Home & Garden Columns

“Music will be an Old Time Music Jam, bring yer fiddle,” is what Terri Compost, the exquisitely named point person of the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library (acronym’ed, equally exquisitely, “BASIL”) replied to my query. I wanted to know who would be playing the music promised for BASIL’s Ninth Annual Seed Swap tomorrow, Saturday February 23, 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Ecology Center. Dang, I don’t have a fiddle. Guess I’ll just send the cat. 

BASIL’s mission is to preserve and share local and interesting varieties of food-garden seeds. It’s inspired by such organizations as Native Seeds/SEARCH in Arizona and Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa. These got started by people who noticed that unique varieties of corn, chili peppers, beans, or other garden plants were disappearing as gardeners who’d grown them year after year died or lost their gardens, and as buying rather than saving (or swapping!) seeds became the normal thing to do.  

Doubtless there are unnamed and mostly unnoticed heirlooms in Bay Area gardens: some lettuces that hang tough all winter and don’t bolt in May; a fava that produces larger, sweeter beans than most; maybe even a basil with different flavor overtones or that thrives in the fog.  

As agricultural conglomerates consolidate and concentrate on fewer seed varieties—mostly those favored by commercial growers and with the broadest marketing appeal—BASIL’s efforts are becoming more urgent. Big seed companies preserve the qualities that big produce growers prize, like shelf appeal, good appearance, and sturdiness for shipping; more subtle qualities like flavor take second place.  

Just as important, a variety that has a superior ability to thrive in a particular place gets lost when only seeds for plants with nationwide appeal are left in the market. 

BASIL started as just a few people’s seed collections, coordinator Terri Compost says. Sascha DuBrul officially founded the Ecology Center project in 2000. Aside from perpetuating locally adapted and interesting plant varieties, the project concentrates on open-pollinated seeds that will breed true, unlike commercial hybrids that must be bought every year from seed companies.  

She passed along a couple of seed-saving secrets: for one, that it's easiest to start with plants like lettuce, beans, and tomatoes that don’t readily swap pollen with the neighbors’ gardens, which would result in hybrid fruit and seeds. A counterintuitive tip: tomato seeds keep best if you put them, still goopy, on a shelf for a few weeks. Mold will form, which can be rinsed away before drying and storing the seeds. The mold seems to reduce disease and aid germination. 

Compost says the “library” of seeds— a bookcase full of seeds, carefully labeled and preserved in re-used (of course!) jars—kept at the Ecology Center provides “the same exchange we do at the swap meet, but spread out over time.”  

Tomorrow, expect heirlooms from local gardeners and small seed companies. Bring some to share; take only what you can really grow out, and save seed to return; bring a potluck dish and your musical talent too. (Lacking those, bring $10.) Wildheart Nursery plants and other goodies will be raffled off.  

(BASIL) 9th Annual Seed Swap 

Saturday Feb. 23, 6:30 p.m.–9:00 p.m. 

Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley. 

(510) 658-9178, terricompost@yahoo.com or 

http://www.ecologycenter.org/basil/