Victory Garden movement grows amid pandemic

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In times of war, governments have encouraged citizens to plant home gardens to grow vegetables and take the pressure off of the national food supply.

These “Victory Gardens,” first became popular during World War I, in 1917.

One hundred years later, in the middle of a global pandemic, seed companies are seeing a greater demand for local, organic seeds.

“There’s this huge Victory Garden movement up and running again,” said Kristina Hubbard, director of advocacy for the Organic Seed Alliance. “Some companies are experiencing, if not double, then triple the amount of seed orders right now.”

Tessa Gowans, owner of Seed Dreams, a local seed farm on Discovery Road in Port Townsend, has seen seed sales quadruple this season.

“I cannot keep up,” she said. “I have a seed bank in a freezer that I’ve been working on for decades and it’s almost empty.”

Gowans credits this new demand for seeds, especially local seeds, to people wanting to know where their food comes from and hoping to create more sustainable and self-reliant food sources, such as Victory Gardens.

“I think especially right now, people are asking, ‘Where does this food I’m eating come from?’” she said.

Gowans has been harvesting seeds for 60 years. Before starting Seed Dreams, she worked with the Abundant Life Seed Foundation (ALSF), which started out as a mail-order seed company founded by Port Townsend resident Forest Shomer in 1973.

But this practice came naturally to Gowans as her life’s work.

“I started because that was how my grandmother would work in her own garden,” Gowans said. “It’s the old-fashioned way.”

When working with the Abundant Life Seed Foundation, Gowans was one of many in a network of small growers who would gather at Fort Worden to share their ideas, successes, failures—and their seeds.

This network of seed growers eventually became what is now the Organic Seed Alliance, a national non-profit group working with seed growers on production research, outreach and education.

According to the OSA, the seed industry has consolidated over the past four decades so most seeds sold commercially come from a handful of transnational firms. One reason is because intellectual property practices allow large corporations to control plant breeding.

But there are more local growers joining the OSA’s movement to breed new varieties and grow local seeds for local farmers.

Buying local seeds is important not only to support local businesses, but also because seeds are tailored to the places from which they come.

“Seeds that grow here are already acclimated to this place,” Gowans said. “They’ll do better here.”

For her, growing seeds is like watching a family tree grow. Each new generation of seeds grows into plants that then create their own seeds, and on and on.

“It’s very satisfying,” she said. “At this point, I’ve got a pretty good seed collection for this exact spot in the world.”

Gowan’s Seed Dreams is one of several local seed growers. Uprising Seeds, located in Bellingham, has also seen an uptick in sales this year, as well as Deep Harvest Farms on Whidbey Island. Both companies are overwhelmed with seed orders they said.

Having nearly sold the entirety of her seed bank, Gowans thinks this year might be her last selling seeds.

But she is hopeful the increase in interest in local seeds and home-grown produce will keep the long-standing tradition of seed -growing in Port Townsend and the Olympic Peninsula going.

“This has been going on for eons,” she said. “I think we’re at a point where we rely on corporations to get us what we need. But I hope people can get back to the community aspect of growing seeds and sharing ideas.”

For those interested in learning how to save seeds, she recommends the book “Seed to Seed” by Suzanne Ashworth.

“Seed saving is not hard to do,” she said. “Start off by planting a garden and reading about it. Then pick a few things that are easy to harvest seeds from. If one person saves three types of seeds and their four best friends do too, then they have a start to a great seed collection.”