Gordon Chalmers waters a section of his compact garden.  There is a small greenhouse behind the trellis and many more plants outside this view.

     He could buy this food cheaper in a supermarket, but that’s not the point.  “What I grow in my garden,” explains Gordon, “I know it hasn’t been tainted by chemicals.”  The only commercial fertilizer he puts into the soil in the containers is fish emulsion, a natural ingredient known to American Indians long before the Pilgims were taught to add a fish to each seed sowed.  Gordon stays away from genetically modified or gene altered seed, and plant varieties produced by new nano-technology.  “There are 300 products in the grocery store right now that they don’t know if it’s safe for human consumption,” he claims.  Just try to buy a packaged and processed product these days without corn in it, he points out.  Anything multi-grained is going to include corn meal.  Even designer breads are rolled in it.  Most breads, meats and beverages contain corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup or dextrose, a corn sugar.  And nearly all the supply of corn has now been contaminated by genetically altered varieties. 
     Chemical companies now market seeds that produce colorful but sterile plants.  You have to buy more seed every year from the company.  Instead of hybrids, Gordon prefers traditional tried and true varieties of plants with fertile “heirloom open pollinated seed.”  For many kinds of vegetables, saving seeds and planting them next year makes for hardier and healthier food.  “Years ago people handed down these seeds from generation to generation.  I’ll admit that some people did it to be thrifty.  But mostly it was for the flavor and taste.  You don’t get that with hybrid tomatoes anymore, especially in the grocery store.”
     Saving seeds will be very important in the future, Gordon believes.  “We are at the point where home gardens are becoming important for families.”  St. Johns Garden Club President Regina Hitchcock agrees, though for her, shunning the wonderful world of chemistry is less motivating.  She and her husband and children grow their own for the taste and the satisfaction.
     The family lives on a large parcel with plenty of room for almost a dozen compost bins, large seed beds, a greenhouse and even a flower garden.  Some plants grow in raised beds supported by old railroad ties.  Regina admits the practice is controversial due to creosote in the ties, but she cites research showing that even new railroad ties only affect the soil within six inches.  She doesn’t think it’s harmful.  Potatoes are grown in old automobile tires.  Other plants are just in the ground.  You have to make your own soil in St. Johns because the dirt in the higher parts of town has too much clay, too many alkaline salts and not enough organic matter.  Starting with the local soil, Regina uses manure and homemade compost to rebuild it, adding peat moss for acidity.  And when you take the effort to create your own fertile soil, compact beds make the best use of it.
     The Hitchcocks grow tomatoes, sunflowers, squash, corn, popcorn, watermelon, potatoes, strawberries, onions, garlic, cucumbers and gourds.  They planted marigolds among the corn to keep bugs away, but Regina admits it hasn’t worked.  Still, she only sprays four kinds of natural insecticide obtained from Gardens Alive, an internet and mail order supplier.  Like Gordon Chalmers, she believes in using open pollinated seed and starting plants from saved seed in a greenhouse.  But mostly, its about the outdoor exercise, and the knowledge that a family can almost feed itself.  “I do it for the sheer joy of it,” she says.  “It’s therapeutic.  And it’s good insurance against hard times.  You can not get the flavors of vegetables out of a store like you can out of a garden.”

     Heirloom open pollinated seeds vs. hybrids
     Open pollinated seeds are the result of allowing natural pollination methods like bees and the wind to transfer pollen instead of controlled hand pollination only between selected varieties to produce hybrid seeds.  Seeds from traditional varieties, not produced for modern agricultural mass production are called “heirloom seeds.”  Heirloom seeds are produced through open pollination in order to retain their inherited traits.  Indian corn is an heirloom, while sweet corn must be hybridized every year.
 

    “Hybrid seeds are the first generation offsprings of two distant and distinct parental lines of the same species.  Seeds taken from a hybrid may either be sterile or more commonly fail to breed true, not incorporating and expressing the desired traits of the parent.   The development of hybrid seed enabled the beginning of the commercial seed market.  Farmers were persuaded to buy new hybrid seed each season, replacing the traditional practice of farm-saved seed, due to the 'hybrid vigour' which can improve yields.  Hybrid seed is also known as "high response" seed.  These seeds require fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and lots of water to achieve their high yields.”

-- primalseeds.org website

     “In the past I’ve grown hybrid vegetables, mostly the varieties that have been developed to produce early yields. Because of this, I was able to grow things like sweet corn in northern climates. However, from a practical point of view I am dead set against them if you intend to incorporate them into a “self-reliant” gardening plan. 
     “While these hybrids can taste good, I’ve found that most have been developed for commercial traits such as ease of shipping, holding saleable color and flavor for long periods, and for ensuring the simultaneous ripening of entire fields of a vegetable to facilitate mechanical harvesting.
     “The one big negative is that hybrid seeds do not produce true reproductions of the mother plants. This makes buying new seed every year a necessary, expensive, and for someone who wants to become self-reliant, a dangerous practice.”

     Regina Hitchcock views one small section of her large garden.  She also starts sets in a greenhouse.

“Heirlooms offer superior flavor and true-to-type seed saving capabilities, but hybrids often offer more “perfect” shapes and sizes, ease of growing, and many offer disease and pest resistance that heirlooms just don’t have.”

     A gardener can expect a 60% germination rate from onion and corn seeds carefully stored for two years.  But seeds saved for up to six years from beans, cucumbers, radishes, muskmelon and all types of squash should germinate at the same 60% rate.  Heat and moisture are destroyers of stored seeds.  It’s best to keep seeds in a cool, dry place.