The under-gardener is a member of the Heritage Seed Library, a brilliant scheme run by Garden Organic the national charity for organic growing. Like a lot of HSL members he is concerned about the loss of biodiversity and by the control big business has over the food chain. The Heritage Seed Library works to safeguard rare and endangered vegetable varieties – vegetable varieties that our grandparents will have grown and loved and that were once the mainstay of gardens and allotment plots in Britain, Europe and America.
As a member of the Heritage Seed Library you are allowed to make 6 choices from this list of vegetable varieties which are no longer commercially available, and you can choose whether to receive a ‘Lucky Dip’ packet as well.
Then only a few days later, which is amazing given the busy Christmas postage period, the package from Ryton Gardens pops through the letter box. Inside are the brown paper envelopes with the precious seeds which will hopefully flourish on the plot in the coming months.
This year the under-gardener has chosen
n Beetroot – Avon Early
n Broccoli – late White Sprouting
n Dwarf French Bean – Hutterite Soup
n Dwarf French Bean – Magpie
n Kale – Vate’s Blue Curled
n Lettuce – Brown Bath Cos
And the ‘Lucky Dip’ was Kale Madeley
I will try to provide a bit of information about the history of these varieties and what makes them special in future blogs.
More information about the Heritage Seed library can be found online at http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl/index.php
No comments:
Post a Comment