Santa Cruz grower Mark Love raises herb and flower seed for Seeds of Change, a national treasure trove of heirloom plants. Farmers markets overflow with exotic shapes and colors. From the pages of small catalogs sprout seeds with names like Rainbow Inca Corn, Appaloosa beans, Red Alpine fraises des bois , Zapotec pleated tomatoes.
Seed saving is all of the above, and more.
Your field of dreams is just a stamp or a page away. In the simple act of planting a seed, the gardener simultaneously blows a kiss to the past and guarantees the future. Preservation and proliferation are the twin agendas of the current heirloom and native seed movement. The Irish potato famine of the 1840s perfectly illustrates the implications of a dwindling bio-gene pool. In a classic case of putting all its eggs in one basket, Ireland had planted its meager soil with a single variety of potato.