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SEEDY SATURDAY FEVER!
By Suzanne Hanna
Toss in free handouts, children’s activities and tasty refreshments and you can imagine the buzz of activity and the hum of satisfaction wafting across these halls and church basements. My personal mission at these events is to hunt down those flower
and veggie seeds for a few heritage varieties I do not currently pos- sess. I eat a lot of summer salads and ‘Drunken Woman’ is a really pretty ruffled lettuce that has bright green leaves edged in deep bronze. Described as “definitely a floozy of a lettuce” by the Gar- den Path Nursery, this leaf lettuce is sweet to taste and slow to bolt which is a definite plus, considering our hot, dry summers of late. This variety matures in about 65 days. Beans have always fascinated me. ‘Lazy Housewife’ is a pole bean
that grows about 4 ½” to 5” tall. A variety dating back to 1810, it was favoured by the Pennsylvanian Dutch because it makes an excel- lent soup bean. One suspects that it got its name because one does not need to string these beans before cooking them. In any case, this is a relatively hard-to-find bean. Be sure to check out these celebrations of diversity and hope for the future across Ontario.
Suzanne is a member of OHA. OHA is encouraging everyone to get involved with Seedy Saturday. For more information go to
gardenontario.org.
Suzanne pores over her seed catalogues in winter, and plans her gardens to use heritage varieties.
I
n late winter, my dining room table becomes a makeshift seed library. Scattered across its gleaming surface are various seed exchange directories, my favourite Canadian glossy seed cata-
logues, a stack of empty coin envelopes and, of course,the collection of seed packets that I have amassed these past few seasons. Midwin- ter is the best time to sort through my leftover seeds and take stock of my horticultural wealth, so to speak. I have been saving seeds for the past fifteen years or so, ever since
I became a member of Seeds of Diversity Canada (SoDC) and be- came aware of the urgent need to help “conserve the gene pool of traditional Canadian plants”, those open-pollinated varieties that are treasured family favourites and are not widely offered by com- mercial seed companies. Thanks to Seeds of Diversity, Canada now hosts some one hun-
dred or more separate Seedy Saturdays and Sundays across our country. Formerly known as Canada’s Heritage Seed Program, this or- ganization provides support and resources to encourage volunteer gar- deners and farmers to work together to grow, propagate and distribute over 1,900 varieties of vegetables, fruit, grains, flowers and herbs. The highlight of each and every Seedy Saturday is the community
seed exchange that offers plant lovers the opportunity to swap those heirloom seeds that our ancestors chose to grow because of their incredible taste, vigour, hardiness and ability to grow from seed. As one event organizer explained, “If you have no seed to share, don’t despair as there will be seed from the swap table as well as from vari- ous vendors for sale.” Most events feature environmental, food security and gardening
displays and focus on bringing local artisans, seed vendors and farm- ers’ m “arket members together to showcase and sell their wares.
www.localgardener.net Early Spring 2012 • 7
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