend to be hardy, but vary in their forms providing a breeding ground where new forms may evolve in response to changes in their natural environment. We believe that like a herd of wild animals, a population of heterogeneous plants supports resilience of the whole over the long-term, particularly under low-input farming systems in diverse, and, particularly marginal environments.

Agroecology: The next buzzword or a grassroots movement?

Chickpeas drying down, communities dying out…all at the expense of the environment.

Since the industrialization of agriculture, alternative voices in the sustainable agriculture movement have fallen on deaf ears. Overtime, a clear dichotomy emerged between models of industrial and alternative agriculture. The industrial model is feasible due to new and improved technologies (mechanization, engineered crops, subsidized transport, fertilizer, and commodity prices, information technology, and capital investment). However, the consequences of external economic dependence (credit, resource inputs, and trade), in addition to environmental (land, water, air, flora, and fauna), and social (rural to urban migration) consequences have over time, given credence to an alternative model of agriculture.