Y2K and open-pollinated seeds

[Guest guest]

Wichita Eagle

February 20, 1999

 

 

Y2K Helps Sow New Crop of Vegetable Gardeners

by Annie Calovich

 

 

Every business day, two to three people enter Valley Feed & Seed in

Wichita to buy non-hybrid seed that can make them producers of their

own food at the turn of the millennium.

 

Every day, too, people who are not necessarily concerned about the Y2K

bug and its potential problems are catching the vegetable gardening bug

and are plunging headlong into rows and seeds and plants.

 

The whole thing means a boom in new gardeners this year, something

that, except for the fear around the edges that seems to me to be

foreign to gardening, is exciting.

 

"Gardening is cyclical in the first place, and we are seeing a

strengthening at this point in time," said Danny Linnebur, owner of

Valley Feed & Seed. "Our seed potato orders are stronger than they've

been in five, six, seven years."

 

People also have been ordering perennial edible plants that come back

year after year, such as potato tubers, asparagus root, rhubarb, herbs

that are perennial, Linnebur said.

 

At the same time, Sedgwick County extension agent Bob Neier says, there

is an increase in people who are starting plants, whether they be

vegetable or flower, from seed.

 

How much of it is just plain gardening interest and how much is due to

Y2K, nobody knows.

 

But some in the gardening business have geared up to supply those who

fear the worst.

 

Y2K, short for the year 2000, refers to computer malfunctions that are

expected to occur when the new year dawns. Some people think that,

because older computers are programmed to read the last two "00" digits

as 1900, problems such as food and energy shortages will result.

 

"What they are looking for is a big garden they can plant this year,

that they can dry and store things from, without using electricity or

freezing, and be able to save the seeds,'' said Thomas Hauch, owner of

Heirloom Seeds in Elizabeth, Pa., which is selling "Y2K Garden"

packages that cost from $100 to $300 (that is a big garden).

 

"Another group is storing up on dry goods, and they are buying sealed

packages of seeds to save for next year in case their food runs out,"

Hauch said in a recent issue of the Hartford (Conn.) Courant.

 

When the Y2K inquiries started coming in to Valley Feed & Seed around

the first of the year, they caught Linnebur by surprise. Now he's used

to the requested items: non-hybrid, or open-pollinated, seeds;

hand-powered grain mills to make flour; whole grains and 5-gallon

plastic buckets with sealable lids to store them in; crockery in which

to make sauerkraut and other recipes from homegrown produce.

 

Linnebur also has put out free gardening literature from the extension

service as well as books on how to collect seed and store it.

 

Those concerned about Y2K often want to buy open-pollinated seeds

because these older varieties, when they grow into plants, produce seed

that can be gathered to produce the same kind of plant the next year.

Hybrid seeds -- bred for improvements in disease resistance, crop

yield, size, taste and other factors -- do not reliably produce the

same kind of plant from year to year.

 

The problem with non-hybrid seeds is that if the plants resulting from

them are diseased, which happens more often with non-hybrids than with

hybrids, the diseases are carried over in the seeds that are collected

from the plants, Neier says.

 

Because most seed -- hybrid or non-hybrid -- will keep for at least

three to five years if stored properly, people don't have to buy

non-hybrid seed for sustainability, Chuck Marr of Kansas State

University wrote recently. Instead, they can stock up on and store

hybrid seed and enjoy the benefits of plant improvements.

 

"Surely the computer problem can be fixed in three to five years!" Marr

wrote in a recent issue of K-State's Horticulture '99 publication.

 

At least a couple of old-style tomatoes can work even though they're

not hybrids, Linnebur said.

 

"You can still find some varieties that have natural resistance: the old

Super Sue, Rutgers," he said. "They'll still do OK because they put out

so much fruit they can make up for what they've suffered in disease."

And if gardeners use good cultural practices such as planting tomatoes

in a new area from year to year, that helps, too.

 

The Hartford Courant noted that whether they are new or experienced,

gardeners who grow from seed still are a minority.

 

"On the whole, I think people have almost forgotten how to plant seeds,"

Pierre Bennerup, owner of Comstock Ferre, a garden center in

Wethersfield, Conn., was quoted as saying. "Years ago, when I was

growing up, you didn't have to tell people what to do with seeds. Now

you do.''

 

People also are less patient, he added (and have less time to spend on

seeds, I would add). Growing vegetables from purchased plants rather

than from seed produces faster results.

 

Plants such as strawberries, asparagus roots and seed potatoes will be

available to the public in the Wichita area in the next week or two,

Linnebur said. He expects the growing season to be very productive for

gardeners based on extended weather forecasts.

 

Orville Sander, a manager of Hillside Feed & Seed in Wichita, thinks

the season looks quite good also partly on account of the influx of Y2K

gardeners. "If anything, it'll help business," he said.

 

Territorial Seed Co. in Cottage Grove, Ore., is expecting the

biggest-selling item in the 20-year history of the catalog to be its

"Millennium Victory Garden" kit -- a waterproof and bugproof metal can

filled with 47 varieties of open-pollinated vegetables, anti-desiccant

packets and growing instructions, The Washington Post reports. (The

newspaper adds: "Though not addressed in the catalogs, gardeners would

need access to sizable plots to grow all the varieties in the Y2K

garden.")

 

Marr of K-State isn't worried about Y2K.

 

"In the early '70s there was a similar 'food scare' with threats of

Middle Eastern oil sanctions that caused temporary shortages of oil and

gasoline in the United States," he wrote in Horticulture '99. "This was

short-lived, and no food shortages materialized. It is my opinion that

the 'food scare' suggested with the Y2K changeover will be non-existent

as it relates to food supplies and garden seeds."

 

If so, maybe it will at least have gained some gardening converts who

grow plants for the sheer joy of it.

 

 

Annie Calovich writes about gardening. She can be reached at 268-6596

or by e-mail at acalovich (AT) wichitaeagle (DOT) com