Local gardeners urged to save their seeds for resilience and diversity ahead of Seedy Sudbury

In the depths of winter, gardeners swoon over seed catalogues and start ordering, but one of the organizers of Sudbury's annual seed swap is urging people to look to their own backyard instead.

Rachelle Rocha is encouraging gardeners to start saving seeds to plant year after year in pursuit of strains hardy to the north and to prevent certain varieties from being lost.

Seedy Sudbury is being held this Sunday, Feb. 9, at Collège Boréal and will feature a room where participants in the Grow Out program can meet.  

The project is a community-driven effort to take a commercial seed and create resilient seeds uniquely suited to northern Ontario's climate. 

The project is in its third year and new members are always welcome.

"It's very empowering to be able to save seeds and grow them year after year after year in your own garden," said Rocha. "Otherwise you have to drive somewhere and buy them."

Rocha says that leaves growers vulnerable to supply chain shortages and at the mercy of commercial seed companies.

"I mean, in the old days you didn't have a store to go buy seeds at. Everybody just traded seeds." she said, noting that people were proud of what they could contribute.

She's seen the benefits of locally adapted seeds herself, saying they can withstand the harsher conditions of northern Ontario, saying she never even waters her garden.

Seeds are also the focus for a Sudbury gardener who is passionate about diversity.

Tamara Clement has a seed business called Heritage Hobby Seed Ark where she tries to bring attention to the diverse varieties of fruits and vegetables that are unknown to most gardeners.

Clement has collected some of the rarest seed varieties in Canada and grows them in her backyard  each year to pass on to other gardeners to grow and preserve them.

She describes how she got interested about 17 years ago with the purchase of her first heirloom tomato, and has been collecting since.

Her reasoning is that commercial varieties are limited, and preservation of other varieties is key to making sure we have access to different kinds of delicious food that may be lost if people neglect to keep farming them.

One example is a variety of tomato she grew this year from Spain which was developed to be stored over winter.

Just last week, she made a sandwich out of one of those that she had picked from her garden in August.

Sudbury seed collector protects hidden gems

"Five months is a long time to store a tomato, right?," she said.  "It actually tasted like a garden tomato still, so that was really shocking." 

Clement described it as not quite as sweet as a summer tomato with a thicker skin.

"Now, is it as amazing as a fresh tomato from the garden in August? No, it was not like that, but I could still detect a noticeable difference between my own tomato and one I would buy at the grocery store. So that was kind of amazing." 

It's one of what she calls "hidden gems" that she wants to keep discovering and passing on to other gardeners.

Seed savers, swappers and growers can find out more at Seedy Sudbury which will be held at Collège Boréal on Sunday, Feb. 9.