An Exciting Time To Be A Part of SLOLA

Our SLOLA world today is busier than ever before with good things brewing and in the news.  

By now you know this Saturday's meeting is special because we will not only have Nisha Vida as our speaker, but directly following our meeting is the launch of Seed Freedom LA, from 4:00 to 7:00 PM. There will be music and silk screening of anti-GMO tee shirts and signs and interesting stuff - but the main reason to come is there will be several city council members as well as some really competent and passionate anti-GMO activists to hear.  The most important reason to be here, though, will be to show support of making LA a 'GMO Free Zone' - meaning that it will be illegal to grow or transport genetically modified plants within Los Angeles City limits.  Though largely symbolic, no GMO plants are planted or brought into the city already, it does set in motion an eventual ban in LA County and then perhaps the state.  And those are not symbolic.  We gotta start somewhere and this is where we are! 

And then there is the Heirloom Expo coming around the corner, September 10, 11 and 12.  Held in Luther Burbank's hometown of Santa Rosa (which is why all those plums are called Santa Rosa), the Heirloom Expo always features great speakers and lots to see and do - it's like Disneyland for seedheads!  And we all get to hang out and geek out on seeds together.  SLOLA has a booth there and traditionally on Wednesday afternoon/evening, all the seed libraries gather around for an informal mini-conference.  The price is reasonable and you're invited to come by our booth and say hi.  We'll be in Grace Hall.  

And Seed School Los Angeles!  SLOLA will host Bill McDorman and Belle Starr's seed school in February - don't hesitate, enroll now while there is still space - we anticipate a completely sold out offering.  You can enroll via Native Seeds/SEARCH at this link.

A Burbank Slicer Tomato, one of the F2 plants in our project.

I really sat down to write about our Burbank Slicer Tomato project - which probably is the one thing that is lifting my spirits about the tomato crop I have not gotten in 2013.  I think it was in November 2011, I was seated next a buyer for Seeds of Change and she told me the story of Burbank Slicer being discontinued because it had shrunk from the 3 inch tomato Luther introduced in about 1915 to a two bite cherry that most folks clearly did not want.  She gave me several packets of old seed which we distributed among our members and set about to breed the tomato back to it's 3 inch size.  

From those seeds we got two really nice sized 3 inch tomatoes and from them, I saved seed the seeds I planted this year.  This photo is from that  F2 (second generation), showing the tomatoes we will select for more Burbank Slicers as we work to get the larger sized tomato consistently.  

Which points to the fact that by being a seed saver, you are a plant breeder - you choose the qualities that will be tomorrow's crop.  As we all select seed from our summer crops, let's make sure we save seeds from the very best every time to continue to have those qualities in our plants.  

Remember, one of the biggest parts of this seed library deal:  you must return a portion of the seed from the plants you grow so that the library will have seed to loan next year!  

For me, selecting the plants from which I will save seed is one of the challenges of the seed saving year.  What makes a Yugoslavian Red Lettuce that variety?  Does this plant - these plants - have the qualities that make this variety distinctly different from another? Then from those plants, scouring to find the healthiest fruits available because the fruit chosen today is the fruit projected into generations to come. Your choices make a difference! 

Feeling powerful now?

david

Starting Seed School

Belle Star (the attractive one on the left) and Bill McDorman, lead instructor, take our class through some thought provoking exercises for the evening.

Late this afternoon, 20 some students met our instructors, in the Native Seed/SEARCH facility in north Tucson to meet and set our intention for the coming week.  It was an interesting day in Tucson.  First of all, the high was about 101F and in the afternoon some tree-bending (hot!) winds came through.  When we went into the building about 5:00, the sun was shining and it was a gorgeous, if scorching, day.  When we came out, we were amazed at the landscape; the sky was gray and overcast in a way that did not seem natural.  Many of the students in this class are from, or have family living in, the areas of Arizona that have huge wild fires burning through and the thought went naturally to 'smoke!' but it was from the wrong direction.  Finally, we deduced it was dust kicked up by the wind.

We got there at 5:00, had a meal of some homemade soup Bill had put together, including big beautiful Red Runner beans and a lot of other home grown vegetables, corn bread (yum!) and a lot of fruit.  We took a tour of the facility.  The highlight of the tour for me was the 600 square foot refrigerator!  I have worked in many restaurants in my life all of which have a walk-in cooler and some had walk in freezers, but I've never been in one this large.  It was exciting all the more because it was filled with seeds!  Most of the seeds in the cooler part are seeds folks will buy in the coming months - the freezer holds long term storage seeds that represent valuable lines of seed to be preserved.

 

 

In this photo, corn seeds are held waiting to be dispensed into packets and sent to customers of Native Seed/SEARCH - I have always encouraged people to order from mail order seed houses for this reason - the seeds are kept under ideal circumstances until they are packed for you.  Buying from the local Big Box you get seeds that have been on the showroom rack for how long and under very questionable circumstances.  My local OSH moves their seed rack out into full sun everyday until they sell the seed or return them for credit - after a month, the viability of the seed is greatly degraded.

We spent time learning about one another - I loved that we were to tell our names, the name of the watershed where we live (I'm Ballona Creek), the amount of rainfall we get per year (the Los Angeles average is about 13", I was amazed at how many in the room had single digit rainfall per annum!  Gave me a new perspective!).  In this class there are folks starting seed banks, libraries, companies and all kinds of enterprises! There are students from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Mexico City! We range in age from the twenties to sixties and represent many different walks of life.  

My intention is to blog nightly until Friday, I hope to present some of the knowledge learned in seed school here in this blog.  I see we have several night sessions in addition to the day session, so I don't know if that'll hold, but I'm going to commit to that schedule for now.  

david