I'm Marjory Wildcraft again, and this time I'm in California with Farmer John of the
Sustainable Seed Company.
One of the things I love about the Sustainable Seed Company is, John has spent a lot of time
with every variety of seed that he offers on his website.
Go check his website out.
There's an incredible amount of detail about every single plant that he offers, whether
it's a good keeper, or whether its something you're going to want to eat fresh, what kind
of environments it grows in well and where it doesn't, and general seed viability.
But today we're going to talk to John a little bit about three key things that you want to
know when you're looking to buy seeds.
Would you say the first thing is that you're going to want to get heirloom and open pollenated
seeds?
Is that?
>> John: Generally, most people are looking to save their seed.
You want to be able to save your seed from year to year.
In order to do that, you have to have open pollinated seed, or heirloom.
Heirloom basically means the seed's over 50 years of age.
Those terms get a little bit loose with different people, you know, whoever you talk to.
But the idea is it's passed down from one generation to the next, and it's done that
way because it was delicious.
It was a really, you know, it tasted really good, or it stored really well.
You could can it and it still had its firmness.
But open pollinated just simply means that you can cross.
It would naturally cross.
And you can save those seeds.
>> Marjory: And when you plant them again, the plant is going to come true.
>> John: It's going to come true, versus hybrid obviously takes two different parents.
Sometimes there are four or six different parents.
But you can't necessarily save that seed and get what you planted originally.
Maybe one out of a hundred, and nobody has that kind of time.
>> Marjory: Now when you talked about seeds, you said 50 years.
They're not going to store those seeds for 50 years.
Seed viability doesn't really last that long.
You mean that they've been harvesting and collecting and growing.
But how long can we really expect, if we buy some seeds from you, or from anybody for any
of our vegetable seeds, how long should we expect them to last if we buy seeds.
>> John: Seeds generally, some seeds like onion seeds, parsnip, that type of stuff,
will only last a year.
And that's assuming that someone keeps them in a nice, dry, and cool condition.
And what I mean cool, an ideal temperature would be 55 to 65 degrees.
You can definitely, there have been cases where people have left it in their basement,
and 10-15 years later been able to grow maybe 50% of that.
But for the most part, most seeds like corn, beans, beets, those last about five years.
The thing that you have to think about with seeds is that they're a living organism.
It's not a widget.
You can't just put it on the shelf, dust it off, throw it in the ground and expect it
to grow.
A lot of growers are really bad about storing their extra seed in their greenhouse, where
it's easy to get ahold of, but your greenhouse temperatures get to be 80-90 degrees, and
that destroys the living embryo inside.
So it's really important to regrow your seed, if you have a seed bank, or buy more.
>> Marjory: From year to year.
So great.
So the first thing is, we're going to look for open pollenated or heirloom seeds, so
that way they'll come true year after year.
The second thing is, they're only really going to be viable on average for about five years.
So you pretty much want to buy what you're going to be growing in the next year or two.
And the third thing is, when you store them, you definitely want them in a cool, dry, dark
place.
>> John: Correct.
And people use different things to keep them dry.
You can use silica in them, or some people just use powdered milk even.
But you want to kind of keep the moisture away from them.
You don't want them too wet.
That breaks them down as well.
And sunlight.
Keep them out of the sunlight, obviously.
>> Marjory: They're going to try to grow.
Well, thank you so much, John.
And like I said, go to the Sustainable Seed Company website.
They have some amazing descriptions, and that's one of the things I love about it.
And Farmer John here is doing a tremendous amount with his company and ensuring that
you get good quality, high purity seeds.
Until we film the next segment, this is Marjory Wildcraft, and you can Grow Your Own Groceries.