Seed Savers: The Story Behind the Seed

By Heather Poling

Phipps Edible Garden is bursting with color and flavor during the spring through the fall! Seasonal crops are carefully cultivated, producing vegetables and herbs that are used in our culinary classes. This summer, there is a special exhibit in the Edible Garden focusing on saving seeds! The exhibit profiles gardeners and organizations that save seeds to encourage biodiversity, preserve heritage varietals, traditional flavors and food ways.

The Seed Savers installation was designed by Allison Glick and Jasmine (Jazz) Pope who work together in the Phipps Homegrown program.  Homegrown helps increase community access to fresh produce by helping install raised-bed vegetable gardens in underserved neighborhoods. In their work with Homegrown, Allison and Jazz are in constant conversation with farmers, gardeners and community members, and wanted to share their collective knowledge about gathering and preserving seeds.

Saving seeds is not just about genetic diversity, each seed represents a traditional food, flavor and story.  Some of the stories are incredible! The Fish Pepper was popular with African Americans in the Baltimore area, largely cultivated in home kitchen gardens.  The pepper had disappeared due to social and cultural changes in the community. William Woys Weaver, a Maryland farmer, found some Fish pepper seeds in the bottom of his late grandfather’s freezer that were 50 years old!  When Weaver realized the importance of his find, he cultivated the seeds and shared them through the Seed Savers Exchange. Today the Fish Pepper is making a culinary come back being featured in restaurants, breweries and hot sauces in the Baltimore area.

Peppe Insalata, a traditional Abruzzo lettuce, has a Pittsburgh connection, named by Sabatino DiNardo in honor of his father-in-law Giuseppe who gifted him the seeds. DiNardi brought the seeds from Italy in 1957, when he immigrated to the US. He cultivated this gorgeous variety of oakleaf lettuce first in Oakland, then for over 30 years at his Brookline home. The seeds are now available to purchase through Truelove Seeds. Both Fish Peppers and Peppe Insalata are currently being grown in our Edible Garden!

These are just two of the amazing varieties of heritage plants that are featured in the Edible Garden. While Allison has eaten the Fish Pepper she is also looking forward to trying the Belmonte Tomato and the Sugar Rush Peach Pepper. Jazz had the opportunity to try the Bloody Butcher corn, a traditional Appalachian dent corn, when she was a student at Chatham. She made some cornbread with the red meal and her friends said it was the best cornbread they ever had.

Allison and Jazz hope that this exhibit will highlight the importance of seed saving as not only a way to protect biodiversity, but to connect by sharing stories. They said, “we hope that visitors leave feeling like they too can become seed keepers in their own gardens.”  Their best advice for novice seed savers is to let your plants stay in the garden past their prime until the seed head forms. Let the seed head develop and turn brown, then harvest your seeds and share your seed saving story!