If gardening is your favorite
hobby, the winter weather may be putting a damper on your fun.
Don’t let it. Spend these cool months planning your spring garden
and selecting your seeds.

Follow in Your
Grandfather’s
Gardening Footsteps

Why not try something a little
different this year? Plant some of the same seeds your
great-great
grandfather may have planted. Where can you get such jewels?
They’re
easy to find now, thanks to the Southern Seed Legacy (SSL)
Project.

The SSL Project began as a
three-year
project funded by the Southern Region Sustainable Agriculture
Research and Education (SARE) program. SARE’s southern office
is at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and
Environmental
Sciences campus in Griffin, Ga.

The SSL Project’s original goal
was to preserve the diversity of Southern seeds. The project was
led by UGA anthropologist Bob Rhodes and has received recognition
from the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for its efforts in
maintaining
agrodiversity.

Bringing Seed Savers
Together

“Over the first three years,
the project established a database of people who save seeds or
want to save seeds,” said Gwen Roland, information
specialist
for the Southern Region SARE program.

“The people in this database
who provide seeds for the collection also bank their
memories,”
she explained. “They describe how they remember the plant
being grown, what it tastes like and any cultural
information.”

Memory banking involves more than
just whether it was planted in hills rather than rows or that
it needs a lot of water.

“It’s more like how it was
used in a holiday dish or other information that places it in
a cultural setting,” Roland said.

Contributors
to the database come from across the southern states. One of the
first contributors to the seed bank was 82-year-old Ernest
Keheley
of Marietta, Ga. He donated a host of heirloom seeds including
Big Boy Bean, Blue Goose Bean, Hastings Cornfield Bean, Hercules
Pea, Pink Eye Pea, Rattlesnake Bean and Red Ripper
Pea.

In addition to his seeds, Keheley
donated his memories that are attached to each variety and his
tricks of the gardening trade. One of his tricks is a seed
mixture
of Hickory King Corn, Hastings Field Corn and three or four bean
varieties.
He says planting this mix is more efficient and the pole beans
eventually climb up the cornstalks and use them for
support.

More Than Just a
Package of Seeds

Now that the project’s original
funding period is over, the database will keep running as a
private
entity. Through annual $10 memberships to the SSL network,
gardeners
get a quarterly newsletter, heirloom seeds to plant and discounts
on SSL events such as the annual seed swap.

“There’s also a wonderful
teacher’s kit available that guides teachers through introducing
students to heirloom seeds and interviewing seed savers,” said
Roland. “You can also get a field manual for collecting and
documenting seeds.”

Roland cautions that joining SSL
and getting heirloom seeds from their seed bank shouldn’t be a
hasty decision. “The seeds come with a commitment,” Roland
said. “If you go into seed saving, you have
to be willing to follow through.”

The Seeds Come With a Commitment

Recipients of the seeds must
agree
to keep detailed records of their plantings, including photos
of the crops’ performances in the field and in the kitchen. The
grower also agrees to pass along a third of the harvested seeds
to another gardener, give a third back to SSL for the seed bank
and keep a third for their own enjoyment.

“This ensures the heirloom
varieties will continue to multiply and be passed along,”
said Roland who joined the seed savers group this year. “I
just received my first packet of Red and Back Field peas and I’m
actually a little nervous. These seeds can be traced back to the
1800s, and suppose my guineas eat them!”

Aside from the historical aspect, what’s so special about heirloom seeds? “Many of these seeds are open pollinated varieties,” Roland said. “People grow them for a variety of reasons such as flavor or the ability to withstand adverse growing conditions.”

Roland says most seed companies
shy away from heirloom seeds, but there are some seed companies
who specialize in them. “Heirloom seeds aren’t
patented,”
she said.

For more information or to join SSL, write to Southern Seed Legacy, c/o Agrarian Connections, 10 Legacy Road, Crawford, Ga. 30630 or visit the SSL Web site at www.uga.edu/ebl/ssl.