I’m a number of hundred heirloom bean varieties deep within the newest seed checklist I’m looking, description by description, with no plan to come back up for air anytime quickly. There are almost 1,600 varieties of beans alone on this mom lode known as The Alternate, every with its personal story of human connection.
There may be Franny, a pole snap bean named for Francesca Mariscesco, the one member of her household to outlive Nazi focus camps, who got here as a refugee to america in 1946 with its seeds sewn into the folds of her clothes. Snow on the Mountain, a pole lima whose maroon beans are capped with white speckles, was handed down between members of a Louisiana household, technology to technology, because the Eighteen Eighties. I might go on (and on, and on).
I haven’t even begun to discover the 6,000-something totally different tomatoes on the checklist, its epic flower number of beauties like frilly, circa-1930 Grandma’s Poppy, or way more basils and beets than I’ve ever heard of. A Soviet-era winter squash known as Mindalnaya is looking to me, with its vertical orange stripes towards darkish inexperienced pores and skin, a spread that an Ohio-based gardener of Slavic ancestry has stewarded for 30 years.
With a variety of crops and a powerful depth of selections inside every, this yr’s Alternate provides as much as greater than 14,000 distinctive plant varieties on supply — every of them open-pollinated, which in contrast to hybrids will produce offspring equivalent to the guardian plant.
That is no extraordinary seed catalog, and truly it’s not a catalog in any respect, however a seed swap of treasures begun 50 years in the past, performed again then by mail underneath the identify True Seed Alternate and in recent times happening on-line. That effort grew to become the nucleus of Seed Savers Alternate, the well-known nonprofit seed conservation group based mostly in Decorah, Iowa, which was based to protect the culturally various and endangered genetic historical past of our backyard and meals crops.
Right this moment Seed Savers safeguards greater than 20,000 heirloom varieties within the nation’s largest nongovernmental seed financial institution, plus collections that embrace greater than 300 historic apples, 500-plus potatoes, and a few 200 garlic varieties. The group publishes a preferred seed catalog, too, that includes 600 varieties for 2025; the proceeds assist its preservation work.
However what’s catching my consideration in Seed Savers’ anniversary yr is a unique navigational hyperlink atop its homepage, simply to the left of those concerning the catalog — the hyperlink that merely says, “The Alternate.” It’s the way in which again to Seed Savers’ level of origin, and to make digging via the trove simpler, it simply acquired embodied in a newly redesigned web site.
A World of Listers, and Requesters
Like a seed, the trouble began small and grew. In 1975, stated Josie Flatgard, The Alternate and outreach coordinator for Seed Savers, simply 29 individuals who had seen newspaper advertisements positioned by co-founders Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy every despatched in 25 cents and a big envelope in return for a six-page typewritten checklist of seed varieties obtainable to be shared.
For 2025 The Alternate has 331 listers, as these posting descriptions of homegrown, open-pollinated seed they’ve saved are known as, gardeners who supply to mail packets to others who request it. Some have only a selection or two to supply; others, like Russell Crow of Illinois, who first listed on The Alternate in 1979, has 342 totally different beans to share this yr.
They do that not for fortune; requesters pay the lister solely the worth of postage. The listers share seed within the identify of conserving their beloved varieties alive.
In every such handoff, they know, one thing else is doubtlessly handed alongside: the ethic of what the group’s web site phrases the “participatory conservation of heirloom seeds.”
“Getting the seeds out into the arms of gardeners — it’s actually the place we would like them,” Ms. Flatgard stated.
“It was the founding concept behind our mission to actually discover like-minded individuals who have been enthusiastic about the life and legacy of the seeds that that they had of their care,” she added, “to see in the event that they might be stewarded by folks, and safeguarded.”
The extra individuals rising every heirloom, the stronger the chain of conservation turns into, particularly towards the brutal backdrop of modern-day variety loss. The arrival of hybrids (and extra not too long ago, of genetically modified crops), mixed with a altering local weather, have taken their toll. Between 1900 and 2000, in accordance with the Meals and Agriculture Group of the United Nations, it’s estimated that as a lot as 75 % of the world’s edible plant varieties have been misplaced.
The Benefit of Regional Adaptation
Redundancy is insurance coverage, and never simply in case one grower loses their provide. As a result of these are open-pollinated seeds, not hybrids, the identical selection grown for generations in a single place versus one other slowly adapts to the situations and pressures it experiences there, and refined genetic variations develop in every plant inhabitants.
Such environmental elements could render one inhabitants extra resilient not directly than one other, and who is aware of which stash could show to greatest stand up to new local weather stressors, or pests and illnesses?
Regionally tailored seed has a extra speedy enchantment, as a result of it could merely carry out higher in gardens in comparable areas, and now filtering by state to refine a search is only one characteristic of the web site’s up to date performance. For the Abe Lincoln tomato, for instance — a century-old, disease-resistant pink slicer with wealthy, barely acid taste — there may be seed from listers in California, Nebraska, Maine, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Jersey.
There is just one present supply for Pendulina Yellow cherry tomato, a prolific selection regardless of a micro-dwarf behavior that makes it best for rising in window containers and different containers. It’s considered one of 4,929 varieties posted on The Alternate this yr from Seed Savers’ personal assortment in Iowa — a kind of 20,000-plus maintained at zero levels Fahrenheit of their 30-by-10-foot walk-in freezer.
Looking the checklist ever deeper, we will filter tomatoes by colour, or separate the new peppers from the candy, as a result of generally all we’re on the lookout for is look, or taste. Just like the spherical Nizza zucchini with a posh, virtually smoky style, or the pink-fleshed Blossom potato that holds its colour even when cooked — each have been hits when served at employees occasions, Ms. Flatgard stated.
Search, and ye shall discover, looking and filtering and studying via the provenances of dozens or tons of or extra potentialities of every crop. “It’s an excellent web site to get misplaced in,” stated Ms. Flatgard.
Able to give up to some semicentennial seed buying, er, swapping?
