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•  Find Your Frost Date

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•  Garden Planting Guide

•  "Why Heirlooms?" - FAQ

•  "A Case for Heirlooms"

•  Glossary of Terms

•  Seed Saving Tips

•  Glossary of Terms

•  Vegetable Origins

•  Scoville Units

•  Measurement Conversion


All of our rare and heirloom seeds are public domain, open-pollinated, non-hybrid and chemically untreated. No chemicals, unstable hybrids, patented or genetically engineered seeds!

Why should you grow and save "heirloom seeds"?


The words "heirloom" and "heritage" are commonly used in the seed industry as descriptive terms to market seed varieties.  They are very loosely used.  They stimulate emotions and memories and are intended to make you feel nostalgic and therefore want to spend money.

It is important for us to understand how words are used.  Some companies use an arbitrary time period as a definition for an heirloom seed.  To us, that is a bit too clinical or impersonal (and inaccurate).  These plants are not here by chance.  They are not a random occurrence found in nature.  They are the product of generations of selection and nurturing by people.

Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary defines an heirloom as, "A valued family possession handed on from generation to generation."  We could not have said it any better.  That personal commitment and effort is what it takes to make a seed variety an heirloom.

By their very nature, an heirloom variety is not an unstable hybrid nor is it fabricated in a lab using genetic engineering.  They are open-pollinated, which when grown with a little care to prevent crossing, breed true to type from year to year.   Saving seeds from most modern hybrids, on the other hand, results in seeds that range from sterile (see Terminator gene article), to ones that have unpredictable gene expression (F1 hybrids).

As our society has become addicted to produce that is inexpensive and uniform in appearance, fewer and fewer varieties of edible plants are eaten by people today. We are eating only a few kinds of vegetables, fruits and cereal grains.

Although a lot of seed companies jump on the "heirloom" bandwagon when they deem it in fashion, they are also the ones who determine when older varieties become "unprofitable" and stop carrying them.

We appreciate your support of our biodiversity preservation work, and are continually adding rare and endangered varieties to our growing list of seeds. Please let us know if you are having difficulty locating a particular variety. We will try and locate it for you or refer you elsewhere.

Seed Legislation

Keep aware of legislation that erodes our rights to produce and save seed for sale or commercial propagation. These rights can be removed either actively through the passing of laws, through the use of patents and other intellectual property laws, or via genetic engineering through genetic drift and varietal contamination.

Plants can be patented which assumes that the patentee "invented" the plant or was involved in the development of that species. Most plants have their origins in natural environments where the propagator happened to find them. These plants have been cultivated by hundreds of thousands of people over the centuries. No single person should have the right to "own" patents to such collective work. Patents of this nature restrict the world's variety of available plant seeds and potentially the world's food supply.

Restrictive practices are happening all over the world. Large multinational companies with great political power are involved in actions that rarely gets any mainstream press attention.

Keep informed! Grow and save seeds! Educate those in your sphere of influence! Support companies and organizations working to keep open-pollinated and heirloom seeds available.


Click here for Heirloom Tomato Seeds and Information.

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