If you’re looking to grow desert-adapted plants from seed, you can get those seeds tomorrow at the Great American Seed Up.
Organizers describe it as a place for farmers and gardeners to collect, preserve and learn about local seeds. Bill McDorman is executive director of a seed conservation organization called Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance and says the point is to ask people to re-engage in what he calls a ritual that allowed us to start agriculture, especially on this continent.
"By growing and saving seeds from the things that worked best for us and re-planting them, we’re grounding our whole food experience in biology in a way that it just can’t be done any other way," McDorman says.
McDorman got interested in seeds more than 30 years ago, when he was trying to find them for his own garden. He says most of the cost of seeds is in packaging and distribution — so, tomorrow’s event will feature seeds in bowls, with scoops for attendees to use. In a way, McDorman says, it’s a return to our roots.
"I mean, if you looked around at the turn of the century, every gardener and every farmer that was in Arizona and throughout this country saved seeds. It was just part and parcel of what you did; you took advantage of this adaptability to make sure things were better." McDorman says.
Many of the seeds that’ll be available tomorrow are for edible plants, but the effort to collect seeds extends beyond the salad bowl.
For that perspective, I’m joined by Steve Blackwell, conservation collections manager at Desert Botanical Garden, and Kimberlie McCue, program director for Conservation of Threatened Species and Habitats at the garden.
