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Learn more about organic seeds and the Seeds of Change difference... View |
eNewsletter #13, September 7, 2000
Dear Gardener,
The theme for this issue is Seed Saving (shown above, Seeds of Change Everlasting Starflower seeds... click on image to zoom in). Why is the saving of seeds important? We have suffered a frightening loss of varieties over the years. For instance, comparing the USDA's number of commercially-available seeds listed in 1903 to how many of those same varieties are still available shows: Beans 578 then, 32 left; Lettuce 497 then, 36 left; Tomatoes 408 then, 79 left. Sure, new varieties have been developed, but most of the old varieties are now totally lost along with their valuable genetic characteristics. The F1 hybrid varieties, usually bred for shipping and uniformity, lack many of the best features of the old tried and true heirlooms.
"In New Mexico, Hispanic farmers were initially interested in the higher-yielding corns provided to them by extension agents. Within two years, however, many of them returned to growing their native corn, as if the introduction of the hybrids had never happened. When extension agents inquired about this reversal, the farmers explained that their wives liked neither the taste nor the texture of the introduced corn, and refused to use it for making tortillas. One by one, the farmers returned to growing the corns favored by their wives. To this day over much of New Mexico, blue Pueblo flours and flints are grown for tortillas and cornmeal, and Mexican Junes for white hominy, while hybrids are preferred only where corn is grown for animal feed." (Enduring Seeds by Gary Paul Naghan).
In his latest book, Life Is A Miracle, Wendell Berry writes, "For the human necessity is not just to know, but also to cherish and protect the things that are known, and to know the things that can be known only by cherishing."
As backyard gardeners, you not only can enjoy conserving biodiversity by saving your own seeds, but also learn how to gradually adapt favorite plants to your garden's own special ecological niche resulting in better disease and insect resistance, drought resistance, flavor, vigor, and hardiness. In this issue we give you the basics and point you towards resources for more in-depth coverage.
Being in the organic seed business, we have always cherished the astounding, lovely variations of these tiny packages of life. We share some of our favorites here as we discuss how they are saved season to season.
Plus, for fall harvest, what to do with some of the excess abundance we all enjoy this time of year.
Thanks for your continued support of sustainable agriculture.
Dave Smith, Editor
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In this issue...
- Why Gardeners Save Their Seeds
- Seed Saving Basics
- Buffalo Bird Woman on saving squash seeds
- A Tribute to a Guardian of Garden Diversity
- NEW! Seed Saving Kit - 10% off
- Last call for purchasing organic fall planting garlic
- Fall Harvesting: Too Many Tomatoes?
- Sir Albert Howard added to our Organic Hall of Fame
- More great gardening tips from our Garden Help Forum
- Our Customers Comment
- Recommended Links: Vandana Shiva, Stevia, Zucchini Time
- Seed Donation Story
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Why Gardeners Save Their Seeds
Alan M. Kapuler, Ph.D. is Co-Founder and (recently retired) Research Director, Seeds of Change.
Seed saving is the resource base of our society. Without it, there is no continuity in the cycle of life. To continue the cycle is to continue society, like raising a family; you hope your children will come of age in a better society. With seed saving and selection, the principle is to narrow down the desired characteristics from many plants to a single one, and then to grow out many more plants in a stable line from the one you have selected so these characteristics are passed on: This is the principle of "from the many, one, and from the one, many." Although populations are more successful at adapting than individuals, change occurs on the level of the individual rather than that of the population as a whole. Those individual plants best adapted to our evolving environmental conditions are inevitably the ones that we select as gardeners.
I'm a child of the 1960s, of the peace and love revolution, and I lived for a while in a commune in Jacksonville, Oregon. One night I was cooking dinner at the commune. I cut the bottom off a bulb of garlic, threw it in the compost, and sauteed up the rest. Then I realized, how come I'm throwing away the part that's alive, the part that grows the roots? I realized in that instant how wasteful it was, and what violence it was to a living thing. By snibbiting-using the top of a head of garlic and replanting the bottom, which roots and grows again-you don't have to kill anything. Likewise, when I cut a squash open, it's important to save the seeds and grow them. You can eat with one hand and plant with the other, which is a marvelous thing to do.(Shown here, Seeds of Change Howden Pumpkin seeds.)
I realized that to change the world, the core issue is violence, whether the violence is done to the earth, to one another, or to the biosphere. They are all interconnected through the food system. So in preparing one meal, I realized that the food system was at the core of nonviolence. Nonviolence provides the answer; it holds the key to peace and love for all of us, and it is what still motivates my work.
Saving seeds is easy and amazingly productive. Say you grow broccoli. You have 25 broccoli plants and you eat 22 of them. Leave a couple of real nice ones. They flower, then they make seeds. After they make seeds you have a few more things to do. On the leftover plants you then get a green pod that gradually dries out and turns brown. When it splits, you take out the seeds and dry them up, put them on a sheet or in a pan and you knock the seeds out. The fertile seeds roll (as is true of all brassica seeds: cabbage, kale, etc.). And here it is here you get this big cup or more of seeds. (I got over 480 grams, that's over a pound, from one kale plant.) If you're in a dry climate, you can put them out to dry and then put them in a plastic bag and put them in the shade to cool. Then you store in a dry, cool place. There should be no change in germination for years. (Shown here, Alan in his seed room. Seeds are saved in envelopes, plastic bags, papaer sacks, buckets, and cartons.)
The advantage of doing that is that you have a bag of seeds that you can plant year after year that gives you beautiful broccoli, you've completed the cycle, you can share it with neighbors, and it has come out of your own garden with no expenses to deal with.
I have a food dehydrator with stackable shelves and a rheostat that allows temperature control. With tomatoes, for instance, where you take the fruits and you squeeze out the juice and you let them sit for a couple of days, let them ferment so the fertile seeds drop to the bottom and catch them on a screenÉI put them in the dryer overnight at 95 degrees. I put all small seeds in it and they are dried well. Then I store them in plastic seeds in the dark and they're stableÉgood for years. I use the drier so I can dry different kinds in the same drier operation. The rule of thumb is 95 degrees overnight. With larger seeds, like squash seeds, I leave them in for 2 days. (Shown here, Seeds of Change Red Splash Calendula seeds.)
If you like certain crops, like tomatoes, you can grow hundreds of kinds. Then you find there are one or two unusual plants. If you want to grow unusual plants, then you do need to save seeds because then you have the option of using your own intelligence and your own taste to select out what you grow.
Seeds are a miracle to me! I have a handful of tree seeds here in the palm of my hand which are going to be these colossal plants. I have a redwood seed in my handÉit's a huge tree. Can you believe it? You plant the seed and thirty years later you've got this immense tree. Uncanny! The longer I live, the most amazing thing are the big trees. Creatures live in them in all categories, from the top to the bottom. They provide shelter and food and the wherewithal that makes life worthwhile.
Good gardening gets you into a place where you feel good about your life and maybe that time is more important to your life than a lot of other things you do. So the gardening and the seed saving combined give a wholistic aspect to it.
It's all about the young ones, the fertility of generations, growing old, nurturing generation after generation. Loving what is growing and alive,being tickled by diversity and variety and the beauty involved in all these aspects of being alive. Without that, we're missing the point and missing our lives.
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Seed Saving Basics
Howard-Yana Shapiro, Ph.D., is Vice President of Agriculture, Seeds of Change and author of our book Gardening for the Future of the Earth.
Gardening is all about the interdependence of nature-and the independence to grow what you like to eat and what pleases your eye. Follow your passions by learning the basic tenets of seed saving and you will find yourself growing fewer monocultures in a garden of diversity, and tending plants with greater resistance to disease and blight.
Boone Halberg, one of the world's foremost corn experts, is a sharp, witty, and gentle individual who works at the Institute of Technology in Oaxaca, Mexico. He is an expert in plant diversity, especially in the fertile Oaxaca Valley, southeast of Mexico City, which has been farmed continuously for over eight thousand years. Native cultures in the region today remain close to their agricultural heritage; ancient varieties of corn interplanted with squash and beans cover the rolling valley floor, and teosinte, the ancestor of corn, can still be found growing in fields. Halberg explains that Oaxaca has been a crossroads of plant and animal migration for millions of years. The region forms a unique continental bridge between the Sourthern and Northern Hemispheres, one that has allowed species to travel between the two. Halberg describes the process that has taken place over millennia whereby teosinte was most likely selected into what we know as our modern corn. Farmers have continually chosen varieties of corn for desirable characteristics such as size, flavor, vigor, nutrition, and beauty, and adapted their selection to their particular piece of property. Today, in the state of Oaxaca, there are eighty-five thousand farmers who grow corn, and they all have at least one of their own varieties. Thus, there are a minimum of eighty-five thousand varieties of corn-true biodiversity.
In time gone by, gardeners and farmers saved their own seeds from the plants that they grew. Wild plants were domesticated and passed down through the generations, and crop diversity flourished, as it still does in Oaxaca. Seed saving used to be a necessity on a global level, and countless families brought their best and most familiar seeds with them when they emigrated to the United States. The inexorable move from farms and rural areas to the cities and suburbs over the past few decades has diminished the enormous diversity of this seed stock. Today, the major source of seeds is large seed companies, which, because of their size and the economies of scale that they operate with, are not well adapted to preserve and offer true diversity.
The number of seed companies has shrunk dramatically, even during the last twenty years. Suzanne Ashworth observes in her book Seed to Seed that most of those going out of business have been, or are, smaller companies (often family-held endeavors) "that had been rich sources of unique varieties, The collections being dropped, which sometimes represent the accumulated life's work of several generations of seedsmen, are often well adapted to specific regional climates and are resistant to local diseases and pests. Far from being obsolete or inferior, these may well be the best home garden varieties ever developed. It is entirely possible that half of the non-hybrid varieties currently available from seed companies could be lost during the next decade." This makes it all the more vital that we each take action to perpetuate the rare heirloom, traditional, and open-pollinated varieties. (Shown here, Seeds of Change Peruvian Purple Chile seeds.)
Most gardeners no longer save their own seeds, and most seed companies prefer hybrids because they are more profitable. The large seed companies, many of which are owned by large multinational chemical companies, tend to market proprietary, genetically inbred hybrids that are unique-and secret-in composition and production rather than more diverse open-pollinated varieties. Unfortunately, what is good for the bottom line of these multinationals is not necessarily good for the independence of gardeners, for diversity, or for the security of our food supply. Most hybrids are unsuitable for seed saving because either they do not breed true or they are sterile. These traits place farmers and gardeners in a position where they must purchase new seeds each and every year. Hybrids also allow for ease of commercial harvesting, since the plants are genetically similar and tend to mature at the same time; however, this trait is usually not desirable for home gardeners who eat what they grow and generally need their crops to mature over an extended period of time. The genetic uniformity of hybrid plants also makes crops more susceptible to epidemic disease.
"Many of us remember our grandmother's seed jar and the paper bags of seed pods drying in the kitchen," writes Bill Mollison. "It is a public scandal that these seeds have now been patented or subjected to legal controls, It is also scandalous that large multinational corporations have gained control over our main food plants via seed patenting. Without dedicated home gardeners, the diversity of seeds of our staple foods could not exist. Such seed resources are only safe in the hands of people who save and grow them and eat their bounty." Fortunately, there are an increasing number of gardeners who save their seed year to year.
Alan Kapuler also has strong opinions about patenting of specific plant lines by large companies: "I can't stand the patenting of stuff that is divine-it's not ours to own, We started a long time ago with systems that endorse violent behavior-the lion-eats-the-gazelle mentality. But we need to abandon this way of thinking, as way that's based on the idea of kingdoms, and replace it with thinking that's based on systems of kinship. We can take the gene pool we have and work with it to retool our ecology.
Ashworth notes in Seed to Seed that "seed saving offers gardeners the opportunity to grow a bit of history in their own backyard. For thousands of years, seed savers have been the stewards and guardians of this valuable and irreplaceable genetic heritage, Vegetable gardeners must do everything in their power to maintain what remains, because extinction is forever."
What to Collect and When
Once your plants are ready for seed harvesting, select the seeds of those plants that are free of pests and diseases and display desirable characteristics such as best flavor or high vigor. Make sure that these plants are marked or distinguished so that you, or members of your family, do not harvest and eat them by mistake! Likewise, protect them as far as possible from birds and other natural predators. Of course, in some cases, such as tomatoes, squash, and melons, you can both extract the seeds and eat the fruit. For vegetables such as carrots, turnips, and radishes, the roots can be eaten and the green tops (attached to the very top of the root) can be planted. They will then flower and yield seeds. Similarly, for onions and garlic, the bulb tops can be eaten and the roots (attached to the very bottom of the bulb) can be replanted to yield seeds. (Shown here, Seeds of Change Great Blue Lobelia seeds.)
In her book Seed to Seed, Susan Ashworth makes a number of practical suggestions for plant selection in saving seeds. "Plant characteristics to consider during selection could include earliness, disease resistance, insect resistance, drought resistance, stockiness, vigor, color, lateness to bolt, hardiness, uniformity or lack of it, and trueness-to-type, Only plants that display good vigor should be selected to save for seed.
For example, with plants such as lettuce, brassicas, and root crops that bolt, or go to seed, at the end of their productive season, it is advantageous to select seed from those plants that are slow to bolt, thus extending their edible stage. After selecting individual plants with a prolonged leaf stage over a sufficient time period, it is possible to develop exclusively late-bolting varieties. In doing so, you perpetuate those plants that can be harvested for eating for as long as possible before going to seed.
One of the characteristics that gardeners care about the most is flavor. For those crops whose flavor you enjoy and that yield continuous pickings, such as peas or green beans, it is best to save the most vigorous bushes and leave them completely alone and unharvested until the pods are dried and the seeds are ready to save; meanwhile, harvest for food consumption the yield from the remaining plants. When lifting root vegetables for the winter, select the largest, healthiest, and most representative of the crop.
Ashworth advises that population size is of paramount importance in seed selection: "To avoid decreasing the genetic diversity within a crop, seed should be obtained from the greatest possible number of plants that meet the selection criteria. Maintaining the genetic diversity within a population is the key to continued evolution and the ability of plants to adapt to varying environmental conditions." It is important never to select only the largest or best-looking fruit for seed, which could create a bottleneck that eliminates most of the genetic variability in that variety. Ashworth suggests, "Instead, always strive to save an equal amount of seed from as many plants as possible that are the most true-to-type within the population." (Shown here, Seeds of Change Ruby Orach Mountain Spinach seed.)
Seed Saving books - 5% off on Website
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Gardening for the Future of the Earth from Seeds of Change provides a background on why seed saving is so important and resources for further education. It also brings together for the first time the techniques of the great pioneers of organic gardening, creating a program that can easily be used by home gardeners: permaculture, biointensive, biodynamic, and kinship gardening. One individual with a digging fork and a small garden can make a difference.
Seed to Seed provides valuable reference information on a large number of vegetables and their seeds, including taxonomy, pollination characteristics and techniques, and general seed production, harvesting, and processing techniques.
Seed saving articles and tribute adapted from our book Gardening for the Future of the Earth by Howard-Yana Shapiro, Ph.D., Vice President of Agriculture, Seeds of Change, and John Harrison; and from a recent interview with the editor. Photographs by Scott Vlaun. Seed photographs in this newsletter by Dave Smith. Copyright 2000 Seeds of Change. All rights reserved.
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Buffalo Bird Woman on Saving Squash Seeds
Always near the fireplace in our lodge there lay a piece of scraped hide about two feet square. It had many uses. When boiling meat we would lift the steaming meat from the pot and lay it on the hide before serving. We also used the hide for a drying cloth.
This piece of hide I drew near me when I was breaking ripe squashes; and as I removed the seeds I laid them in a pile on the hide. Squash seeds, freshly removed from the squash, are moist and mixed with more or less pulpy matter. To remove this pulp I took up a small handful of the fresh seeds, laid a dry corn cob in my palm and alternately squeezed and opened my hand over the mess. The porous surface of the cob absorbed the moisture and sucked up the pulpy matter, thus cleansing the seeds. As the cleansed seeds fell back upon the hide I took up another handful and repeated the process.
If there was a warm autumn sun, I often carried the hide with the cleansed seeds upon it, and laid it on the floor of the drying stage outside for the seeds to dry; but if the day was chill or winter had set in, I dried the seeds by the fire.
When quite dried, the seeds were put in a skin sack to be stored in a cache pit. The storing bag was often the whole skin of a buffalo calf, with only the neck left open for a mouth; or it might be made of a small fawn skin; or it might be made of a piece of old tent cover and shaped like a cylinder.
Storing the Unused Seed Squashes
It was our custom to remove to our winter village in the leaf-turn-yellow-moon; it corresponds about to October. I remember the leaves used to be falling from the trees while we were working about our winter lodges, getting ready for cold weather.
When moving time came in the fall, any squashes left over in the lodge, uneaten, were stored in a cache pit until spring. But it was a difficult thing to store these squashes so that they would keep sound; and when spring came many of them would be found to have rotted. Some families were more careful in making ready and storing their cache pits then were others. Squashes kept best when stored in carefully prepared pits.
On a family's return the next spring the cache pit was opened; and the squashes that had kept sound could be used for cooking, and their seeds could be planted. The number thus stored over winter was not large. The seeds of rotted squashes were just as good to plant as were the seeds of the sound squashes.
We carried no squash seeds with us to our winter village. For our spring planting we depended on the seed we had left stored in the cache in our summer lodge, in my father's family.
The seeds of a ripe squash are swelled and plump in the center; those of a four-days-old squash are flat. We could tell in this way if squash seeds were ripe.
From Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden - Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians.
Our all-time most popular book - 5% off
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A Tribute
...to a Guardian of Garden Diversity, Curtis Showell is a tall, lanky farmer who lives on his family's land in Bishopville, Maryland; born in Virginia, he has lived in this area for nearly forty years. The land he works has been worked by several generations of his ancestors. "I got three bloodlines. On my dad's side of the family, I come from the Wooster Indians. On my mom's side, well, she is basically the same tribe Pocahontas was." (The third line is African-American.) With a wide interest in all of the cucurbits (except cucumbers), Curtis has amassed a world-class collection of seeds; it is a collection orchestrated by a self-taught genius. As a child, Curtis was taken with the growing of food. The family garden has always been a source of pride.
I started out when I was a kid. I was about eight years old. A seed catalog came to our house, and we ordered seeds for the family garden. The next year when the catalog came I noticed that some of my favorite varieties had disappeared out of the catalog. There wasn't a thing wrong with them. A lot of them were superior to these today. They had better flavor and their keeping quality was good. With some of the new stuff, the keeping quality is not that good and the taste is overrated. So I started collecting-no one else in the family, just me. I guess it was my instinct; after I had seen the disappearance of seeds, I said I had better hold on to this here and stop wasting it. I have been collecting and growing ever since. I think they should be preserved for the next generation." The list Curtis maintains is overwhelming: over a thousand varieties of squash and pretty close to a thousand varieties of melons. He uses the best criteria that any grower can when choosing which seed to collect and grow: taste. "I test them by eating what I grow and letting other people sample them too, to see if they agree with what I say. Of course, I have to pretty near shoo them away when the crops start to come in," Curtis says with a chuckle. In an age of ever-growing complexity, we are lucky to know gardeners like Curtis Showell. (Shown here, Seeds of Change Malali Watermelon seeds.)
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NEW! Seed Saving Kit - 10% off
We are introducing the Garden Keepers Seed Saving Kit for 10% off during September only.
- Ten airtight, glass-topped tins
- Glassine seed envelopes with labels
- Seed collection & storage bags
- Stakes for marking collection plants
- Seed desiccant
- Twine, bands, and pencil
- Seed tin labels
- Reference guide for collecting, cleaning, storing, and trading
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Last call for purchasing fall planting organic garlic We begin shipping garlic in a couple of weeks. There are still plenty of the following two varieties...
- Certified Organic Italian Easy Peel Planting Garlic
- Certified Organic Mother of Pearl Planting Garlic
and a few left of these...
- Certified Organic Chesnok Red Planting Garlic
- Certified Organic Inchelium Red Planting Garlic
- Certified Organic Tipatilla Planting Garlic
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Fall Harvesting:
Too Many Tomatoes? The authors write: After some years of growing our own vegetables, the we began to accumulate the knowledge of handling the harvest, and pooled our efforts in search of a variety of good recipes for each home-grown delicacy. It may seem trite to point out that a can of mushroom soup and a few frozen onion rings are not fine complements for snap beans freshly plucked from the vine. These recipes are simple, honest food preparations, with an occasional indulgence in a cream sauce. They are varied and interesting, for a range of needs from hors d'oeuvre to desserts.
We have devoted a chapter to each vegetable conducive to backyard gardening. The introductory text to each chapter includes general information, a brief summary of growing requirements, calorie, carbohydrate, and food value information, and detailed instructions for harvest, storage, and cooking. The basic cooking preparation is included in the introductory texts. Chapters are: Asparagus, Beans, Beets, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Chard, Corn, Cucumbers, Eggplant, Lettuce, Onions, Peas, Peppers, Potatoes, Spinach, Squash (Winter, Summer), Tomatoes, Turnips, Anything and Everything.
Too Many Tomatoes - 5% off Website only-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sir Albert Howard
...has been added to our Organic Hall of Fame. The gentleman who started the organic farming and gardening revolution takes an honored spot in our Organic Hall of Fame.-------------------------------------------------------------------------
More Great Gardening Tips
from our Garden Help Forum
"I was just reading some info on the Green Revolution and I was wondering if someone could help me understand something in such a way that I could explain it to others. What do chemical fertilizers do to encourage "short term", or should I say, seemingly quick and abundant crop growth, yet in the long term it promotes chemical dependency and destruction of the life of the soil? What are the fertilizers doing and how is this different from organic-based fertilizers? I ask this question partly because of an e-mail that was sent earlier this month about plants not doing too well because of the fertilizers that are used to promote their growth so that they will look good to consumers. Explain this please, if anyone understands what I am trying to say?" - K.D.
Hi K.D.,
Commercial fertilizers are generally chemical industry based from crude oil, a non-renewable resource. They also add tremendous amounts of salts to the soil. Continuous use of these forms of fertilizers, in part due to salt and also the "quick action" that causes ph changes in the soil at a drastic rate, kills or stunts natural microbial and soil organisims. If you get a chance sometime, ask a chemical farmer to let you dig in a planted field and look for something simple like earthworms....then dig some good organic soil to compare.
A quick chemical fix is like fast food...you do get the result, but it is temporary and the side effects fattening, etc. Nothing like a real meal...and the same goes for feeding the soil.
Hope this helps understand a bit better.
Don Dunklee, Certified Organic Grower, Michigan
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"Does anyone know (or know sources of information) about the ecology of Gnat insects, especially regarding non-chemical methods of control? We are situated in the Southern Highlands of North Carolina. Thanks in advance for advice and insight." - A.T.A.
"What you need to do is obtain a couple of empty liter pop bottles. Pour a burgundy wine or red wine in the bottom of the bottle. Replace the lid and then poke two or three holes with a phillips head screwdriver in the side about three or four inches from the top. This works wonderfully. However, the most important thing you can do is to clean the surface of counters off and keep food put away!" - Gary
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"Good morning. I have a lot of "snails" in my yard..they appear to be snails, they have two little antenae sticking out the top of their heads..although they are not accompanied by a shell. Are they slugs? They are much in evidence around the "on a stool-close-to-the-ground" birdfeeder and my worm/compost bin. I've checked my gardening books but no help forthcoming. What does this indicate about my yard environment? Thanks." - Shirl
"Sounds like slugs to me. As an animal rights vegetarian, I am normally very forgiving about "all creatures great and small"....but if they are slugs....I give no quarter (nuke em is the first thought that comes to mind when I see the little monsters). A good way to keep them out of your garden beds is diotameceous earth. Copper wire also is supposed to work. You can tell where they have been in the early morning by looking for a silvery slime trail. They will go after your plant's leaves, they seem to particularly love my marigolds. They also were getting into my dog's dish, until I placed it in another dish with salt in it." - C.J.
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Our Customers Comment
Dear Seeds of Change,
I have been purchasing your seeds for several years now and always spread the wealth into my friends gardens. The great flowers you sell always re-seed and give me a second summer of glorious beauty. My next door neighbor planted some African Marigolds this year from some local greenhouse and I planted your African Marigold seeds (shown here). Our gardens are not 50 yards apart and his flowers are covered with some kind of black fungal growth. My Seeds of Change flowers seem immune to the fungus and are doing beautifully. I tell him it's because they have healthy, intact immune systems because they are organic and we chuckle. The best part is he asked for your web site address and is going for a healthier garden next year. Thanks so much for your company. P.S. My Mexican Sunflowers are over 9ft. tall! - Maria Evans, Princeton, NJ.
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eNewsletter Response
We received several emails from our last newsletter asking readers for their best tips on dealing with pests. This was one of the most comprehensive...
"I've been gardening organically in various parts of the country for over 25 years now, and here are some of the things I've done to manage various pests:
- Plant leaf lettuce as the garden border. It will keep the rabbits happy so that they don't have to go deeper into the garden to munch, and there will still be more than enough for the family table.
- Intercrop with flowers and herbs that repel the specific pests you are troubled with.
- Place birdfeeders in or near the garden. The birds will help control cabbage moths and other insects.
- Don't remove wasp/hornet nests from nearby property (the garage overhang, at our present house, is a popular nesting place and is close to the garden), as the residents will also help with pest control.
- Never plant the same thing in the same spot the following year (our garden is long and narrow, bordering the house; kohl crops are at one end, tomatoes and peppers at the other, leaf and vine crops in the center this year, and all will rotate for next year).
- Plant more than you need. Share surplus with the neighbors, and don't fret if the bugs and bunnies get some; there will still be plenty for you.
- Plant a second (and even third) crop later in the season when the bugs that are a problem may not be willing to move from the other gardens they've found or aren't in their "seeking" phase. The extra crops will ensure that you have plenty for your freezer or for swapping with neighbors.
- Insects can often be relocated to an area where they'll do little or no harm. Pick the worms off the cabbages, place them on a large outer leaf, and move them (leaf and all) to the compost pile. They'll live out their lives, and you'll have them off your crop. A good spray with the hose nozzle can dislodge aphids, spider mites, etc., from the underside of leaves.
- For the "pests" with two legs: We use stepping stones to mark where the neighborhood kids can stand to pick berries; they know they have free access to what they can reach from there and are content to leave the rest for us.
Susan Posch, Boone, Iowa
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New Recommended Links
Tips on preserving, harvesting, curing and drying gourds (Shown here, Seeds of Change Bowl Gourd seeds.)The BBC "Reith 2000 Lectures: Respect For The Earth" features the Prince of Wales, Vandana Shiva, and Tom Lovejoy on Sustainable Development and Biodiversity
The United Nations has created an Organic Agriculture website... worth a visit, especially if you are an organic farmer
You can donate 9.6 square feet of rainforest land with a simple mouse click.
11 Ideas and Recipes to Get You Through Zucchini Time
You've asked us about Stevia, the sweetener herb. Here is some info.
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Seed Donation Story
Dear Seeds of Change,
It has been some time since your gifts arrived at our school-we do thank you so much.
These seeds seemed very special and were planted with great care-and successfully. The students enjoyed watching them come up through the soil, and grow and grow.
You would like our garden, I think-we have about two acres planted in vegetables, flowers and trees. The students at the school are so involved in sowing seeds, or starting them in their classrooms, planning where to finally plant them. What we are finding is that in this process, they are using science, math, reading, research, writing and even art!
Plus, these children are learning that the sunflower seeds they see in a package at a store come from a plant with a beautiful 12 inch blossom-that they grew! You should see their faces when they first took the seeds out and toasted them. They have eaten vegetables that they grew, picked flower they have grown, seen butterflies and birds come to this place that is theirs.
Lake is an inner city school where the majority of the families are below the poverty level; where a great many parents are non-English speaking-twelve different languages to be exact are spoken by the various cultures. But everyone knows the language of gardening-you should be around during our workdays. The garden has been such a gift to us all. You have contributed to that gift!
Thank you again for your generosity.
Sincerely, Nancy Sugars, Volunteer Garden Co-ordinator
Lake Elementary School
San Pablo, California
Blue Mountain Lupine seeds
Our Call Center is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Orders can only be accepted for U.S. and Canadian addresses.