What's in your soil?  Seeds - Heirloom, GMO, Non-GMO, or Hybrid

A recent article in the New York Times' Sunday Magazine  by Dan Barber about genetic modification of seeds suddenly got me worried (again) about

• the seeds I use in my garden, and

• the lettuce that I just bought from the  grocery store because I had run out of  my home grown mix. 

I felt that I needed to refresh/reboot my brain about what the terms "heirloom, hybrid, GMO and Non-GMO indicated. I checked with my principal seed source and was relieved to learn that it, at least, pledge not to use or supply genetically modified seeds (GMOs). The company usually offers also offers between "organic" and "conventionally" grown seeds also accompanied with the pledge taht both are "non-GMO." The difference is that "organic" means the plants supplying the seeds were grown in accordance to some recognized standard, the top standard being that administered by the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. For plants and seeds, this label means that those plants have not genetically modified, treated with sludge, chemical fertilizers or pesticides, the grower (e.g. farmer has kept detaield records of her/his work, and that the farm has passed a third party's verifying inspection.

FWIW: GMO seed comes from  plants whose DNA has been altered by various processes such as recombinant DNA technology, cell fusion, micro and macro encapsulation - processes that are not realisically possible in nature. A good example is a Monsanto seed corn whose DNA that now contains genetic material from BT (bacillus thuringiensis), a bacteria that is considered to be a natural pesticide.  The corn is actually registered as a pesticide, not as a plant.  Other genetic modifications  are used to make plants reliant on specific brands of fertilizer, resistant to certain herbicides, grow to a given height or ripen within tighter range of days. On the other hand, GMO crops have increased crop yields and produced disease resistant crops in Southeast Asia.  The underlying concerns about GMOs relate to over dependence on just a very limited variety of crops, a few corporate monopolies dominating the seed supply for a large part of the world and the uncertainties of knowing what, if any,  are the long term impacts of genetically modified plants on the natural environment and, of course, humans.

"Conventionally" grown from my supplier means that the seed plants may have had chemical fertilizers or pesticides applied to them but are from  non-GMO sources.  Hybrid  plants can meet organic standards - hybrids are just the result of cross-pollination with closely related plants.  Hybrids usually require multiple generations of breeding for their favored characteristics to become established and become  a reliable variety so that their seed will reproduce a plant like its parent, i.e. be "true to seed."  Most "heirloom" plants are the result of cross-pollinations occuring over hundred or even thousands of years either through natural selection or over just decades with human assistance, but they remain "open pollinated" plants.  "Open pollination" means that if you decide to save seed from your Brandywine tomato for the next season and you also grow either another heirloom, like Amish Paste, or a modern hybrid, like Big Girl, you may not get a Brandywine next year (f1 generation).  In order to keep your "open pollinated" plants true to seed, you need to keep them isolated in some manner from the riff-raft tomatoes growing down the street...

Veggie History:  Strawberries

Source: Cornell U.

It's shortcake season! Volunteer fire companies, church auxiliaries, and garden clubs now are busy posting signs daily along roadsides announcing "Strawberry & Short Cake Festivals," and the red berries  displayed in pint and quarter baskets   fill the stalls at local farmer markets. 

But did you know that these familiar strawberries (Fragaria x ananassa)  are actually an European  cultivar of two crossed wild varieties from the New World?

Native Americans  introduced European settlers to the eastern  variety, Fragaria virginiana. Although the settlers sometimes included it in their gardens, they generally picked the berries in the surrounding woods; and  Europeans returning to the  Old World took plants back to their  gardens.  In the early 18th century, F. virginiana  probably accidentally hybridized with another New World species, Fragaria chiloensis that grew along the West Coast and in South America to produce our familiar F. x ananassa.   This hybrid quickly displaced Fragaria fresca (the "alpine strawberry" common throughout the Northern Hemisphere), in European gardens, it and soon traveled back across the Atlantic.  By the end of 18th century the new strawberry was being sold to gardeners like Jefferson by "plant men" in America. The rest is history, of course; but for a lot more information about strawbe

And remember:

"I eat a lot of fruit because if I fill up on strawberries or an apple, then I'll have one small 

piece of cheesecake rather than two big pieces." - Tom Fridan