Seeds: a broader view

 Last weekend, the folks in our Native Turf Helping Circle gathered around a table in the common house dining room. It was time to "clean" all the seeds that were harvested last fall from a variety of native flowers and grasses here at Prairie Hill. The seeds were still connected to the dried parent plant, or surrounded by fluff, or still in hard casings. This is a time-consuming activity made fun by doing it together. After two hours, we weren't nearly finished. But it is only January and we have lots of time before we will plant these little treasures. Working with them made us more aware of the whole story of the seed, tiny little bits of potential, ready to come to life with the right environment.

Around a hundred million years ago, flowering plants first appeared on the earth. In contrast, humans have only been here for 200,000 years! It was a huge event when plants were able to evolve and become flowering (and hence seedbearing). Until then, early plants like ferns and mosses didn't have seeds. This meant that they didn't spread very far, reproducing by dividing where they were growing. They also didn't have cross fertilization so they pretty much stayed the same from generation to generation. With the event of flowering plants, which needed pollen from other plants in order to make seeds, there must have been an explosion in the plant world. Not only did the cross fertilization allow slightly different plants to emerge, which meant they could evolve with changing environments. The development of seeds also meant that plants had a wonderful new way of spreading themselves far and wide. With the help of birds, animals, wind, water, and insects, seed dispersal had no boundaries. 

Seeds also came with a special trait: dormancy. That meant that they could wait for a long, long time before they came to life with the right environmental conditions: temperature, moisture, soil. Many of our current seeds have lost the ability to last for years in a dormant state. It has been bred out of them.  But recently scientists were successful in germinating a 2,000-year-old seed from way back! Amazing!

So here we are in the 21st Century needing to expand our seed banks. I don't think anyone disagrees that with our climate becoming less stable and the future unknown, it's important to have a greater variety of plants available. We don't want to have a disease or change in climate to wipe out any of the crops that we depend upon. And since in our current system, profit is the main motivator, much of the responsibility for positive change falls down the ladder to ordinary folks like you and me. One thing we can do is start to support seed companies that offer a wide variety of seeds for our vegetable gardens, especially companies who have seeds passed down in families from generation to generation. I order my seeds from Fedco, and I love their philosophy. But there are other great forward-looking seed companies. Seed Savers is one. You probably know of others. I've been ordering native prairie seeds from Prairie Moon. I'm not sure that people still can easily put a "comment" on this blog. I know some folks have had a hard time doing that. But if you have suggestions of good seed companies, please try to put them at the end of this post in the comment section.

Another thing we can do is save our seeds from one year to another. Especially in these times when seeds are copyrighted and privatized, seed-saving is a good skill to have. Until recently in our history, seed-saving was the only way people carried seeds over to the next season's planting. So it can't be that hard!! (If it sounds like I'm speaking as a seed-saving novice, you're right. I've not done this much.) From what I've read, here are the basics. First: you probably don't want hybrids (plants pollinated by something that could change the nature of the next generation). So if you're going to save the seed from a particular plant, it would be good not to plant something of the same species but different variety right next to it. Cross breeding can only occur between the same species, so look at the botanical name of your plants and if two of them have the same species name but they are different varieties, they could cross-pollinate. That's fine if you're not going to collect the seeds. But if you want the seeds to result in a plant like the parent, cross-pollination will perhaps skew that a little.

Next, choose seeds from the best candidates, the plants that did especially well and have the qualities you prefer. That's what our species has been doing for thousands of years and it works. Pick the seeds when they are mature, and let them dry before storing them. And store them in paper, not plastic, and preferably in a dark place. If any of you have more advice, please share it! I'm going to save seeds this next fall from my garden vegetables and flowers. And there's a whole crew of us who will save seeds from our prairie ground cover.

I've been saving the best part for last. I mentioned our current farming practice of monoculture. In Iowa it tends to be corn and soybeans, thousands of acres of these two crops. Until recently, you could look out across fields of either of these crops and they would stretch to the horizon with the same plant covering all the ground. I have to say that since I grew up on an Iowa farm, that view is still beautiful to me.  Green and lush rolling hills in the sun, with the occasional tractor. It was a farming tradition that my father practiced and thousands of other farmers too. And these farmers tend to love the land. There certainly was no intent to damage the ecosystem. This type of farming was what was taught in the universities. Yet we know now that plant diversity is important to ecosystems, and monocultures threaten the health of our environment as a whole. Some environmentalists curse the farmers for their role in environmental degradation.

But the times they are a changin'. Many farms like the one my cousin farms are incorporating ecological innovations in their practices. Over the years, Ken has planted trees on both sides of the streams running through his fields, and those trees and their roots catch run-off from the fields and keep chemicals from going into the streams. It's called a riparian zone. And most impressive of all, Ken plants wide rows of pollinator plants (all kinds of flowering perennials, many of them native) at intervals across his fields. There is grant money to encourage farmers to do this kind of thing. Whether it is enough to offset the loss in crop income, I don't know. But I know that many farmers are participating in this kind of program because it is the right thing to do, and because it helps the whole.

Enough said about seeds, probably. Just remember as you plan your spring planting that we all have some small power to expand the seed banks of the present by our choices and actions. As someone who always ordered seeds for everything I planted, I am ready to learn how to save at least some of the seeds from my garden at the end of this growing year. And when I think about these seeds, I realize that they have a personal bond to this garden, this climate, this place. That's a new thought and I like it!