Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

There are rumblings that the Monsanto types are getting laws written to get seeds we can grow ourselves outlawed much sooner than I previously thought.

Rumblings do not always pan out, but seed is one of the least expensive components of preps and you will sleep better when you have an ample supply stored cool, dark, and dry.

Expensive sources call them 'heritage' medium call them 'heirloom' modestly priced 'non hybrid' but it just means they breed true, like a pedigreed dog, and you can save them for next year's crop and know you will get the same plants.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

or you can make them. my tomato seeds this year are from a neighbor's tomatoes from last year.

also, my potatoes managed to flower and crank out one fruit, containing seeds. looking forward to testing those for viability.

my brussel sprout plants, after a year, cranked out a bunch of seeds. the seed pods look like miniature string beans.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

This seems to be my experience too. The pricing changes dramatically based on the classification used. Even though they are the same seed type.

If you have the opportunity, space, it might be worth growing some of your seeds to get a handle on how they grow and what pests might be attracted to them before it becomes a matter of survival. I do not have much space where I am, but all available space has something growing in it ATM so I can learn my mistakes when it is not life and death. So far so good. I have had some stuff totally decimated by bugs. I have also been trying a few techniques to deal with the pests. Not into pesticides myself so trying other options like companion planting or bug deterrents like chilli, garlic, oil mixes as sprays.

Also birds provide a valuable bug eating service, so encouraging some birds is worthwhile although they sometimes enjoy things you don't want them to, so you need to see whats what and discourage where necessary

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

All in the marketing

I dont like that.


T

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Some seeds don't have a particularly long shelf life, unless you freeze them. Onions, for instance, I understand aren't good much past a year although I've used 2 year-old onion seeds successfully with greatly diminished germination rates.

I don't want to waste valuable freezer space, so most of my seeds don't go into the freezer. I just grow out new ones every year. Beans, peas, peppers and tomatoes provide a new supply of seeds every summer and I keep them cool and dry in the basement for several years as insurance against a crop failure.

Potatoes are an issue for me and it's especially troubling because they grow so successfully in the limited sunlight that my small suburban garden enjoys. I don't know anyone who grows potatoes from actual seeds; I have zero experience with that but I have yet to see a single seed produced on my plants. Yes they blossom a little. Did I just miss the seeds?

I've been growing Yukon Gold potatoes for several years now. They mature in about 90 days. The spuds I harvest in early October will keep until late March in a cool dark corner of my basement, so I have some for planting in the spring. But my spring crop is mature by the end of June. Can I use those for planting my fall crop? I've been using left store-bought "seed" for my July planting and have never tried harvesting my spring crop to go right back into the ground. Does anyone know? Or should I be growing a different variety that takes longer to maturity and are also good keepers?

I think that people who buy garden seeds and stash them away are going to be sadly surprised when they bring them out 10 years later. Saving seeds is not like storing food. Seeds are living things and they lose viability over time.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Just saying.............

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4706151

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Are you talking about Codex alimentarius? I keep having to remind myself that that is in December of this year.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Merlin, seriously how much freezer space do seeds take up? I've got enough in my freezer to probably grow out a few acres of crops of dozens of varieties and it takes up less space than a couple bags of frozen corn and peas. Im sure if one really wanted to be ingenuitive they could even squeez them into cracks between other longterm freezer-stored food.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

I hear about people buying "survival seed kits" as a food source when TSHTF. No doubt, a lot of these people have zero gardening experience and are going to have a real surprise, if they ever have a real need for these seeds. :bawling:

Homegrown Yukon Golds!! That sounds sooo good! A bit of butter, salt & pepper, maybe a bit of chives and a meal fit for a king (OK, maybe an Irish king). :wink:

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Point well taken. I put my envelopes of seeds in a pint jar. I guess that's not really necessary and I could find a place to hide them in less space. Like underneath the pull-out drawer at the bottom of the freezer or on top of all those pounds of butter I bought on sale that sit on the top shelf. I'll re-examine this alternative. But bean and pea seeds aren't going to find a home in my freezer; those seeds are way too bulky and I grow new ones every year anyway.

I think, though, that people who buy #10 cans of assorted garden seeds thinking they can store them for years and years on a shelf in the basement may not be particularly happy if they don't use them up and replace them periodically. The fact that someone found a 1000 year old seed that sprouted doesn't make old seeds good candidates for planting your survival veggie garden.

Edit: Lest anyone think I'm feeling superior, let it be known that I have some of those #10 cans of seeds in my own basement. I just hold out more hope for the fresh ones I grow for myself :)

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Where is the best place to buy these seeds ?

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Probably not the best pricing... but I like their bundling / packaging options.

http://www.non-hybrid-seeds.com/

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

True enough. Sounds like some good ole' common sense to me.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

This is such a good idea. One of the important preps.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

As a long-time gardener, I am not sold on open-pollinated varieties....in my experience, they produce only half of what hybrids can, and they are just not as reliable.

You can grow out the seeds of a hybrid vegetable without difficulty, what you will end up getting is a mixture of the original heirloom or open-pollinated varieties from which the hybrid was created. You can then separate the seed based on the distinct types observed. Within a few generations, you can probably get back to the original heirloom varieties.

Now, the only scarey thing to me would be genetically modified varieties that produce no seed or sterile seed. When that happens, we are screwed.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Thank you Chris_I_H! Heirloom means that the seed grows true to variety. Remember that hybrids were bred for traits like disease and pest resistance. It isn't a bad idea to have reliable hybrids in a separate patch of ground-remember, disease and pests could very well explode if there is a catastrophic collapse. Those hybrids might be the only plants you harvest...

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

I dont know about them hybrids.
This summer I planted a new to me kind of squash hybrid "Gold Rush"!
Just had to try them.
Well they made great squash , and then started looking more like zuchinni, and made many zuchinnis.
Then to my surprise this same plant produced a small pumpkin! Shazaam!

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Dang, turn the dial pop out a melon...

That is neat. It would be cool if we had a plant that could make anything you wanted it to. A generic plant. Or maybe a plant that could grow more than one type of thing at the same time. Hmmm... Or maybe a plant that could heat itself in the winter.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

just started this project a little later than I wanted to due to the dang rain all the time. Its gonna be 16x20 poly hoop house.
Gonna use it for winter crops, lettuce, spinach (yumm!), califlowr, brussels, cabbage, carrots , and onions.

Attachment 79987

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

I bought a time capsule of Heirloom seed from these guys - think I heard about them from GIM, maybe not... A ton of information as well.

http://www.survivalistseeds.com/

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

I prefer heirloom to hybrid. Hybrid is altered. Disease resistant? Yeah, ok... what did they introduce? Not that I won't have some for backup but not for primary thank you.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

The real work is in building your soil, unless you are

Lucky enough to have good soil out of the box.

Building soil is NOT buying bags of chemical fertilizer

And topdressing the dirt you got.

You need to till it deep, and compost compost compost.

Furthermore, once you have built really good soil, you don't

Need combustion engine powered equipment to keep it up.

Read the wisdom of a pretty amazing lady by the name of Ruth Stout.

Using heirloom seeds is the icing on the cake.

What this does in the end is it completely gets you unhooked

From the hybrid/gmo, chemical fertilizer, mechanized tilth dependency.

Which is an excellent method of spending large amounts of

Money for dubious results, but not much else.

Just call it off the grid gardening........


scyth

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

I've read a lot of Ruth Stout, never heard her advocate either tilling or composting.
Just the opposite.
You could call her mulching composting I guess, but she never "composted" the way most people use the word. As in turning a pile etc etc.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

your spuds are a odd duck, Potatoes that actually have a fruit that gives seed is a rarity,and its nothing to do with modern man at all. Potatoes seem to be in an evolutionary transition stage.basically for millennia they dont require to seed to reproduce, the tubor (part you eat) is actually the dominant part of the plant. and doesnt require the rest to reproduce. just for grins you can splice a tomato plant to a growing potato plant (they are both members of the nightshade family) and get a potato plant to give off a fruit.
any potato that has "eyes" is ready to grow. so if your spring taters have those give her a whirl. just dont plant in the same spot or they will get the blight (read Irish potato famine)

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

I have never seen potato "seeds" as I always thought the potato was the seed. We always just cut up the potatoes left after winter (or saved some) with an eye on each chunk of potato and planted them. One good sized potato would yeild 4 or five eyes to plant. Always worked very well for my father's garden.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Well, yeah, I cheated.

Done a lot of French Intensive, also.

But here's the deal. Bought the house on 5 acres,

And i swear it is the last one.

So, took the shovel out and tried to drive it into the ground.

It bounced back with a high pitched ring.

Hmmm, what we got is rocks and clay, Northwest style.

Therefore, dug out the Roto hooter, and close to a dozen shearpins

Later, had a modicum of tilled soil, which

Had about zero fertility.

Found some rich folks with an Arabian horse stable,

And huge piles of horseshit mixed with wood shavings, for free.

Found a good supply of topsoil which though not free, didn't

Totally clean me out.

So I added about ten inches of this stuff and tilled it in again.

Then kicked in the Ruth Stout topdressing of, in this case,

Wheat straw.

So. Results.

King hell garden in the first year, and no need for further

Tilling or fertilizers.

Next spring I'll be busting up another patch, about 40' x 40'

And doing the same thing.

Sometimes you just gotta think outside the box..........

To get to where you need to go.


scyth

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

fall/winter crops in here, my three year old really likes the fresh picked vegetables.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Very interesting....squash, pumpkins, and zuchinnis are all in the same family (cucurbita), so it's not too surprising, if the hybrid was formed from some cross of the three.

I've crossed sweet corn with flour corn before and gotten some very strange varieties (but nothing you'd ever want to eat, unfortunately).

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

I buy here

http://www.aaoobfoods.com/nonhybridseedinfo.htm

They were friendly and gave cheerful personalized family style service to me via phone order, though web order is there too.

For some speciatly seeds I use johnny's IIRC and avoid hyper expensive, though perhaps morally worthy seeds of change.

I dig down at least 3 feet to start each small square foot, adding manure and tossing caliche, grass bits, rocks, etc. Later I invite my hens to weed, debug, poop on, and turn each garden bed after its season, like spring crops or whatever, let it lie fallow or cover crop it with something like clover or kale hens like to eat in different seasons, then give it a turn planted once no weeds or bugs have survived my little hungry farm hands. If straw is cheap, I mulch, but regular hay drags in too many weed seeds to suit me. Even hay works in the Stout method, as long as you keep piling it on, but I was not growing my own, and my hens mixed it into compost. I found that because they dig up and eat bugs mercilessly, (then convert them to delicious eggs) I preferred them to weed smothering a la Ruth. If, as I plan if things go really bad, I plant grain no one will think of as grain for us and the hens in the part of the yard visible from the street, then I will have that straw to use. If we move to acreage I will also grow my own straw and grain.

Onions and spuds are not generally grown from seed, ditto yams and garlic. My onion and garlic patches had plenty of small unharvested plants to keep me in multiyear business after buying my starter sets. I did not time my spuds right because our climate zone is called 8 but now acts like 9 or 10 and spuds go in in December I have been told. So I do not know if leaving them in a patch will work here or for others. But if you can keep a few not rotted till planting time you are all set.

edit to add - I used all the regular catalogs, from Parks, Burpee, Shumway, Gurney, to select items like non hybrid pole sugar snaps and other not always easy to locate items. I love vertical gardening and never take a bush when I can get a pole version.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

It would not surprise me. Their biz plan is to control global calorie intake. They will fail, but between here and there we still need to eat w/o giving them a penny.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Don't forget green onions and chives in your planting because you can even window box them and 'cut and come again' for a very long time it you are careful with them... ie no ripping up, leave each plant some green to go with, etc, when you trim off some to flavor up your dinner.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

One thing we need to realize is that often times the heirloom seeds we so covet are actually hybrids created long ago. However hybridizing yourself is much more fun than letting a company do it for you who may have bad intentions. I have a pretty cool roma tomato with yellow veins going through it I take credit for creating. I won't buy hyrbid seeds but have no problem hybridizing myself to see what happens :). It's kinda fun.

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

Has anyone tried these organic heirloom seeds? http://www.botanicalinterests.com

I bought about $75.00 worth of them on Amazon...Can't wait for the spring to come back around to plant these!

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

a health food store. many organic fruits & vegetables have viable seeds.

i just sent a seed pack to my brother for his kids to play with.

homegrown yellow corn seeds - from 3 ears of corn left on the ground in a neighbors garden, & tested viable.

homegrown India corn seeds - from corn grown from last year's crop.

tomato seeds from a neighbor's tomato 2008 crop.

etc. what was wierd was somebody stole my wheat crop. i wasn't growing much of it, just about a square yard, but, it was for seed.

it made me wonder if Monsanto has agents that go to community gardens & take out targeted seedlines.

how's that for ParanoiA ? :565:

Re: Get Your Non Hybrid Seeds Fast
 

I have grown quite a bit of seed from botanical interests and havent had any problems.

Its garlic planting season everybody, time to get busy.

Dont forget the seed saving book 'seed to seed', do you know how to make your own seed?

Anybody have a link to the monsanto/seedsavers exchange legal stuff?