Best wishes with the garden!

I hope it all goes well, and if you feel like it, please come back and let us know how it goes or ask more questions. It would be great to hear from you again.

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!

I think it’s pretty rare for a person to be able to go out and intentionally buy a packet of GM seeds. I think these are mostly only available to farmers, or at least only sold through farm supply stores.

It’s always possible seeds you buy have been unintentionally contaminated with GM genes, through cross-pollinating when the seeds were produced. Corn is one of the the biggest problems in this respect, because by nature it’s an outbreeding plant, and the plants can spread pollen over great distances. In addition, since I made this post here GM sugar beets have begun to be commercially grown which are also outbreeding, meaning beets of all kinds could potentially be contaminated. All other plants are either inbreeding, or there are no commercially grown GM varieties, so the chance of contamination is very small.

If you grow any of the types of plants listed above in this post, there’s always a small risk, but the risk isn’t particularly greater with a packet of seeds than if you go to the supermarket and buy the vegetables there.

The best thing to do in general is buy your seeds, or get them free, from a more trustworthy place than a hardware store. In Australia, both the Digger’s Club:

http://www.diggers.com.au/

As well as the Seedsavers network are excellent sources of non-commercial seeds:

http://www.seedsavers.net/

Non-commercial seeds are much more likely to be produced by someone like you who wants to avoid GMOs, and Seedsavers is potentially a great way to meet other gardeners. Non-commercial varieties are also almost always much more interesting.

A friend of mine, Kate, who lives in Adelaide has a blog:

http://hillsandplainsseedsavers.blogspot.com/

She and others who are part of the blog are probably a great source of seeds and information about seeds.

As far as organic vs. conventional, I have heard the argument that if you buy organic seeds you are doing something positive for the environment, because they can’t use chemical sprays. In my opinion, this argument is pretty weak. A large number of seeds can be made with a small number of plants, and the most commonly used sprays are to improve the cosmetics of food which aren’t necessary to use when producing seeds. I think the environmental impacts of producing seeds are pretty small in general.

Other than environmental issues, there is no fundamental difference between an organic seed or a conventional one. When you plant a seed, all you care about is the DNA, and the rest of the seed rots away. The potential amount of pesticide that could be in a conventionally produced seed is so infintesimally small, that it could not be significant.

The main problem with certified organic seeds, is the system of organic certification is used unfairly against small farmers and seed companies. Even though there is no difference in quality between organic and non-organic seeds, the paperwork involved is so cumbersome and expensive that generally only larger companies can can afford it. I did a post a little while ago about this:

http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=263

Seeds can sometimes be chemically treated. This is something completely different, and you should never buy or use treated seeds. The chemicals used for this are often very toxic. By law, treated seeds have to be brightly colored. If you come across seeds that are bright pink or green, or some other strange color, they have probably been treated.

If I didn’t already answer your questions, you’re welcome to list the seeds you bought here, and I’ll tell you if I know anything about them.

thanks

I think for most GM seeds you need to be a farmer to buy them. You might try a farmers supply store or a farming seeds outlet.

Keep in mind you will almost certainly need chemicals to go with the seeds, that’s how most commercial crops are. For example, the same company makes Round Up ready seeds as well as the Round Up itself, and of course they want to make sure you end up paying twice, once for the seeds and once for the chemicals. Some commercial varieties require dozens of chemicals to grow properly.

Good luck with your experiment.

I bought some tomato seeds from the US last year and afterwards had a minor panic over whether I might be importing something contaminated and risked releasing it into my other crops or the wider environment. But you’ve helped put it in perspective … an inbreeding plant which isn’t subject to large-scale commercial GM crop production is probably very low risk. It’s good to be vigilant though and conscious of your seed sources, as you say.

Just wanted you to know your efforts to research and write up this stuff are appreciated!

Thank you for your comment.

I can understand coming across this post out of context and possibly not knowing anything about the theme of the blog behind it. Perhaps that’s what happened here.

This is a blog about topics concerning seed savers, so gardeners who grow heirloom vegetables and other plants and save their own seeds for future plantings. In this case GM contamination, even in a small amount, is a big concern because it would be carried forward from year to year. We also trade seeds amongst each other, so contamination could pass from garden to garden.

A quick look through your company’s catalog suggests you don’t sell very many seeds suitable for seed savers, because most of your seeds seem to be F1 hybrids or at the very least patented varieties, so I think we are talking about two very different classes of seeds.

I have no reason to suspect there is anything wrong with the seeds your company, or indeed any other seed company sells, nor was it my intention to suggest this.

Far from being paranoid, I was trying suggest concern for this problem be put into proper perspective. For example, like we both said, most of the time plants can be inspected to see if they are true to type and no unintentional crossing has occurred.