A Reason to Save Seeds

I was looking around a gardening friends tiered garden today and she was explaining how she once grew out on 'the farm' wonderfully large, heavy cropping, Ox Heart Tomato bushes. She gave some seeds to two other neighbours who grew them with excellent results. When she came to move into town she hadn't kept a recent batch of seeds and asked her previous neighbours if they had any.

The story ended something like ... one neighbour hadn't kept any seeds and another who had kept seeds had lost the lot when rats got into the shed. No more big, lovely Ox Heart Tomatoes. The End.

Well, not quite. My friend was sharing the story because, although she is very generous with her seeds and cuttings from the garden, she wished she had shared a lot more so that the chances of this happening were reduced. Hopefully someone would have a current seed collection to ensure it's continuation.

I was hoping, quietly inside that perhaps somewhere out there, the tomatoes where being grown by others somewhere, but you just never know. Quite possibly they have been lost altogether. Locally grown plants, though similar to plants in other areas, are good for local gardeners because they are good in local conditions.

Seed saving really is a collective thing. Seeds need to be grown and shared widely in the local community so that stories like this become rare - and this lesson is not lost.