Re: The Right Seeds are Imperatives and not so expensive
Re: The Right Seeds are Imperatives and not so expensive
For those who do not know what heirloom plants are, here's info from wikipedia. Basically they're plants you can gather seeds from and the seeds will produce the same plant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heirloom_plant
Heirloom plant
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Only a few of the many varieties of
potato are commercially grown; others are heirlooms.
An
heirloom plant is an
open-pollinated cultivar that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but which is not used in modern large-scale agriculture. Since most popular heirloom plants are
vegetables, the term
heirloom vegetable is often used instead. The trend of growing heirloom plants in
gardens has been growing in popularity in the
United States and
Europe over the last decade.
Before the industrialization of
agriculture, a much wider variety of plant foods was grown for human consumption. In modern agriculture in the
Industrialized World, most food crops are now grown in large,
monocultural plots owned by
corporations. In order to maximize consistency, few varieties of each type of crop are grown. These varieties are often selected for their productivity, their ability to withstand the long trips to supermarkets, or their tolerance to drought, frost, or pesticides. Flavor and variety are frequently secondary concerns. Heirloom gardening can be seen as a reaction against this trend. In the
Global South, heirloom plants are still widely grown, for example in the
home gardens of South and Southeast Asia, although their future is uncertain.
Growing heirloom plants may help increase the genetic variation of crops.
Heirloom growers have different motivations. Some people grow heirlooms for
historical interest, while others want to increase the available
gene pool for a particular plant for future generations. Some select heirloom plants due to an interest in traditional organic gardening. Many simply want to taste the different varieties of vegetables, or see if they can grow a rare variety of plant.
There is no consensus as to how old a plant variety should be before it can be considered an heirloom. Many gardeners consider 1951 to be the latest year a plant can have originated and still be called an heirloom. (That year plant breeders introduced the first
hybrids developed from inbred lines.) Some heirloom plants are much older, some being apparently
pre-historic. Usually, a plant is not called an heirloom if it is grown widely and commercially, regardless of how old it is.
To be an heirloom, a plant must be "open-pollinated", meaning it will grow "true to type" from seed. This excludes nearly every
hybrid. Open pollination allows the same cultivar to be grown simply from seed for many generations.
Heirloom
roses are sometimes collected from
cemeteries, where they were once planted at gravesites by mourners and left undisturbed in the decades since.
I wish I had known before that happened, I'd have purchased quite a bit of their stuff to tide me over until I could produce seed on several of their outstanding varieties myself.
)And if TSHTF- I'll still have plenty of seed to share, in the small inexpensive packages. I have a couple of dozen packages from last year that I havent planted yet-they'll go in next year, or perhaps some will be a late summer planting to see if I can get one last crop in.... This year, I'll pick up a couple of dollars worth, that will probalby get planted out in about 2 years....