Category — Seeds

The Ritchay family’s garden.

15Thousand Farmers – Planting A Seed To Feed Ourselves – Louisville, Ky

by Greg & Michelle Vittitow,
Impact Dash
March 11th, 2010

The Vision:

15Thousand Farmers helps create, empower, and inspire 15,000 new, organic, neighborhood backyard/front yard farmers in Louisville, KY to feed their families and themselves and to give away! How? By using simple and easy instructions, checklists and materials and ongoing support provided through local organic growers and resources that will provide everything needed to start Easy Farms in our yards, on decks or in community gardens.

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Watch Crisis Garden Mock in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Huffington Post excerpt:
March 10, 2010

Said Colbert: “Glenn’s advertisers know nothing moves product like the hot stink of fear.” Case in point: a commercial for a product called Survival Seed Bank, in which the spokesman claims nonhybrid seeds will be more valuable that silver and gold, and thus save you from the impending economic meltdown.

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4 million cracker packages with seeds inside and a pledge to build 50 community-based home farms

Home Farming is about growing your own herbs and vegetables, no matter where you live. To help people on their path to Home Farming, four million packages of Original and Reduced-Fat Triscuit crackers will include cards with basil or dill herb seeds that can be planted directly into the ground.

A recent Triscuit survey found nearly two-thirds of Americans are interested in growing food in a backyard garden. And three out of four of those surveyed prefer to eat foods with a few, simple ingredients, reflecting a popular desire to get back to the simple joys in life. (The Triscuit Home Farming Study, fielded by StrategyOne, is a national telephone survey among a representative sample of 1,018 U.S. adults conducted January 14, 2009 and January 17, 2009.)

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This ad was aired on controversial TV program, the Glen Beck show.

Survival Seed Bank

Excerpt from Survival Seed Bank website.

You don’t have to be an Old Testament prophet to see what’s going on all around us. A belligerent lower class demanding handouts. A rapidly diminishing middle class crippled by police state bureaucracy. An aloof, ruling elite that has introduced us to an emerging totalitarianism which seeks control over every aspect of our lives.

As the meltdown progresses, one of the first things to be affected will be our nation’s food supply. Expect soaring prices along with moderate to severe shortages by spring. If you don’t have the ability to grow your own food next year, your life may be in danger. Supply lines for food distribution in this country are about three days, meaning a dependence on “just in time” distribution systems, which will leave store shelves empty in the event of even the smallest crisis.

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Larger image here.

WWI Home Garden Seed Advertising by Haskell Coffin 1919

Haskell Coffin (1878 – 1941) A versatile illustrator, gracing covers for several magazines, Redbook and The American being two long-term stints. Becoming famous as a portrayer of American beauty, the Coffin girl could be found on note cards, sheet music, calendars, decorative boxes, fashion catalogs. His “Joan of Arc Saved France” WWI poster is well known.

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A trailer showing Zell and Krist growing, revitalizing, and transforming the Artan Garden into a Creative Cultural Centre in North Bay Ontario.

Artan Garden

Mr. and Mrs. Artan came to North Bay with their family over 35 years ago. Mr. Artan built a cottage at the end of Judge St. The foundation is still there in the back parking lot. Mr. Artan came with many skills; his talents in stone masonry, cement, and permacultural design came from his long career as a General Contractor, at the age of ten, Artan was laying ceramic shingles on Mediterranean homes. Artan Contracting was a thriving business and employed many in the community.

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By Marca L. Woodhams,
Smithsonian Institution Libraries

The Smithsonian Institution Libraries have a unique trade catalog collection that includes about 10,000 seed and nursery catalogs dating from 1830 to the present. Many of the trade catalogs were part of the Burpee Collection donated to the Horticulture Services Division by Mrs. David Burpee in 1982. The collection includes both Burpee and their competitors’ catalogs.

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This year, Maria experimented to see if she could grow wheat, flax and quinoa at our Vancouver Compost Garden, and she succeeded. The wheat and flax were purchased from a local seed company, Salt Spring Seeds. The wheat varieties are named Red Fife, Marquis, Kamut and Blue Tinge Ethiopian. The flax is named Golden Flax. The quinoa was purchased from a local organic bulk food store.

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April 22, 2009
By Lisa Johnson
CBC News

Several B.C. seed and plant retailers say business is blooming this year, and the recession, rising food prices and star power may be feeding British Columbians’ growing enthusiasm for gardening.

West Coast Seeds owner Jeanette McCall told CBC News she had expected a busy year at the Delta facility, shipping vegetable and flower seeds to customers, but not this busy.

Stocks of packaged seeds that were supposed to last all season were running out before March.

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Alan Titchmarsh helped to popularise landscaping, which has given way to ‘edible gardening’, favoured by a younger generation. Photo from The Independent.

As shoppers feel the pinch, more Britons are tearing out the decking and turning their lawns into vegetable plots.

By Rachel Shields
The Independent UK
18 January 2009

The nation’s landscape is changing before our eyes. Record numbers of people are preparing to dig up their manicured lawns and privet hedges. Even the most modish gardens are sporting freshly dug vegetable beds, sapling fruit trees and nascent compost heaps.

Fruit and vegetable seed sellers last week reported record sales, with many saying that they cannot keep up with a sudden rise in demand. Meanwhile, the landscape gardening industry is in crisis, with many firms laying off staff.

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Photo of Dan Jason by John Cameron

Sowing seeds for a greener world

By Julie Beun-Chown,
Canwest News Service, November 29, 2008

For Jason, the solution is simple: learn to garden. As an experiment this year, he took 12 of his best and most reliable crops, which included wheat, barley, tomatoes and garbanzo beans, put them into a Zero Mile Diet Seed Kit and sold it for $ 36. It was wildly successful. For those seriously concerned about food shortages, he suggests a mix of grains and vegetables, including quinoa, amaranth, wheat and barley.

“ Until now, people thought seeds were part of the common ownership forever and ever,” he says. “ People in other parts of the world already collect their seeds. In general, we’ll be thrown onto ourselves much more in future to provide our food. We might as well start now.”

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A 57 minute documentary by SeedSavers on traditional diets and how they are grown and eaten in eleven countries.

Our Seeds: Seed Blong Yumi

A small crew comprising Seed Savers directors, Michel Fanton and Jude Fanton, and occasionally a local soundperson took a hundred and sixty hours of footage in eleven countries: Spain, France, Italy, India, Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.

There are interviews of farmers and expert commentators and documented seed saving, farming methods and cultural activities in both first world and tribal locations. Peasants in advanced countries, such as Taiwan, Spain, France and Italy share the same sentiments as indigenous Pacific farmers when it comes to traditional varieties.

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Film Clip: Perhaps the original guerrilla (chimpanzee) gardener in this WW2 Victory Garden clip.

Article By Joe Robinson,
LA Times May 29, 2008

“The activists see themselves as 21st century Johnny Appleseeds, harvesting a natural bounty of daffodils or organic green beans from forgotten dirt. It’s a step into more self-reliant living in the city,” says Erik Knutzen, coauthor with his wife, Kelly Coyne, of “The Urban Homestead” to be released in June. The Echo Park couple have chronicled “pirate farming” on their blog, Homegrown Evolution. Guerrilla gardening, Knutzen says, is a reaction to the wasteful use of land, such as vacant lots and sidewalk parkways. He’s turned the parkway in front of his home into a vegetable garden.

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Prof. Dr. Willem Van Cotthem, Honorary Professor University of Ghent (Belgium), has set up a wonderful program to help people in desertified regions.

“In every village of the developing countries where we have constructed family gardens and school gardens in the past, there is now less risk of famine. Indeed, we have shown the people and the children how to produce their own vegetables and fruit trees with a combination of traditional methods and modern technologies, e.g. soil conditioning to keep a garden soil moistened with a minimum of irrigation water. Such things are never forgotten, even if these people move to urban areas, where they will try to set up a tiny little garden.”

“That is the reason why I make this appeal upon you : please help us to collect seeds of vegetables and tropical fruits that can be grown in family gardens and school gardens in desertified regions.”

Read more here.