There's no such thing as a weed...

Whilst checking who originally coined the phrase about weeds merely being plants growing in the wrong place, I came across a website devoted to quotes about gardening with a whole page on weeds and weeding. Here are some of the ones that made me laugh out loud. For more weedy quotes, visit the site itself by clicking here.

A weed is a plant that is not only in the wrong place, but intends to stay. (Sara Stein)
Hoeing: A manual method of severing roots from stems of newly planted flowers and vegetables. (Henry Beard)
Perennials are the ones that grow like weeds, biennials are the ones that die this year instead of next and hardy annuals are the ones that never come up at all. (Katherine Whitehorn)
Give a weed an inch and it will take a yard. (Unknown)
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone. (Dennis Breeze)

Seed Saving 2

Well, with the heavy GM stuff out of the way, onto the actual seed saving. Last year I let coriander and dill go to seed as an experiment. With no patience to look it up in books, a few plants were allowed to bolt, ie neglected, then neglected further until their umbelliferous heads developed what appeared to be ripe looking seeds. Further neglect still, as they were abandoned in a corner of the polytunnel, shoved into brown paper bags.

Last year I periodically shoved my hands into the bags and pinched and squeezed a few seeds to sow alongside my bought seeds. RESULT! The saved seeds actually came up faster and more vigorously than the newly bought in seeds (although the plants tended to even out after that).

Fast forward to now, after spring cleaning the polytunnel, eventually the seeds make it to the kitchen table for sorting. Seed heads crunching between finger and thumb, gently shaking until all the seeds fall. With little twigettes and branches falling too, a colander is drafted in to sort the wheat from the chaff. Why haven't I done this before? As well as deepening feelings of connection to the circle of nature (!); as well as a gesture of silent protest against the vileness of Monsanto and Co biotechnology (see suicide seeds below); this process yielded over 100g of each type of seed from just a few heads of each. Will sow alongside bought new seeds; progress report later in season.

Because I am a beancounter, here are the financials. A normal seed packet contains hardly a gramme of seeds, and costs over €2. Even a wholesale bulk packet of 100g costs upwards of €10. For field scale/more commercial growers these sums still won't add up, as the saving process is quite fiddly, and leaving crops to bolt is perhaps not the best use of space, and risks creating pre-seeded beds. But for the kitchen garden, seed saving is easy, practical, ecological, satisfying, and more high yielding than I had ever realised.

Seed Saving 1 (Terminator Technology)

For the commercial grower, the concept of seed saving is probably something of a luxury. For the kitchen gardener it is about as satisfying as it gets, bringing the full cycle full circle. It is not, however, a luxury in subsistence farming in developing countries around the world, where small scale farmers feed their families and their communities using seeds harvested from previous seasons' crops. (Indeed, it maybe something we return to in the 'developed' West/North one day - but that's another story.)

Seed saving as a hobby is one thing. Seed saving as a means to having food on the table is quite another. Farmers in poorer countries often depend on saving, sharing and swapping seeds that have been developed over generations to thrive in local soils and climates. Their harvests are more successful, they require no cash, and they can sell any surplus through local markets.

GM seeds with a 'suicide' gene have been developed by the big Biotech Boys. These seeds are created to produce just one harvest. This means that you have to come back to buy more the following season, every season. What's more, the seeds are designed to be used with chemical fertilisers and pesticides (supplied by the same Biotech company, funnily enough). With cross contamination impossible to stop, all it takes is one farmer to grow the seed, and the genes can intermingle with neighbouring farms, rendering their seeds sterile too.

Progress? The technology is not currently commercially available, in part due to the avalanche of opposition in support of rural communities in the developing world. However, knowledge of this technology is useful in conveying the sheer brutality of the GM industry to the uninitiated, and to undercut the Biotech PR machine that claims it aims to help the poorest farmers in the poorest countries.

An eloquent discussion on the politics of seed saving is worth a read in Vandana Shiva's article "The Suicide Economy of Corporate Globalisation". For the latest news on GM, visit Michael O'Callaghan's comprehensive GM Free Ireland website here. You can also find a transcript of Vandana's talk at the 2006 GM Free Ireland conference.