Illegal Allotment
Psst. Check this out. Keep this one to yourself, and if you do tell anyone it didn't come from me.
There is a market in illegal seeds. Yes you heard me right the first time - illegal seeds! Even more outrageous it is based in Brighton, the bohemian centre for all things dodgy. Hang on don't get carried away. I fear I may be taking you down the wrong path. These are seeds for vegetables. There is a whole array of illegal seed varieties available out there for every vegetable you can possibly imagine.
Even more crazy, these seeds have the most peculiar names imaginable. Let me ask you this - when were you last in the same room as a District Nurse, a Nun's Belly Button, a Lazy Housewife, a Fat Lazy Blonde, and a Drunken Woman?
(Incidentally if you can answer "quite recently" to this question and you are not talking about illegal seeds, and particularly if you hold down a position of prominence, I suggest that you don a disguise and start skulking about. The News of the World is in hot pursuit as we speak - don't even mention fast cars and race tracks.)
Before you get too excited, the motley crew mentioned above are climbing beans and lettuces.
Settle down now and let's be serious for a moment. Seedy Sunday is a campaign to protect biodiversity and protest against the increasing control of the seed supply by a handful of large companies.
The average non-allotmentor on the Clapham Omnibus has probably never considered this, but this is quite a serious point. Ever since certain organisms decided to drag themselves out of the sea and gradually morph into what is now termed homo sapien, admittedly some of them on my daily commute are still on this journey, he has been able to re-sow the seeds from this year's crop to grow for next year.
This is how and why the circle of life has progressed throughout the millenia and why you are able to read this today.
Many of the seeds that are on offer today are known as F1 seeds. The "F" in this case means "Filial", relating to genetics. These are hybrid seeds that are crosses of two separate vegetable varieties. This makes them hardy, robust and often high yielding. You can more or less breed any kind of plant you like depending upon which plants you cross. The problems with F1 vegetables is that their seeds produce either very weak plants or are in fact sterile and are no use at all.
The more traditional seeds are known as open pollinated seeds. This means that they pollinate naturally where they grow and their seeds can be collected. This natural process leads to diversity as each set of seeds produces plants which are not identical to their originator. F1 seeds are genetically identical to the plants which were cross pollinated to produce them.
The seeds at the Seedy Sunday seed swap would be illegal if money changed hands for them, which is why they are swapped. It is very expensive to render them legal as they have to be put on an official government list and "maintained" and so many are not kept on the list.
I just think it is refreshing that people are prepared to put themselves out to maintain an element of biodiversity that most of us are not aware of.
The diversity of vegetable varieties that must have been available over 100 years ago seems amazing. I suspect that they were not as hardy as today's F1s, but natural selection is a work in progress and the better stuff will always survive.
This brings me back to you and me. Without natural selection you and I wouldn't be where we are today. Remind me again, what's it tonight? Oh yes, can of lager, Coro' and a bag of crisps.
Oh well.
There is a market in illegal seeds. Yes you heard me right the first time - illegal seeds! Even more outrageous it is based in Brighton, the bohemian centre for all things dodgy. Hang on don't get carried away. I fear I may be taking you down the wrong path. These are seeds for vegetables. There is a whole array of illegal seed varieties available out there for every vegetable you can possibly imagine.
Even more crazy, these seeds have the most peculiar names imaginable. Let me ask you this - when were you last in the same room as a District Nurse, a Nun's Belly Button, a Lazy Housewife, a Fat Lazy Blonde, and a Drunken Woman?
(Incidentally if you can answer "quite recently" to this question and you are not talking about illegal seeds, and particularly if you hold down a position of prominence, I suggest that you don a disguise and start skulking about. The News of the World is in hot pursuit as we speak - don't even mention fast cars and race tracks.)
Before you get too excited, the motley crew mentioned above are climbing beans and lettuces.
Settle down now and let's be serious for a moment. Seedy Sunday is a campaign to protect biodiversity and protest against the increasing control of the seed supply by a handful of large companies.
The average non-allotmentor on the Clapham Omnibus has probably never considered this, but this is quite a serious point. Ever since certain organisms decided to drag themselves out of the sea and gradually morph into what is now termed homo sapien, admittedly some of them on my daily commute are still on this journey, he has been able to re-sow the seeds from this year's crop to grow for next year.
This is how and why the circle of life has progressed throughout the millenia and why you are able to read this today.
Many of the seeds that are on offer today are known as F1 seeds. The "F" in this case means "Filial", relating to genetics. These are hybrid seeds that are crosses of two separate vegetable varieties. This makes them hardy, robust and often high yielding. You can more or less breed any kind of plant you like depending upon which plants you cross. The problems with F1 vegetables is that their seeds produce either very weak plants or are in fact sterile and are no use at all.
The more traditional seeds are known as open pollinated seeds. This means that they pollinate naturally where they grow and their seeds can be collected. This natural process leads to diversity as each set of seeds produces plants which are not identical to their originator. F1 seeds are genetically identical to the plants which were cross pollinated to produce them.
The seeds at the Seedy Sunday seed swap would be illegal if money changed hands for them, which is why they are swapped. It is very expensive to render them legal as they have to be put on an official government list and "maintained" and so many are not kept on the list.
I just think it is refreshing that people are prepared to put themselves out to maintain an element of biodiversity that most of us are not aware of.
The diversity of vegetable varieties that must have been available over 100 years ago seems amazing. I suspect that they were not as hardy as today's F1s, but natural selection is a work in progress and the better stuff will always survive.
This brings me back to you and me. Without natural selection you and I wouldn't be where we are today. Remind me again, what's it tonight? Oh yes, can of lager, Coro' and a bag of crisps.
Oh well.
Labels: F1