Novellas Farm and Art

Here it is September already. Time to think about the Fall garden.

Things have changed a bit lately. For one thing you have to be careful about
the source of your seedlings and your seeds.

I pretty much start all my garden plants from seed.
And sometimes, I admit, I just grab a package from the grocery store.

But then I started to hear more and more about the dangers of GM seeds. The more I learned the scarier it all sounded. I began to wonder if I should actually use seeds that I hadn't ordered from an heirloom seed
company.

I did a little reading and was relieved to learn that
even if the package does not label the seeds as NON GM they may still be OK.

Burpee is one brand you may see in the stores, and I did a little research and found they do not sell GMO seeds.

Which is really nice to know if you just need to pick a package up. No, they are not heirloom, but really I am not adamant against hybrids.

I have had people ask what the difference is between
heirloom and hybrid.

Heirloom seeds are gathered from plants that have been proven to be good performers for generations. They are probably some of the same selections our grandparents used. The seeds can be harvested and they will be like any off spring, similar to the parent plant.


Hybrid seeds have been bred to be resistant to certain diseases or to be well suited for a certain location.
People have chosen plants with good qualities and bred them together to get very well suited plants. There is nothing artificial about it, it is a little like dog breeding. It is selective plant breeding. The only thing is, the seeds produced from hybrid plants will not be true, they will be different from the parent plant, perhaps even sterile.

Genetically modified seeds on the other hand are in no way natural.

These plants have been tampered with on a cellular level. Often the plants have been injected with genes from an unrelated species. The flowers from these plants produce modified pollen that have the potential to breed with non GMO crops and effectively contaminate our whole food supply.
Also, the use of antibiotics as gene markers could render certain bacterias into super bugs.


I hope this information will help you to make your garden a really healthy place. Try to learn about the source of the seeds and seedlings you plant in your garden this year.