Kim Delaney of Hawthorn Farms, who has been a seed saver for many years, spoke at the October meeting of the Mapleton Historical Society. She provided a historical view of the art and practice of preserving seed. All of the fruits and vegetables people eat come from seeds that have been saved, bred for certain traits and passed down from season to season.
The term heirloom is used often these days, especially in reference to tomatoes, but what does heirloom really mean? It means the seed varieties are passed down through the generations basically intact, and these are self-pollinating plants that don’t easily cross with other plants. Heirloom varieties such as Matina, Siberian Red or Amish Paste are similar to tomatoes planted, both here and around the world for decades. With care, this generation can continue to preserve these varieties for the future.
But many seed varieties have changed throughout the years as well. Hybrid corn is a familiar concept, but many other vegetable varieties have been developed or hybridized, though some are more genetically stabilized than others. Hybrid refers to the process of combining two different parent varieties to create a new variety. While the desired trait may be expressed in the first “child” generation, the seed of the “child” may have unexpected traits. This is why farmers don’t save hybrid corn.
But why can the seeds of beans or tomatoes be easily saved and not corn? Delaney explained the two broad categories of plant reproduction, “selfers’ and ‘crossers.” Self-pollinating plants like tomatoes actually have both the male and the female parts contained within each flower. To ensure that there is no cross-pollination of a tomato, Delaney simply ties a bag over the flower to protect it. On the other hand, cross pollinators like zucchini squash have two types of flowers on each plant. Delaney demonstrated how to distinguish the two: the female flowers of a squash plant actually have a tiny squash at the base of the flower, which will grow when fertilized. She described how to pick the male flowers off of one variety, cross them to the female flowers of another, label them and see what happens.
Many seed varieties have been developed over the years, whether special hybrids made in laboratories or through gardening experiments with cross-pollinating varieties or through selection for certain traits. Over the years of using these techniques, our ancestors have made interesting changes to fruits and vegetables with regard to colour, shape and taste. Delaney described how she is still working with varieties to breed for certain traits. For example, she selects for sweeter carrots or perfectly pink radishes.
Delaney also shared the story of how a well-loved tomato variety that she preserves and sells, Sasha’s Altai, became available to the world. A seed-saving couple from the U.S. were traveling through Siberia in 1989, looking for short-season varieties of vegetables and their translator introduced them to a bright-faced and kind-eyed man named Sasha, who said he had a tomato variety they would like. He left to get it, but three days passed and they didn’t hear from him again. They were near boarding their plane to return when the translator explained that Sasha lived up in the Altai mountains, a day journey up, a day to rest and a day to return. Just as they thought they would have to leave without the seeds, Sasha’s bright face emerged from the crowd and he carried a small package of seeds. The couple brought them back and featured his seeds in their 1990 catalogue. A few years later, Sasha was beaten and robbed in Siberia and when word got out through their magazine, gardeners across the country donated money to care for him and his family – 1,000,000 rubles in total. The variety has gone on to become one of the 10 top early varieties in the world, according to Organic Gardening Magazine and was sold in Australia as the “Best Tomato in the World.”
Delaney’s talk emphasized the human stories entwined with the history of food. With every bite we eat, we are literally tasting history and and every seed saved is making history. Find out more at www.hawthornfarm.ca.. You can even try saving seeds yourself.
