It is widely accepted that seeds are an essential component of growing vegetables,
and they are often a focus of debates and even a tag or identity that we assign to what we do.
Discussions about seed variety choices are common, including the debate between using heritage
varieties compared to hybrid varieties, and the associated issues of choice, resilience and
control. There is also a lot of promotion of seed saving as either an added benefit or an essential
component of having a vegetable patch. But we tend not to talk too much about the more diverse issue
related to seeds, of the infrastructure and supply chains that provide most of the seeds that we use,
the regulations that control their distribution, or the skill and infrastructure needed to produce
these seeds. And we tend not to put too much thought into the quality or viability of the seed
itself. Most of the time it seems we just assume that the seeds we want are going to be available,
when we want them, at a price that is affordable, and expect them to be of high quality. But
because of recent significant changes in political arrangements, disruption to supply chains in
general, and shifting social focus, seeds are not so easy to get. And many of us have begun
to recognise seeds as an essential service and to see the critical infrastructure related to seeds
as something that needs to be both maintained, and possibly radically restructured or even replaced.
I live and grow in Ireland which has experienced a relatively unique situation in the past year with
respect to the availability and supply of seeds. Ireland has a low population density, not a lot of
professional growers, and in recent decades very few people grew any of their own food.
There have been very few seed companies in Ireland, with most seeds coming from the UK,
either directly with the easy cross border shopping that we used to have,
or UK packaged seed being sold through local shops or organisations. Even though most of these seeds
were not grown or produced in the UK, it was still easier and cheaper to rely on the bigger market
available in the neighbouring country which has broadly similar growing conditions. Until
recently I was aware of only two small suppliers selling seed produced in Ireland, and one company
supplying seed from Germany, and the rest seemed to all come directly or indirectly from the UK. An
added issue for me is that the amounts of seed contained in the smaller seed packets that are
commonly available, generally isn’t enough for the scale of growing that I do in the numerous
gardens of the RED Gardens Project. So for quite a few years I have been purchasing many of my seeds
from a supplier in the UK, buying in larger quantities which were a lot less expensive,
and I was hoping that they were also fresher seeds of higher quality, but that is questionable.
In this project I also try to use readily available seed varieties, including some F1
or hybrid varieties, and I tend to stay away from the rarer or more localised heritage varieties,
to stick to more conventional seed supplies so that the work I do could
be a little bit more relevant to many more people around the world.
I have known for a long time that the seed supply system that I relied on could be a lot better,
and was likely needing to change in the near future, but then it suddenly started to change
quite quickly at the beginning of last year. First there was the pandemic, leading to supply chain
issues and a lot of people stuck at home suddenly wanted to start growing food. The stock of seeds
that were available suddenly sold out in many places, and many online suppliers ended up having
to shut down their websites for days or weeks at a time to process huge numbers of orders. And
then, here in Ireland, we had to deal with Brexit, or the process of the UK leaving the
European Union, and it wasn’t until quite late that we became aware that even with a successful
negotiation of a Brexit deal, seeds would not be included. Near the end of last year,
shortly before UK was set to leave the EU, the various seed suppliers that I rely on in the UK
all stopped taking orders of seeds for delivery to anywhere in the EU, including Ireland. Fortunately
I had just enough foresight to order in most of the seeds that I needed before this deadline.
So Ireland was suddenly cut off from the main supplier of seeds,
and the full implication of that has not yet worked through the system. It
is possible that a new arrangement can be agreed to enable seeds to be imported again from the UK
into Ireland and the rest of the EU in time for the next year's growing season, but I
doubt that will happen. So getting seeds for this season is going to continue to be problematic,
and a lot of work needs to be done to reconfigure the supply chains for those critical components
for growing vegetables here in Ireland, and there are a number of different approaches to take.
The easiest option is to find seed suppliers in other European Union countries,
as looking outside the EU is apparently not an option because of strict seed import laws. For
my own requirements I have found a good supplier in Germany, that thankfully has most of their
website translated into English, although they don't have all the varieties that I'm used to,
and are based in a climate that is quite a bit different. But I need to avoid assuming that
I can simply order in seeds whenever I need them and have them arrive within a few days,
and I have been buying seeds in even larger quantities, to have enough for a few seasons. This
is a basic approach to increasing resilience, in maintaining a stock of essential items, and
not letting my own supplies dwindle. This requires more money of course, and I need to be careful to
store the seeds in such a way as to maintain high viability and germination rates, but having this
extra supply also allows me to help out friends and neighbours who may not be able to get the
seeds that they need. I could continue sourcing most of my seeds from large suppliers abroad, but
I feel that recent disruptive events are a useful opportunity to start to make some
significant changes, but at least it is good to have a bit of time to sort out other options.
A very common and appropriate response to this situation is to save my own seed,
and although I've saved some seeds in the past,
I have not focused very much on this fascinating part of vegetable growing for quite a few years
now. With all of the different vegetable gardens and explorations that I manage,
I've needed to reduce the number of things that I had to keep track of during the growing season
and to limit the tasks that I needed to do, and seed saving was a convenient one to drop,
as it was so easy to buy seed from elsewhere. It definitely makes sense to start saving seeds for
some vegetables, especially the ones where I only grow one variety or the flowers don't
readily cross pollinate, and where I can still eat most of the crop. This kind of seed saving I
could easily do as part of my existing gardens, as saving a few seeds here and there wouldn’t
significantly affect the comparisons and yields between the different methods I am trialing. But
because of the nature of this RED Gardens project I would want to avoid saving seeds in these
gardens that requires more space or would have an impact on the amount of food I could grow. So
vegetables that need longer growing season to produce seeds, or ones you can’t save
seed from as well as eat, I would prefer to grow in a separate dedicated growing space,
a space I have finally cleared for this season for that purpose.
While I appreciate the benefits and possibility of more extensive seed saving,
and it would be a wonderful thing to explore, it becomes another set of things to add to my
long list of tasks in addition to growing food, tracking data and making videos. Every
season I don’t seem to have enough time to properly manage everything I've started,
and if I am going to save seed, I would want to do it properly, or I don't think it make sense for me
to do it at all. So, I am a bit hesitant to dive into all of this, and I'm more likely to start
slow, with only a few crops, only a small portion of the range of vegetables that I currently grow.
There are significant reasons why most professional vegetable growers and market
gardeners don’t save their own seed, and not just because the they can’t save seed
from the hybrid varieties they like to grow. It is a task that takes effort,
knowledge and skill that is quite separate to the process of growing vegetables, as well as
requiring specialised equipment for harvesting and cleaning larger volumes of seed. The
cost benefit analysis just doesn’t to add up. And professional growers need high quality seed,
as poor germination or cross pollination can lead to loss of valuable crops, they need the
reliability that can be easily purchased from large scale suppliers. While I am not so much
of a professional grower, I'm also not keen to risk crops due to potentially problematic seeds.
For some vegetables, I could easily save seeds directly from the gardens,
and there are other types of vegetable crops that I could grow and save seed from in a
dedicated area without adding too much to my workload. At the other end of the spectrum, I
will likely continue to buy hybrid seed varieties that I have found to be really useful to grow,
and will never be able to save seed from, as well as continuing to buy in new varieties to try.
But it is the large number of vegetable types and variety selections in the middle that
I really don't know what to do about. The easy but less resilient option is to continue to buy
them from distant suppliers, either directly or through local resellers, and the hard but possibly
more resilient option would to put in the work to save seeds from many of these crops myself. I
hope that another option of an Irish based supplier will emerge, which will be able to
provide larger quantities of high quality seeds for vegetable varieties that are suitable for
the Irish climate, and that are produced here in Ireland. This takes work, focus and experience,
and hopefully a lot of variety trials, and either the dedicated focus of one company,
or the coordination of a range of growers who are starting to take seed saving more seriously,
and who can be trusted to produce high quality seeds that others can rely
on. And I feel that it is this trust which may be missing from another potential option of a more
localised seed saving network, where people share seeds that they have saved themselves. This may
be an excellent option for many people, but with the scale and type of growing that I am doing,
I am hesitant to rely on seeds from someone who may not have taken the precautions to avoid cross
pollination, or didn't grow enough plants to prevent inbreeding depression of the variety.
The world is rapidly evolving, but seed saving is a slow and careful
process that takes experience and skill. I think that we are at a point of transition,
with an opportunity to make significant changes, to move from one formerly stable state that had
benefits and flaws, to another system or several different systems, but I don't yet know what that
will look like. Hopefully an appropriate supplier of Irish grown seeds will emerge,
and there seems to be a wide enough interest in this happening. In addition to this, I feel
it is time to rethink the seed supply strategy for myself and within my own community, as it
would be good to have a more localised supply as well. This is definitely one of those things
that I wish somebody else would do, but within my community perhaps I am that someone else.
Perhaps with both the stage of development of the gardens that I manage, and my own skills and
interest, it's an appropriate time to start saving seeds in a much more focused and integrated way.
The thing that I feel is missing is capacity, and that is where I am stuck at the moment,
as taking on more of this essential role will mean that other things won't get done or will
suffer as a result. But I also feel that resilience mainly exists at a local level
and it's something that you need to do, and it's not really something that you can buy,
even if buying in all of the seeds I need is the easiest option, most of the time.