GMO vs. Heirloom Seeds
tammy February 28th, 2007
Tomorrow it will be March – almost Spring!!! The looong months of January and February are over! Yeah!!! With birds chirping outside and a the sweet smell of Spring in the air, I am thinking about what will go into my vegetable garden this year. My longheld dream of learning how to grow all our own organic food and herbs is pressing for my attention once again.
This year will be exactly my second attempt at growing a vegetable garden. Last year, on my first try, it was a complete disaster. I planted tomatoes, peppers, green beans, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, caneloupe, and a variety of culinary herbs. The long and short of it was that for the most part I just didn’t know what I was doing. All I got out of a summer’s worth of tilling, weeding, and watering were a few regular-size tomatoes, tons of cherry tomatoes, and some herb clippings. Nevertheless, I’m definitely geared up for the second round, and I just know I’ll get a crop this year!!
The first thing I want to do is buy seeds. Last year I bought seedlings from our local nursery, from Lowes, and horror of all horrors, from Walmart. What I have learned since then is that most of what I bought was probably propogated on GMO seeds.
What are GMO seeds, you say? Genetically Modified Organisms. I read that some companies now breed “super produce” by splicing in genetic material from other totally unrelated species. In one case, salmon genes were spliced into some produce to get a particular desired quality (I’ll look it up and post the exact info here later). Fish genes in your tomatoes?!!!
Nobody knows what all this tinkering with the genetic code of our food will do to our health in the long run, and the worst part is that the companies doing this are not required to label the seeds, seedlings, or produce as GMO. Under current standards, this produce can be labeled as organic even if it is GMO! We’re eating it up thinking it is something good for us, and the fact is we just don’t know if it is or not. In one study I read about animals fed GMO corn (I think) ended up with lesions on their major organs and other serious health problems. This does not sound good!
Another serious concern I have is that GMO producers are currently allowed to patent the genetic code of the unique fruits they invent, which mean that anybody who grows those varieties in the future would have to pay royalties to the GMO companies. This means you and I, growing our own vegetables on our own little plot of land, would be breaking the law if we saved seeds from our GMO plantings and sowed future gardens with them without paying royalties, as would poor farmers in 3rd world countries. That is if you can even get usuable seeds from them — many GMO varieties of plants are seedless, and in others, the seeds you do get will not grow another generation. Total franken-food!
These “super” varieties of produce seem to many like a blessing because of the large, disease resistant, and abundant fruit they produce, but really they ultimately serve to make the ”inventors” rich and powerful (being able to control the world’s food supply is A LOT of power) and they may endanger our health. I thought growing your own vegetables was supposed to be good for your budget and your health??
In any case, there is a very strong grass roots movement to preserve non-patented seed varieties, otherwise known as heirloom seeds. These are seeds that that have been passed down for generations, and that can be grown, collected and shared openly. This is a great movement to keep the control of wholesome, healthy food production in the hands of the people and not super corporations or governments.
I am committing this year to growing everything in my vegetable garden with heirloom seeds. So I spent this morning planning what I wanted to grow so I could order what I will need online. I ordered seeds for collards, tomatoes, peppers (also some medicinal herbs that I couldn’t resist: chamomile, calendula, and St Johns Wort) from www.gardenmedicinals.com, which is a company local to me. Now I’m trying to decide what I want from www.rareseeds.com.
Next, I have to learn when to start which seeds when, which ones have to start inside and be transplanted, and which can go directly in the ground, what gets planted next to what… and on and on… more about these things in future posts!
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Thank you Tammy for the info on the GMO seeds!!! I am just now learning about the hazards of GMO in our food suppy and am now trying to figure out how to keep them out of my own garden too!! You supplied some really great information, thank you!
Oh, you’re welcome Sara! It’s such a huge topic, I still can’t keep it all straight in my head when I try to talk to people about it. But we can all make a difference one garden at a time!
[...] they have discovered to be useful. At least I know my wild growing blueberries haven’t been genetically modified! But who knows what they will do to the commercial blueberries using this info, yikes! Like this [...]