[Mike]

On January 20, 2024 we held our first Zoom discussion for Cascadia Seed Guild plans and tasks for 2024. We had a maximum of 22 attendees, many staying around till the end at around 2:40PM. A request for a simple Seed Saving document, so we created a PDF dedicated to this. https://regeneratecascadia.org/groups/cascadia-seed-guild/documents/folders/9/

[Mike]

This is the outline we created for the January 2024 Zoom session

https://regeneratecascadia.org/groups/cascadia-seed-guild/documents/folders/10/

[Mike]

Brian, thanks once again, as you stated, perhaps not many among us know of the existence of Landrace Gardening methodologies, which is interesting, as in essence, it precedes “true-to-type” seed propagation. In addition, in sharing this, there is no advocation from the point of what we will do, just a sharing of the broadest knowledge of seed-saving options. As we all know, we need to save more seeds, overall.

[Brian Kerkvliet]

Thanks for this info Mike. After looking at it I feel that it is over simplified and can lead people down the wrong path. For instance corn is wind pollinated and can cross with any other corn within 2 miles. So isolation techniques or hand pollination is needed to insure that you don’t end up with GMO feed corn seed. Basically there are three categories of seed that you can save, easy, medium, and hard.

We could make a simple hand out but there is this one I would put out there as a primer that has already been made up by Seed Ambassadors here.

There are many other resources on saving seeds posted on the Salish Seed website and listed here.

• The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving, edited by Lee Buttala, et al. ​Seed Saver’s Exchange, 2015.
• Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, by Suzanne Ashworth. Seed Savers Exchange, 2002.
• Seed Sowing and Seed Saving by Carole B. Turner, Published by Story
• The Organic Seed Grower: A Farmer’s Guide to Vegetable Seed Production by John Navazio. Published by Chelsea Green, 2012.
• Saving Seeds: A Home Gardener’s Guide to Preserving Plant Diversity by Dan Jason. Salt Spring Seeds, 2020
• The Whole Organic Food Book: Safe Healthy Harvest From Your Garden To Your Plate, by Dan Jason. Raincoast Books, 2001.
• The Resilient Gardener: Food Production And Self-Reliance In Uncertain Times. by Carol Deppe. Chelsea Green, 2010. (Carol’s other books “Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties” and “The Tao of Vegetable Gardening” are also excellent)
• Beautiful Corn: America’s Original Grain from Seed to Plate, by Anthony Boutard. New Society Publishers, 2012.
• Homegrown Whole Grains: Grow, Harvest, and Cook Wheat, Barley, Oats, Rice, Corn, and More, by Sara Pitzer. Storey Publishing, 2009.

[Julie]

For the Seed Guild Meeting 1/20/24

1. Here is the Zoom Recording (Passcode: ft4$22*Q ).
2. Here is the unlisted YouTube video of your Zoom recording
3. The video is also a link on your ReportBack update/post.
4. Mike created a Reportback post which Brandon will turn into a website post/update. (I added some headers and italics for seo while adding video).
   

Lets see what works best for Group Stewards to create their own update post here on the website – give feedback here please. Whats most useful?

[Mike]

Thanks for sharing these items Julie.

[Mike]

Thanks for your comments and resource sharing.

[Mike]

Here is a good posting on permies.com on Landrace Gardening

https://permies.com/t/139843/permaculture/Solution-Crisis-Landrace

permies.com

One Solution to the Crisis: Landrace Everything (permaculture forum at permies)

So, I’ve been shifting to re-organizing my local community to work rapidly towards ramping up our landrace breeding and production. I’d like to thank Joseph Lofthouse for introducing the concept of landrace genetics to me, and for your thoughts on … Continue reading

[Brian Kerkvliet]

Yes I agree there is a place for landrace seed stewardship but that is after you have a good understanding on seed saving overall. There are ways you can really mess up if you are not paying attention. Carrots can cross with poison hemlock or queen annes lace. Corn can get GMO genes, squash can become toxic by crossing with gourds etc.

When beginning to teach people about this stuff it is best to start with the fundamental basics and then lead into more loose experimental approaches. This will give them an understanding of some of the potential hazards and benefits of open pollinated landrace approaches to seed saving.

Also if people are doing it for themselves that is one thing. If they are doing it to share or sell/trade with others that is a serious responsibility and quite another thing.

I alwase go with the precautionary principal. Just my thoughts on this