Archive for the ‘Homesteading’ Category

If you’re looking for great homesteading information, be sure to visit The Homesteading Carnival, hosted this week at Walking Therein.

There’s a post from us, but also tons of other great resources for you to discover…

I recently ran across an ad that got me thinking: Survival Seeds.

Although I haven’t started yet because our housing situation is so uncertain, I have my heart set on starting a garden.

I want to grow a substantial portion of what our family eats – for reasons ranging from cost, to nutrition, to sustainability and independence, to teaching the children important life skills.

The Survival Seeds ad copy touches on a lot of “hot button” issues, but it also makes a lot of factual claims that I don’t know enough to know about.

I’ve often wondered why, for most plants, you hear people talking about either buying seeds to sprout or buying seedling plants from a nursery – over and over again every year.

Why can’t you just keep some of your crop for next year’s seeds?

Apparently, at least part of the reason is that so many of today’s food plants are hybrids, or “engineered” – and in many cases specifically designed to not be able to reproduce! They can make the fruit (or vegetable), obviously, but the seeds are sterile.

This can only be overcome by purchasing heirloom seeds or plants. Another good thing about these is that they are the original plants that God designed.

I’ve read elsewhere that you can have problems with cross-polination with the “modern” plants degrading your heirloom varieties, even to the point of sterilizing them. How do you keep your stock “pure”?

Survival Seeds also warns that these seeds are getting harder to come by, although it’s hard to tell if that’s just a scarcity tactic on their part.

So what is the value of these seeds – is it a good deal?

My cursory Internet searching turned up heirloom seed packets for an average of $2 – $3. Unfortunately, I’m not enough of a gardener to understand how many of those you’d need to plant your acre, so that doesn’t help me much.

I found a similar “plant a reproducing acre” kit from Sweet Corn Nursery, for about the same price.

There’s also a “Victory Garden” from Heirloom Seeds, which offers an optional “sealed in plastic” packaging – although this only claims to be good for three years’ storage, the cost is under $100. If you want to have it for “just in case” for the next couple of decades that won’t cut it, but for me to plant right now it could be the way to go.

And what about that long-term storage solution? Will it work?

I’d be very interested in hearing from any farmers or gardeners out there with your thoughts!