NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Vic and I both are clutter hoarders in many areas of our lives, especially printed material such as books, magazines and EIRs. Seeds are one category in which I alone am guilty.

Saving seeds can be a good thing. Many gardeners save seeds from their best vegetables to plant the next year. This type of selection over many millennia in different parts of the world is what gave us the huge genetic variety in seeds and allows us to produce so many different kinds of grains, fruits and vegetables.

This enormous variety is at risk. Modern agribusiness means enormous stands of the same variety that stretch as far as the eye can see. The entire American field corn crop, for example, is made up of only a handful of varieties, all of them hybrids whose seeds cannot be saved because they won’t breed true. Each growing season, the modern farmer must buy more seeds from the seed company.

In light of the very real possibility of a disaster such as global climate change, nuclear war, or genetically modified organisms running amok and destroying part of today’s food crops, an international organization is banking seeds for the future. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, or the Doomsday Vault as it is popularly called, was built under the permafrost on a remote Arctic island off Norway. Funded in part by Microsoft’s Bill Gates, the seed vault opened in February. It is humanity’s ultimate safety net.

The Doomsday Vault will hold 100 million of the world’s most precious seeds, a genetic heritage that has been accumulated during more than 10,000 years of agriculture. It will protect seeds that form the main food source of the human race. The deposits came from 100 countries and consist of unique varieties of staple crops such as corn, rice, wheat, barley and potatoes, in addition to varieties of eggplant, lettuce, tomatoes and many more. This ambitious project is the most comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds being held anywhere in the world.

The seeds from old heirloom varieties, many of which have been around for centuries, are key to maintaining diversity in crop plants. Heirloom varieties are defined as cultivars that are open pollinated, meaning they are not hybrids or crosses of two inbred strains. Heirlooms will breed true to type. In other words, the offspring will be like the parents. Heirlooms cushion humanity against disasters that could wipe out those huge monocultures of hybrids on industrial farms.

Fortunately, home gardeners can buy and save heirloom seeds from many vegetables. Vic and I have a number of heirlooms growing in our garden right now — Black Krim tomatoes, Red Kuri squash, Lollo Rossa lettuce, Chioggia beets, Danvers Half Long carrots, and many others. Heirloom veggies, especially tomatoes, are sometimes available at farmers markets. Home gardeners can find seeds for heirlooms in many major seed catalogs such as Burpee, Park, Territorial or Cook’s Garden, or find them online at specialty heirloom seed companies such as victoryseeds.com, heirloomseeds.com, or rareseeds.com.

The concept of protecting heirloom varieties isn’t new. Seed Savers Exchange, a U.S. nonprofit founded in 1975, was a pioneer in the preservation of heirloom seeds. They now have 24,000 varieties from all over the world in storage and offer 500 of them to the public for sale. By buying your heirloom garden seeds through them at www.seedsaversexchange.org, you can support their important work.

Another nonprofit group is Native Seeds/SEARCH ( www.nativeseeds.org). Formerly headed by noted environmental author Gary Paul Nabhan, this organization seeks out seeds for plants that were used for food, fiber and dyes by Native Americans in the desert Southwest and Mexico. Native Seeds/SEARCH has an eclectic collection of seeds for sale for squash, corn, beans and chiles. I’ve tried some of their offerings, and really liked their Mayo Blushers, a beautiful winter squash that turns from green to pink as it ripens.

It was in looking through my stash of old seeds for some Mayo Blushers that I discovered just what a seed hoarder I am.

Much to my chagrin, I found remnants of old seed packets that go all the way back to 1983, the year we planted our first garden in California. (Keep in mind that most seeds are good for about two years, usually five at most.) I decided I really needed an inventory of the seeds I have on hand. The list went to two pages, two columns per page. I never even tried some of them in the garden. I guess I like to buy seeds more than plant them.

My biggest collection is of squash seeds. I won’t go into exactly how many different packets I have on hand, because then I’d be the blusher.

Suffice it to say there are a lot of them and they are all more than 10 years old. I figured those old seeds would be no good by now. While I did have them in the refrigerator for a few years, they weren’t exactly stored under permafrost. But I couldn’t bring myself to just throw them away. So I planted some of the varieties, using all of the seeds in any given packet per hill.

Unfortunately, about a third of the seeds were still viable.

That means I now have way too many plants of Arlessa French zucchini, Florentino Italian zucchini, Kuta squash, Lakota winter squash and Red Kuri winter squash.

This is in addition to the plants of patty pan, sunburst scallop, golden zucchini, yellow crookneck and yellow straightneck summer squashes, plus butternut squash and Queensland Blue and Rouge Vif D’Etampes pumpkins that were already growing in my garden.

I now have 37 summer and 20 winter squash plants growing in my garden. The winter squash will probably produce only about two or three squash per plant.

But summer squash plants can produce a new squash every day for months.

Uh oh. Vic is not going to be happy.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].