A Norwegian Noahīs Ark and an Iowa farm offer hope and happiness to gardeners everywhere
Dan Brawner
February 28, 2008
I look out the back window and see the handle of my lawn mower sticking out of a snow drift like a periscope checking to see if the coast is clear from yet another blast from the unseasonably wintery sky. But the calendar doesnīt lie and even though it may not look like it now, spring is coming. Soon snow shovels and ice chippers will give way to hoes and rototillers. The skyrocketing cost of fresh produce isnīt the only reason for the widespread renewed interest in gardening. Consumers are growing wise to tomatoes that are weaned on poisonous chemicals, picked green in California, stamped, sprayed and displayed to resemble actual food. By the time a tomato gets to your local grocery, it tastes more like a Nerf ball that was dipped in V8 juice.
Old geezers will tell you when they were young tomatoes tasted zesty and fresh. Watermelons ran with sweet red juice that dried in the July sun, leaving streaks of real sugar. In fact, as sad as if sounds, if youīve never experienced the flavor yourself, itīs impossible to imagine vegetables that taste natural. The thousands of varieties of fruits and vegetables known to our ancestors have been reduced to a handful of tough and mostly tasteless standards offered by chain stores. But help is on the way.
It was recently announced that deep inside a frozen mountain, about a 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, the Norwegian government has built a vault to protect some of the earthīs most precious treasures. Not gold or silver or even priceless, bleary Van Gogh paintings, but a collection of seeds from all our planetīs known food crops. Built to hold 2.25 billion seeds, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault now has a beginning cache of 100 million seeds representing 268,000 varieties of beans, wheat, barley and other crops.
The temperature-controlled, bombproof facility can keep seeds safe and viable for 10,000 years. It is like a Noahīs Ark, preserving every remaining food seed on earth in the event of a nuclear holocaust or a natural disaster. Now, even if worse comes to worst, the human race can replant and rebuild.
The longevity of seeds is amazing. A few years ago, a team of UCLA scientists, headed by botanist Jane Shen-Miller discovered ancient lotus seeds from a dry lake bed in northeastern China. One of the seeds was dated at 1,288 years old. When Shen-Miller planted the seed, it sprouted! She remarked that the seed was around in the 13th Century when Marco Polo came to China.
A bit closer to home, the Seed Savers Exchange near Decorah, Iowa preserves more than 24,000 "heirloom" varieties of vegetables. Of the 8,000 or so different kinds of apples known in the US in 1900, now mostly extinct, Seed Savers raises 700 varieties on the 25-acre preserve. There, you can also find 500 kinds of beans, 125 varieties of peppers, 500 kinds of tomatoes, as well as old-time flowers and herbs. And itīs not just a museum. You can buy seeds from them and start your own heirloom garden! Now, doesnīt that make you feel a warmer inside?
Old geezers will tell you when they were young tomatoes tasted zesty and fresh. Watermelons ran with sweet red juice that dried in the July sun, leaving streaks of real sugar. In fact, as sad as if sounds, if youīve never experienced the flavor yourself, itīs impossible to imagine vegetables that taste natural. The thousands of varieties of fruits and vegetables known to our ancestors have been reduced to a handful of tough and mostly tasteless standards offered by chain stores. But help is on the way.
It was recently announced that deep inside a frozen mountain, about a 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, the Norwegian government has built a vault to protect some of the earthīs most precious treasures. Not gold or silver or even priceless, bleary Van Gogh paintings, but a collection of seeds from all our planetīs known food crops. Built to hold 2.25 billion seeds, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault now has a beginning cache of 100 million seeds representing 268,000 varieties of beans, wheat, barley and other crops.
The temperature-controlled, bombproof facility can keep seeds safe and viable for 10,000 years. It is like a Noahīs Ark, preserving every remaining food seed on earth in the event of a nuclear holocaust or a natural disaster. Now, even if worse comes to worst, the human race can replant and rebuild.
The longevity of seeds is amazing. A few years ago, a team of UCLA scientists, headed by botanist Jane Shen-Miller discovered ancient lotus seeds from a dry lake bed in northeastern China. One of the seeds was dated at 1,288 years old. When Shen-Miller planted the seed, it sprouted! She remarked that the seed was around in the 13th Century when Marco Polo came to China.
A bit closer to home, the Seed Savers Exchange near Decorah, Iowa preserves more than 24,000 "heirloom" varieties of vegetables. Of the 8,000 or so different kinds of apples known in the US in 1900, now mostly extinct, Seed Savers raises 700 varieties on the 25-acre preserve. There, you can also find 500 kinds of beans, 125 varieties of peppers, 500 kinds of tomatoes, as well as old-time flowers and herbs. And itīs not just a museum. You can buy seeds from them and start your own heirloom garden! Now, doesnīt that make you feel a warmer inside?
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