Heirloom seeds - two new hits in our garden

We plod along most years planting the same varieties of vegetables that worked for us in previous seasons. We've been growing vegetables for a long time now, we used to chop and change but as the years went by we established a set of reliable growers that stood us in good stead. But every so often, we explode into spontaneity again and try something different, new open pollinated seeds. Sometimes it works well and that plant will be added to our permanent rotation list, most of the time our experiment isn't as good in our conditions as what we're already using and after that season it's forgotten.

Not this year though. This year we tried a few new varieties of tomatoes and some new (to us) radishes. This year we met St Pierre tomatoes and Easter Egg radishes for the first time and they've won us over, completely.

St Pierre is a French heirloom tomato and has pushed the pink Brandywine off top perch as our favourite tomato.  Sorry Brandywine, I was yours for many years, now my heart belongs to another.

We usually grow Daikons and French breakfast radishes and although we'll keep growing the Daikons, Easter Egg radishes have replaced French breakfast for us. They have such vibrant colours - red, purple, white and pink. They're crisp and tasty and not too hot; ideal for a touch of crispy heat and crazy colour in a salad. 

Both these vegetables are open pollinated varieties so I've already saved seeds from the St Pierre; they're now fermenting in water in the kitchen. Soon I'll clean them, let them dry out completely, then save them for sowing next year. The radishes are starting to flower now, soon I'll collect their seeds and store them in the fridge, along with other collected seeds for next year's planting.

There are several reasons to sow open pollinated seeds (also known as heirloom seeds). Every year they grow in your backyard, they change slightly to suit your conditions, and when you have the vegetables growing you won't have to buy new seeds again. You can collect seeds from hybrid vegetables but it's a waste of time because they won't reproduce true to the parent plant. If you do this right, you'll buy seeds once, after that you save seeds, only buying again if you add a new vegetable or variety or your crop fails.

Seeds are such a valuable commodity. Whoever controls seeds controls the world's food production. We must keep these heirloom seeds going. If you can do this in your own backyard, you'll help keep those seeds viable and productive and you'll be much more self-reliant. I could go on and on about how the big seed companies are manipulating seeds but that would be a waste of my time and yours. I prefer instead to actually do something myself. When we decided all those years ago to grow open pollinated seeds and to save them year after year, it was a deliberate act of a radical backyard grower. I might not be able to influence the big seed companies but I can choose to plant heirloom vegetables; that means something. The only reason we have these seeds still here with us today is that many generations before us knew the value of seeds and made the effort to pass them on to us. I don't want all that care and effort to die out in my generation and I want tasty vegetables - therefore I grow open pollinated seeds.

Of course it's easier to buy hybrid seeds, they're in almost every supermarket and hardware store. But now we have all been empowered by the internet, not only can I write this for you to read in your far-off corner of the world today, but it's given us ways of connecting to traders of open pollinated/heirloom seeds. If you google "open pollinated seeds" in your State or country, you'll be surprised at the number of small vendors who pop up. Most of them sell exclusively online so all you have to do is to email for a catalogue or view it online, then order your seeds. It will cost you about the same to set yourself up with open pollinated seeds but if you do it right, you'll only outlay that expense once and you'll have your own repository of seeds to sow and save, and to pass on to your children and grandchildren.

I believe it's worth the effort, I hope you do too.

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