Seed exchange preserves biodiversity

Heritage Farm, the home of Seed Savers Exchange, nestles in idyllic northeast Iowa, complete with roads curving over gentle hills, limestone bluffs, streams and the Upper Iowa River, famous for scenic canoeing.

I know all this because I am from a town with much less interesting topography about 40 miles from the picturesque Decorah area.

And the relevance to suburban gardeners is that plants thriving at Heritage Farm, open free to visitors from March 1 through Dec. 23, should have a chance in our own gardens, which are also in USDA zone five.

“For example, the German pink tomato has grown over 100 years in Northeast Iowa,” said Diane Ott Whealy, co-founder of Seed Savers Exchange. “It adapts and makes strong tomato seed. I know it's seen more changes than I have.”

Whealy's book, “Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver,” (Chelsea Green, $25) tells how almost 40 years ago she and her ex-husband, Kent Whealy, started the exchange, whose work she says is crucial to preserving biodiversity in the world.

Why is it so important that tomatoes come with stripes or in purple, pink and black as well as the famous red?

“Everything depends on plants,” said Whealy in a recent interview. “We need a vibrant, diverse plant world. And we don't know what we will need in 10 years, so we keep all the pieces. Diversity gives us the strongest food supply.”

Imagine if there were only one kind of corn in Iowa or wheat in Kansas, how easy it would be for a pest or bad weather to wipe out the whole crop.

Whealy spoke recently at the Chicago Botanic Garden and at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show, which continues through March 18, and is working on a garden at the Field Museum.

The stories about the seeds are almost as important to Whealy as the seeds and plants themselves.

One of her favorites is about visiting her beloved Grandpa Ott soon after the Whealys' 1975 marriage to get seeds for their first garden.

“Grandpa brought out a little pill box with tiny black seeds and told us the morning glory seeds came over with his parents when they emigrated from Bavaria at the turn of the century. These seeds were a living link to them and all the family they left behind. We were holding the seeds. It was a magnificent moment.”

And that made the Whealys curators of the seeds and the stories, the ones responsible for saving both for future generations. That was also the time when large seed companies started replacing old-fashioned seeds with hybrids and also purchased many smaller companies, making work like the Whealys' more important.

“There are two themes — seeds and people,” she said. “Every seed has a story, and it's up to us to bring them to life with soil and stories.”

Today Seed Savers employs more than 70 people and stores 24,000 groups of seeds on its 900 acres.

Another prized Whealy story is how Seed Savers got the Chelsea watermelon. Chelsea is a tiny town in eastern Iowa where families traditionally grew watermelons, and people traveled there to buy them because that variety did not ship well.

Marvin Kucera, a Chelsea resident, remembered those melons from his childhood, but had not seen any for a decade.

“He found the oldest lady in town, and she had seeds in her freezer,” reports Whealy. “He was so proud of them. He grew two or three melons and gave me the seeds.”

Seed Savers Exchange has a catalog where anyone can order heirloom seeds. It also produces a yearbook of heirloom gardeners who sell and trade rarer seeds. That yearbook is part of the membership fee, which starts at $40 a year.

“It's the beautiful side of what we do. People are growing these seeds again in their gardens and create their own stories with their families,” she said.

Gardeners should start their heirloom plots with what they like to eat, Whealy said.

“If your kids like carrots they can see how carrots are produced. My daughter brought some children to the farm, and in our area children are surrounded by gardens. She pulled out a carrot and said, ‘I told you carrots grow underground.'”

And the beginning seed saver could save seeds from heirloom tomatoes, beans and lettuce because they do not cross readily with other varieties, Whealy said. Directions for each seed type is on the organization's website, but the general idea is to save ripe seeds in a dry, cool place, she said.

And her main tip for every gardener: Talk to your neighbors about what they grow and gather their tips.

Amateur means love, says Whealy, and love takes you a long way in the garden and in being stewards of seeds and their stories.

The website for the Seed Savers Exchange is seedsavers.org.