Who is growing your garden seeds?

16 mins read

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the April ’07 print version of the Daily Bulldog.

Sugarsnap: the pea that you can eat raw – pod and all – straight off the vine; the pea that is juicy sweet when maturely plump; the pea that has survived at least five corporate takeovers* since it came on the market in 1979 and by latest accounts is still going strong.

Corporate takeovers? Those seeds of Sugarsnap you are getting ready to plant are a product of Syngenta Seeds a multi-national corporation, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Never heard of Syngenta? Check the Internet. It’s a global leader in both seed and pesticide sales with annual earnings over $9 billion. It’s only been in existence seven years but it’s been in the making for the past 250 years as corporation after corporation in the “life sciences” (seeds, pesticides, pharmaceuticals) merged and spun off until today it is said to be one of the largest seed companies in the world.

But you won’t see Syngenta’s name on the packet of Sugarsnap pea seeds you receive in the mail; you’ll see the name of the seed company that bought the seeds from Syngenta and retailed them to you under its own label. That’s pretty much how it’s done in the seed industry.

Like all other seed retailers, Fedco Seeds in Waterville, buys its Sugarsnap seeds – one of its best sellers – from Syngenta. It buys about a ton of Sugarsnap seeds – that’s 2,000 pounds or 4 million seeds – from Syngenta each year. They come in 50 pound bags.

“While Fedco tries to stay away from multi-national companies like Syngenta that are engaged in genetic engineering, Syngenta is the only place where we can get the volume of Sugarsnap peas that we sell,” says Fedco’s C.R. Lawn.

And, while counting the tall-vined Sugarsnap as one of his favorite peas and one that Fedco believes has not been genetically engineered (see Fedco’s Safe Seed Pledge at www.fedcoseeds.com), Lawn is concerned about the concentration/consolidation of power in the agriculture sector.

So much so that Fedco’s seed catalogue has a numerical supplier’s code indicating the source of each variety of seeds it offers to its customers (listed below). It entered the catalogue back in the year 2000, when Syngenta was created out of the merger of Novartis and AstraZeneca to form the first global group focusing on agribusiness.

1. Small Seed Farmers
2. Family-owned companies or cooperatives, domestic and foreign
3. Domestic and foreign corporations not part of a larger conglomerate
4. Multinationals not to our knowledge engaged in genetic engineering
5. Multinationals who are engaged in genetic engineering)
6. Seminis/Monsanto varieties

Syngenta aside, the good news is that despite the years of corporate takeovers, the Gallatin Valley Seed Company, which is credited with bringing the Sugarsnap into being almost 40 years ago and held onto the patent until it expired in 1994, is still managing its production in Idaho’s Snake River Valley. Albeit, for Syngenta.

Gallatin plant breeder Dr. Calvin Lamborn brought Sugarsnap into being while trying to produce a flatter straighter snow pod pea (the kind we use in stir-fries) when in 1969 he crossed a “rogue” thick walled (non-edible) pod pea that had been discovered in 1952 with a traditional (edible) snow pea, hoping that the thick wall might counteract the twisting and buckling of the snow pea. So the story goes.

From this first cross came an entirely new class of edible-podded peas, with plump pods, thick walls and delicious sweetness at maturity. It took about 10 years to create a market for the new pea; change comes slow, but when it does, fame follows fast.

In 1979, the Sugarsnap was awarded a rare gold medal by All-American Selections, an internationally known, independent vegetable testing organization, which, according to Time magazine (Monday, April 23, 1979), “pronounced it the most successful new strain it has savored in its 46 years.”

Lamborn went on to produce Sugar Ann, Sugar Bon, Sugar Mel and Sugar Rae. One suspects Gregor Mendel, whose lifelong affair with the garden pea that gave us the science of genetics, would have been pleased with the work of Calvin Lamborn.

* (For a look at the corporate mergers that produced Syngenta check out the website of the Rural Advancement Foundation International at http://www.rafi.org)

April: It’s Pea Planting Time
Many New Englanders are said to plant peas on April 19, the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, hoping to harvest their first peas by the Fourth of July. Historic symbolism aside, we plant peas early for good reason: they are a cool weather crop, germinating at temperatures as low as 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The earlier you plant, the more you will harvest, say those who do.

Stuck on the tried and true. Try planting a new variety of peas this year. According to the Garden Seed Inventory, there are more than 200 varieties of peas available from the estimated 274 mail order seed companies in the U.S. and Canada. Try “Cascadia Snap.” Offered this year by Pine Tree Garden Seeds in New Gloucester, Maine, it was developed by Dr. James Baggett, Oregon State University. It’s the first unpatented, public domain snap pea. Early, sweet, tender and almost stringless.

Peas do not do well in acid soils, preferring a pH between 6 and 7.5. They also like a good supply of potassium. Wood ashes can take care of both these requirements. But the soil in which peas grow should not be high in nitrogen for too much nitrogen causes the plant to take up too much water; too much water makes plants prone to disease. Too much nitrogen also causes the plant to put all its energies into making large vines; consequently fewer peas are produced.

If you’ve been planting your seeds one to two inches apart in a single row, as suggested by many catalogues, try planting them in a six inch wide band. Those who do argue that this intensive method enables the plants to shade or cool their own roots and allows the tendrils to cling better to each other and the trellis.

Don’t pick the Sugarsnaps until they are very plump but not swollen. When small and immature they lack flavor; they need time to develop their sugars. To increase your yield keep picking. When you pick, you frustrate the plant which is trying to set seed, so it keeps on producing. And pick early in the morning; that’s when the peas are at their sweetest.

Peas are open pollinated/selfers (they reproduce by using their own pollen) seeds; that means you can recycle the seed year after year. Most pea seeds remain viable for two to three years, if kept in cool dry conditions.

A good source of small quantities of heirloom pea seeds can be obtained from Will Bonsall of the Scatterseed Project. He grows and saves more than 400 varieties of peas at his small farm in Industry, Maine, for the Seed Savers Exchange, a grassroots network of gardeners who maintain and distribute thousands of uncommon varieties of seeds in the name of flavor, genetic diversity, and yes food safety. One of 15 Mainers who are members of the Seed Savers Exchange, he can be reached at 39 Bailey Road, Industry 04938

Small Seed Farmers
If you’ve ever grown a Soldacki or an Aunt Ruby’s German Green or a Cosmonaut Volkvo tomato and have ordered your seeds from Fedco Seeds in Waterville, it’s likely that the seeds were grown by Donna Dyrek of Loon Song Seed Farm in Hartland, Maine. Dyrek is one of 47 small farmers (17 which are in Maine) growing seeds under contract for the Waterville-based cooperative seed company.

If you’ve never heard of these varieties – three of Dyrek’s favorites – you’ve probably not discovered the world of heirlooms. – plants that for the most part are not the result of hybridization. “While they are a “little trickier to raise than hybrid varieties, which have been bred for disease resistance, they are a whole lot tastier,” says Donna. “Taste – not appearance – is the bottom line at Fedco,” she adds, noting that she grows a lot of “tasty but weird-looking tomatoes, including ones that are purple and orange.”

Dryek started growing tomato seeds for Fedco more than 15 years ago and over the course of time has grown as many as 25 varieties but not all at once. Her average is around 6-8 varieties a year but a few years ago, because of a “grower crunch” at Fedco she grew 17 varieties and harvested 12 pounds of seeds from 621 tomato plants on her two-acre, south-facing hillside gardens. (As she says, “Never again!”)

“Depending on the variety, it takes between 10-20 plants to produce about ¼ pound of tomato seed,” Dyrek said. That year she grew between two ounces to two pounds of seed per variety. Ever hear of Schmmeig Striped Hollow? It looks like a pepper and is good for stuffing. One of Donna’s favorites. She grew two ounces of it that year. (Donna’s record-keeping is first class.)

For her efforts she gets about $360 for a pound of seed. She describes it as a “reasonable return” and work that allows her to stay at home and garden. Dyrek is among a growing number of farmers and gardeners in Maine supplementing their income by growing seeds.

Fedco’s CR Lawn figures that 18.5 percent of 935 varieties or 173 varieties it sells are supplied by small farmers like Dyrek. Of those 173 varieties, 86.1 percent are grown organically and tend to be varieties not otherwise easily obtained from the big seed companies that do not see any profit in growing heirlooms, niche or regional varieties.

April: It’s Tomato Seedling Starting Time
MOFGA-certified Donna Dyrek of Loon Song Seed Farm in Hartland, Maine, says she starts her tomato seedlings later than others, around the middle of April for a number of reasons. She wants to put them in the ground when they are ready to go into the ground; i.e. when they are “short and squat.”

Taller is not better, says Dyrek. She also starts them later because she does not want to spend too much time tending to them in her wood-fired hoop house.

If your seedlings are tall, don’t dig a big hole when transplanting them. The deeper the hole the colder the soil. Dig a long shallow trench and lay the seedling parallel to the soil surface, with just a few leaves exposed and cover. Water well.

Her potting soil is home made: a mixture of home-grown composted manure from the her goats, sheep, and cows, peat moss with a bit of vermiculite, pearlite, and azomite, a rock powder mined in Utah that contains over 67 minerals beneficial to plants, especially tomatoes and garlic.

Dyrek “feeds” the seedlings weekly with a liquid fish emulsion; sometimes twice a week, if need be. Because she prefers to start later, she doesn’t plant her tomatoes out until the second week of June. And when she does, she plants them in lots of composted manure and spaces them three feet apart. She does not mulch because of a perennial problem with rodents.

If you want to get off to a fast start by buying heirloom tomato seedlings, you definitely want to check out Tomato Lovers Paradise at Whitehill Farm in Wilton, where Maine Certified Organic grower Amy LeBlanc is offering more than 150 varieties of heirloom tomato seedlings this year. Ask Amy about the stories that go with Box Car Willie, Tommy Toe, Russian Black and Grandma Mary’s. Call 778-2685 for a catalogue.

In choosing the variety, know the difference between a “determinate” and an “indeterminate” tomato. The branches of a determinate are self pruning and thus stop growing and producing fruits when they reach a certain length. They are also called bush tomatoes. Their fruits are said to ripen within days of each other.

A indeterminate, on the other hand, will keep on growing and setting until the first frost, consequently they are usually large sprawling plants that must be staked. Some claim because they have more foliage and ripen more slowly, they are better tasting.

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