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A do - it - yourself seed bank is just your own icy stash of seeds place aside for long - term storage . The estimable ejaculate banks are located in your own menage or neighborhood and take vigorous , regionally adapted varieties of the crops you already know how to grow and use .
The following is an excerpt fromThe Tao of Vegetable GardeningbyCarol Deppe . It has been adapted for the web .
The Do-It-Yourself Seed Bank
ejaculate tucked out in a bank vault in Svalbard , Norway , are fine as far as they go . But in heavy times this is unconvincing to be very far from Svalbard , Norway .
Even in the best of times you , an individual gardener or farmer , wo n’t be able-bodied to get any seeds out of the Svalbard seed camber . Only institutions that have deposited seed can get seed out , and then only the seed that they deposited in the first place .
A generic can of “ survival ” seeds is also not likely to be very useful . Such hind end are full of variety that are not optimal for your region , nor best for your purposes .
Nor is the can probable to include more than trivial measure of the boastfully - seeded staple crop variety such as corn , legumes , and squelch , the very crop that would be most important in the event of any major tragedy .
The Best Type of Seed Bank
The well seed money box is the one that is full of vigorous , regionally adapted varieties of exactly the crop you manage about the most , your very favorite varieties , those that do best for you , that you already know how to grow and use .
It contain serious amount of seeds of these crop , enough to constitute a normal - sized crop of each of them for three years or more , not just a tiny sample of cum that has to be increase for several year before there is enough to be useful . And the best seeded player bank is in your own nursing home or neighborhood .
Reasons to Start Your Own Seed Bank
Every gardener should have her own seeded player banking company . Even if you are n’t a seed saver , you should have your own come money box . Even if you never experience any catastrophe beyond the ups and downs of average living , it ’s utilitarian to have your own seminal fluid depository financial institution .
Save Money
If you buy source , you’re able to buy in bigger amounts and pay just a fraction of what you pay when you purchase a fiddling packet every year .
You simply dry the bought seed for long - term storage , fraction it up into one - year - sized packets , and put it into your freezer .
Flexibility
There are geezerhood when we can be too poor or too busy to buy come . With my own stash of seed , I grease one’s palms seed when I can start the money and time and pickpocket into my hoard when I ca n’t .
Some years I buy a lot of seed . Some years I corrupt none , but still set everything I desire . The personal source savings bank gives me greater tractableness and resilience in near times as well as unsound .
Owning Your Own Variety
Many varieties these mean solar day are produced by only one grower in the body politic or world , even if sell by many retail seed companies .
So you could observe your preferent mixture suddenly boss with CROP FAILURE in every cum catalogue one twelvemonth . When that happens it ’s very overnice to have your own cache of the motley .
Guarantee the Seed
The commercial-grade seed trade on a regular basis loses varieties . And the fact that a variety is widespread and very popular is no guaranty .
Of my five favored squash variety from the eighties the commercial-grade swap has lose all of them . Often many seed society continue selling the cross - up trash under the traditional name . The more reputable seed companies overlook the assortment when it is no longer what it is supposed to be .
The solution is that you may bribe varieties trade under the authoritative name long after the real variety that name represents no longer exists anywhere . All that has actually been keep is the name .
One reason often given for saving our own seed is to be able to prevent the loss of varieties we care about.
Where the ejaculate is n’t useable otherwise , we have to do our own seed saving , of course . But when the seed is widely available we just want to stash some away so that , if it is lose , we have dependable seed we can employ to start our own seed save after it becomes necessary .
I really wish I had just dry and frozen a slight of every variety I liked thirty years ago . If I had , I would still have real ‘ Sugar Pie ’ pumpkins and literal ‘ Guatemala Blue Banana ’ wintertime squash .
( What is being sold by these names today bears lilliputian resemblance to and has little of the distinctive flavors they had thirty years ago . ) And I would not have had to do all that body of work to engender the ‘ Sweet core — Oregon Homestead ’ line of wintertime squash after the commercial craft lost ‘ cherubic Meat ’ .
Seed Varieties to Save and Avoid
Even if you purchase most or all of your come , only varieties that can be saved belong in your seed bank . The seed bank needs to have undecided - pollinated varieties .
If you cache hybrid cum you have only the seed you have stored and are at a dead closing when it is used up .
Whether your semen bank starts with saved or buy seeds , its usefulness bet on your being capable to write seed and perpetuate the variety after taking it out of the bank .
So the cum in the ejaculate depository financial institution needs to be of open - pollinated , not intercrossed varieties . Hybrid diversity do n’t breed on-key .
Hybrid Varieties
Some hybrids do n’t make seed at all . Others do , but the seminal fluid give rise plants with variable characteristic that reflect segregation for all the genes and traits that were different in the two parent varieties that lead into the hybrid .
Some hybrids can be dehybridized into uniform , open - pollinate , true - breeding variety that resemble the original cross , but this is a breeding labor that ordinarily takes a number of years . And not all hybrids can be dehybridized .
The more your horticulture use open - pollinated rather than hybrid kind , the more complete your seed money box can be , and the more seeded player - supply resilience you have .
Replacing Hybrids
If you on a regular basis use some intercrossed varieties , seek for equally good open - pollinated variety show you could switch to . Most hybrid in most crop are not superior to the honest tantamount candid - pollinated variety .
They are simply market more intensely by the company that produces them than are miscellanea for which no one has a monopoly . Furthermore , with opened - pollinated varieties , the fact that gardener and husbandman can pull through their own come frame a point of accumulation on what can be charge for it .
Hybrid source prepare a captive market of anyone who becomes dependant on it . We gardeners have no reason to encourage and promote monopolies in our source provision . So we ask to do our prep and trial more varieties than just the heavy touted ones .
We need to actively search for and supervene upon the hybrid varieties in our garden with varieties that are open - pollenate .
AAS Varieties
mind AAS varieties . This acronym stands for “ All American Selections . ” It could more accurately be say to stand for “ All Agribusiness Selections . ”
The rule of the competition require winners to bear a sure percentage of all worldwide seed harvest sales for a issue of years to the AAS organization . you could do this only if you all control the come , which you could do only with hybrid , patented , or PVP ( plant life variety protected ) seed .
So AAS is an honor for the ripe new proprietary variety , that is , the best new loan-blend , PVP , or patented varieties only , not the good new varieties . Nor are these best young proprietary motley well than preexisting public domain varieties . Nor are the “ new ” feature for which they are touted needfully new .
Sometimes they have been around in public arena varieties for year or ten . When you see the Scripture AAS Winner be aware that the variety is proprietary , and that you’re able to not grow it without giving up your traditional power or right field to preserve your own seed and some of your ejaculate - supply resilience .
PVP Varieties
PVP varieties are open - pollinated change and breed true to type . However , they have sound restriction that forbid you from sell , swapping , or even giving away source . You are , though , allow to produce seed for your own use or sell a veggie craw grow from such seed .
It is also legal to use PVP varieties to do cross to modernise new varieties of your own . ( It is n’t sound to educe a new variety simply by choice from a PVP , or to utilize a PVP to make a hybrid whose cum you sell . )
So it is workable , though not idealistic , to include PVP varieties in your seed bank . In a mega - disaster there in all probability would n’t be anyone around to enforce the PVP rules .
But most use of cum bank seed will be in position shortsighted of mega - disaster . And for seed - savvy gardeners and farmer , selling or distributing seed is an important choice .
I suggest obviate all PVP varieties in your garden and seed bank unless the diverseness is genuinely superior to all other equivalents .
Fungicides
A third category to void putting into our seed money box is varieties that are sold only with seed treatment ( antifungal ) .
The seed treatments involve dangerous chemical substance that are not pragmatic to apply on the home exfoliation . The varieties are not resistive to common disease that are found in most garden , so can not mature without the treatments .
The compounding of a kind not resistive enough to ordinary disease to grow without seed treatment and the seed treatment themselves makes for varieties for which you may not write germ . Avoid purchase treated seed . avert varieties that are sell only as treated germ .
GMO Varieties
Of course , we do n’t want GMO smorgasbord in our seed bank . Even if we did n’t mind the familial modifications , GMO varieties usually have utility patent of invention that are maximally restrictive .
You are forbidden from pull through come even for your own consumption or for using the motley in breeding of any kind . You essentially do n’t own the come when you buy it . You are just leasing the purpose of that amount of seminal fluid for one yr .
Space for Your Seed Bank
In most cases your seed bank will start as a small box in a freezer . It may grow to a whole deep-freeze of its own if you get ambitious and figure on storing enough seed for years , or for your entire neighborhood as policy against a serious disaster .
by rights dried for long - term storage and put into a freezer , the seeded player will keep virtually indefinitely as long as the king lasts , and for several years beyond should the power stop . During that several years beyond , you would save and replace the seed as you used it .
Expanding Your Seed Bank
If at some decimal point you want to expand your do - it - yourself cum depository financial institution to a whole freezer , regard find a used chest of drawers deep freezer . These are often usable devoid because the great unwashed get rid of them to convert to more commodious upright freezers .
Chest deep-freeze are fine for seed , as you do n’t demand frequent or convenient access . Most used thorax deep freezer change hand via freebie ads place by those wanting to get rid of or acquire one .
A cum bank can be designed around the want of average gardening or it can be oriented toward get your family line or neighborhood through serious surd clip or even mega - calamity . I think the good do - it - yourself seed camber does at least some of both .
Recommended Reads
Saving Dry vs. Wet seed : The Seed Series
keep seed organize : Saving & Storing
The Tao of Vegetable Gardening
crop Tomatoes , Greens , Peas , Beans , Squash , Joy , and Serenity
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