Saving Heirloom Animal Breeds

I've posted a number of times about how over time different types of food disappear. Older, maybe tastier, varieties fall out of favor with producers to be replaced by fruits and vegetables that ship and store better.

Places like The Seed Savers Exchange deal mostly in hard to find and heirloom vegetables in an effort to preserve some of these varieties. There are also a number of seed banks which save seeds to prevent against a disaster or disease which might wipe out an important food type.

The New York Times had an article today about a group that is saving farm animal embryos with cryogenics of breeds that have since fallen out of favor and are no longer being heavily raised any more. These animals, like the previously mentioned vegetables, may actually be tastier or better for the environment, but have some element to them which does not make them consistently homogeneous to raise and market.

Eating Things To Save Them

Marketers tend to only offer the varieties that they sell the most of. As time goes by, this results in certain varieties being dropped. This happens both with fruits and vegetables as well as animals. Sometimes people will keep passing on the disappearing species, such as heirloom tomatoes, but sometimes they just disappear forever.

Here is an interesting idea in the times people eat more of these endangered varieties as this will, in turn, drive up market demand and increase the incentives to breed these species.

New York Times Story

The Circle Of Life

A lot was written in the newspapers and gardening blogs about what tough year this was for growing things. In addition to this being a very rainy and very cold year, there was also a tomato fungus that impacted in a good part of the east coast. In spite of all the troubles that people had in getting plants to grow where they wanted to grow, here are several examples I've found recently of things just growing without any help:

I had been sprouting seeds in trays on the patio earlier in the year. Here shiso and basil sprout next to the patio from seeds which most likely dumped from the sprouting trays.



At the end of the year last year, there were some green tomatoes left on the vine which Sean was tossing around. On the right of the shiso patch is a grape tomato plant which grew from one of those discarded tomatoes.



I had transplanted some tomato plants which later died, but which had dropped a lot of tomatoes which rotted on the ground before doing so. Now there are dozens of small tomato sprouts in that spot.



I had hung some pea plants upside down to dry for saving the seeds. Here a few peas must have fallen off the drying vines and sprouted on their own.

Seed Saving - Tomatoes

Tomatoes are in full swing now and we have more than we can use ourselves. Next week I'll probably try to make some sauce, but this week I'm saving the seeds for next year.

1. Select the best fruit which will carry on those good genes to the next season. Free of cracks, good shape, good color, and plants that have a lot of fruit are all things to look for.

2. Slice open the tomato and put the seeds in a small bowl. Cover the seeds with 1/2 - 1 inch of water and place the bowl in a warm, dark place. Let the bowl sit there two to three days until it starts to ferment. That little sack around the tomato seed is there to keep it from sprouting inside the tomato and this process will remove the sack.

3. Skim off any junk which float to the top of the bowl.

4. Gently rinse the seeds under running water.

5. Spread the seeds on a dry paper towel to dry. Throw out any seeds which are brown, green or otherwise look odd. Let the seeds sit for a few days until completely dry. Store them for next year in a cool dry place.

3.

Seed Saving - Purple Peas

Peas are an early season crop that like the weather slightly cool. As the days are getting hotter and longer, the pea vines are now turning brown and it is time to start saving their seeds. This year I had planted Purple Peas from the Hudson Valley Seed Library.

1. Save from the best stock which will pass on their good genes to the next generation. The one that climbed to the top of the trellis first or the one that started to look like a small shrub rather than a bean bush are good choices. Make sure the plants you pick are free of disease or any other problems. Take from more than one plant to add some diversity.


2. Select the best fruit. Do you have fruit that you took a picture of to show off? Those are the ones for saving.


3. Let the fruit dry on the plant until the pod turns brown. This will usually be 4 – 6 weeks past the time you would have picked the fruit for eating. If you are doing this late in the season and the weather is turning cold or wet, pull the entire plant and hang it upside down where it is warm and dry until the pod is finished drying. Now should be early enough to let them dry in the field.


4. Shell the peas as if you were preparing them for dinner. Discard any seeds which are unusually small, wrinkly, mushy or otherwise odd. Place the seeds on a cookie sheet or paper towel and put them in a warm dry place allowing them to dry further. Do not put them in the oven, toaster or other artificial heat source as this cook them and render them useless for planting.


5. Put the seeds in a container and store them in a cool, dry place. An envelope like a seed company would use is more than sufficient or for larger quantities a jar or piece of Tupperware will work well.

Late Blight Fungus

A recent article in the New York Times explains about a tomato blight that “has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may determine whether the outbreak abates or whether tomato crops are ruined”.

It seems one of the culprits is a single nursery which supplies many of the big box stores where the staff are not trained to spot problems like this. The article also explains how to spot the symptoms of the disease and references advice on using a fungicide to treat it. Given, however, that the purpose of growing your own vegetables is to avoid additives this is not very encouraging.

I’ve written in a number of older posts about the saving seeds and starting plants from seeds and here is one more example where it pays off and while my plants are not currently infected, if they do become so it will not be because I carried it home with me.

The Mystery of the Mystery Plant

We throw any vegetable scraps (e.g. carrot peels, rotten fruit, etc …) directly into the garden to rot away with other yard waste and every year we get mystery plants. Mystery plants fall into a strange gray area as they are not weeds in the familiar sense, but they are plants not intended which grow from seeds thrown out from the kitchen. Given that it can be tricky to start plants from seed, there is a temptation to want to let them grow if for nothing other than to see what they are even if they are out of place. Cucumbers and melons are the most common mystery plant, but tomatoes and potatoes have also made previous appearances. One year, a grape vine even managed to sprout which we later transplanted to a nicer spot near the backyard fence.

2009 Varieties - Part III - The Hudson Valley Seed Library

The Hudson Valley Seed Library is similar to The Seed Savers Exchange in many ways, but with a few important differences.

The first is that they specialize in the varieties, some organic, which do well in the New York Hudson Valley area which means they will also very likely do well in my area which is only slightly less frosty.

The second is that they encourage you to save and exchange seeds by offering a membership plan. For $20, you get 10 packets of seeds to start which is about $.75 less than the normal per packet price. They will then supply you with instructions on how to save seeds and will apply a $2.00 credit per variety returned at the end of the season. They also offer reduced prices on other varieties to members.

Here is what I selected with my membership:

Melons

Banana Melon
Schoons Hardshell American Melon

Squash & Pumpkins

Bennings Green Tint Patty Pan
Connecticut Field Pumpkin
New England Pie Pumpkin

Corn

Ashworth Sweet Corn

Herbs

Mammoth Dill
Sweet Basil

Peas

Purple Podded Pea

2009 Varieties - Part II - The Seed Savers Exchange

The Seed Savers Exchange is working towards protecting biodiversity and encouraging seed saving and sharing. The sell both seeds and seedlings for both vegetables and flowers. Many, but not all, of their varieties are organic. The variety they offer is huge and their catalog is just interesting to read for the number of items offered. I've ordered from them the last two years and have had good results.

Here is what I got from The Seed Savers Exchange this year:

Cucumber

Jelly Melon Cucumber
Japanese Clmbng Cucumber OG

Okra

Silver Queen Okra

Tomato

Crnkovic Yugoslavian Tomato
Hungarian Heart Tomato
Trophy Tomato OG
Wisconsin 55 Tomato OG

Greens

Five Color Silverbeet Chard OG
Dwarf Blue Curled Kale

Sunflowers & Poppies

Heirloom Flower Collection

Saving Seeds

Many years ago, farmers had no choice but to save some seed at the end of each season. There were no mail order houses or easy / cheap ways to get seed, so they simply set aside a little bit from the best part of their crop to use the next year.

There are many reasons why people still save seed today.

Some people feel it is cheaper than buying new seed each year.

Some people are concerned about the genetic modifications that the big seed companies make to the seeds. Some seeds have been modified to the extent that you cannot plant a new crop from the previous year's crop.

Some people feel it gives them a connection to the earth and the cycle of life by using what was grown and died this year to start the cycle again next year.

Some people like the idea of being “off the grid” with their food supply.

Some people are concerned about biodiversity. Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem. If a farmer sells 90% of one crop and only 10% of another, he is likely to slowly convert to the crop which he sells more of. If a particular crop ships or stores better, it will also crowd out other varieties (even those that taste better). An heirloom plant is a plant or vegetable that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but for reasons similar to those just mentioned start to disappear over time and many people enjoy saving seeds to keep the varieties going.

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners is the de facto standard on saving seed. You can also Google “seed saving” to turn up a number of useful sites.

I started simply with the leftover Halloween pumpkin, some sunflowers from a farmer’s market, and some late season tomatoes from a very productive plant we had this summer by following the instructions in the book and packing them away with the regular seeds I bought mail order. I plan on planting them in the spring along with everything else and, if it works well, plan to expand on it at the end of this year.

The Ramapo Tomato

The New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES) is the farm extension agency here in New Jersey and they’ve recently started offering Ramapo tomato seeds.

A hybrid is the child of two different varieties which is bred to take the best attributes from both the parents, but also means that the seeds cannot be saved and reused for future plantings. If no one is breeding these plants, the variety will gradually disappear. Sometimes the reason for not breeding the plant is that while the flavor may be superior, the ability to travel long distances is lacking and a more durable, but less tasty variety wins out.

The Ramapo tomato is a hybrid tomato which is supposed to be rich in tomato flavor, was once quite popular, but was no longer available for exactly that reason.

link has the details on how to order the seeds and some interesting articles on the Ramapo tomato and tomatoes in general.

New Jersey has a long history with the tomato. It is in the top 10 tomato producing states, is home to Campbells Soup and has two varieties of tomato, Jersey and Rutgers, named for it. I've already ordered a couple of packets of Ramapo seeds and it is interesting to be bringing back something associated with this history.

The Ramapo tomato: