Decorah, Iowa, July 19-21, 2013: Member Beth Purcell reports on this month's Seed Savers Exchange and Campout:
Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) is a nonprofit organization
devoted to enhancing genetic diversity by preserving seeds of heirloom
varieties of fruits, flowers, and vegetables.
SSE collects heirloom seeds, and facilitates members’ exchange of
seeds. It maintains the largest
non-government seed bank in the US. SSE
has test gardens and meeting facilities at Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa
(northeast Iowa). Each year they grow-out hundreds of heirloom varieties at the
farm, and enlist members’ help to test heirloom seeds in gardens around the
country.
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| Seed Savers Exchange test garden, July 2013 |
SSE offers seeds for hundreds
of vegetables and annual and perennial flowers. You can see many varieties
growing in the test gardens. Red
Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata),
5-feet tall, hardy to Zone 4, would complement the white milkweeds available on
Capitol Hill. Ground cherry (Phusalis pruinosa, Aunt Molly’s OG) is
an attractive pest-resistant plant with fruits similar to a tomatillo, and
great in pies and preserves; it matures in 70 days and needs full sun. They use cocoa mulch in the test gardens because
it’s excellent for weed suppression, however it tends to block water, and dogs
sometimes eat it.
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| Red Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) |
Every July SSE holds a conference,
offering seed-sharing exchanges, workshops on seed-saving, gardening ideas, and
expert speakers on garden-related topics. One speaker covered the challenges of
plant patents to farmers and gardeners: “Bag tags” on patented corn and soybean
seeds are a license prohibiting the farmer from keeping seed from this year’s
harvest to replant the following year. If
the farmer opens the bag, he or she agrees to be bound by the license. As a result, the farmer must buy seed year after year from the seed company. Seed companies have successfully sued farmers
to enforce this license. While plant
patents and bag tags are now an issue for farmers, gardeners may soon be
affected - Monsanto has developed a
tomato with the same restrictive license.
A concern is that seed companies may begin to modify garden seeds from
the public domain, obtain patents, and sell seeds with restrictive
licenses. However, open-source
unrestricted plant breeding programs and seed-sharing organizations like SSE
might survive using licenses similar to Linus Torvald’s Linux open-source
software, where the license requires unrestricted use for all users.
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| Ground cherry (Phusalis pruinosa) |
A trip to SSE Heritage Farm in
Decorah, Iowa might be part of an enjoyable family vacation. The farm is almost 1,000 acres, with test
gardens, a herd of heritage cattle, and flocks of heritage poultry. There is a lot to see at the farm, and
nearby. The town of Decorah is very
charming, with restaurants, parks, and a bike trail circling the town. The Mississippi River is not far. Heritage Farm offers camping during the
conference, or you can stay in a dorm room at Luther College in Decorah (room
was comfortable, sheets and towels provided, and A/C worked great). You can fly to Waterloo, Iowa, rent a car and
drive to Decorah. The scenery is
beautiful – gently rolling hills becoming hillier in the northeast (and no
billboards anywhere). The roads are
well-maintained, not crowded, and drivers are calm (a nice change from DC).
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For more information on the conference, saving heirloom
seeds, seeds available for purchase, see www.seedsavers.org.
--post and photos by Beth Purcell
