The Ease of Saving Seed

Every Spring, most of us (including me) head to the store to buy nicely grown, harvested, dried, and packaged seeds in little paper packets.  This is SO NORMAL in our society.  So, is it any surprise that most Americans barely blink when they're told that Monsanto has eliminated most farmers' ability to save seed?  To us, the seed buyers of American, we don't really get it just how HUGE this is.

Well, it is huge and here's an example from my own kitchen.  

(1)  Two years ago, I bought a packet of Speckled Cranberry beans.  I grew them, I fell in love with them, and I dried them (because that's what they are...drying beans, not fresh eating beans).  Before this, I had NEVER saved a seed in my life.  

(2)  Last Spring, I had some beans left over and I decided to try planting them along with another store bought variety.  The night before, I soaked them all in water.  The next morning, my saved beans had already put out a sprout tip, while the other beans had done nothing.  In fact, my beans felt alive!  I planted them all in the same soil and the same area of my garden.  Three days later, my SAVED beans were pushing up through the soil.  The other beans took 9 days.

(3)  Each bean plant produces about 30 pods of 7 beans = 210 seeds per plant.  I had 3 tripods of 3 plants each.  That's 9 x 210 = 1,890 seeds OF WHICH I SAVED 9 SEEDS FOR NEXT YEAR.

OMG!!!!  Instead of spending $3.75 to buy a packet of 30 seeds, when I only need 9...I saved .005% of my harvest and was ready to go...or, if I'd wanted, I could have planted 3 times as many plants (tripling my harvest) for the cost of three mouthfuls of cooked beans.

In other words...SAVING SEED IS SUPER CHEAP & EFFICIENT!  

So, converting America's soy, corn, potato, canola, and sugar beet farmers to BUYING SEEDS was an economic coup by the world's International Chemical Companies.  One which was supported by our government officials who were, first, supported by the Chemical Companies in running their campaigns to get elected.

Who wins?  Politicians and Corporations.

Who loses?  Consumers and Farmers.

Anyway...saving seed is easy, casual, fun, effective and something we all can do!

Warmly,

March Twisdale