After COVID our seed network has taken some time to reconnect. We’ve missed the face-to-face sharing of knowledge and stories that comes with the sharing of seed.
While the postal ordering system we put in place during the Pandemic meant that we were able to get valuable seed out to community gardens and growers right across London, the system created very time consuming tasks for our 100% volunteer-run, grassroots organisation. We are not a seed company! And for us the human elements of sharing seed are really important, we’re trying to build a world where we value the care, attention and labour that has created the food we eat, or the little packet of seeds in our hand. We wonder if we can truly value that work, if free seeds just land in our letterbox. Are we really challenging (food) systems ground in disconnection and isolation?
So this year we’re going to try it a bit differently – and closer to how we operated pre-covid. We’d like to invite all of our network to come and collect seed in person. This will be a chance to talk and meet, and hear about where people are on their seed-saving journey.
We are offering two dates:
28th February 7-9pm
4th March 2-4pm
Location is Stockwell SW99AW – approx 5 mins walk from Stockwell tube.
RSVP to receive the full address.
We’re also asking seed savers to RSVP and reserve the varieties you want in advance
The advantage of doing this is it helps us to manage stock levels, and you’ll be able to see the exact varieties we have available, and read the full information about the varieties.
New Seed savers, or those who haven’t contributed seed to LFSB previously, can use the form to request a starter pack for collection. Starter packs include our selection of a few of the easiest crop types to begin seed saving with.
In exceptional circumstances, if you can’t collect, and have contributed seed in the past, we may be able to post seeds out to you, but we’ll only have very limited time for sorting requests, so please collect if at all possible.
We appreciate this isn’t as convenient as previously, but hopefully the benefits of meeting face-to-face and having the chance to connect with others about seed saving will bring its own rewards…!
So what seed do we have available from the 2022 harvest?
Of the 2022 contributions received, there are a couple of new additions worth mentioning:
Agretti is a salt marsh plant somewhat like samphire, which can be grown in an unheated polytunnel or greenhouse. It has succulent tube-shaped leaves with a bit of a crunch, very good fresh for salads, or lightly steamed. The viability of seed is notoriously short lived – literally months – so difficult to find fresh enough to germinate. Germination percentage is never high, but the grower who contributed this seed has had good initial results with this batch, so get it while its fresh!
We’ve only had a limited range of peas in the seed bank (maybe something to do with our hot dry London summers) so we’ve introduced a couple more:
From Grove Allotments in South London we received Bijou Giant Mangetout. This type of giant flat podded pea was more widely grown in the 1880’s. Very tasty fried and dressed or raw in salad.
We also added the climbing pea Serpette Guilloteau. In 2021 we exchanged some seed with a new seed saving network in North-West Ireland (Derry, Donegal and Tyrone) the Food Security Through Seed Saving & Exchange project and a small amount of Serpette Guilloteau, was included in that batch. A good general purpose climbing pea about 1.5m tall. A grower we know kindly offered to grow-out and bulk up the seed, so that we could offer it out more widely this year. This variety has curved pods and the name comes from a particular French curved knife rather like a scimitar. It’s early and cold tolerant, so can be sown in the autumn to overwinter in sheltered areas, or early in spring. As with most peas, summer heat and growing mid-season is best avoided.
It’s always good to see familiar favourites returned to the bank. Sydenham Garden grew Ukrainian Purple, a tomato which has featured in the seed bank since 2016. It is a good early plum type tomato that does well in the UK, even in a bad summer. It has fragile looking plants that often look weak and unpromising at first, but then surprise by setting good trusses of large, deep purple plum tomatoes.
See the full list of available varieties here.