Growing a Greener World Episode 510 – The Seed Farmer

Home gardeners are increasingly drawn to heirloom seeds for their unusual flavors, colors and of course, their cultural heritage. But many do not realize that unless the seeds of those heirloom and open pollinated plants are grown out properly, the genetics are lost forever. In this episode, we visit the Organic Seed Alliance and meet Dr. John Navazio – one of the pioneers in preserving the cultural heritage of our garden seed supply. We learn all about seed stewardship, why it is important and what we can do in our own backyards to help preserve these special plants for many more generations to come.

This episode originally aired as Episode 521.
Read the full show notes for additional information from this episode at: https://www.growingagreenerworld.com/episode521/

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I’m Joe lample when I created Growing a Greener World I had one goal to tell stories of Everyday People innovators entrepreneurs forward-thinking leaders who are all in ways both big and small dedicated to organic gardening and farming lightening our footprint conserving vital resources prot protecting natural habitats making a tangible difference for us all they’re real they’re passionate they’re all around us they’re the game changers who are literally Growing a Greener World and inspiring the rest of us to do the same Growing a Greener World it’s more than a movement it’s our [Music] mission when we look at our history seed was among the most prized possession of both the immigrants coming to America and the Pioneers traveling west in a covered wagon with their seed came all the flavors and Heritage of their old Homeland and represented New Life in a new land every year that seed was carefully grown out harvested and saved for the following year it’s the way things were done for hundreds of years but today things have changed fewer and fewer farmers are saving their own seeds which means they have to rely on just a few large companies that sell seed for agriculture so without going into all the politics it’s still easy to see that now Farmers have fewer options on what to grow and US fewer choices on what to eat one organization set out to help build food diversity by directly working with Farmers help 10 years ago the organic seed Alliance was formed although they’re currently headquartered in Port Towns in Washington they work nationally to train farmers and stewarding the Very seed they needed for their crops today the Osa still works directly within the agriculture Community to teach research and Advocate to protect what they consider to be a living natural resource Mela coli is the executive director there organic seed Alliance is a nonprofit organization our mission is the ethical development and stewardship of agricultural seed uh so we accomplish our mission in three main program areas we work to protect farmers and breeders rights to access to genetic resources in in order to um in other words to be able to save their own seed um we work with farmers and breeders to breed new crops new varieties for organic agriculture that work well in an organic farming system and we also work to develop a supply chain of organic seed availability by working with farmers in learning how to grow seed organically without the use of uh intensive chemicals and working with seed industry to introduce new varieties to the organic seed Market and make them widely available to organic farmers to plant in organic Fields now that’s a really big deal when you think about what’s going on in the seed industry today because most of the money and the attention is going into nonorganic seed production combined with the fact that a lot of seed companies are being Consolidated into just a few large multinational organizations the result is a rapidly declining supply of organically grown or historical favorites so without the help and Partnership of Osa with our farmers and we lose a lot of significantly important seed and crop varieties that are critical for biodiversity and so much more now the oldest way of saving and preserving seeds for future Generations was to Simply allow plants to pollinate freely and when you grew out the seeds from those plants they would come true to type to produce virtually identical crops now the term used to describe that is open pollinated but within that category there’s another group called heirloom varieties and they have a special significance there’s often confusion between the difference of an open pollinated and heirloom variety heirloom varieties are all open pollinated varieties but heirloom just refers to the fact that the seed has been passed down from generation to generation within a family or a community um there’s a roughly a definition of 50 years 100 years depending on who you at but the idea is that these are cultural heritage varieties and what we do at organic seed Alliance is we uh help preserve the culture that created heirlooms in the first place by teaching people how to save seeds so that they have the skills to continue handing down varieties for future Generations some of our most exciting work is working with Farmers to create new varieties that are open-pollinated that can be saved from generation to generation but just like the heirlooms of of the past have the qualities that farmers and gardeners want to pass on to the future we have a program we call the heirlooms of Tomorrow the idea being we’re preserving the culture the Heritage and the seed that our ancestors um worked on in the heirlooms of the past but leaving that Legacy for the future generations and then there’s the issue of clarifying the difference between open pollinated seed and hybrid seed well unlike open pollinated seed that comes true to type in the Next Generation hybrid seeds don’t they’re manipulated by human intervention to create desirable traits from both parents but when you plant the seed from hybrid fruit you don’t get an exact copy in The Offspring a lot of people get confused about the difference between an open pollinated seed and a hybrid seed but what it comes down to is that as a farmer or Gardener you can save seed from an open pollinated variety and it will come true to type the Next Generation if you save seed from a hybrid you’re going to get a mixture of types of of plants in the field the next year so the way an open pollinated population is created is allowing all of the plants in the field to freely intermate with each other without human intervention the way a hybrid is created is two open pollinated populations are maintained separately from each other and inbred until they’re highly genetically uniform and then those two populations are crossed uh so when you save seed from a hybrid what you get is some of the traits of the mother some of the father and some of something in between so now that we’ve seen that seed can come true in our garden or Farm through classic open pollination such as with heirlooms or we can create a new variety of crop by intentionally Crossing separate parent varieties such as with hybrids but it’s important to note that it’s still a natural albeit human assisted manipul ulation of plant varieties within the same species it’s a common practice and nothing controversial about this type of manipulation it’s often used for example to create more pest or disease resistant varieties or fruit that’s highly uniform or ships and holds well for the grocery store for example but again it’s just blending the genes of different varieties of plants within the same species well when I say genetics a lot of people get confused between the difference between a hybrid and a genetically modified organism or GMO variety um but all plants have genes the difference is that a GMO variety has been manipulated to insert DNA that is not from the same species as that variety so it’s a human intervention into the genetics hybrids are created but with under natural circumstances when people buy seeds they’re either originally coming from plants that were grown organically like all of these or conventionally meaning non-organically and I think people would be very surprised when they think about the environmental impact of the seeds that come from non-organically grown plants right that’s true conventionally grown seed H it’s a long season crop and it’s not an edible crop so there are higher level of allowable pesticides used in conventional seed production So when you buy conventional seed compared to organic seed there’s a much higher environmental impact that is not directly in your garden but associated with it right so you could be any level of organic Gardener that you want to be but if you’re not starting with organic seed you’re really not as organic as you think you are that’s right not only may it not work best for your garden but you’ve also contributed to this supply chain that has a non-organic imprint let’s talk about the inputs that go into conventionally grown seed you know when these plants are being given all of these chemicals along the way then when we get those seeds and we want to grow them out organically we’re really not setting those plants up for the best chance of survival right because it’s a different environment well plants adapt to whatever environment they’re grown in so if plants have been grown under conventional conditions they’re going to grow best under conventional conditions yes for an organic farmer you want a a crop that has been bred and produced under organic systems okay so what is the organic seed Alliance doing differently then we work with Farmers to breed varieties that are better adapted to organic conditions that have vigorous roots to take up uh organic organically available nutrition that have good Pest and disease resistance that compete with weeds so that when you get the seed and put it in your garden all those same qualities will show through so that’s a really important point because as an organic Gardener if I really want to have the best chance of success in my garden I can’t do any better than starting with organically grown seed right not only will it grow better for your garden but you’ve also supported a whole system of organic production excellent point Farmers play an important role in all of our work at organic seed Alliance in our advocacy program and our education program a lot of our educational workshops are right in Farmers Fields but perhaps most importantly in our research program we work with farmers and public and private plant breeders to breed new varieties for organic agriculture people think that saving seed is about preserving varieties the way that they used to be but our ancestors always had a goal of improving varieties for the future saving seed from the healthiest plants the tastiest plants so we work with Farmers to do just that to improve varieties and we also work with them to breed new varieties meet Nash Huber an organic farmer located in squim Washington he’s working directly with the organic seed Alliance not only preserving existing varieties of seed but to also develop brand new varieties of edibles through their breeding program however Nash is much more than an organic farmer he’s also a well-known leader in environmentally sustainable farming practices land conservation and has won numerous Farm stewardship Awards Nash and his team go Beyond Organic as they Farm over 700 Acres much of it is part of various long-term conservation leases to protect the land from development Nash Works to protect that land as he grows Acres of vegetables berries fruit trees pastured animals grain and of course organic seed seed of course when you when you’re growing food or growing crops seed is you know obviously something you have to have it’s your access to seed it’s you know you have to have access to land you have to have access to water you need Finance you need Capital but seed if you don’t have seed you might as well not have land uh and so you’re not going to eat seed has become pretty much the domain of five or six large chemical companies on the planet Earth and so that’s proprietary information it’s it’s much like you know seeds are much like a a book you know and so it’s a library and so you have this consolidation where we used to have this multiplicity of seed companies that were very Regional and then we go through this conglomeration this this this boiling down to where it’s all under the um jurisdiction of four or five um multinationals and in the process they sort out the books and they throw some away and as an agriculturalist you lose friends you lose plants seeds that you’ve known for a long time that you’ve become you’ve had a relationship with you understand you know I was trained as a chemist Bes said you know as a farm boy coming up a far in the Midwest but I went to school and got a meal ticket and be and worked in the food industry for a half a dozen years and research and so I saw it from that angle too I saw what was happening in the food industrialization of food then at the same time see that happening to seed such an important ingredient as important as the food you eat and you know having studied corporations and kind of have a feeling for how they think and and and how they work I understood what that meant for seed the partnership that we have with organic seed Alliance here in the farm and the work we do with seed has you know evolved over time as I’ve understood the importance of seed in our operation you know cuz originally my goal was just to have resiliency within our farming system so so that we had seed that worked for us and then as we’ve worked with those you know a dozen did like last year we had maybe 15 breeding projects on the farm in different plants seeds pretty much each year we around that area and there’s always questions how to do it because I’m not a I’m not a plant I’m not a breeder I’m not a geneticist I’m a farmer I understand how to grow plants I understand how to bring together resources and you know equipment and water and people and things like that and but I don’t I don’t understand genetics and so that partnership is really key I want to I want to be able to utilize that information to to to make those changes to make a better plant to make a plant that’s more adaptable to our condition I can do it cuz I know how to grow cabbage I know how to grow carrots I don’t know how to breed them so it’s a real part real important partnership nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina so true seed sits in the community of canler they specialize in non-hybrid and GMO free seed for home gardeners the former co-founder Peter waskevich is a big advocate for teaching home gardeners how to save their own seed for the best yields most people know how to save seed using the dry method where you simply allow the seed to mature on the plant until it’s dry classic examples would be like beans and peas for example where the seed dries in the Pod but where the seed is encased in a moist or wet environment well then the wet seed saving process works best classic examples of that would be tomatoes and cantaloupe eggplant and squash such as pumpkins and a lot of people that I know that save the seeds from pumpkins treat it like a dry method where they just extract the seeds lay them out on a paper towel and that’s the end of it but it sounds like the wet method is better yeah that will work but you’re going to get a much higher germination and a longer storage if you use the wet process let me show you with these pumpkins okay so we’re taking the tops off yeah we’re going to take the tops off and you want to have a clean bucket and then we’re going to scoop them on out we’re going to go right into that no worries sure you don’t want a glove with that I’m a garer are you kidding me let’s go scoop all the seats out into a clean bucket preferably with a tight fitting lid to minimize odor as they go into a fermentation process over the next 24 to 36 hours during this time store them in a place where the temperatures remain around 90° or less any hotter and it can kill some of the seeds before setting the seeds aside add just enough water to cover them but no more this AIDS in the fermentation process and keeps the seeds from drying out prematurely during the fermentation phase stir the seeds about twice a day this helps clean the seeds from the pulp and it also AIDS in separating the good seeds which settle to the bottom from some of the Bad Seeds which flow to the top once the fermentation process is complete it’s time to co the good seeds from the bad a large bucket combined with a highpressure hose in spray nozzle works well to blast the remaining pulp from the [Music] seeds once it’s nearly full slowly pour the water into another clean bucket while being careful not to pour so fast that you lose the good seeds at the bottom since they’re lighter nonviable seeds will rise to the top and pour out with the waste water but it doesn’t happen all at once it takes several flushes of refilling the bucket and carefully pouring off the waste water to keep cleaning the good seeds while purging the [Music] bad with each additional flush you’ll eventually be left with just the seeds that will germinate at the bottom in our case we filled and emptied the bucket about six [Music] times once the Seas were thoroughly clean and only the good ones remained we pour them out to dry the seeds need good air circulation and plenty of room to spread out this is a simple device that anyone can make using a lightweight wood frame and window screen it’s perfect for this purpose spread the seeds out across the screen and try to get them to the point where they’re not touching each [Music] other invariably though some will want to stick together so just rub them between your fingers to separate the stubborn ones and that’s the process now the final step is just to give this has plenty of time to thoroughly dry with good air circulation underneath and in a safe place out of the elements ready all right all [Music] right now that we’ve gone to all that work to process the seeds we want to make sure that they’re dry enough to store and there’s a couple of ways to do that and it depends on the type of seed for the pumpkin seeds that we just saved you know the ones that are flat well there’s the brittleness test and it’s simple to do you just take one of those Flats seeds and you bend it in half and if it snaps just like that it’s dry enough to store but if it bends over kind of like if it’s rubbery well don’t store that because it’s not dry enough and then there’s the round seed like the corn or the pee now that’s the smash test it’s my favorite one all you do is get yourself a hammer place the seed on a flat surface and smash it if it shatters like that it’s dry enough to store but if it just sort of mushes don’t store those because they’re not dry enough yet but once you’ve collected all those dry seeds then you want to put them into an envelope and there’s some basic information you want to be sure to add to that envelope such as the name of the seed when it was harvested or grown and of course the origin of the seed but any additional information that you have that will help you remember that seed when it’s time to plant it well that’s going to help too such as flavor or color or anything else go ahead and add it to the envelope it doesn’t cost anything to do that then you want to store that envelope in an airtight container now I like to use these canning jars because they have have a nice resealable lid but you can also use those plastic resealable containers or even a metal jar for example then you want to put this into a cool dry place store it in the pantry for example and then it’s going to be ready for you when you’re ready to [Music] plant you know the old saying sometimes you don’t appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone well such as the case case with many of the seeds and plants our ancestors grew sadly many are gone forever and along with them their flavor and beauty and that’s not all as certain plants disappear from this Earth it disrupts and threatens the biodiversity that depend on them to keep things in Balance Heritage Farm is the home to Seed Savers exchange in Dora Iowa a growing Global community of gardeners who since 1975 have shared hundreds of thousands of seed samples while in the process continue to build a network of people committed to its mission of collecting growing and distributing heirloom seeds and plants that was the vision and dream of seedsavers co-founder Diane OTW 35 years ago today they have about 13,000 members who share that simple but important mission to help save the world’s diverse but endangered Garden Heritage for future Generations you know probably the most popular question or one of the most frequently asked questions is what is an heirloom and the easiest way for me to explain that is to maybe compare it to an heirloom piece of furniture or a piece of jewelry something that has been in the family and handed down from generation to generation but there’s a big difference with airom vegetables because they’re alive when we’ve started Seed Savers 35 years ago I don’t think airom vegetables were even thought about or much less um desired or even people didn’t understand what they were 35 years later people are more aware of where their food comes from they want to know where their food comes from and that brings up a sensitive issue about where the seed comes from every seed has a story and it’s it’s up to us and family generations to keep that story alive with the seed so not only are we growing seed to keep the seed viable but we’re also encouraging the story and how that seed was used and connecting that the the seed with the food with the food to the Garden so we started Seed Savers with that idea just wondering if other people were out there had who had family heirloom seeds that had no one to pass them on down to and in the beginning we didn’t have listings of seeds we had letters we published everybody’s letter that incorp that really brought the seed to life and put the seed in their [Music] life it’s pretty incredible when you think about how seeds as small as they are have had such an impact on our past and the opportunity they have to mold our future and that’s why it’s so important to protect that Legacy for future Generations if you’d like more information about what you saw today we have it on our website under the show notes for this episode the website address it’s the same as our show name it’s growingagreenerworld.com thanks for joining us everybody I’m Joe lample and we’ll see you back here next time for more Growing a Greener World [Music] I 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