op seeds?

[tstovall]

Does anyone know of a mail order source to buy a varieity of vegetable open pollinated seeds. I am wanting them for my 'just in case peak oil is true' kit.

Thank you, Tom

[Gary Woods]

Pretty much any seed catalog; just look for things NOT marked "F1" or "Hybrid."

Shameless plug: have a look at

Many of us save our own seeds as a way of thumbing our noses at certain world-domination-inclined companies...

Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

[The Cook]

Check out

All of their seeds are open pollinated and/or heirloom. They do not sell in commercial quantities but if you want to save seed their sample packets are great.

They also have lots of information and good links on their site.

Satisfied customer.

[Billy]

The Seed Savers Exchange

heirloom plant, heirloom variety, or (especially in the UK) heirloom vegetable is an open-pollinated cultivar that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but which is not used in modern large-scale agriculture.

[jellybean stonerfish]

JLHudson

[jellybean stonerfish]

[Billy]

"Peak Oil" isn't going to be like a door being slammed shut. There will be a long period where we are lied to, while prices go up and up. We will be encouraged to keep consuming, keep creating debt, buy till it hurts because we are America and our way of life is a beacon to the rest of the world. We will be told that peak oil just requires more tax breaks to oil companies for exploratory drilling. Then we will, unexpectedly, hit the wall.

Meanwhile, you want heirloom plants.

[tstovall]

It's easy to see the prices going up and up. The peak may have already occurred. Crude in 2000 was 28 USD a bbl. 2004 it was 54. 2008 is yet to come and go, but so far a bbl is up to 137. It's getting harder to ignore the impact of more demand than supply and that will continue to worsen with China and the other developing nations industrializing at a rapid rate as well as the earth's population continuing to increase.

And, the government does nothing and doesn't even educate its citizens of the impending dangers of a society run by oil, when oil production continues to decrease. The easy oil is in decline. It will get more expensive to get less.

Meanwhile, I want heirloom plants. Yes, I thought I asked that question on the correct NG. There are things that individuals can do to help themselves when the fabric of our civilization changes and one of the most important safeguards would be for those that can grow, to have heirloom seeds to sow and save from year to year and to leave to the next generation. Tell me, please, why you think this is trivial? Tom p.s. thank you all who gave me places to buy heirloom seeds!

[June]

I like "Seeds of Change" as well.

Regards, June

[tstovall]

It's easy to see the prices going up and up. The peak may have already occurred. Crude in 2000 was 28 USD a bbl. 2004 it was 54. 2008 is yet to come and go, but so far a bbl is up to 137. It's getting harder to ignore the impact of more demand than supply and that will continue to worsen with China and the other developing nations industrializing at a rapid rate as well as the earth's population continuing to increase.

And, the government does nothing and doesn't even educate its citizens of the impending dangers of a society run by oil, when oil production continues to decrease. The easy oil is in decline. It will get more expensive to get less.

Meanwhile, I want heirloom plants. Yes, I thought I asked that question on the correct NG. There are things that individuals can do to help themselves when the fabric of our civilization changes and one of the most important safeguards would be for those that can grow, to have heirloom seeds to sow and save from year to year and to leave to the next generation. Tell me, please, why you think this is trivial? Tom p.s. thank you all who gave me places to buy heirloom seeds!

[Charlie]

My usual plug for one of my favorites.

Charlie

[Billy]

With the disasters in health care, credit, the profit-making war-machine, oil, housing, nutrition (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease), energy, and honesty in the media (I'm sure I left some out), it makes you wish that we had politicians with our interests in mind. (I'd like to remind everyone that the tightening of bankruptcy laws preceded the credit crunch by three years. Obviously, someone is keeping an eye on us).

You bring attitude and you shall receive attitude. YOU asked for open pollenated plants. Gary Woods responding post told you to avoid F1 and hybrids and I was making sure you understood that open pollinated and heirloom were the same thing. Where are you taking umbrage? I also believe that you asked in the correct news group but you still need eyes to see, ears to hear, and a brain to understand.

I hope I don't offend your sensibilities, if I mention that saving seed that comes true requires separating similar plants, sometimes by quite a distance. Planting seed from a zucchini that was grown next to a crookneck, or a pattypan, probably won't come true. Same with corn and many other plants. I'll even further risk offending your sensibilities by recommending "Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners" by Suzanne Ashworth, and Kent Whealy.

Tell me, please, why you think this is trivial? Pray, my little friend, what ever gave you that notion? Citation please.

They have, like, this neat search engine now, ya know, called "Google". If you can find your web browser (it will be called something like "Internet Explorer", "Opera", "Safari",or "Firefox", ya know;-). There will be a little window marked "Google", or go to

and type in "heirloom seeds, purchase".

Then comes, like, the hard part, ya know. You need to, like, pick the ones that, ya know, you want;o) Maybe, like, you could ask the newsgroup what vegetables you like. Cool huh?

Sorry, if I offended your sensibilities, but sometimes I' a wee cranky after my first cup of coffee.

You might find "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements" by Sandor Ellix Katz to be of interest.

(The following is an excerpt from pages 44 and 45.)

Dependence upon ever-growing corporate entities for something as basic as seed is not pretty. Alfonso Romo Garza, the billionaire who masterminded the consolidation of Seminis prior to its sale to Monsanto, bragged to the Wall Street Journal: ³Seeds are software. And we have the seeds.²(1) That would now make Monsanto the Microsoft of food. Do we really want to be that dependent on a single corporation for our ³ operating system"?

Monsanto and the nine next largest seed corporations control more than half of the world's commercial seed supply.(2) ³ What you are seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies," explains Robb Fraley, Monsanto's executive vice president and chief technology officer, ³ it's really a consolidation of the entire food chain.²(3) Fedco

decided to drop Monsanto's seeds and announced in its 2006 catalog that the company was ³ getting off the seed grid. . . .We do so because Monsanto epitomizes the road down which we no longer choose to go ... the road that leads to our complete surrender of control of our seed and therefore of control of our food system."

Expansion of the legal concept of intellectual property underlies corporate control of seeds. Intellectual property law deals with proprietary interests in innovations such as inventions, as well as abstractions such as words, ideas, sounds, and images. Over the past few decades, laws around the world have been rewritten to protect the intellectual property rights of plant breeders, allowing breeds to be patented and constraining ways in which farmers may sell, trade, give away, and even plant saved seeds. ³ Quite clearly a monopolistic patent regime cannot be established as long as farmers have the alternative of their own zero cost, reliable, time-tested, high-value seeds of their traditional varieties of indigenous agro-biodiversity," points out Vandana Shiva.(4) What has traditionally been viewed as a natural right-saving seed as an integral element of local agricultural practice-is being transformed by globalizing corporate interests into a legally granted (or denied) privilege.

In order to prevent farmers from ³ cheating" the patent holders by saving and replanting seed, the seed industry, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has developed what is known as ³ terminator" technology, seeds that generate self-sterilizing plants. The disclosure of this technology in 1998 created an international furor. For now, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has imposed an international moratorium on terminator technology, but it has been repeatedly challenged.(5) The technology exists, and those who stand to profit from it are likely to persist.

³ Biotechnology essentially aims to eliminate sexuality as a means of passing on genetic material," contends Peter Lamborn Wilson. ³ Capital has now reached the theoretical stage of commodifying the life process itself. The principle of intellectual ownership of nature-the final enclosure-seems to have become the basis for the global world order and its economy.²(6)

Increasingly, national governments and other, even less accountable, international regulatory institutions have been imposing plant-breed protection laws that deny the traditional right to perpetuate seed. . .

footnotes

1. Quoted in Nabhan, Coming Home to Eat, 149.

1. ETC Group, "Global Seed Industry Concentration-2005," Communique 90 (September/October 2005), ?newsid=524.

2. Heike Ferrie, "Schmeiser vs. Monsanto,"

1. Vandana Shiva, "The Indian Seed Act and Patent Act: Sowing the Seeds of Dictatorship" (February 14, 2005), Znet, cfn'i?itemID=7249&sectionID=56.

2. ETC Group, "Canadian Government to Unleash Terminator Bombshell at UN Meeting: All-out Push for Commercialisation of Sterile Seed Technology" (February 7, 2005),

1. Wilson, "Avant Gardening," 17.

2. Stephen Leahy, "Canada: Monsanto Victory Plants Seed of Privatisation" (October 5, 2004), Inter Press Service, ?idnews=25740.

1. Shiva, "The Indian Seed Act and Patent Act: Sowing the Seeds of Dictatorship."

2. Coalition Against Biopiracy, "Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy 2006," accessed June 21, 2006.

1. ETC Group, "Whatever Happened to the Enola Bean Patent Challenge?" (December 21, 2005), .

Now I'm waiting on the library to take a closer look at "Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners" by Suzanne Ashworth and Kent Whealy. There may be no other choice, except for the "terminator" gene.