The Environmental Youth Alliance: Urban Seeds 2013!

Mid February at the EYA is a busy time, and is yet the calm before the storm. The team has spent the winter planning and preparing for the multitude of spring and summer programming to come!

In the youth garden, dedicated local youth have been volunteering their time every Saturday, where they have been working to prepare for this year's Urban Seeds program. Luckily, the sun was shining on our last volunteer session, and we moved our seed packaging station outside at the Strathcona Community Garden!

Saving seed is a profound, joyful, and meditative process. Some people relish the physical act, connecting to the seed through the tactile process of harvesting, threshing, winnowing and cleaning. Looking closely at the flowers of bolted lettuce, the papery arugula pods, the donut shaped mallow seed, the dinosaur-toe-nail like Calendula seed, creates a tangible connection to the wonder of natural evolution. Each seed is a variation on a theme, a method of passing along vital genetic information, and yet each variety of plant has "solved" this biological imperative differently!

Others become fascinated by the actual information that is encapsulated within each seed, whether it be the tiny sand-like grain of Hopi Tobacco or the massive purple and black Scarlett Runner bean. One might ask, how many "gigabites" of genetic code is present within each seed?

To hold a handful of seeds is a humbling experience, and impresses on each one of us the importance of maintaining our vital food sources. The diversity is astounding, and yet commercial food production has nearly squandered our selection. This diagram depicts how we have lost over 80% of our diversity in food crops (source), and it is therefore not surprising that most youth come to the garden without ever having been exposed to this diversity. They astounded to know there are dozens of varieties of lettuce, bean, carrot, and beet.

The Urban Seeds project is working to alleviate this frightful reality. Each year we grow and harvest heirloom/heritage seeds in our Youth Garden and at the Strathcona Community Garden - these include food and flower crops as well as native species. The Youth Garden provides a space to learn about seed sovereignty, diversity, and heritage.

“If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the

impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. Childhood is the

time to prepare the soil and once the emotions have been aroused—a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, admiration and

love—then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response.”

—Rachel Carson,“The Sense of Wonder”

We believe that seeds are a powerful way to connect to each other, to our land, to our food, and to natural history. Each seed tells a story. Each seed can feed us. Each seed grown and shared is a step in the right direction. As Vandana Shiva says, "we really are faced with two options for the future: protect biodiversity, protect nutrition, create livelihoods, and give us good food. And on the other side, is a world of 5 corporations controlling the seed, destroying small farmers, destroying all artisan production and giving us toxic food." To see the complete video: Two Options - Vandana Shiva

To find our seed, come join us at the Seedy Saturday, February 23rd from 10am to 4pm at Van Dusen Floral Hall!

Our seed variety this year includes the following:

Arugula

Red Orach

Merlot Lettuce

Rouge D'hiver Lettuce

Joker Lettuce

Calendula

Mallow Flower

Nasturtium

Love in a Mist/Nigella

Peppa de Zappallo Bean