When I get back home early next month, I am ordering/starting my own seed bank.

My plan is to wrap the natural (non-hybrid & non-GM) seeds within their original packaging and small ziplock bags and place them into the freezer.

I have noticed that the Bee Disappearance story has now made the Main Stream Media. I wonder how well I could pollinate my plants by using a "Q-Tip"?

How long will seeds last?

I just recently used some 3 year old tomato, watermellon and carrot seeds for our cub scout troop and they all came up this week. So I know they will last at least that long!

A seed bank sounds like a great idea. Any websites or data on this out there?

I have been looking at the book; "Dare To Prepare" by Holly Deyo (standeyo.com) and I think it said some humongrous number that far exceeded my lifespan. I'm at work so I can't/won't try to quote exactly.

For those interested, Google on "heirloom seeds";
it makes for a good start.

As of 20 years ago, there were networks of people
trading seeds. Some would volunteer to maintain a
certain seed strain, which some of you might do.

I got my heirloom seeds from a local guy at a Living
History type place. Every state has these I suspect,
and many of these have heirloom gardens. Also, you
can check your local Gov. Ag Agent ( sometimes staffed
by volunteer gardeners) who can give you local sources
of heirloom seeds. Using Local Heirloom Seeds can save
you a lot of research, time, failures. Mine worked as
good or better than hybrid seeds.

Some seed types are easier than others to maintain,
as a pure true strain. Corn is hard to isolate, because
the pollen can blow with the wind for hundreds of yards.
Beans are easier, because they do not cross pollinate
so easily.

Hike4fun

Don't worry about the so called "bee disappearance" story. If honeybees are absent, other pollinating insects will quickly take up the slack. Few people seem to remember that honeybees are not native to either North or South America. They were intentionally brought here by European settlers. Indian corn, beans and squash and wild fruits and nuts were pollinated for many centuries before the introduction of the honeybee. In my part of the country, a bee mite infestation almost wiped out the wild honeybee population and for several years, I rarely saw a honeybee but I noticed no decline in the production of my large vegetable garden. Honeybees are useful in some types of commercial fruit orchards (citrus in particular) where growers need to make certain that every possible flower is pollinated. But rest assured that flowering plants will continue to produce fruit in the U.S. even if all honeybees disappeared, which I believe is a very remote possibility. So the mysterious bee disappearance phenomenon is more of a problem for the honey producer than for the gardener or survivalist.

One new problem with maintaining strains of heirloom open-pollinated (OP) seeds is cross-pollination from genetically-modified (GM) plants. The producers of GM plants swore on stacks of Bibles that the pollen wouldn't be blown more than 1/8 of a mile downwind from GM crops.

It has turned out not to be true. Apparently, it doesn't take much pollen to contaminate OP plants that you're trying to keep pure. Scientists are finding that GM contamination of food, feed, and weed seeds all over the world, even in England, where GM plants and seed are not allowed.

All the info isn't in yet on how GM food plants affect the people and animals to whom they're fed. Canola oil (from rapeseed, soybeans and corn are probably the most likely GM products that you're eating, but there are probably other things that are being fed to livestock and you're ingesting it from their meat.

In addition to contaminating desirable heirloom seeds, when a GM crop plant crosses with a wild relative, a "superweed" can be produced, which is immune to the herbicides the GM plants were bred to tolerate. You may grow organically, but this shows how GM plants can alter the environment.

If you want more info on the problem with food plants in particular, you might get hold of 'Seeds of Deception' by Jeffrey M. Smith.

And, just to make you feel better, our taxes paid for a lot of these very expensive GM plants and what they're doing.

Sue

p.s.

I'm not saying that it's a waste of time growing heirloom plants and seeds. It's not. Most of the GM plants thus far produced are the heavily-commercialized ones.

Maintaining heirlooms (esp food plants) may well be more urgent than we know. There are so many hybrid varieties of seeds being produced, that heirlooms can provide a diversified base if unexpected problems develop.

Sue

Whatever is killing/disappearing the bees will probably affect other pollinating insects as well.
Have you seen many Monarch Butterlies lately? I've noticed a major drop in the migrational Robins for the last 3 years, in fact this year is the first I've started seeing Robins and there are very few of them. Here in Lousy-anna, we used to be a major destination for their annual migration.

Ain't the collaberation/cooperation between big government and big corporations truly wonderful?

No, I haven't noticed a decline in other pollinating insects and I've seen a gazillion robins this year in Alabamer. Today they were thick in my newly tilled garden getting worms and grubs I had kicked up. I love robins, especially parboiled, then fried and served with rice.