I have various saved seeds, and also some commercial seeds that I don’t necessarily want to give space to in the garden or the allotment. One of my other interests is guerilla gardening – that is, planting in public spaces that are otherw ise neglected.
I will definitely be participating in some seed swaps this year, but I am thinking that after that is done for the season I might make up some seed bundles/bombs/grenades for guerilla gardening. The idea would be to combine several species in a cardboard/clay/whatever bundle and just walk/cycle around with those in my pockets, dropping handfuls of them anywhere that I see a neglected tangle of urban “green” space that isn’t really being maintained (and also not likely sprayed). Maybe I’ll even pull up a bit of the long grass/matted weeds in some locations. When it rains, the cardboard/clay/whatever will get saturated and if the conditions are right, the seeds will germinate…
…and then I can go back in the autumn and sample whatever has managed to grow despite weed pressure, wildlife pressure, and neglect. If it tastes good, it can go back into my seed mixes to grow at the allotment. (Obviously this might be harder to do with biennial roots than with, say, tomatoes or squashes.)
This would be much stronger selection pressure than I’m willing to apply at the allotment (where I get scolded and risk eviction if things look too “messy”) or in the back garden (which is mostly reserved for more tender plants that don’t do well with the 2.5 mile bike ride from the allotment or which I prefer to harvest immediately before eating them) or at the tiny community garden (where the focus is more on shorter-term yield in a very small space), so the yield might be pretty disappointing, but on the other hand the investment on my part is very low. Of course, people might harvest the food for themselves, but I don’t necessarily see that as a disaster either. A lot of the locations I have in mind aren’t very high traffic, so I imagine if anything grows at all I will get to eat at least some of it.
I am thinking about dividing up the seeds according to the following characteristics:
- do they need support?
- are the plants large or small?
- what’s the ideal germination temperature?
I would also include some flowers in each, because goodness knows we need the pollinator support in London, and because frankly I have more calendula seeds than I will ever realistically need.
So climbing beans and cucurbits and nasturtiums that might do well clambering up a fence can go in one bundle, dwarf beans and bush tomatoes and calendula in another, carrots and beets and chives and cornflowers in still another.
Have you made seed bundles/grenades/bombs before? How did that go? I’ve used commerical ones that were given to me as gifts, but can’t say they were very successful.
This may not be the perfect strategy to create a landrace or a grex, of course; but I am very big on starting where I am, and it seems at least worth a try.
I bet a lot of great crop domestication has been achieved using just that approach.