Welsh-grown, ‘One Planet’, heritage seeds - Introducing the Wales Seed Hub
The Wales Seed Hub! We're a unique seed-selling co-op, now offering gardeners a range of Welsh-grown, heritage and amateur vegetable varieties.
But we're no ordinary seed company. For a start, the seed is all grown on our members’ farms (in contrast to most seed you buy in the UK which is grown abroad - often as far afield as China). In addition, we choose varieties that thrive in the often challenging climate in Wales, some of these varieties having been grown here for many years.
Most of our growers are market gardeners. We don’t use chemicals but only environmentally friendly methods to grow our crops, with many, including ourselves, being 'One Planet' smallholders. Most of us produce seed of just two or three vegetable varieties, but we've joined together to monitor seed quality, and to licence, packet and market it, so the Hub has a range of varieties to sell.
‘Gardener’s Ecstasy’
One example that we grow is the ‘District Nurse’ borlotti bean. In the 1990s, an elderly lady in Cardiff gave some seeds of this bean to her district nurse, who in turn passed them to her stepdaughter, and they have been grown and passed around amongst keen gardeners ever since.
Borlottis are a drying bean, so you won't find them in your veg box, but they can be stored for ages without the need for complicated high energy processing, and are a great source of protein if you're following a plant based diet. They also make the most awesome home made baked beans!
‘Ailsa Craig’
Another is the Gardeners' Ecstasy cherry tomato, bred by the late, great Tony Haigh, tomato grower extraordinaire at the Brithdir Mawr eco-Community in north Pembrokeshire.
Other varieties are more familiar, but we chose them because they do well in less favoured areas: for example, the cordon tomato ‘Ailsa Craig’ was bred in Scotland in the early1900s and is early maturing as well as tasty, and the winter squash ‘Blue Hubbard’ is a traditional, reliable variety, great for storage throughout the winter.
The Wales Seed Hub is being supported by the Gaia Foundation’s UK Seed Sovereignty Programme, with all of us having taken part in their intermediate seed production training, which was designed to fill the startling gap in UK on-farm seed growing knowledge. The ambition of the Programme was to help us move from apprentice seed producers into selling seed commercially, giving us an added income stream while also boosting the worryingly low quantities of open pollinated seed grown in the UK. Motivated by both the need to increase Welsh seed resilience and the financial resilience of our own land-based businesses, we launched the Hub in 2020, initially selling just two varieties, but adding another eleven this year.
The First Two Wales Seed Hub Varieties
We're now not only on a mission to increase the range of seed we sell, but also to find as many old Welsh varieties as we can, preserving an ever dwindling range of tasty, fantastic, vegetables historically grown in this Country. If you've come across any, we'd love to hear from you!
For more info, including how to order seeds from us, visit our website, www.seedhub.wales