From Garden Seed Saver to Regional Organic Seed Producer

My seed saving venture started with heirloom varieties from the HSS collection – first tomatoes and dry beans, then peas, lettuce, peppers, squash and eventually biennials, flowers and herbs. At first, the saved seed was for my own use and then for sharing with the community through Kingston’s Seedy Saturday and the Kingston and Area Seed System Initiative (KASSI). We then began using saved seed for our vegetable CSA on Wolfe Island.

Producing more seed than we needed for the farm led to selling seed at Seedy Saturdays. In 2017 we created Kitchen Table Seed House – a website for selling our organic seed online – and shifted our farm to focus solely on seed production. Business partner, Annie Richard, brought plenty of experience to the operation with multiple farm internships, completion of Fleming College’s Sustainable Agriculture program and a summer field position at Cornell University with plant breeder Dr. Michael Mazourek. Organic seed production has been at the forefront of my farming efforts ever since I realized that seed security is at the heart of food security.

The Organic Seed Alliance provides a great quote illuminating the importance of regional organic seed production: “Building a healthy, sustainable agricultural future requires farmer-centric seed systems at the regional level, where farmers and the communities they serve consciously choose which crop genetics they use, how they are maintained and how these genetics are controlled.” (OSA).

Individual gardeners and local organic farmers have an important role to play in learning seed saving skills to ensure availability of open-pollinated heirloom varieties. Heirlooms are part of a rich culinary tradition passed down through the generations selecting varieties for flavour, particular culinary uses as well as climate suitability. Access to many old varieties (i.e. cabbage, broccoli, corn) has been lost as traditions died out and seed saving was discontinued. Supporting regional seed production, much like supporting local food production, will go a long way to solving this problem.

It is important to re-establish more environments where organic seed is grown and bred, including more breeders, farmer-breeders and regional seed companies that focus on a wider range of genetic traits. The current climate challenges we face and the ethical decisions being made on our behalf provide further impetus to dive into what is open-pollinated seed, and how can they adapt to changing climate conditions. By definition, open-pollinated (OP) cultivars breed true-to-type whether they are an old favourite heirloom or a new stabilized cross. OP seed is the foundation on which our seed system rests.

An easy illustration of what is at stake is thinking about how we access bread. Many of us buy bread made in large centralized bakeries and distributed through chain grocery stores, but you can still buy all the ingredients at that same store to make bread, if you have a cookbook and the skill to make it. We are losing our ability to “bake our own bread” so to speak with seed that is not savable. You can buy the seed but you can’t “make your own seed”. Hybrids, GMO, and CMS are removing our ability to save our own true-to-type seed. So… solve this challenge by becoming a seed saver!

Quality seed production involves three major considerations: 1) species choice, 2) population size (the number of plants required), and 3) isolation distance (the distance between varieties of the same species). To start your seed saving adventure choose the “selfing” species. These include peas, beans and lettuce. You can start with as few as 5 plants and an isolation distance of as little as 5m (15 ft.). Let peas and beans reach full maturity and pick when they have dried down. After lettuce plants have bolted, flowered and set seed, collect ripe seeds in a paper bag. This is usually achievable in any reasonably sized kitchen garden.

If you have more space, grow seed from the “crossers” (i.e. tomatoes, sweet peppers, and eggplant). These species don’t need too large of a population (5-20 plants) to maintain genetic health, but they do require more isolation distance from other varieties (50 ft. min. or covering with insect netting to prevent cross pollination with other cultivars). There are plenty of on-line resources to walk you through the process of fermenting tomatoes, drying peppers and processing eggplant to extract the seed. An excellent resource is “The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving” ed. Jared Zystro, etc.

The “out-crossers” (i.e. squash, corn) can require both large populations (min. 200 plants for corn) and far greater distances (up to a 2 km for corn) in order to maintain genetic health and remain true-to-type. Squash requires fewer plants but good isolation (800 m) to prevent crossing. Fruit is removed from the plant after they have died down and then cured for a period of weeks. Seed can then be removed, washed and thoroughly dried. The nice thing about squash is that you can still eat the fruit.

I am a great advocate of experimenting so don’t let these “rules” dissuade you from saving seed for your own use. Doing is the best way to learn. You may inadvertently become a plant breeder.

At Kitchen Table Seed House we continue to determine which species produce quality seed in our climate. The hot and humid summers on Wolfe Island work best for squash, corn, beans, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and some of the flowers and herbs. We bring in seed from trusted wholesale suppliers, or contract growers for those crops that we cannot grow in our location (i.e. carrot as it crosses with Queen Ann’s Lace).

Many of our varieties on offer are heirlooms because we are looking for great flavour and a wide range of variability in colour, shape, size and culinary usage. But, we also have a strong interest in breeding new heirlooms for the future. Annie has a number of ongoing breeding projects where she is selecting for flavour, disease and pest resistance, and the ability to perform well in organic or low-input systems (i.e., farms that don’t use off-farm inputs of pesticides & insecticides). We are also interested in less genetic uniformity as a means of providing plants with as many options as possible to adapt to their changing environment. We continue to select the most robust plants in field production to ensure that each year’s crop is performing well in our local conditions.

Seed saving requires very little in the way of specialized equipment. Some screens, sieves and buckets will get you started with tomatoes and peppers. Seed storage requires a cool, dark and moisture free space. On a larger scale, we use a sea container with a dehumidifier for drying down crops and have built a Winnow Wizard for removing chaff from seed crops. We have also converted a wood chipper to a thresher, which works very well for peas, beans and lettuce. Our seed crops are stored in a climate-controlled room at optimal temperature and humidity.