Seedy Sunday in a rich man’s world

On those hot basking sunny days of August there is time to have seedy thoughts lying back listening to the birds and the bees, while watching the wind ripple through the grass. As summer moves relentlessly onwards, it is now the time to save seeds for the future and swap them in the depth of winter at the idiosyncratic Seedy Sunday (see Blogg – The Big Seedy Society 16 February).

You may want to protect our dwindling heritage, to strengthen our local food sovereignty or escape the treadmill of buying expensive F1 seeds by saving and swopping till you drop.

Packets of Seeds from the large seed companies that today sell the large majority of seeds rarely costs less than £1 and can cost £2-99. Anyone cultivating an allotment can expect to pay £30 to £50 a year. Some gardeners may spend double this or more on seeds that have no local provenance, that are untested by Brighton’s climate, may not be suitable for our soil and may have travelled the length of the country to reach you. Buying plants will costs so much more.

It’s comparatively easy to save selected seeds like tomatoes, French beans and peas while lettuces and radishes look glorious when they go to seed and collecting spoils at the end of their season takes a little care, but not that much attention for a wide range of seeds. The value of doing this for preserving our local heritage and food diversity is explained on Seedy Sunday website www.seedysunday.org and the methodology on the How to Save Seed website http://howtosaveseeds.com/index.php .

One of the most poignant reminders I heard on the loss of diversity was a recent TV programme featuring Monet’s beautiful hazy, lazy garden in Giveny, captured so poetically in paintings that can never be matched by the precision of photos. 75% of the plants in the garden in the early part of the twentieth century are no longer available today and the gardeners there have to improvise with modern cultivars to try to imitate those that have been lost.

Some 98 per cent of our vegetable varieties have disappeared over the past century and regulations are hastening the decline, while according to Garden Organic, 95 per cent of the vegetables we eat now come from just 20 species of plants. This lack of diversity presents a high risk if some new infection blights one of these species of plants. Their heritage seed library identifying anyone of us as seed guardians is attempting to combat this. This needs some commitment to do the job properly but to save tomato seeds, French beans and peas is so easy peasy.

Monet, Monet , Monet… needs Seedy Sunday… in a modern world.

(with apologies to Abba) .

Alan Phillips..

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