Nature’s store of wisdom: The value of open-pollinated seeds

Walk through the produce section of a supermarket or stroll through a farmers’ market and at first glance there seems to be an abundance of choice. Year-round, you will be able to find any vegetable or fruit you might desire. But look closer and you will see how limited the choice actually is: there will be one, maybe two varieties of carrots, you will find green courgettes, occasionally yellow ones, with a bit of luck there will be cherry, beef and plum tomatoes, but with broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers or celery you will rarely find more than one variety. Old seed catalogues give you a glimpse of the wealth of choice that there used to be: dozens of varieties of each vegetable, different in size, colour, taste and growing time, suited to this soil and not to that soil, demanding light or shade, requiring plenty of water or content with little.

Over the decades, seed saving gardeners have maintained many of these heritage varieties but very few are commercially available. One reason is that selling such seeds isn’t very profitable – you can’t make much money with something that is widely available for free: most heritage and some modern varieties are ‘open pollinated’ so anyone is free to save the seeds for the next growing season. Contrast that with most of the varieties that you buy in a supermarket or on a farmers’ market. You could save the seeds, but even if they were to germinate, don’t expect the crop to look anything like the produce you initially bought. Most modern varieties are hybrids, which means their seeds are either sterile or the offspring are not ‘true to seed’.

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