Episode 293: why seeds matter, with Jennifer Jewell, author of book what we sow

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TRANSCRIPT

[0:00] Music.

[0:15] Jane Perrone Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast. I'm your host Jane Perrone and in this episode seeds take centre stage. Plus I answer a question about biochar. So whether you are a dedicated follower and practitioner of my On The Ledge sowalong or a complete newbie to growing from seed, I hope this episode will inspire you about the wonders of seeds.

[0:54] Jane Perrone In this episode, I am talking seeds with Jennifer Jewell, host of wonderful podcast Cultivating Place. Jennifer is an expert on this subject. She's written a whole book called What We Sow: On The Personal Ecological and Cultural Significance of Seeds. So this isn't a practical On The Ledge sowalong episode but think of it as a way of resetting your mindset about seeds - their importance, their centrality in our lives and maybe this will inspire you to think again about whether you want to get involved with sowing any kinds of seeds let alone houseplant seeds if you've no idea what the on the ledge so along is this is my annual mission to get listeners sowing houseplant seeds. I've been doing it every year on the podcast since I think 2018 and in the show notes you can go and find all of those previous episodes listed and catch up on all the content covering everything from sowing cacti and succulents to growing ferns from spores to the structure of a seed and more. This interview will really make you think about where your seed's coming from and who's controlling the system.

[2:18] Music.

[2:24] Jennifer Jewell I'm Jennifer Jewell, and I am best known as the creator and host of Cultivating the Place, Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden, a nationally syndicated public radio program and podcast out of the United States. I am also the author of several books about gardening and specifically how gardens and gardeners are powerful intersectional agents and spaces for change, h elping to grow our world better. So I do not talk about how to garden. I talk about why we garden and why that is important in our world generally, even if you you don't garden, Jane.

[3:12] Jane Perrone This is totally chiming in with a strand of my podcast on the ledge, which is seed sowing and sowing houseplants from seed. This is something I'm really passionate about, and it's part of a wider passion for seeds generally. And I loved in your introduction where you described the four primary elements of water, air, soil, and fire, and then added on seed as the fifth element that humans need to make life on earth. Seed is life. I love that idea. And I was going to ask you, why did you write that book? But I guess that explains it pretty well. Was this a sort of a pandemic exploit?

[3:54] Jennifer Jewell The timing might suggest so. It became a pandemic exploit, but what was interesting to me in beginning to write it in 2020 was how long I had been circling this topic. So my third book, What We Sow, on the personal, ecological, and cultural significance of seeds, which is this reader of a book, not a picture book you're going to put on your coffee table, exploring the state of seeds in our world. What I realized was that in the podcast, going back to its inception in 2016, in the current iteration, and in my first two books, I had been steadily accumulating, quite a few interviews and conversations and research threads into what we mean when we say the state of seeds in our world. I had been talking to people about the restoration economy's seed supply and how generally in these times of biodiversity loss and habitat at fragmentation and degradation, and the subsequent urge to restore wild lands, whether it's in the UK or in the United States, in order to offset these losses, there has been this enormous industry created of people growing site-appropriate, ethically sourced, and genetically genetically diverse native seeds in order to seed those restoration projects. And this has been going on for several decades since the UN first declared this restoration need in the Nagoya Protocol back in the 90s. So that's one level of seed, right? But then there's, of course, like the food and commodity seed supply. And then there's the home gardener seed supply and flowers and food and herbs in all of that. So when we say the seed industry, it's really this mammoth multifaceted economic and philosophical entity in our world. It's been a long time since I started looking into it, but in this focus that started in 2020 and took me through the beginning of 2023, when I turned the book in, you know, it's kind of a labyrinth of, of how do you find who is growing seed for what reason, with what agenda, and why should we as gardeners care about that? And how do we act on that for the best of, for all of us, really?

[6:48] Jane Perrone I thought about you this week when I was sowing some seed that is so precious to me so. This was seed that I collected of the plant sea beet by the sea in Dorset a few years ago quite a few years ago it's on my desk somewhere I'm looking around for it I think it was probably about at least seven years ago I collected this seed and I had this sea beet in my garden for but for all that time, but we had a very harsh winter or harsh spell during last winter. And I lost it. And I was really upset. And then I was going through my seed stash the other day, because right, we all have seed stashes, right? And I found I still had some seed of this seed that I'd saved. And I was so excited and I sowed it and I thought, gosh, nothing may happen. But indeed, it has started germinating and the excitement is palpable. And I'm sure people People who don't share our passion for seeds would find this completely inexplicable. But for me, it's a link to that experience, that holiday. It's a crop that I love to harvest that is a perennial vegetable that's so useful. It's got everything going for it. And I really thought of that 'seed is life' comment in your introduction when I saw these seeds coming up. It's so valuable, isn't it? Are there any particular seeds in your seed stash that are particularly special to you or seeds that you have that have a special place in your heart?

[8:24] Jennifer Jewell Definitely. We do a lot of camping and hiking across the U.S. West, my partner John and I. And when the opportunity presents itself and it makes sense for us to collect seed from some of the native plants we love, especially the ephemeral annuals or wildflowers, I should make a note here. It is illegal to collect on public land. You have to collect on private land with permission. And there are ethics to how you collect native plant seed, including never taking very many seed. And then growing those in your garden and collecting those seeds again. So I'm thinking here of one of our, fabulous native salvias in California called Salvia carduacea. And it's also known as thistle sage. And it is just like the most unlikely of annual plants. And it has a gorgeous thistle-like seed head, but that is in the verticillasters that you think of when you think of native California sages and salvias. And the show of it in the spring with this very white, silver foliage that's kind of furry, and then these thistle heads that go up sort of pagoda-like, the stem, it's just magnificent. And to have it come from this teeny, teeny little seed, and then see it germinate, just like you experienced, it just slays me every time, Jane. I mean, it is a miracle taking place between your hand and the soil. Yeah, it is engaging with the very essence of life. And it reminds you a little bit of your place, I think. For me, it does.

[10:27] Jane Perrone It is powerful stuff. But the reality is that you and I are in a minority here, aren't we? And Ithink you use the phrase in your book, 'seed stupid', in that we really, as human beings, there's a vast majority of us who, for many different reasons, really don't appreciate some of the things that we've just been talking about. How have we come to this past that seeds are so misunderstood, or not even thought about.

[10:59] Jennifer Jewell Right. I want to clarify that when I used that term 'seed stupid', I was definitely applying it to myself as well. It was a surprise to me, Jane, in 2020, when I thought to myself, why is our seed supply so impacted by even the earliest days of this pandemic. How is the seed supply in our world so fragile that it is backed up already? And I thought to myself, there is a lot about the seed supply world that I don't understand. And as a gardener who really prides myself on being in the know and well-informed and very intentional, all those earnest words we might use to describe ourselves. I just didn't know what I should know. And I realized that if so many of our world has developed to live and thrive at a distance from our plant communities. So people often use the word divorced. We are divorced from nature and we think we can get along without it because the grocery stores supply our food, the subway supplies our drive. You go back and forth and life goes on whether or not you understand plants. When you really start to think about all the things in your life from, you know, cotton clothing to, the food on your plate, whatever it might be, everything comes back to, I mean, almost everything that you care about in the world in terms of food, housing, clothing, like these all come back to seed at some level. The only thing that doesn't would be like rock and metal. The derivatives of those don't need seed, but everything else really does. And so for us, for many people, we describe like the lack of ability to identify different plants in the landscape as just a green blur. Like people are described as looking at the world as a green blur, because of course, everywhere you go, there are plants, even in the desert, even at the highest alpine reaches. And certainly even in cities, there are plants everywhere. But if you don't see them as individuals, you see them as this green blur. And this is plant blindness is something that we've talked a lot about in our world over the past 25 years even. But this inability to understand the role of seed, it occurred to me that that is not just seed blind, it's seed stupid because it is a blindness that really hobbles your ability to engage with the world in the best possible, fullest possible way, and therefore treat the world and show up in the world as your best self somehow. And this is one of the things I was trying to highlight. Even if you don't want to be a gardener, the importance of seeds and therefore their plants in our world is something we should not allow to be taken away from us under the guise of the words convenience or, I don't know, cleanness or efficiency. It is irresponsible, I think, for us. and also not preferred - like there is some pleasure that you lose if you don't have these relationships and once you have them there is this immense pleasure that is gained from understanding and engaging with plants and seeds at a more knowledgeable level - a more intimate level.

[15:11] Jane Perrone And we also need to know this stuff because seeds are big business, right? This is the other thing that comes out in your book. Can you tell us a little bit about the business of seeds and what you discovered in researching your book? Well, you know, I think that most people that engage with plants in some way, which are most likely the people listening today, have this understanding that at the largest industrial scales, the plant and therefore the seed industries have continued to become consolidated. And I want to connect here how seeds and plants and knowledge of them have been distanced from most people's everyday lives and this consolidation as not just being an accident or an inadvertent consequence. But it has actually been strategized and planned and executed with full intention to make most Most people unaware of the associations of seeds and plants to their economic and their environmental and their social lives so that the people who are controlling them can do what they want with them and continue to garner control and profit over the best interests of people and the planet. These things have happened intentionally and strategically. And it's when you start to look at these connections, it's horrifying, Jane, how much agency we have abdicated to these large corporations, international corporations, who really don't give a hoot about the integrity or the genetics or the fact that seeds and plants are part of our inherited, common birthright. Right. And they are being purchased and patented and secreted away at this crazy rate. So at this point, something like 60% of all the seed industry's value is held by, owned by, controlled by, profited by four major pharmaceutical petrochemical companies. Now, whenever I deliver that line, I ask people to really sit with what that means to them. That means that your food, your flowers, your medicine, your forests, your watersheds, they are all being impacted by pharmaceutical, petrochemical, corporate decision-making. Now, chances are, the more you think about that, the more yucky that is to you, that your ability to survive on this planet, you know, retail shopping notwithstanding, is controlled by these people who have a very different value system than most of us have for what goes into our air, what goes into our water, what goes into our children's food, and what our future looks like as a result. And to become aware of it means that maybe you do a little more research, and maybe you read some of the fine print, and maybe you make different purchases, or maybe you make a different check mark on your voting ballot for what the bonds are, or if you want your representatives to support the Farm Bill this year. We all have more agency than we think to say this is not how we want our plants and seeds stewarded in this world.

[19:32] Jane Perrone It's scary stuff isn't it, but this is why i love buying seed or get sharing seed from buying seed from little companies like you mentioned in your book a few different companies in the uk that i've bought seed from The Real Seed Company and Brown Envelope Seeds amongst them who are doing things really differently who are you know not only advocating for but also selling open pollinated cultivated vegetable seeds, and also, you know, seed swaps and saving seed, all these incredible skills that we have kind of started to lose, but actually we haven't lost because there are lots of people who are preserving and fighting back. Can you tell me about a couple of examples of, of, of how the fight back's happening and, and the characters involved?

[20:25] Jennifer Jewell Oh, there are, there are so, I mean, if the research for this book was really depressing in terms of how much genetic diversity has been lost or patented or genetically modified or covered in chemicals. I mean, there was a, there were two different statistics that were again just gut wrenching for me. One of them being that across the US all non-organic corn being planted, and there are hundreds of millions of acres across the United States that are planted out in corn for food, for livestock, for biofuel, for canola oil, for, you know, all these different large commodity purposes. Purposes all non-organic corn planted in the u.s on these hundreds of millions of acres if it's not organic it is covered with chemicals that are toxic to most insects and they are predisposed with this roundup ready genetic modification to emit this neonicotinoid impact. Uh, and it's held that, that pesticide cocktail is held in every cell of this corn. Um, and because it's wind pollinated, it means that it crosses and spreads that, um, contamination to all the corn within miles and miles of it. So that was, that was terrifying, right? And then, then the other one about commodification and, um, and then the third third one that I want to share before I get to the good news, Jane, is that the Xerces Society, which is in the U.S., the largest non-profit, non-governmental non-profit, working for the protection of invertebrate life on our continent, but certainly in our world at large. So these are all the insects, all the pollinating insects, all the mussels and clams and beetles and bugs that make our world go. This group, the Xerces Society, has been focusing quite a bit on monarch butterfly research and data collection. And the primary larval, I think the only larval food for the monarch butterflies in their life cycle is one of the milkweed plants. Now there are many species of milkweeds and they are different native regions to these. But the Xerces Society across the US, is having a very hard time finding milkweed plants in a commercial nursery that are not contaminated with this neonicotinoid genetic contamination. And that means that you are essentially welcoming a butterfly to your garden with a meal, and then you're then poisoning them with that meal, which is heartbreaking. It is not what we want to do. It is not what we intend to do. So we're against some big, big problems. On the good news front, which is what you were asking me about, opposing all of this are hundreds and hundreds of people like you, like me, like the Xerces Society, like home gardeners and native plant societies and organic gardeners across both of our countries and continents who are working to stand against all of this, who are saving seed and sharing seed and supporting seed growers who keep this integrity in mind. They are supporting seed libraries in our public libraries or at our botanic gardens that are non-GMO and organic seed, open-pollinated seed, non-patented, that's one of the important things, is that we keep as much of this genetic in the hands of the gardeners to share and grow out and share again in perpetuity. That's how humans have continued to share and adapt and select the plants we love the most. When you think about where I am, you know, some of the really interesting people, and there are so many that I interview for the book, but Rowan White is a woman of indigenous descent based now in California. She was born and raised in what is now upstate New York in the Akwesasne tribal area. And she is the founder of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, helping to re-inoculate tribal communities across the United States with information about their heritage plants, about their seeds, about how to save them, about how to share them, about how to store them so that they continue to grow on well. That is one person who is making an enormous impact. You go So over to the East Coast and you think of K Greene and his partner, Doug Muller, who started the Hudson Valley Seed Company. Kay Green was the founder of the very first public library based seed library in the U.S. That's another one. There are so many, I can't even talk about them all. But in total, their efforts and their passion on the ground in this grassroots seed-based level really gave me a great hope. One of the seed keepers that I interview, a man named Jeff Quattrone, who has helped to develop a whole network of seed libraries in New Jersey, and who has worked to find and repropagate and grow out and share forward the seeds of these, I think, between five and seven now, heritage varieties. Of tomatoes that were bred in New Jersey historically. He said to me, you know, the larger the mainstream, Jennifer, meaning those commodity, you know, pharmaceutical corporations and those chemical companies and all of that, the larger that mainstream, the larger the space for the undercurrent and our undercurrent of seed keepers who are working to preserve the integrity and the great biodiversity of seed available to us at all of these levels is very vibrant and it is alive and well. And I have an incredible amount of faith in its power to overcome.

[27:37] Music.

[27:46] Jane Perrone More from Jennifer shortly, but now it's time for our Q&A,and this concerns biochar. Jim got in touch to ask about using biochar in houseplant substrates. Biochar is something I'm still experimenting with on my houseplants, so I can't give you a totally comprehensive answer, but here's what I know so far. Let's start with the obvious question. What on earth is biochar? It's basically a form of carbon. So if you take wood and you heat it under extremely high temperatures, biochar is what results. You can make biochar out of other organic materials, but usually it's wood that we are talking about as the base material for this product. And if you've ever heard of the term terra preta. Well, this is biochar. In the Amazon, indigenous peoples were improving their soils using biochar over many, many centuries. And we're still using biochar today. Why does it work though? Well, if you imagine that biochar is, well, how can I describe it? It's like a massive and very intricate sponge inside. There's lots of teeny tiny holes inside every tiny piece of biochar. So that enables biochar to hold on to a lot of things that we need for our substrates. That includes nutrients, of course, but it can also include air and water and even microorganisms too that can help your soil to thrive. There is a really good RHS page on biochar, which I will link to in the show notes, which goes through lots of technical information and also practical information about when to use biochar and when not to use it. In the last 10, 20 years, lots of firms have latched onto this idea of biochar as something that's good for your soil. And there are a number of companies offering these products. Certainly in the UK, I think one of the best known ones is called Carbon Gold. But what can they do for houseplants? Well, I think they can be a really valuable addition to houseplant substrates. They don't contain nutrients in and of themselves, but they can be a store, a place for nutrients to be stored for the use by your plants. Similarly, air and water, as I've already said. If you want to use biochar. You can just simply add it to your substrate when you're repotting, or you could just sprinkle it on the surface of your pot. Every biochar product will be slightly different in terms of what they're recommending you put in. Usually when you're talking about application rates, I've seen anything from 2% to 20% by volume listed as the recommendation. So look at your own product and see what it recommends. Carbon Gold's biochar Houseplant Booster, they recommend putting one one to two teaspoons in an average pot and mixing that in and watering as normal. The one thing they point out is that, as I say, biochar holds onto a lot of water, so you won't need to water so frequently. It's going to hold water very, very effectively. So it's going to be something you're going to have to experiment with. You may also hear about charging or activating biochar. Again, if you're buying a product that's like the houseplant booster that's specifically designed for houseplants you can assume that you don't have to do this but there is a whole well there's tons of information out there about charging biochar basically biochar is just like a sponge it doesn't contain nutrients nutrients have to be added to it water has to be added to it so you can do that in different ways most people will be adding it to water with a nutrient solution in it to make it charge up with all those resources that your plant's roots are going to need. What I would say is just make sure that when you're buying a biochar product, ask questions of the supplier, like how would I use this with houseplants? Do I need to charge it ahead of using it? And find out the information you need in order to use it effectively.

[32:00] Jane Perrone Can you make biochar yourself? Not recommended. It's a very specific process involving particular equipment that you probably aren't going to have in your home or garden so yeah i would say no don't uh don't try and make biochar at home and don't try to use uh bits of charcoal from a fire if you have one because again that is not going to work because the materials won't be um charred to the right level and you could have harmful um substances in there too so you really are better off buying the stuff. I hope that helps Jim and if anyone else has got experience with using biochar then do get in touch and I will update with your thoughts and experiences on this topic. It's a really fascinating one and I think we'll be hearing a lot more about biochar in the future. Thanks for your question Jim and if you've got a question, drop me a line ontheledge podcast@gmail.com. And now it's time to get back to my chat with Jennifer.

[33:08] Music.

[33:15] Jane Perrone I was just thinking while I was reading this book about the context of growing houseplants from seed and I was blithely thinking, oh, well, of course, the world of houseplants, you know, this isn't such an issue because actually there are not that many people who grow houseplants from seed. And those who do tend to be the kind of specialist folks who are into gesneriads or who are into pollinating their anthuriums and so on. But then I remembered very, very abruptly that actually in my own book, there was a story about the Kentia palm, Howie of Forsteriana, and how Lord Howe Island was basically, that was their main income was the seed and how that was absolutely devastated by invasive rats basically eating all the seed. And of course you know in the houseplant world of course it's the same the same app lies i guess we've slightly escaped from the the same issues as vegetables because it is quite a well a neat a niche really neat quite a niche hobby but it's interesting to see how even in this hobby i'm sure the seeds of you know the seeds of something like uh uh Monstera deliciosa or the polka dot plant which comes from Madagascar and is threatened in its natural habitat you know is probably there's probably issues if we if I dug into that I'd find more issues but I guess this is my mission really is just to get to people thinking about not just looking at a grown plant and thinking oh well that's amazing but thinking about where it actually comes from, whether that's a tiny dust-like orchid seed or a huge, you know, a big, a big...

[35:04] Jennifer Jewell Coconut.

[35:05] Jane Perrone Yeah, exactly. Coco de mer or something.

[35:08] Jane Perrone The other aspect that I really loved in this book was talking about another aspect of this sort of undercurrent, which is the seed banks that have been set up around the world. And I had the privilege of going to the Kew Millennium Seed Bank, but there are loads of these all around the globe and, I mean, I sometimes get told off by my children for sort of always talking about apocalyptic things and what would happen in the apocalypse. But this is the whole point of these seed banks, isn't it? It's preparing for a worst case scenario.

[35:41] Jennifer Jewell Yes and no. Humans have been saving and sharing seed and selecting the best plants from those seeds since we have been walking on two feet and engaging with plants as food, as medicine, as ritual, as ornament, all of the above. So humans throughout time have always had seed banks in their own smaller versioned way, where you collect the best of your seeds, you plant most of them, but you save the rest for the next season in case this season's harvest fails. So you are never without them, right? That is just intelligent, common sense thinking based on hundreds of thousands of years of human experimentation and starvation cycles of plenty and then scarcity. But in the late 1800s, the very first sort of governmental organized seed bank was kicked off by the Russians in order to collect and store and document as much as they could of their most important food crops and the seed. And they did this because they were in a period of empire building and they wanted to make sure they always had enough seed in order to feed the people and to feed the troops of people who went off to do their empire building. This then sort of morphed in the 1900s from being just this one, the Vavilov Institute, into being series of seed banks around the world in cooperation between governments and large business entities like the Ford Foundation and others, working with governments to protect the food, the human food crop diversity of greatest importance. So it resulted in, you know, through sort of the 1930s through the 1970s, the development of these centers of diversity of seed crops. There was a dry land seed crop seed bank called, it's an acronym, ICARDA, I-C-A-R-D-A in Syria. There's one in Central and South America that is preserving the biodiversity of corns and squashes and and sunflowers, and plants that are native to this area and of great food importance, human food importance. There's another one in the Philippines for the great diversity of rice. So slowly, more and more of these have been created. The United States has one called the USDA Food and Crop Germplasm Center. I'm getting that a little bit wrong. It's a long title. Based in Fort Collins, Colorado, which is high and dry and cool, which is why it's based there. They are the backup site for other seed bank centers around the U.S. That collect in their area and then send their backups to the USDA in Fort Collins. So Kew, interestingly enough, has really moved from being a traditional seed bank that it started as under the direction of John Dickey into being a seed bank that focuses primarily on the flora of the United Kingdom. That is now their special focus, not necessarily food crop plants, which is where they would have started, but the actual biodiversity of native wild plants across the United Kingdom. There are now something like 1,500 of these larger governmental organized seed banks in the world. And together with governments and other corporations and nonprofits, they all got together to create the sort of mothership of them all, the Svalbard Seed Vault up in the Svalbard Archipelago north of the Arctic Circle. Norway is the kind of administering country, and their large nonprofit called NorGen helps with the international non-profit crop trust to administer Svalbard. What's interesting about Svalbard is it's very much about the apocalypse. It is the backup copy of all the backup copies. So while the USDA does their own collecting and Kew does their own collecting and, you know, ICARDA does their own collecting and whatever, all of these other ones do their own collecting. Svalbard only serves as a backup copy to these originating collections. So that if there's a war or a natural disaster that impacts one of these seed banks, they have a backup copy in Svalbard to help regenerate not just the plants, but also the seed banks. And so at this point, biodiversity is almost as important tenant in these seed banks as human food protection is.

[41:15] Jane Perrone It's so important, isn't it? I mean, conflicts happening around the world, I presume that - I don't know, is there a seed bank in Ukraine? And presumably that's being...

[41:24] Jennifer Jewell Yes, it was targeted almost immediately. Like this is one of the tricks - tricks is a terrible word, But one of the strategies in times of war is you try and control and take out your adversary's food supply, because that is what will bring them to their knees. And yes, the Ukraine is a hotspot for grain diversity and growing and supply in our world. And their seed bank of wheat genetics was targeted almost immediately by Russia early in the war. Clearly, I'm sure the same thing is happening in the Middle East. And so that instability should give us all pause as to how we care for our planet and how we care for one another.

[42:13] Jane Perrone Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's a really, as you say, it's not a practical how-to, it's not a picture book. This is a read, but a beautiful read. And there's so much here. I mean, I remember reading one of your entries about your daughter going away to college and I'm just I was just looking for it now. But I was that brought me to tears. It was talking about how, you know, as humans, we are seed within seed. And that is just very beautiful. It's a very, very beautiful book. So I do urge all listeners to go and get a copy. We'll put a link in the show notes to all the relevant info. Info uh but it's just been a delight to find out more about this work and there's so much more we could talk about but I will leave readers to go and explore um and alongside the, very difficult issues in here there's so much hope would you agree.

[43:15] Jennifer Jewell There is, I would. And, you know, I think for me, the great access point was the beauty, the beauty and the diversity of the plants around us. And that just like enjoying the diversity of oaks and acorns in my area in California and, and reconnecting to that mystery and that miracle and that beauty, that right there is, I think, the most powerful access point for us to love and care for these topics and be made larger by them.

[43:55] Jane Perrone Are you sowing some seed this spring?

[43:58] Jennifer Jewell A lot of seed, Jane. We just did our zinnias, we did our carrots, we did a lot of lettuce, this. We're looking at our tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers very hopefully as the weather gets a little warmer.

[44:16] Jane Perrone After this interview, I've got to go out to my greenhouse and put some fleece over my tomatoes because it's going to be cold tonight. I think they're both self-saved seed. I usually do save tomato seed. One thing we haven't quite captured, well, maybe we have, but it's just how fun this whole seed thing is. It's, once you get hooked on it, there's just no going back. So seed stashes, sowing lots of seed, it is the way forward. And I'm sure that you've inspired lots of listeners to think about this in a different way. So thank you very much for joining me, Jennifer.

[44:56] Jennifer Jewell Ah, thank you, Jane. It's been a pleasure to catch up.

[45:02] Music.

[45:08] Jane Perrone Thanks so much to Jennifer and do check out the show notes at janeperrone.com for a full transcript and links to the Cultivating Place podcast and Jennifer's books, including What We Sow. That's all for this week's show. I will be back two weeks hence, but for now, have a wonderful couple of weeks. I'm going to be heading off to the Malvern show, to the houseplant festival all weekend surrounded by plants and planty people cannot wait - bye!

[45:48] Music.

[46:08] Jane Perrone The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiko, and Whistle by Benjamin Banger. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.

[46:24] Music.

Host Jane Perrone talks to garden writer and podcaster Jennifer Jewell about her latest book What We Sow, and answers a question about biochar.

This week’s guest

Jennifer Jewell is the host of weekly public radio program and podcast Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden. (You can hear my interview on houseplants in this episode).
Her book What We Sow: On The Personal, Ecological, And Cultural SIgnificance Of Seeds published by Timber Press.
Her other books include The Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants
You’ll find Jennifer on Twitter as @cultivatingplace.

Check these notes while you listen…

I mention sowing seeds of the wild vegetable sea beet (Beta vulgaris maritima). Never heard of sea beet? More information here.
Find out more about the Xerces Society and its worth with the monarch butterfly.
The story of rats nearly wiping out the Kentia palm (Howea forsteriana) on Lord Howe Island is told in my book Legends of the Leaf.

The people Jennifer mentions who are working in the field of seeds are:

Rowen White indigenous seed steward
Jeff Quattrone, Founder of Library Seed Bank in New Jersey
K Greene and Doug Muller of the Hudson Valley Seed Company

The seed banks mentioned in the interview are:

ICARDA
International Rice Research Institute (Philippines)
USDA-ARS Germplasm Resources Information Network
Kew Millennium Seedbank (listen to an episode of On The Ledge on this seedbank)
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
National Gene Bank of Plants of Ukraine (moved to a safer location in 2023 - read more here)

On The Ledge sowalong update

This episode is part of the On The Ledge sowalong series. You can listen to the other episodes here.

What is the OTL sowalong?

Since 2018 I’ve been running the sowalong, and the premise is simple - encouraging listeners to grow houseplants from seed, offering advice and tips on how to do it, and sharing your successes, failures and questions with the whole OTL community.

Want more from the sowalong?

You’ll find all the sowalong episodes from previous years here, including cacti and succulents from seed, ferns from spores and more.
If you are looking for seeds in the US or the UK, check out my UK buying guide and my US buying guide. And let me know if you have suggestions for other seed companies worth adding to the list.

question of the week

Jim wanted to know whether biochar is worthwhile for using on houseplants.

What is biochar? It’s a charcoal-like product you can use as a soil improver make from pyrolised wood. The RHS’s page on biochar has lots of great information on this topic. It doesn’t contains any nutrients itself but it is very porous so it can hold a lot in the way of water, air, nutrients and microorganisms. Added to houseplant substrate, it is reputed to improve root health.

There are various brands on the market in the UK - the only one I have come across that’s specifically for houseplants is by Carbon Gold and is called Houseplant Booster.

I’ve only done a few experiments with biochar but I would love to hear from any listeners who’ve got experience of using it with houseplants.

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!

HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE

Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.

Want to make a one-off donation? You can do that through my ko-fi.com page, or via Paypal.

Want to make a regular donation? Join the On The Ledge community on Patreon! Whether you can only spare a dollar or a pound, or want to make a bigger commitment, there’s something for you: see all the tiers and sign up for Patreon here.

NEW! You can now join my Patreon as a free member or take out a seven-day free trial of my Ledge End tier. Visit my Patreon page for details.

The Crazy Plant Person tier just gives you a warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the show you love.
The Ledge End tier gives you access to one extra episode a month, known as An Extra Leaf, as well as ad-free versions of the main podcast and access to occasional patron-only Zoom sessions.
My Superfan tier earns you a personal greeting from me in the mail including a limited edition postcard, as well as ad-free episodes.

If you like the idea of supporting On The Ledge on a regular basis but don't know what Patreon's all about, check out the FAQ here: if you still have questions, leave a comment or email me - ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. If you're already supporting others via Patreon, just click here to set up your rewards!

If you prefer to support the show in other ways, please do go and rate and review On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. It's lovely to read your kind comments, and it really helps new listeners to find the show. You can also tweet or post about the show on social media - use #OnTheLedgePodcast so I’ll pick up on it!