Time to get seedy
Hello, it’s Kerry here from the Frome Seed Library. Your free, permanent seed swap located inside our fantastic town library. We’ve now reached one of the most exciting times of the year for us seedy folk...seed harvesting time!
But why bother saving seed when you could just grab a cheap packet of seeds from the supermarket next Spring?
Well, you see each and every seed, from the mighty 25kg Coco de Mer, to the fine dust of the Foxglove, is a perfectly evolved vessel of genetics, which given the right conditions will germinate and (hopefully) flourish.
Whilst there is nothing wrong with buying your seeds, the vast majority of the seeds sold in the UK (around 80%) are overwhelmingly imported from overseas, where seeds have been grown in carefully controlled environments. This means your seed has no genetic memory of that soggy summer of 2024, your claggy clay soil, or the recent drought, whereas your plants at home will, and for those that have continued to thrive despite everything, well that degree of hyper-local resilience and adaptability is something no seed company can replicate.
As politicians warn of future food shortages, it is crucial to recognise the role of seed in increasing our local food resilience; they are our insurance policy, but the type of seed and provenance is key. At present 4 companies ‘own’ over 56% of the world’s commercial seed market, these companies -Bayer (who bought Monstano in 2018), Corteva, Syngenta, and BASF - also own 61% of the world’s pesticide market. I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling peckish anymore...
Thankfully there is a growing global food and seed sovereignty movement (of which our humble seed library is a part of!), empowering growers and members of the public to save and share their seed, without the need for turning seed into a tightly controlled commercial commodity at risk from turbulent geo-political instability.
If you don't have any plants to save seed from, fear not, as well as our seed library, there are also a number of brilliant British seed companies selling open-pollinated, heritage seed bred here in the UK. What's more, many of them include seed saving guides so you need never buy seed again! – The Herbary in Horningsham is one such company, as well as Vital Seeds, Real Seeds, Wales Seed Hub, Seeds of Scotland, and incredible the Heritage Seed Library – who since 1975 have protected and saved hundreds of rare vegetable varieties.
So give it a go, we have a free downloadable seed saving booklet on our website (fromeseedlibrary.org), put together by our fellow seed librarian Catherine of Llandrindod Wells Seed Library, and we’re always happy to chat if you have any questions.