The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food (24 page)

A large glass jar at the registration table was filled with chocolate kisses. Whoever came closest to guessing how many were in it, a sign said, would win a pumpkin.

“Which pumpkin?” I asked a library volunteer at the table.

“That one.” She pointed out one in a pile of pumpkins.

The pumpkin was as large and beautiful as a wheel of cheese. It was smooth, deeply ridged, and the color of apricots. It would easily make a dozen pies. I decided I was going to win that pumpkin. “May I count the kisses that I can see?” I asked the library volunteer.

“If you can see the candy through the glass, it’s fair game,” she said. “Counting is allowed.”

Without touching the jar, I counted the kisses lying across the top. I counted approximate layers of kisses from top to bottom. I did some figuring. The jar was not perfectly cylindrical. The wider layers would have at least 12 extra kisses, and nine layers, more or less, were wider. I added 108 kisses for the wider layers. I figured some more.

What I’ve noticed with speculation is that guesses are usually too low. I cringe to think what this says about humans, that we are chronic underestimators. Knowing this, I added a hundred kisses to my total, wrote my guess—901—on a piece of paper, stuck my vote in the cardboard box, and turned on my hope machine.

“Did you see the pumpkin I’m going to win?” I asked my husband, who was selling his pottery upstairs in the library. When I talk like that, he believes me. He still thinks I’m magic.

“No, let’s go see it.”

I showed him the jar of kisses and the pumpkin. He reached for a slip of paper. “What was your guess?” he said.

“I’m not telling! And there’s no need for you to bother guessing. I’ve won already.” He scribbled on his paper, folded it, and slipped it through the slot of the box.

“I want that pumpkin,” I said. “I’m going to save the seeds. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

At the end of the day, when volunteers counted the kisses, there were 891 in the jar. “Sweet,” I thought. “I’m very close.” The workers fidgeted through the entries, while I watched more nervously than I was willing to admit even to myself, and determined that the winning guess was 875. They sent someone off looking for the winner.

My guess was not 875. The pumpkin would not be living at my house.

Then I did the math.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I think you’ll find another guess in the pile that’s closer. 901.” I was shocking myself at how greedy I had become. But it was an unusual and enthralling pumpkin. I wonder if George Washington Carver was like this.

“No,” a volunteer said. “875 was the closest.” I always think my accent may be a liability in situations such as this, because Southerners are often stereotyped as slow because their speech is unhurried. (When I asked a man on a Sitka street for directions once, he asked, “What, did you just fall off the turnip truck?”)

“My guess was 901,” I said. I could see energy finally reach a lightbulb behind the retiree’s eyes. The volunteers had not thought of guesses exceeding the correct figure. “The rule is the closest guess, right?” I asked. “Not the closest that is less than?”

“That’s correct.”

The library ladies reexamined the guesses and found the 901. They confabbed among themselves. By this time someone had located the fabled winner among the crafts on the second floor and had brought him downstairs.

“Uh,” one of the women said, “it looks as if we’ve made a mistake. Hold on just a minute. Is this you?” she asked me. “Did you guess 901?”

“I did,” I said. “That’s how I knew it was in the box.”

“Well, that’s definitely closer,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She turned to the nonwinner, for whom I had no sympathy. “We are so sorry,” she told the man. “We made a mistake.”

The man, who looked newly retired, was gracious. “It’s not a problem,” he said. He had a friendly face. That’s what signaled the angel in me to emerge. “You can have the prize,” I said, “if you really want it.”

“Young lady, what would I do with a pumpkin like that?” he said.

“Oh, thank you,” I said. Why was I thanking him? I’d won the damned thing. “I’d love to have it,” I said. I knew exactly what to do with it. I planned to set it on the butcher block in my kitchen and photograph it and wish that I had grown it. I planned to tell the turnip festival story a hundred times. I planned to wait until the last possible hour next spring to cook it, maybe to wait even until a rotten spot appeared on it. I planned to bake it into pies and tarts.

I was smitten with the whimsicality of the scene, me winning an incredible pumpkin by guessing 901 chocolate kisses in a jar.

“What variety is it?” I asked the aides.

“Oh, the squash farmer told us. We have the name written down somewhere here,” one of them replied.

“Squash farmer?”

“All she grows are squashes.”

“Here’s the name,” another volunteer said. “Mustaprovince.”

The name made no sense to me and after I lugged the pumpkin home, I promptly forgot it. A few weeks later, I moved the pumpkin to our cool basement, where it lasted a year without spoilage before I baked it into fabulous pies. I saved the seeds, but because its grower was a squash farmer, I was doubtful that the seeds were pure, meaning true to type.

But how I wanted to grow such charismatic, long-lasting, and delectable pumpkins. I needed three things. I needed the name of the pumpkin. I needed to know if it was an open-source variety. If so, then I needed seeds.

It just so happened that the next fall I attended Common Ground Fair, a huge outdoor organic agriculture show in Maine. By chance I spotted a pumpkin of the same variety in the exhibit hall. It was labeled
MUSQUE DE PROVENCE
. That was it! When I got home, I ordered seeds.

Now the seeds have grown into an insouciance of vines, and I am determined to produce pure seeds. I finish taping shut the last male flower, to prevent a wayfaring insect from haplessly contaminating the Musque de Provence’s pollen with some other kind.

That night, just before falling asleep, I remind myself to pollinate the pumpkin flower first thing the next morning.

I sleep and I dream that I am taking care of a little girl. I find a goose egg and I am showing it to her when she drops it and it bursts, spilling a curdled yellow liquid that doesn’t smell rotten. Then a small mother bird falls out of the shell, wet and unready for the world, followed by a baby bird, very tiny, swaddled in bits of hay. The two birds flounder on the floor. I wail softly,
Oh no no
, attempting to gather up the birds so that, although born immature the both of them, I might save their lives. The mother bird tries desperately to escape me, and as I try to cup her against a wall, she becomes a luna moth. Somewhere during the dream my erratic breathing wakes my husband. He says I’ve been holding my breath for ten to fifteen seconds at a time.

Next morning, I gently strip off petals and rub male anthers full of pollen onto the stigma of the female flower. Then I retape the female and wait. In a few days I see that the pollination is successful.

The blossom withers and drops away, and the fruit begins to enlarge. Over the weeks and months to come I keep vigil, watching and turning the pumpkin. I prop it on a board to keep ants and beetles from chewing on it. When it matures I will scoop out its seeds and dry them. I will give them to friends. I will grow more.

I may even become a squash farmer myself.

TO SAVE YOUR OWN SEEDS
and get plants that are photocopies of the parents, you must grow open-pollinated seeds.

If you believe in moon magic, plant between either the last quarter and the new moon in the signs of Gemini for multiplication; or in the earthy signs of Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces—believed to be the most productive constellations for aboveground crops. In many cultures, seed harvested at full moon is thought to have the best germinating power.

Select plants in your garden that have done well and have adapted to your temperament, soil, climate, and desires. If you want early melons, select seed from the earliest. If you want tolerance to cold, pick the plant that lives through the coldest night. You may be interested in disease resistance, late maturation, drought tolerance, or productivity. Keep notes if necessary. Mark your plants with tie-on markers (pieces of torn cotton cloth). Then choose from them the fruit whose characteristics most appeal to you.

Gathering seeds at the right time is important. For fleshy fruits, the seed is ready when the fruit is completely ripe. Flowering heads are tricky in that you must get the seed after maturity but before wind and animals scatter them.

My best advice to you, if you want to elevate your seed-saving interest to a passion or a scholarship and do it correctly, is to get Suzanne Ashworth’s incredible book
Seed to Seed
, about which I once overheard someone say, “It seems so little to have all the answers.” Ashworth knows (almost) everything there is to know about seed saving (and I added the
almost
only in case some small tidbit of information has not yet been discovered). The Seed Savers Exchange also periodically prints a seed-saving guide, which is an invaluable resource. I have the one that appeared in the
Seed Savers Summer Edition 1988,
a Seed Savers Exchange publication that served as their journal.

Maintaining seed purity is a science. You need to know how many of each variety to plant, how far varieties should be planted from each other, whether a variety is an annual or a biennial, how long the seeds are viable, and many more facts. You won’t get many of those details from me here.

My goal is simply to plant a seed. In you.

Some vegetables produce seed in one season and by reason of their botanical structure generally do not cross with others of their kind. This reproduction, called self-pollination, is easiest for the seed saver, since the seeds remain reasonably pure genetically without added protection from bagging or separating plants a great distance. Lettuce, tomatoes, peas, beans, and eggplant contain both male and female parts on the same flower (called a perfect flower). Their ovules are fertilized by their own pollen.

In peas and beans, fertilization occurs before the flower opens. The anthers are snug against the stigma, ensuring pollination when the anthers release. These vegetables may be planted freely in the garden, although hard-core purists recommend separating beans by 150 feet or by another crop that will be flowering at the same time.

To Harvest Seeds
: Let bean or pea pods dry on the plant until brown, then pick and shell. If cold weather looms, you can pull the entire plant and hang it upside down in a dry shelter. Label and store.

Lettuce flowers occur like fireworks, in a bunch of little sprays which open over three to four weeks. Each tiny flower generates one lettuce seed. In regards to purity, to not tempt fate you should separate varieties of lettuces that will flower at the same time by 20 feet.

To Harvest Seeds
:
Seed heads will ripen in stages parallel to the
timeline of the flowers, the first about eleven to thirteen days after the first bloom. The rule of thumb with lettuces is to harvest when
about half the flowers on each plant have gone to seed. Cut the
stalks of the flowers and make a bouquet, which you cram head
first in a paper bag and hang upside down until it is fully dry. Then the seed can be shaken or rubbed from the chaff. Label and store.

Things start to get a little complicated here with the love apple. Most modern varieties of tomatoes are self-pollinating. They are bred to have short styles, with anthers that fuse together until the pollen has fallen on the stigma. The pollen then slithers down the style and fertilizes the ovules. Other varieties have long styles that protrude beyond the anthers. These are mostly heirlooms and in general are more likely to cross-pollinate. These tomatoes should be isolated by at least 100 feet—all varieties by at least 10 feet, ideally—because solitary bees have been known to transfer pollen between blooms. A flowering crop grown between varieties is always a helpful barrier.

To Harvest Seeds
:
See chapter 19
.

Eggplants are mostly self-pollinated. To ensure purity, varieties must be separated by 50 feet or by caging—covering the entire plant with tight-woven cloth or screen in order to prevent entry by insects.

To Harvest Seeds
: Eggplant should get very ripe, about to fall off
the stalk. Let the fruit stay on the bush beyond the stage where
it’s edible. (Isn’t it true that this phrase is a little vague? I’ve seen
Dumpster-divers eat plenty of things that seemed beyond edible.) The color will turn dull and the eggplant will look sickly. I harvest
the seeds by blending chunks of the almost rotten eggplant in a
blender with water. Pour this mess into a bowl and, like tomatoes, viable seeds sink to the bottom. Eggplant seeds may be fermented
like tomatoes to increase germination rates and kill seed-borne
diseases, although it’s not necessary. Strain, dry, label, and store.