by Ray, Janisse
CROSS-POLLINATORS
PEPPERS AND OKRA
Although they have perfect flowers, these beauties are easily cross-pollinated by insects and should be kept 500 feet away from other varieties (a mile for okra) or, optionally, beneath screened cages—one variety to a cage. Okra flowers may easily be bagged.
To Harvest Seeds: Peppers turn red when they’re ripe. Scrape the seed from the pepper core and dry out of the sun. The seeds are dry when a folded seed breaks in your fingers. For okra, pick fully mature pods and let them dry until they split open like a banana peel. Knock out the seeds. Label and store.
More Difficult Annuals
SQUASH, CUCUMBERS, PUMPKINS, CANTALOUPE, AND WATERMELONS
These crops have separate male and female flowers and are outbreeding, meaning hardwired to cross-pollinate. To save their seeds and keep the varieties intact, you must do one of the following:
1.Learn to hand-pollinate. See chapter 16.
2.Keep seed stock separated by at least 200 feet (or a quarter mile for certain purity).
3.Plant only one of each species.
To Harvest Seeds: Wait until the fruits are fully ripe to pick them. Cucumbers will be yellow. Cut open, pick out the seeds, spread them on plates to dry. Label and store.
RADISH
Radishes are wild beings that freely cross-pollinate. In fact, they need to cross-pollinate because they cannot fertilize their ovules with pollen from the same plant. So the more plants you have of a variety, the better your pollination. You will not be able to eat the radish from the plants you want to save seed from, because they need that root, of course, to produce seeds. So leave the radish alone.
To Harvest Seeds: Watch it send up seed stalks that begin to flower. These turn into (edible) little torpedoes that slowly dry. Harvest, label, and store.
SPINACH
So much can be said about spinach. Remember, this crop is pollinated by wind, and it has male plants and female plants. Furthermore, it’s hard to determine the sex of the plants until they’ve sent up a seed stalk. The best advice is to grow only one variety of spinach from which you plant to save seeds, keep double as many female plants as male, and strip off the seeds from the stalk right in the garden. At least this is what the books say. I have to confess that I’ve never saved spinach seed, so don’t take my word for this. I have a hard enough time just growing it in southern Georgia. Oh, and the books also say that a thin fabric works fine to cage the spinach plants. Label and store.
CORN
Pollen from tassels of corn is swept long distances by wind and cultivars should be separated by time (early and late corn may be planted side by side) or a distance of over a quarter mile. You may hand-pollinate by shaking the tassels over the brand-new silks and bagging the pollinated crops.
To Harvest Seeds: Corn ears should harden on the stalk. Then bring inside, hang until dry, and shell. Label and store.
Biennials
These plants, which produce seeds in the second year of growth, include carrots, turnips, beets, kale, onions, parsnips, and salsify. The first year they produce a crop, which must be ignored (read: not eaten) and the plant must be maintained for a second year of growth. In northern climates biennials are dug up, overwintered in root cellars, and replanted the following spring. Firm types, like kohlrabi, are the easiest to overwinter; leafy types like collards tend to rot. If winters are mild, as ours are here in the subtropics of southern Georgia, biennials usually survive in the garden. For seed savers, most of these crops are self-sterile, require insects to pollinate, and cross-pollinate easily. All members of the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, kale, collards, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts) cross with each other. If you’re devoted to saving their seed, and I hope you are, you have to choose one cultivar from the entire family or isolate them by distance or screens.
To Harvest Seeds: Heading flowers are trickier to gather in that you must get the seed after maturity but before wind and animals scatter them.
Drying and Storing
Seeds must be thoroughly dry before storing. They should break, not bend. Life is triggered by moisture, and any droplet of water left in the seeds shortens their life span by keeping subtle life forces ticking away. A good rule is when you think seeds are dry, leave them another day. Temperatures over 110°F will damage seeds, so in hot climates they cannot be dried in direct sunlight. In humid conditions, subject them to a gentle heat—such as that from a solar dehydrator, a lightbulb, or a pilot light—kept around 90 degrees. Seeds that are prone to attack by weevils and other insect infestations also must be frozen in order to kill the eggs that have already been laid in the seeds. Store seeds under cool, dry conditions, since heat and humidity trigger germination and are enemies of viability.
In general, seeds should be stored in airtight containers, such as envelopes in coffee cans with lids taped airtight. Silica gel packets are often used for moisture control. Seeds last longest in the freezer if they are completely dry. If not the freezer, keep them in the refrigerator, if possible.
I have mentioned only a small percentage of the vast kinds of edible botanicals in the world that we will want to keep growing, for the sake of survival and diversity and pleasure, when the biotechs fail or when civil society gets strong enough to crush the multinationals—whichever comes first. For other crops, I suggest again that you get the Ashworth book or check online.
Are you confused enough already? Don’t be. Seed saving is not hard. All you need is love.
— 25 —
seeds will make you a thief
THE HOLLYHOCKS in the Cimetière de Montmartre, blooming pink and white beneath the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, near the headstone of Émile Zola, begged for their seeds to be stolen. The seeds came prepackaged, a doughnut of black flakes, like onyx, arranged in a ring, within a nubbin of calyx. To have these flowers growing in my garden would be to remember Paris and the beauty of its dead memorialized in marble and travertine. (Thank heavens I got to see Paris before I quit flying.)
I could not help myself. The seeds were so tempting, thrust toward me from the base of the hollyhock stem, itself yoked with more flowers, floating skyward like pink saucers. Hollyhocks bloom over an extended period of time, and their first blooms have turned to dry seed heads even as later blooms remain in bud. No one was around, not simply out of sight but not on guard anywhere, and the little packet came off so easily in my hand.
Mere hours later, Paris forgotten, Raven and I drove slowly through the south of France in drizzling rain. Southern France’s rural countryside and its beautiful old villages, where houses were constructed of stone centuries ago, mesmerized me. A longing rose in me, to live in a landscape such as the one I passed through. I longed for window boxes, for a market where older women sat selling homemade melon jam and quail eggs, for a revolutionary spirit. I remember the purple and yellow plums snatched from tree boughs overhanging garden walls near a vineyard at Nitry; they were impeccably sweet. I think when I found the plums—so many, going unpicked, beaded with cool rain—I fell heedlessly in love with France. Before, I had been charmed. Now I was giddily, uselessly, mercilessly in love.
At one vineyard, Raven and I strolled in raincoats through a demonstration garden, which might have been our own except the labels were in French and some of the plants, like artichoke, we had never seen growing.
An aisle parted the garden in two, and rows angled off either side. Each weedless, perfect row was assigned to one kind of plant: peonies, beets, onions, carrots, strawberries, cosmos. One large fragrant herb had gone to seed, its umbel eye-level and pregnant, and I could not resist gathering a few of its seeds. A fennel, it still grows in my herb garden.
Along fence lines the roses were incredible, seemingly disease free and delicate, redolent, flawless, tender, raindrop-speckled, lovely. There were roses of all colors. I had never seen roses more magnetic than in France, a
nd finally I understood why roses have inspired poetry from Elizabethan to modern. If roses grew easily from seeds, I would have stolen from them too.
I dried my modest bundles, wrapped in napkins and maps and pages photocopied from travel guides. There were the plum pits to care for, tied in a bandanna. I kept them as warm and dry as if they were little French poodles. Night after night, each spent in a different town, from a hotel in Semur-en-Auxois to a tent in the Alps to a goat farm in Jura, I guarded the seeds I gathered, little packets in my luggage, opening them to dry, closing them to travel.
I steal seeds in the hope of surrounding myself with a bewildering and awesome universe of plant life. But is it really stealing? The plant gives freely. If the plant is under ownership, in someone else’s garden, is its reproduction then also someone’s property? Aren’t seeds, as Vandana Shiva argues, part of the commons? “The uniqueness of life is that it reproduces and that’s the problem for capitalists,” I heard her say once during a talk at Keene State College. “As if seeds pop out of corporate heads.”
I am, of course, taking Shiva out of context. She is talking about the biotech industry’s zeal to patent life-forms, including seeds, which is stealing from God. I’m not stealing from God. Or from the plant. Perhaps I am stealing from the person who planted the plant. Or who owns the property on which the plant grows. But the plant wants its seeds spread, and if they land halfway around the globe, all the better, from the plant’s point of view. I’m an emissary of God.
— 26 —
gifts
TWELVE WISE WOMEN WERE SENT OUT by their elder matriarch with pockets of seeds to replenish the world. When they reached my house, walking six abreast, the curtain of night had closed, and without words they entered the bare ground of my fields. They held things momentarily between their closed palms, lips moving silently, eyelashes laid gently in double brush lines. And then they lay down their gifts.
My garden, peaceful and calming as gardens are, has become a hotbed of activism, and sometimes a triage unit. To want to rescue anything is in my nature, although my husband doesn’t understand why we can’t eat everything we grow. We are saving those tomatoes for what? he asks. After many struggles—with moving from one place to another, and after we settled down, with bugs and disease, with drought and flood—I come to realize that I can only play a small part in a tragedy being played out on a world stage. I can only save so few things. My life is short, and time is precious.
My garden doesn’t look typical. Growing in the garden are Moon and Stars watermelon, Fife Creek Cowhorn okra, Running Conch cowpea, Black radish, Green Glaze collard. My garden contains plants in all stages of life, from germination to going-to-seed. The barn hangs with feed bags of seed heads, drying, driving the mice wild: Hollow Crown parsnip, Outhouse hollyhocks, Long Keeper beets. The kitchen is stinky with seeds fermenting in their juices and waiting to be dried. Seeds proliferate in the freezer, in my office, in the seed bank, in the garden shed—in jars, credit card envelopes, coffee cans, medicine bottles, recycled seed packets. Our house looks like a strange fertility clinic, bent on reproduction, I a fertility goddess, hot to protect that which industrialism has bypassed and thereby made rare.
And what a beautiful and storied table we sometimes set. One gumbo is made with Hill Country Red okra, another of Long County Longhorn. Sometimes the dill pickles are sliced from common old Marketmores, and sometimes they are from Lemon. The steamed pod beans are Dragon Tongue or Pencil Pod Yellow or Black Valentine. Five Color Silverbeet chard gets sautéed with onion. The lettuce is Rouge de Hiver and Freckles, and the salad is topped with julienned Purple Vienna kohlrabi and Chioggia beets with their awesome concentric rings. The Coconut Squash soup started as a Gold-striped Cushaw.
At the farmers market we display the seeds at the front of our canopy. It is early April, garden-planting time in the South, although the climate has changed and the temperatures are too hot for normal. Raven has made a seed rack about the size of an old wooden Coke case, partitioned into fifteen sections. In it I have stacked my wallet-sized manila envelopes of seeds tagged with address labels. On each one is a little sticker of a flower or a peace sign. Inside each is a surprise and I don’t mean the seeds.
One stack is Malabar spinach. Malabar is a spinach alternative that grows in Southern summers, on vines. It contains almost as much mucilage as okra, but the sliminess cooks out, and the leaves taste like spinach, they cook like spinach. Each packet contains one teaspoon of seeds.
A stack is chia, another is Jack bean. Four o’clocks fill a space next to lion’s tail, Grandpa Ott’s morning glory next to garlic chives.
The market is busy and Red Earth Farm is sandwiched between the strawberry farm and Georgia Southern University nursing students taking blood pressure. Mine is 102/66.
“Excellent,” the young woman says.
Why shouldn’t my blood pressure be excellent? I am a farmer, I am a seed grower, I am embedded in a local economy, I am among friends. Across from me Arianne and Elliot, young farmers of Hope Grows Farm, hawk their eggs and pastured poultry. I am sitting behind a table burgeoning with our crop of kale and chard, first of the season. I have been filling packets from jars of seed in a basket. A wrenlike woman in front of me is holding packets of seeds.
“Will this grow in a square-foot garden?” she asks. She holds up a packet of Bright Lights cosmos.
I picture a square foot of ground. The cosmos soar four feet tall, expansive, fractious. “They’re unruly,” I say.
“It’s okay if they grow big,” she says.
“Maybe plant one seed in the middle of a square,” I say. I reach into my basket and bring out a fruit jar half full of seed.
“These are the cosmos seed,” I say. I open the jar and shake a few of the pointy, sharp-ended shuttles into the bowl of my palm. “This tiny black crux is the seed. The rest is casing. I don’t have the machinery to separate the chaff. Now you know the part to plant.”
The second packet she has selected is lamb’s-quarter, a wild edible that many people cultivate, of which a single plant will overwhelm a square foot of ground. It grows even more ebulliently than cosmos and produces leaves that taste like spinach. Lamb’s-quarter, unlike spinach, loves heat, which we have plenty of. The woman thanks me and hands me two dollars.
An amiable man in his eighties is interested in cowpeas. He wants Purple Hull Pinkeye.
“I have some,” I say. “But they’re riddled with weevil holes and I can’t sell them. I’ll give you some and you can sort out the good ones.” I fill a manila packet, slip in a surprise, and write the name on the packet. I also give the gentleman two kinds of cowpeas I packaged a year earlier that didn’t sell. I’ve kept them in the refrigerator so likely they’re viable.
A woman in jodhpurs and riding boots halts to ask if heirloom is the same as heritage.
“Yes, it is.” I talk to her about heirlooms. She leaves with a packet of Hollow Crown parsnip and another of cilantro.
A young couple reports that they are tending their first garden. “We planted it yesterday,” the man, short with buzzed, dark hair, says.
“We’d like to buy seeds,” says the young woman. Her hair is dyed red as a neon sign. “But we planted all our space.”
Instead, they buy one of Raven’s pies and a jar of organic strawberry jam.
“Keep the garden watered,” I say. “Especially until your seeds germinate. Dripping is better than sprinkling.”
All morning, as the market progresses, my conversation consists of sentences like “Grow it on a fence” or “Plant it a quarter-inch deep” or “Sure, it would work for spanakopita.” Of course the sinners sail by the seeds, but plenty of people pause. More and more people are stopping. They want to learn all they can about growing.
When the morning is over and our money is counted, this is what I know: Seeds are returning to circulation.<
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— 27 —
seed banking
IN 2008, Norway finished construction of a strange structure that reporters began to call the Doomsday Vault. Norwegians bored a tunnel into a solid-stone mountain in the permafrost on an island some seven hundred miles south of the North Pole and lined it with a meter’s width of reinforced concrete. They, essentially, built a structure to last forever. They built it to withstand just about anything.
Why would Norway and its global partners build such a thing? To answer this question, we have to imagine scenarios that might precipitate the need to replenish foodstuffs globally. Suppose genetic engineering goes wild. Suppose a comet hits the earth. Suppose climate change rearranges agriculture as we currently practice it. Suppose seas rise?
The global seed bank was built to withstand even climate change. The tunnel was positioned high on a mountainside, 430 feet above sea level—130 feet higher than seawater is expected to rise in global warming’s worst-case scenario, even if the polar icecaps melt. Tsunami waters won’t reach it. Inside this remote and invincible mountain, the Norwegians are stashing seeds from all over the world, four million kinds of them.