DOES GIY SUPPORT NATIVE IRISH SEEDS?

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DOES GIY SUPPORT NATIVE IRISH SEEDS?

Is it important for Irish organic growers to source native Irish seeds?

Let's have a look....

Brown Envelope Seeds (Cork, pic below) and the Irish Seed Savers Association (Clare, pic above) both provide certified organic Irish seeds for growers around Ireland.

SO what about GIY?

At the non-professional end, the whole GIY - grow it yourself - movement has been a phenomenon. Dozens of groups have been set up all over Ireland and thousands have begun to grow some of their own food, helped along by GIY. Their general approach seems to be to promote organic approaches to growing but with a light touch.

I was surprised to find out that GIY's own brand seeds, available on their very popular website, are all sourced abroad. They come from sourced from UK suppliers Kings, CN Seeds and Tuckers and Irish supplier, which imports from the UK and Holland, Europrise.

I spoke to GIY patron Klaus Laitenberger, who's runs the Vegetable Seed Company (in partnership with Quickcrop), which sells the seeds on the GIY site, and with GIY founder Michael Kelly about seeds.

Laitenberger pointed out that if there was an Irish wholesale seed producer, GIY would definitely be interested in stocking the seeds.

“Seeds are of the highest quality and standard and their adaptability to the Irish climate has been tried and tested for many years through trials in probably one of the most difficult growing areas – Leitrim. The ones on this selection is my personal 'best of' - mainly in terms of taste and also disease or pest resistance.”

Interestingly, Latenburger has no issues with hybrids. “I believe it's a bit of a myth that the older the variety is the better it tastes. Some - definitely not all - modern varieties are far more delicious than older ones. A good example is tomato Sungold F1 and Rosada F1. They are probably the nicest tomatoes you'll ever eat. The old standard variety Moneymaker (probably 100 years old) must be the blandest tomato available.”

Michael Kelly added “of course we would prefer people to save their own seeds as a more sustainable approach, but as an organisation our mission is not about encouraging seed saving and more about getting people growing in the first instance. For most GIYers, seed saving is likely to be a second phase, after they have several years of experience under their belt. The idea of seed saving would be daunting to someone who is still trying to acquire basic growing skills.”

However, seed can be purchased from organisations that save seeds, like the Irish Seed Savers. So why none of their seeds on the GIY shop?

Klaus Laitenberger say he certainly appreciates “the use of heritage varieties and other open-pollinated varieties.” He adds “I think GIY and myself are promoting seed saving through articles from various people. I wrote a few articles about saving seeds throughout the last few years I'm also a strong supporter of the Irish Seed Savers and followed and supported their work from the very beginning and of course I would like to see their seeds for sale at the GIY shop.

Michael Kelly of GIY: “We are exploring a link with the Seed Savers at the moment whereby we would resell a selection of their seeds - they need support and we certainly mention their events and services whenever we can.”

He went on to point out that there may be issues at the Irish Seed Saver's end with wholesale quantities and year round availability, as “ the GIY web shop needs to have a comprehensive range all year around”.

However, when I contacted the Irish Seed Savers, they were confident that they could certainly supply a range of seeds at the required quantity and with year round consistency.

So who knows? Maybe soon we'll seed heritage seeds from the Irish Seed Savers on GIY's on line shop soon....

That's our discussion regarding DOES GIY SUPPORT NATIVE IRISH SEEDS?

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