Why save seeds?
Author - Dawn McLachlan
When I was nine years old, my dad gave me a packet of sunflower seeds. I planted them out in a small patch of dirt behind the shed. As spring turned to summer I cared for my little green babies. Taller and taller they grew until the towered over me. Neighbours commented over the low fences as my sunflowers stretched upwards, turning their faces to the sun with heads as large as dinner plates. That summer I was the talk of the neighbourhood as my sunflowers could be seen over the gardens, tossing their golden petals in the breeze. I was so proud.
I let the beautiful golden discs turn to wrinkled brown, then black, and waited for the seeds. When the time came, my dad cut the towering plants down for me and I left the heads dry out on my windowsill in the last rays of the year. Then I collected the seeds and laid them out to dry, and then filled a jar with them. That jar lived in the dark under my bed as a memento of the summer, and a reminder of the spring yet to come.
Spring came and I was so excited to get my little seeds into soil. I had my pots filled with compost and I set them up on the windowsill in the shed. This was where my disappointment began. I did exactly the same as I’d done before, but fewer than half of my seeds showed their little green noses above the soil and the ones that did were weak. The weeks rolled on and my sunflowers failed to thrive. They grew spindly and nothing I did made a difference. When they eventually flowered their blooms were no bigger than my hand and they waved their apologetically small faces at me as I peeped around the shed to check on them.
The crushing disappointment meant I didn’t grow sunflowers again until adulthood. What I didn’t realise then was that there was nothing I could have done to make those second-year sunflowers a success because I was a victim of the F1 hybrid seed trap. The seeds I had so carefully gathered and kept all winter were doomed to return to type and instead only grew a weak version of one of the original sunflowers used by the hybrid creators.
The F1 Hybrid Seed Trap
Most of the seeds we now see available to us have been cross-bred to create seeds that are strong, reliable and in many cases resistant to disease. Cross-breeding plants for a better end result is nothing new. The desire for larger fruit, better colour, more vigorous habit has driven cross breeding for millennia. Growers want bigger, better plants which have a lower failure rate and that can come from these commercially produced seeds, but at a cost. Creating hybrid F1 seed is an expensive process and the seed producer has to maintain the original “pure” lines to create more of this stronger, faster, bigger seed. This means that the seed is more expensive, and because of the hybridisation process the plant you grow from it will not set viable seed that you can use in your own allotment or garden. Seed gathered from plants raised from F1 hybrid seed will grow a plant that will revert to one or other of the original parent plant. It will not grow the plant you had last year.
There is no doubt that there is a financial draw for commercial growers to use F1 hybrid seed, but there is another way. This is to seek out heirloom or open pollinated varieties. Open pollinated plants are those which are either self-pollinating or will cross with their neighbours, and heirloom varieties are open-pollinated plants that are over 50 years old. These are plants that are pollinated by wind or natural pollinators like insects. These plants are the ones that are most genetically variable and likely to adapt over generations to changing conditions and climates. These are the plants from which we can collect seed, and share seed, and grow on from generation to generation.
It is only two or three generations ago that almost all of our food came from open-pollinated varieties but, over the last 50 years, thousands of varieties have disappeared from the seeds lists. The science that dominates the agricommerce industry has focussed almost exclusively on creating F1 hybrid seed. The seed industry has, over this relatively short period of time, achieved an inbuilt dependence on them as growers purchase new seeds every year.
For those of us interested in freeing ourselves from that self-perpetuating trap of repurchasing seeds every year, there is seed saving. Seed saving itself is a learned skill and there is something intrinsically beautiful about learning the many and varied methods of pollination of these varieties.
Why bother saving seed?
Obviously, it will save you a lot of money to save your own seed, but there is also something deeply satisfying about being able to take your plants full cycle. To take a seed from one of your own plants and bring it all the way around to seed again is a beautiful thing. It is also a manifestation of the control I have taken back from the commercial hybrid seed suppliers. I haven’t had to pay for the privilege of using sterile seed for one season, because this is mine. I know this plant. I can take that seed and know absolutely where it has come from. By raising or sharing my own seed I am playing a surer hand because I know it survived in my climate, and my soil, and my environment the previous year, and the one before that. I can take my saved seeds and swap them with friends and together we can mix up the genetic pool and create seed that is uniquely suited to our part of the world.
There is more to it than that though. There is something deeply personal in this cyclical process. The plant and I did this together in a symbiotic relationship. The plant fed me and in my gratitude I will do my best to help it to perpetuate its life cycle. In the seeds I hold I can understand how this plant lasted the wind, and the rain. I can tell if it will enjoy certain types of feed, and if it likes an open breezy spot, or a warm sheltered place. I know this plant before it has even germinated and I understand it. We went through this process together and I feel a curious bond to the plants I bring to seed. This is plant parenting. This plant is truly mine, and when it cracks its tiny shell and reaches up through the dark, damp soil seeking the sunlight, I will be there waiting patiently for it - again.
This is an extract of a piece first published in 2020 as part of a chapbook series for The Town is the Garden Project in Huntly, Aberdeenshire.
