Press Release
Saving Seeds: New Reports Out for OK Gardeners and Farmers
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Heirloom okra.
Click on photo for higher resolution image. |
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Heirloom okra.
Click on photo for higher resolution image. |
Gardeners are eagerly eyeing their mailboxes for the winter’s
crop of seed catalogs, but they’ll find far fewer seeds to
choose from now than just 25 years ago.
By one estimate, the number of commercially available garden seed
varieties has fallen by 90% since 1981.
Older “heirloom” varieties, the ones grandpa used
to grow, are disappearing from the lists.
“Historical value and novelty are not the only reasons to
take an interest in heirloom varieties,” says George Kuepper
of the Kerr Center, a nonprofit educational foundation in Poteau.
According to a new set of free publications from the center, heirlooms
offer much more than just antique accents for both home and commercial
gardens.
The rich genetic heritage of heirlooms preserves traits that let
them flourish in an age before widespread fertilizer, pesticides,
and irrigation.
Another plus: since they are neither hybridized nor genetically
engineered, anyone can save their seed to plant again in the next
season.
Two of the new reports detail the results from the Kerr Center’s
heirloom variety trials.
Over the 2008 growing season, Kerr Center tested 30 heirloom varieties
of okra, and twenty (along with six newer varieties for comparison)
of sweet sorghum.
Growing Heirloom Okra at the Kerr Center: A Preliminary Study rates
okra varieties for yield, date of first harvest, plant height,
ease of harvest, fruit type and color, and attractiveness as landscape
plants.
“Okra is one of the most popular and intriguing vegetables
in the Mid-South United States,” Kuepper writes. “It
not only adds variety, taste and nutrition to Southern cuisine,
it is one of the more reliable crops that farmers and gardeners
can grow in this climate.”
Results reported in Growing Heirloom Sorghum at the Kerr
Center: A Preliminary Study include dates of seedling and
head emergence, stalk height, and tillering.
“Some heirloom sorghums were much earlier than improved
varieties we’ve customarily grown and processed at the Kerr
Center,” Kuepper observed.
The Kerr Center has grown sorghum for more than twenty years.
During the annual Fall Farm Fest at the Overstreet-Kerr Historical
Farm near Sallisaw, visitors watch the sorghum being pressed and “cooked” the
old fashioned way.
The center plans more variety trials in 2009.
The third new publication, Heirloom Vegetables, Genetic Diversity,
And the Pursuit of Food Security, explains how the loss
of heirloom varieties sacrifices both genetic diversity and public
control of the food supply.
The report identifies opportunities that heirlooms offer both
for market gardening and home food production.
It also reviews scientific evidence suggesting that heirloom varieties
may be more nutritious than their more recent counterparts.
For more information call the Kerr Center at 918.647.9123 or visit www.kerrcenter.com.
The site offers free downloads of these and many other publications
on various topics in sustainable agriculture.
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