Become a real seed detective: Master the mission
Have you ever wondered, like pores, kale, asparagus, beans, pumpkin and corn were on our plates? Well, like Adam Alexander, also known as a seed detective.
Below is a fragment of Seed detective By Adam Aleksander. It has been adapted for apply on the Internet.
My mission of seed detective
In two refrigerators in the garage behind my office there are jars and boxes filled with envelopes, containing – at the time of writing this text – 499 varieties of vegetable seeds, unfortunately mostly inaccessible to trade: beans and peas, tomatoes and chilli, lettuce and leeom radish, carrots, beets, parsley, turnip, sugar corn, onions and spinach, herbs, zucchini and pumpkin.
Every year I like to practice at least 70 different varieties: First of all, because I just love to eat them, and secondly, to refresh and supplement the seeds of seeds. I cultivate some cultivation as a tutor of the seeds library seeds – seeds that will be made available to members; Others just share with enthusiastic and curious gardeners.
My mission was and remains to save the seeds so that I could do it And, most importantly, returning seeds to those who were the first to share them, and support of the work of Heritage Seed Library in Great Britain and other libraries and genes around the world.
Seasonal tasks to save seeds
From the full summer to early winter, I spend my days collecting dried beans and peas pods, collecting seeds from ripe tomatoes and rotting cucumbers, and then washing and drying them on every available windowsill; carrying lettuce seeds to separate them from cotton pads; The threshing of sacks with cabbage and radish seeds, jumping ups up and down – an activity that can lead me to drink!
Winter is time to enjoy pumpkin and pull the seeds out of the sponge center of fruit to sow them the next spring.
This cycle of searching for crops for sowing, keeping their seeds and sharing them has become part of how I define myself.
Like the first farmers, I store the supplies of dried beans, peas and chillies; bottles of tomatoes, spices and all kinds of pickled vegetables that will provide me with good supplies in case next year’s harvest are catastrophic.
And thanks to a vast supply of seeds from home, I will always have a lot of great vegetables to grow.
Adaptation of crops to local conditions
This is vital at the individual level, because as more and more of us save seeds, sThe created crops adapt to local conditions.
The greater genetic variety of customary and freely pollinated varieties compared to up-to-date varieties means that they can develop better in more diverse environments.
This ability to adapt increases their immunity and means that they may also have the future in the local food economy. Local varieties, if they are grown by gardeners and gardeners on a miniature scale, strengthen our cultural attachment to vegetables and can be sold with a higher price.
People love to buy vegetables whose stories are as local as local.
Another benefit resulting from saving our own seeds is that the next year we get seeds that germinate better and faster, which gives plants with a greater vigor and, over time, more resistance to local weather conditions. There are also commercial opportunities.
Demand for organic seeds, especially customary varieties, exceeds supply around the world.
This is the chance for breeders for diversification, saving their own seeds and selling others. Sometimes saving your own seeds leads to an accidental or intentional intersection of two different varieties of the species.
As a result, the vegetable becomes part of our national culture, as we will see in the history of British relations with multifuritic beans Phaseolus Coccineus.
Defend heritage and heritage
What do I understand by heritage and heritage? We associate heritage with people and places. In the same way, heritage seeds are associated with regions and kitchens.
Souvenir is something that is usually passed down in families from generation to generation. The same applies to customary vegetables, which are associated with individuals and families.
In the US, these two definitions are replaceable.
Regardless of how they are described, all these types of vegetables are pollinated using the open method, which means that they arise as a result of the natural pollination process, whether through insects, wind or as a result of self -pollination.
In Great Britain, pollinated commercial varieties that are no longer sold or are not cultivated, are also classified as heritage.
Hybrid seeds F1 (the result of controlled breeding from various parents) – if they are treated as freely pollinated varieties – they will give offspring other than a parent, so they are not saved.
Somewhere deep in mine – if not everyone – the emotional core lurks the first farmer.
I admit that every morning, entering the garden every morning, I tell all plants happily good morning. I also talk to them individually, fearing that they may be a bit uncomfortable; praising them if they grow well, especially during harvest.
I feel in my vegetables just as the shepherd felt in his sheep. I take care of them. I love them. I am deeply convinced – though without any evidence – that this emotional bond was experienced by the same first farmers.
There is no day a year so that I would not find something tasty and nutritious in my garden, grown from seeds from home. And with the collections, memories of people and places where I found them come.
Human connection
I wrote this book, wanting to share my enthusiasm and love for growing and eating uncommon, unusual, delicious vegetables as well as saving and sharing their seeds.
It was thanks to conversations with other gardeners and food lovers that I understood how much people want to learn more about the history of crops on their plates; Especially those that have a local and entertaining story to tell.
I have already lost count, how many times people talked to me proudly about the pleasures they drew from the cultivation of vegetables from seeds saved at home. Their joy of telling me about triumphs and failures, and above all the pleasure of completing the circle of cultivation – sowing of seeds saved at home, collecting crops and playing with them in the kitchen – rewards all this.
I want to see a continuous raise in the variety of varieties that we grow and which we enjoy.
Thanks to the more intimate and personal relationship with Cinderella of our culinary culture, there will be a greater desire to cultivate our crops, better food and enjoy more pleasure. But above all, the taste counts.
Cultivated locally, collected and quickly consumed. There is no vegetable that I grow, which would not be better than what can be found in the shelves of supermarkets.
And with this curiosity there is enthusiasm to enjoy the pleasures of vegetables, which are up-to-date to our taste buds. I would like to believe that you, dear reader, after reading this book, you can go out with a up-to-date or refreshed curiosity, where the life of arable crops began, which are part of our everyday life and how they became so vital for our self -esteem.
Thanks to the better understanding and awareness of the fabulous journey that these vegetables made from wild parents to the descendants, Maybe we will not look at this pea plate anymore, but rather with delight.
If this book becomes the beginning of your travel in the direction of cultivation (if you can), acquire and consume delicious, uncommon, endangered, senior and customary varieties, I feel that I have done my work.
The search for crops for sowing, sharing and saving creates an uninterrupted thread from seeds, through harvest, to the dish and back to seeds. It’s just a wonderful thing, affluent in narrative.
On the following pages you will find – at least I hope – many stories about vegetables that, I hope, will bring a smile, including a too human story about peas called Daniel O’Rourke.
Notes
1 Doris Löve (Cambridge, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
2 -171203.