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SAVING OUR SEED HERITAGE - community gardeners set up local seed networks

Michel and Jude Fanton of the Seed Savers Network offer advice to community gardenes on setting up local seed networks.

Removing seeds from their pods prior to drying and storing.

Community gardeners are starting to play a role preserving traditional varieties of vegetable and herb seed by setting up local seed networks.

"Community gardeners can play a vital role in preserving our food plant heritage", said Jude Fanton, director of Australia’s Seed Savers Network.

"Already, community gardeners at Beelerong in Brisbane and Maitland Outreach Community Garden in NSW have set up local seed networks and the UNSW community gardeners in Sydney save seed for replanting.

"Setting up a local seed network enables gardeners to save the seed of traditional herbs and vegetables and swap them with other gardeners. Doing this makes it possible for community gardens to make links with home gardeners and with other community gardens in the region. This is how they can get unusual or rare seed and enlarge the collection of vegetables grown in their community garden.

"At the Seed Savers Network, we advise community gardeners how to set up a network and we list them on our website so that other gardeners in the region can find them. Gardeners might like to set up a social exchange where they swap seeds or cuttings or seedlings", explained Jude.

Disappearing varieties

It’s no secret that the variety of vegetable seeds available to gardeners today is a lot less than it was a century ago. This is due to:

• smaller seed companies being bought out by larger seed businesses and only the most profitable varieties being offered for sale, the others dropping off the seed catalogues and disapparing
• the adoption of a limited number of varieties, many of them hybrids, by commercial growers; these are the vegetables that ripen all at once – a necessity for commercial growers supplying the supermarkets – and vegetables that travel well – as they have to, to get from farm to supermarket.

Community gaardeners have greater choice

"Community gardeners are not limited in what they can grow like the commercial grower is", said Jude. "They can grow all those wonderful, colourful and tasty varieties that the commercial grower cannot and that the supermarket buyer cannot get.

"Take the tomatoes. There’s only a limited variety available from the shops and they are the tomatoes that travel well… that can survive transportation. Their skins are thick and their taste is sometimes… well… let’s say they are less tasty than the traditional varieties.

"Through the Seed Savers Network and through local seed networks, community and home gardeners can get the rarer, tastier varieties unsuitable for commercial growing".

Information about:

• setting up a local seed network in your community garden and obtaining a copy of the Seed Savers Manual that explains how to save vegetable seed - www.seedsavers.net
• Information about the Seed Savers Network and the location of local seed networks: www.seedsavers.net

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PAGE UPDATED... Monday, 15 January 2007