Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden podcast with John Jones. The gardening podcast that helps you master your own garden. With new episodes weekly packed full of gardening tips, how to garden guides, interviews with gardening experts on many gardening topics and just about anything that will help you in your garden whether you are a new or a seasoned gardener. I hope you enjoy.John
Master My Garden Podcast
EP300- Adam Alexander “The Seed Detective” chats seed saving, growing veg, his new book and more
A single pepper from a Ukrainian market changed everything. That first bite—thick flesh, layered sweetness, a whisper of heat—sent us and our guest, Adam Alexander (the Seed Detective), down a path that connects flavour, resilience and the quiet power of gardeners who save seed. This is a celebration of living varieties that learn your soil and light, improve with each season, and taste far better than supermarket sameness.
We dig into the craft of selection: saving seed from the earliest, most delicious fruit; nudging a greenhouse pepper into a hardy outdoor staple; balancing the vigour of certain F1s with the adaptability of open-pollinated landraces. Adam shares why buying from local seed growers accelerates success, how heterogeneous populations handle rough seasons, and when hybrids still earn a place—think months of calabrese side shoots without the cauliflower glut.
The stories travel far. Ethiopia’s agroforestry and deep crop heritage overturn clichés about scarcity. Albania’s astonishing flora and vegetable landraces showcase Europe’s hidden diversity. A Danish enthusiast breeds an outdoor aubergine over a dozen years; a Catalan pea becomes a towering, sweet staple; an Albanian oxheart tomato yields kilos of passata and a reminder that taste can drive conservation. Threaded through it all is a simple truth: gardeners are part of the solution. Each saved seed reinforces genetic diversity, strengthens local food security, and preserves culture—one swap, one season, one delicious meal at a time.
If you care about flavour, climate resilience, and independence from fragile seed supply chains, this conversation offers practical steps and inspiring examples to start now. Subscribe, share with a grower friend, and leave a review to help more gardeners become seed heroes. What variety will you save this year?
Adam's latest book "The Accidental Seed Heroes" is out now you can visit Adams website here
https://theseeddetective.co.uk/my-book/
If there is any topic you would like covered in future episodes, please let me know.
Email: info@mastermygarden.com
Check out Master My Garden on the following channels
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mastermygarden/
Instagram @Mastermygarden https://www.instagram.com/mastermygarden/
Until next week
Happy gardening
John
How's it going everybody and welcome to episode 300 of Master My Garden Podcast? I actually hadn't realized it was episode 300 until I wrote it up on the whiteboard. So yeah, that's a a little bit of a little bit of a milestone in itself. But this week's episode is one I've been looking forward to for a while. It's going to be an exciting one, and I know it's going to be one that will resonate with a lot of you guys. I'm delighted to be joined this week by Adam Alexander, who's affectionately known as the seed detective. And he's been saving seeds for the last 35 years of vegetables and herbs. And is a real champion of seed saving, of heritage varieties, and of that whole seed saving and sharing movement. So he has a couple of new books out that we're going to chat about, but we're also going to delve into his history and the long history of this 35 years of seed saving. So Adam, you're very, very welcome to Master My Garden Podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Well, John, thank you very much for inviting me. And it's great to meet you, albeit virtually. And I'm looking forward to a conversation. Thanks a lot, buddy.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. You're very welcome. Yeah, so seed saving is something that we've chatted about on the on the podcast before. I'm not sure if you know Madeline McMceever of Brown Envelope Seeds, but Madeline.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, most certainly.
SPEAKER_01:So Madeline has been on the podcast before, and it's actually it was one of the earlier episodes, but it's one of the most popular episodes, you know. So it just goes to show that there is a keen interest in seed saving. Um again, we have would have spoken in the past on the importance of it, but maybe just to set the tone, you've you're 35 years seeding uh saving seeds of you know various varieties and so on. Just tell us a little bit of that backstory, how you got started, and then we'll get into obviously the importance of it for ourselves today and for future generations.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. So, well, I mean, I've been growing vegetables ever since I was a small kid. So that is a very, very long time ago. And I'd I I'd but I'd never really thought about seed saving, even when I was running a horticultural business, albeit briefly in the 70s. Um, and my my professional career has actually been in film and television, and I was by trade a producer. And um so uh I had found myself, I was making a TV series actually for the BBC and for the Welsh channel S. Podurek, in um in uh Donetsk in the Ukraine of all places, and it was the late 80s, and um this is at a time when um the the implosion of the Soviet Union and um the Donetsk was an interesting uh city because the story of the founding of the city by a Welsh um industrialist called John Hughes, where it was originally named Yuzovka, um, and how it then became known as Stalino, Steeltown, um, and eventually Donetsk. It was an interesting story because it was a story really of uh history. But I had a crew it which included a delightful director who was a vegetarian. And being a vegetarian in the in the Soviet Union in those days was not the most exciting time. Um and uh I can imagine you could eat.
SPEAKER_01:Finding a restaurant would have been difficult.
SPEAKER_00:Finding restaurants was very difficult, but uh but the yeah, there were just very, very little choice of things to eat. Yeah, potatoes, beetroot, black bread, a few apples, that was about your lot. Except if you went to the market. And in, because the shops were basically empty, but in the market, um you found this interesting group of people who were, for the most part, little old ladies, babushkas, who were augmenting their meager pensions by selling fruit and vegetables that they had been growing in their in their gardens or in their duchess on the edge of town. And um so I met this woman who actually she became for me a real archetype, uh, somebody that I have been, you know, tracking down ever since. And amongst the things on her store were some peppers. And, you know, I'd grown peppers and I bought seed, and I was never I eat them, but I was I I was not passionate about them because I'd found them remarkably unexciting in terms of their flavour. Uh but anyway, she had these and they're about the size of a tennis ball, multi-lobed, deep red. And I th I bought some because also I knew that the pepper is a fundamental part of the cuisine of it was of Ukrainian cuisine, but and also Russian, but also cuisine of the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, and uh great swathes of you know, you know, Turkey and Hungary and all through there. Um and I took these peppers back to the the hotel restaurant, um, and I thought, you know what, I really ought to just see what they're like. And I sliced one open and I took a bite, and it was the first of many wow moments that I've had in the last 35 years or so. And this pepper was thick-fleshed, fruity, it had a lovely, complex flavor, had real character, and it also had a little bit of heat, just enough to let you know it was there. And this, I thought, wow, this is fantastic. Needless to say, my director and the crew were very happy with the dishes of stuffed peppers that they then enjoyed. And I thought to myself, I wonder if I say take some seeds back home, whether I'll be able to grow them myself. And I did. And I've been growing them ever since. And I think uh I I I guess we'll be coming back to this subject. Um, but it the story of kind of my relationship with that pepper and what it has become is to me, it it is very much the sort of poster girl of what seed saving empowers and enables gardeners to be able to achieve to build resilience and diversity and above all deliciousness into their veg cloths.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and the taste, uh I'm sure we come back to some of these wow moments, but that as a wow moment 35 years ago, it I suppose that's you you you had tasted peppers, you had grown peppers, and I'm sure they were, you know, commercial seed or yeah, that that type. And when you go outside of that, you find these these gems, these I suppose these, yeah, they are gems. That's that's the word for them.
SPEAKER_00:They are. I mean, the thing about what the the Danetsk pepper is it's um, I mean, there's a there's a term for them. So, you know, it a lot of people would call it a heritage or an heirloom. I I would actually have called it an heirloom because it was associated with this woman's um garden and her story. But actually, what it is is a highly genetically diverse heterogeneous land race or farmer's variety. So it's it's a it's a locally adapted version or type of a very well-known class of pepper. Uh, I've found others um uh across that part of the world since that are all very closely related, uh, but also look very different and have a very different relevance to the communities and societies that grow, champion and and love them.
SPEAKER_01:And you you I just saw on your Instagram you have a a brilliant video pinned to the top of your Instagram page around it it's a little introduction to your your life in seed and saving seeds. And but you mentioned a really brilliant point that I suppose relates back to this lady's garden, where that seed grown in the garden has over time adapted to that situation. And you take that seed 35 years ago, you bring it to your garden, it grows quite well, but over time again it changes slightly to adapt to your garden. And that seed over time, as you save it year on year and grow it year on year, it continues to adopt, adapt, and evolved. Um what have you seen, you know, and why is that so relevant? It's a brilliant video on your Instagram.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, why it's why I mean why for me it is so important is that when I when I first started growing growing it, I just I you know I grew it in my greenhouse and I saved some seed um you know year after year without really thinking about why I was doing it. And the other than to know that I could grow this pepper again the next season and I could share some seeds because you get a lot of seeds out of out of a pepper. Um and and then I began to really think much more systematically about selection. And I thought, do you know what? I really wouldn't it be great if this pepper became something that I could grow outside that was early, um, that fruited over a long season. So I started quite early on, sort of in the, I guess, you know, 30 years ago or so, um selecting to save seed from fruit that were the first to ripen and conformed most to the phenotype that I was looking for. So it was about its size, its colour, above all else its flavor. It had to continue to be delicious and something I wanted to eat. And then I started growing them outside. And so what I did was those, the seeds from the earliest fruits I would sow again and then I would transplant them. Um sometimes grow them in pots on a on a on a on a on a patio, sometimes um in start them in a cold frame and then take the lids off the cold frames and just leave them to grow now. I you know, I can grow it outside pretty much any time. Um in this last summer, which was sensational, fantastic. Here we are coming to the end of October, and I am still harvesting ripe peppers out of my veg garden. Yeah. Wow. And it's the first to flower, the first to fruit, and it fruits for the longest period of time. And that's happened because of this process of selection. And I'm just following in a tradition, it's a continuum. This has been going on farmers from our Neolithic ancestors 12,000 years ago, when they started to domesticate the crops, did it through through selection. Uh, they weren't deliberately trying to breed something, and I'm not a deliberate breeder. I'm just I'm just selecting. And what that means is I now have a Welsh farmer's variety, a land race. I actually like to call them gardeners' varieties, GVs. I mean, other people have said, well, Adam, now you've got a Welsh heirloom pepper. Interestingly enough, it's not the only one. I've discovered a couple of other people who've got peppers that have become well adapted to growing, uh, particularly in South Wales. And um that is something that I've really feel passionately about sharing with growers and gardeners who are interested in saving seeds. Because once you start to save seeds, you can then really select to build long-term resilience and genetic diversity into what you grow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and then you become less dependent on, I suppose, other varieties that are mass-produced, but they're also not as tasty. They're yeah, generally speaking, they are uh disease prone, they're not grown specific for your area, they're not adapted to your area, so something that produces brilliantly in one area. I I I often see this here. Um I got sent some seeds last year. There was one particular tomato just hasn't done well here at all. Um and and you you you you find that over time that there's you if you were able to keep seeds within your own system, they adapt, get better, improve year on year.
SPEAKER_00:They do, and I think I think the other thing is supporting your uh local seed growers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, and and I mean the great thing, you know, if you think in Ireland, you you have obviously you have the Irish seed savers who are really important body, and then you have, you know, brown envelope seeds, you know, local growers who um they may be um uh basically multiplying uh existing commercial varieties on list varieties, um, which you could probably buy, many of them you could buy somewhere else. But because those growers are doing what I do and what you do, which is to save year after year so that you have this instant, this evolutionary process going on with improvement and resilience. That means that when you buy seeds from an Irish grower, they're already very well adapted. Whereas if you go to, I mean, I I I get seeds from all over the world, but the truth is if you buy seeds from a producer in southern Europe, then you're going, it's gonna take a little while for those seeds to wake up and say, you know, depending where they are on the Emerald Isles, um, to wake up one morning and say, Oh, I'm I'm at home, I'm not in southern Italy or Spain or Morocco or Thailand or wherever it is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's usually important because uh the seed that I'm talking about came from uh a listener of the podcast in France, actually. And a lot of the seeds were were successful, but that tomato didn't like the conditions here at all. And so it's grown, it is grown in a polytunnel, but I do have open sides. Uh so and it's where I live, I'm very much Midlands. I'm on uh what's called Castlecomra Plateau, so it's quite high above sea level. We get late frosts, it's quite cold, quite windy. And it definitely it definitely sulked a little bit. Now it was extremely tasty, but it did sulk a little bit. So uh I think yeah, over time, over time it will adapt.
SPEAKER_00:Uh well, I mean, it's it's I mean the thing is it's it's such great fun doing it. You know, you will take those seeds. And you you know, us gardeners, we're all eternal optimists, and we always believe next year it's gonna be great. And you'll sow those seeds, and you won't know until um you know, look at how well they've germinated. And then when you then, as you say, you have no idea what the weather's gonna be like, uh, other than it's probably gonna be challenging and uh wet or dry, and um uh it'll be really interesting to see how quickly uh that tomato adapts. And it it's with some crops I found adaptation can be quite fast, but with others, um, you know, you you're you're looking at you know four or five years before you think, actually, do you know this has really changed? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Just let's go back to that pepper. Um yeah, and and uh just in relation to that first. That is there is there a variety there like obviously it's your say of seed now over time, but to have one that would I'm just thinking here like peppers is very difficult for me here again because of the open tunnel cold uh generally speaking. But one like that would transfer to my garden, uh albeit in the polytunnel. But what am I looking out for there to to find that seed or something like that seed that maybe?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, first of all, you ask me and I'll send you some. Whether or not whether or not it'll make it through across the I the Brexit customs madness is another matter. But um to be honest, I don't think they're really bothered. Not whether it's too small seeds. No, no. But I mean, the the good thing about the Donetsk pepper is that there's I gave some seeds to um the the the the um Fred and Ronia, who own and run Vital Seeds, which is based down in in Devon, and they are selling it this year um um for the first time. And that to me is very exciting because it certainly means that people in the UK, if they know about vital seeds, yeah, uh, will be able to get it. And and I've got uh I mean I've got uh other other seed companies in in the UK who are now also starting to grow varieties that I have been really evolving over some of them over 20 years or more, um, which I think are absolutely delicious and sensational and are very likely to please the grower. I think for you, I mean, certainly growing them in a polytunnel, I would have thought they'll be f absolutely fine. The thing about all of these crops, um, you know, and you think where they come from, is they like lots of light and sunshine, and I think the warmth, I mean, it's really important, but actually it's sunlight I I I've found and uh is is what really matters. So when you get a miserable grey late summer, like we had last year, you know, they were I you know they, you know, I had crops, um, but they everything came later. Whereas this year, you know, I was eating peppers early in in July. Um and funnily enough, not just the Donetsk pepper, but um there are two other um sweet peppers. Uh well I grow several sweet peppers, um uh not every year, but it's sort of in some sort of rotation. And I had found um uh another pepper from Morocco, which I really like, which is a kind of classic Moroccan pepper, but which I had discovered um it growing in an oasis in in the uh eastern part of Morocco in the desert. And uh that um I've I've grown also outside, um, and certainly this year it was very happy. But what was also interesting was that I was growing a big box pepper that was bred in Aleppo in Syria. It was a commercial variety, and do you know what? That actually beat my Danyx pepper to be the first that I harvested as a full-on ripened pepper this year. And I saved uh seeds from that one, and I was I was able to do it because there'd be I'd had some isolation, so I wasn't worried about the thing crossing or anything like that. And I will be really interested to see next year uh I will grow uh I will grow a couple just to see if it is is really building in some resilience. And I think the the other thing about because I'm saving seeds and I keep them in a fridge and I'm a bit of an anorak about it, uh the uh you know I I I mean those d those Moroccan peppers, which were very, very early this year, probably because we had unbroken sunshine from the middle of February for months, is um I was that was seed that I had I went back to my original seed that I had collected in 2007. And I had some seed that were saved in 2009, and I grow grew the two, just uh two or three plants of each one. I was checking the viability, of course they all germinated, and it was very encouraging to see how kind of stable they are, that they look the same, they taste the same, but it was amazing that the original seed from 2000's 18-year-old seed was perfect, very happy to have moved from the Sahara Desert to Southeast Wales without a blink. And that's heterogeneity for you. That's that's why as gardeners, we really it really pays to grow heterogeneous crops, traditional open pollinated varieties. Yeah, you can often get really big yields from F1s, and I grow F1 varieties, don't get me wrong. But if you want things that are uh not going to um uh disappoint you in the way that so many modern cultivars do, because they are not grown for the gardener, they're grown for the commercial grower uh who just wants everything to ripen at the same time, you know, it's uniform, it's size, it's got a bit, you know, all those things. We need to be growing these diverse uh traditional varieties.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. Is there just to talk about F1s for a minute, you you say you say you grow some F1s, is there particular crops that you like to grow F1s in for a particular reason?
SPEAKER_00:I mean it Yeah, I mean it may sound a bit counter uh uh intuitive, but there are one or two hybrid uh broccoli or calibrace that um you know they all come at the same time. A nightmare. But actually, if you grow, I I might grow four plants uh and I'll do them in succession. But as a plant, uh an F1 that I say sowed in March, I will yeah, I'll cut the cut the top heads off them, eat them, and then I let them let the side tunes go. And a lot of these hybrids have incredible vigour. And I can be harvesting up side shoes for six months, eight months, and that is, and they so they tend not to as quickly go to flower as many of the more traditional heterogeneous um broccoli and calabrases. I mean, there are very, interestingly enough, you know, calabrases are very modern type of vegetable. Yes, there are open pollinated ones, but actually all the work has been done because that's what people buy in supermarkets. And so they they have their benef they have their uses. Um the thing that I really try and avoid are cauliflower. Cauliflower are a nightmare because they do all ripe, uh mature at the same time. Yeah. And they come fit exactly at the same moment. So, you know, if you're going to grow an F1 cauliflower, ask yourself the question, how many cauliflowers can I eat in a fortnight?
SPEAKER_01:That's actually something something something I've talked about a lot on the podcast, because that's that's typical of what of what we do. We go to the garden center in in March, we get our our tray of 12 cauliflower plants, we stick them in the ground, and then we have 12 cauliflowers on a given week without fail.
SPEAKER_00:And and so why do we as gardeners keep beating ourselves up by doing this? Yeah, and it's nuts. I mean, the thing, one of the things that drives me absolutely crazy is garden centers flogging you um generic vegetables, usually at entirely the wrong time of year, you know, your tomato plants are all ready for you to put in the ground in March. Well, nobody in their right minds is going to do that. And and all these it's just awful. And they're usually very poor quality. Um and again, I if you're going to grow, if you're going to um buy plug plants, then I think one really does need to be a little bit more selective. And there are so many now growers and and and and got market professional growers who are growing these heterogeneous varieties. And you, you know, you buy as many plug plants as you want from them, and yeah, they may cost a little bit more, but actually, you know what? You're going to get what you want at the end of the day. Um say, no, all these cauliflowers. They truth is, of course, you probably end up giving most of them away, or you turn your back for a moment and they've bolted. And uh, you know, it's uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Brussels sprouts is another one that I prefer to grow F1s in. I I don't know what it is about open pollinated sprouts. I always find the there's I don't I I I they they tend to pick up a lot more disease, I think. Um I I don't know, I have less success with them. Uh so F2.
SPEAKER_00:I I I'm ja I'm just looking at my diary, because I've been keeping a um a grower's diary for since 1976. And I was just reminding myself of I I don't my wife is not a great Brussels sprouts lover. Um so I I grow one plant and uh just for me. And I was just looking to remind myself of I've I I I've got a variety, actually it was from the the Heritage Seed Library. Um so it's an old open pollinated um variety, and it's it's it's it's the crop is absolutely fantastic. I haven't started picking them yet. I I wait until the frosts come. Um so I found those that has done uh really remarkably, remarkably well. But um as regards uh I'm just looking in while I sort of multitask, uh which I can't do because I'm a bloke, uh what the name of it is, which has completely escaped me. But I used, oh yes, it is. Um I I used to, it's called Roxton, W-R-O-X-T-O-N. And do you know what? I'm thinking to myself, that is the heaviest cropping, um, most sensible Brussels sprout I've grown for a long time. I used to grow red ones. Um uh actually I used to grow them when I had when I had um when I had a market garden in in the in the mid uh 70s, late 70s, mid to late 70s. And I used to take red Brussels sprouts into Tiverton Market on market day to give to the veg sellers there. And they'd look at me and think, Adam, what are you trying to do? Poisonous? Do you think anybody's gonna eat this? Whereas actually I think red brussels sprouts are rather good. Um, there's some interesting work being done with these flowering sprouts um now, which because have all been hybrids. And I was at the Guy Foundation's inaugural seed gathering conference uh the other day, um, talking to um a wonderful uh Irishman who is who who works for the Guy Foundation, lives in live l lives in Ireland, and who is dehybridizing these uh Kaylet type uh loose Brussels sprouts. And he says it's really exciting. Um and I I like that idea of, and I've seen more of it happening, particularly with tomatoes, um, of dehybridizing F1s um and looking at What emerges out of them and what you can possibly cross them with uh to to actually create something that is stable and delicious. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um just to to go back, you mentioned that that lady in the market in in the next she she sort of created an archetype for you that over over the next number of years you sought out around the world. And I guess it that's where the genesis of of your most recent book. Um so your your most recent book is The Accidental Seed Heroes, um which is it's out now, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is, yes, it's it was yes, it was published in March. It's yeah, it's out in it's certainly up for sale all across yes, uh across the world now. I don't know when it first came into Ireland. I think probably it's been in Ireland for a for a for a little while. Um Yeah, that I mean the accidental seed heroes is you know, people say, well, why did why accidental seed heroes? And so what I wanted to do was really tell the stories of people who I see as being real seed heroes, who are who are on the front line of two things. First of all, doing things that we've been talking about, which is maintaining these evolutionary populations of land races, farmers' viruses, these genetically diverse open pollinated uh crops all over the world. And then the new generation of seed heroes who are taking the fight to the hegemony of these giant seed companies who champion uh monocultures and homogeneity. And they do it in a variety of ways. You have freelance breeders, uh um amateur just enthusiasts who have a particular passion for developing something. A good example of that is a guy uh who I met in Denmark, Sorin Holt, who just has a thing about aubergine. And he wanted to be able to grow aubergines outside in Denmark. And, you know, that can be a challenge. And I mean, he spent many years cross-pollinating, waiting to see what happened, and has ended up, after I think probably about 12 years actually of work, with a wonderful, um, quite very diverse variety. Uh, probably should call it a cultivar, because it is the result of some crossbreeding, which he calls Black Raven. And it's amazing because I can grow it outside. It's it's absolutely the heaviest cropping aubergine that I have in my garden. And it's very long, it's like, you know, a giant cigar. Um and it's fantastic. And funnily enough, right now, I mean, I'm talking to you and it's a beautiful sunny day. Um, I will be harvesting fresh aubergine out of my garden today to use to make a nice um curry with. And those are his. And he so here's an example to me of a real seed hero who is who's just a Joe, like you, you all of us gardeners. And then you have the other seed heroes who are um collaborating. You have ethnobotanists working with uh indigenous and traditional farmers, you have um university departments um who are working in the field with a whole diverse group of growers and seed producers. Um and they're wonderful. And why accidental? Because all plant breeding, whether it's systematic um uh sort of modern uh molecular plant breeding or traditional, let's see what happens, uh breeding, it's all the result of accidents, accidental mutations, accidental crossings. And even when you deliberately cross something, you don't know what you're gonna get till you get it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And with luck, you get something that is quite good. But nine times out of ten you don't. And uh that's um, and I just love the fact that actually what we are all doing is is really accidental. And I also feel that when gardeners recognize that they are not only part of a continuum, but they're also part of the solution. That when we um follow in the footsteps of these seed heroes, actually we become seed heroes ourselves because we are reinforcing the genetic diversity that has been lost in the last century thanks to the advances in modern molecular plant breeding. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it like that's a hugely important point to go back to your to your friend in Denmark who's grown the aubergines. Some people listening, well, not not people listening to this podcast because they all they all get it. But if if you said to somebody that this guy took because he wanted to grow aubergines outside and he spent 12 years working on it, uh trying things, failing, try again, take this best bit, run with it a little bit, and he takes 12 years to get this plant. If he doesn't do that, then what the the gardeners are left with in Denmark, you know, and then it spreads is what everybody else has. And if if there's a problem with that, or if it doesn't work, you're relying on a system that you have no control over. And what you end up with, because this guy has put in the effort, the 12 years of effort, you end up with a plant that will work, that will survive, that will improve as it grows, uh, will get used to your garden, will improve with your garden, and then can be passed from his garden to your garden in Wales. And from there it can be passed on again and again. And now across the world you have all of this, I suppose, pushing away from the reliance on you know off-the-shelf seeds, and it's it's a really, really important piece of work that that these people are doing. Uh it's interesting from from you know from a gardener's perspective, it's very interesting when you see this, but it's hugely important as well, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00:I I absolutely agree. I mean, thank God for garden nutters is all I could say. Because um, I mean, the if it wasn't for the fact that there are um you know thousands of people all over the world who have their obsessions and passions and enthusiasms and care passionately about trying to achieve something as accidental plant breeders, um, we we wouldn't have the diversity that we already have. I mean, I go back to the point that that and I write about it, and and that is that up until a couple of hundred years ago, farmers were plant breeders. Yeah. That that and they weren't doing it systematically. They were doing it in the way that we've been talking about, where you just select from the changes that you notice happening in your crop. And then it, you know, we we we we have this amazing kind of period that really that kicks off in the early part of the 19th century, a couple hundred years ago, where people started to uh think uh systematically about uh plant breeding. What happens if I cross this variety with this other variety? What am I going to get? And that um enabled an absolute explosion in diversity of cultivars of things that have been deliberately bred. But you already had an unbelievable diversity of these land races or farmers' varieties that were being maintained because you didn't have a commercial seed business. You know, everything that anybody grew anywhere was local. Um, for the most part. There were exceptions, but essentially that was it. And it was really the big cereals that were the were that that changed it. Um and then, you know, I I blame Mendel for all of this because, you know, he he and his amazing work with peas, hereditary of peas, was the well, it was, you know, it took him 20 years after he died before the penny dropped. And plant scientists looked at his work and thought, you know what? This old monk, he's done something really interesting. And out of that emerged, you know, the word genetics. You know, genetics was a word that was invented by a British um uh professor of plant science um in Cambridge. And um uh it's been there's a strange, there's a there's a a terrible paradox uh that's of that's the result of our suddenly understanding genetics and using our knowledge of genetics to really inform how we go about breeding things. And you know, uh so this, you know, the the genetics was only ever as you know invented, if you like, discovered a hundred years ago. So you had a hundred years, a century of essentially a total wild west of plant breeding, but it was very exciting. And it was, I write about it in my first book, particularly with peas, and there's a you know, the Irish were were were were no strangers to never let the truth get in the way of a good story uh when it came to pea breeding. I only have to think of uh the famous so-called Irish pea Daniel O'Rourke, which is about as Irish as I am, but that's that's you know, it's neither here nor there. But the uh at least I say that, I hope I'll be allowed back into your wonderful country as a result of suggesting for one moment that Daniel O'Rourke is actually an American pea, God forbid. But um, I digress. The thing was that you had this amazing explosion of plant breeding amongst a lot of it amongst gardeners, but amongst the first generation of sort of commercial plant breeders. And then a hundred years ago, with really the discovery of genetics and how we could apply it, we then find ourselves in this world of evolving uh monocultures and homogeneity. But a hundred years ago there were only two billion people living on this planet. And today there are eight billion. And there are only eight billion because we can feed ourselves. And so, and it's because of the development of these very high-yielding major crops which we have become reliant on, with maize, wheat, rice, uh, you know, soya. These these these crops have been feeding us, and we've that's in one sense an amazing success. Because if we didn't have them, we wouldn't be here. But we paid a terrible, terrible price, which is we've been destroying our soil, we've been destroying our ecology, we have been um eating stuff uh with the you know, the the the the explosion in ultra-processed food, which is the result of these highly mechanized um industrialization of food, is it is not doing us any good or that of the planet. And so I really wanted to write about and think about what is it that we we can really do which empowers us and enables us and um offers us a real way, positive, constructive, inspiring way forward, so that hopefully by mid-century we might no longer be poisoning the planet and destroying our ecosystems merely by sticking a seed in the ground. Um and I'm a huge optimist, and the more I see of just what's going on all over the world with the restoration of farmers' rights, these are very difficult uphill battles, but they're happening. And when we as gardeners add to the diversity in our own gardens and share that diversity within our communities, we are absolutely part of the solution.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, brilliant, but really powerful. Uh, just to sort of start to round off the the accidental seed heroes. So is that a set number of featured people from around the globe, or how is the book structured?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I I the I wanted to sort of uh uh explore some of the crops that I've that I'm really really interested in. Um so that it the book includes some crops like it's cereals, well, wheat, aubergines, you know, I obviously tomatoes are in there because some in really interesting work on how do we develop black resistance in tomatoes. Um pulses, really, really fundamental part of how on earth we feed ourselves in the future, with um uh beans and uh uh and and legumes uh as an alternative to meat. And um, but at the same time, I also wanted to take the reader into parts of the world that they wouldn't necessarily think of. So I went to Ethiopia, which is such an interesting place because we think of it as being, you know, we we think of famine and disaster. But Ethiopia, it has five of the greatest rivers in Africa running through it. It has the greatest diversity of indigenous of and native edible plants anywhere in Africa. It's incredible. And um and also it it employs agroecological and agro uh root uh ways of growing. Agroforestry is really important. When you go to the south of South Omo, right down in the south of Ethiopia, in in up at two and a half thousand meters in uh uh at the at the top of the uh of the Rift Valley, and um, you know, you are in a in a world of abundance and diversity, which I think is a model that many of us really need to explore in much more detail. So, and then there are other in uh native farmers in Albania and in Rajasthan in India. And I sit at the feet of these people because the knowledge they have is fantastic. And this ghastly colonial we know best mindset. Oh God, these poor ignorant peasant farmers, what do they know about growing anything here? Take this GMO maze, it'll save your life. I mean, it's just forgive my French, but it's bollocks. And um, and so I wanted to share with the reader stories about people that I've met in places that are surprising. Albania, you think of, you know, the North Korea of Europe, has the greatest diversity of flora in Europe, has the oldest fitic culture in Europe, has the greatest diversity of vegetable land races still, despite the fact that they are disappearing at a rate of knots. So they're wonderful, these are wonderful, wonderful countries that if you are curious and interested in learning from uh local knowledge and expertise, and also in my case, occasionally being given a few interesting seeds to take home when you try, uh that's what I wanted to write about. And that's what I hope um get gets, you know, I explore in in some detail. But it's all also about the pursuit of deliciousness. I'm not interested in myself growing anything in my garden that doesn't taste good. Um so uh and equally for all of these farmers and growers and gardeners, whoever they are, wherever they are in the world, they also want it to be nutritious and delicious.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. Uh that leads me to the sort of the one of the one of the last points. You you you mentioned at the very, very start that you had this wow wow moment with that pepper, but you mentioned there was many others after. Maybe just just one or two of those kind of highlights. Something that really blew you away.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I there are a couple of a number of not many but some crops that I will always grow because they absolute wow moments. One of them is a pea called Aviuan, which comes from Catalonia. It grows to two and a half meters. It's a beast. But it was it's um it was bred by the grandfather of the wife of somebody who I'd met who's Jesus Vargas in the Gorochka region of northern Catalonia, and he'd bred it at the beginning of the 20th century. He was part of that incredible cohort of breeders around the world who were doing amazing things with peas. And when I, you know, I remember with Jesus walking through his garden, he's an organic farmer, walking through his veg plot, and there's this sort of forest of peas. Um, and it's May. I was there actually for my birthday, and you know what it's like? You know, you go through the garden, there are peas swelling, swelling on the vine. Who is not going to want to pick one and shell it and pop the peas? I and I did that, and it was like, wow, this is something else. And um, it was that was that's a pea that I will always grow. And the great thing about the luck that I had with Jesus was that he's the only person growing it. And I said to him, you know, my dear old friend, none of us are getting any younger. What happens when you shuffle off this mortal coil? What's going to happen to that pea? I don't know, the kids that are not interested in the farm, you know, who knows? And fortunately, I was able, you know, he gave me seed, I brought it back, I've grown it, um, and enjoyed it, and it's now with the Heritage Seed Library, and so it's safe. Yeah, and I share it widely, and um, you know, I have yet to meet anybody who said to me, Adam, you gave me a busted flush. This is not a pea for me. They all love it. And there are there's the pea, there's a fantastic uh Courgette that uh comes from Syria. Um, funny enough, the Irish seedsavers have a white one. I would say this, wouldn't I? But it's not nearly as delicious as my green one. But that again is I can't imagine not having that courgette growing in my garden. And that was a wow moment. Um as a result of growing it, not meeting the grower, because it was a commercial variety, and I got it just as the Civil War was kicking off in in Syria and the seed company got blown up. You know, that was the end of that. Um what's that what's that question? We go on and on. As for peppers, capsi- I mean, chilies, uh, beans, uh uh, there are there are different lettuces as well that I really, really love. So, and mostly of the winter lettuces. So bloody warrio, latohino. I remember when I I I ate latohino for the first time, and it was in a biodynamic garden in Sussex, and there was a lovely gardener there, um, German lady. Um, I'm not going to say how old she was, but I'm too much of a gentleman for that change. But she but that was, you know, eating the leaves of that, and I thought, oh, this is what all lettuces should be tasting like. Um, yeah. The list can go on and on and on.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. And I I can I can imagine that because there is, yeah, there is certain varieties that when you eat them, you wonder what all the other ones are about. So yeah, I can I can appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00:I I did have a wow moment. Uh I should tell you this, it's important. So I was in Albania researching the book, it down in the south, in the Koche region. And I was w with a with a botanist and agronomist, Professor Robert Damo from the university, who's who is cataloguing um the land races, the farmers' varieties down there. And we were in this incredible valley, the Miras Valley. I mean, they've been growing there for 2,000 years. And uh walking in amongst the crops, and it was in the late summer, and there were tomatoes everywhere, and he introduced me to Ella and Ellie and Zorba Hayuni, who had both been professionals on a collective farm years ago, and they were growing their own tomato. And Zorba picked this massive ox heart, and I was, you know, I've eaten ox hearts, I've grown them. Yeah, okay. They I yet to eat an ox heart that that that blew my mind. Anyway, he handed me this ox heart, and and um I I sliced a bit off with my with my pocket knife, and it was a complete wow moment. I'd never eaten an ox heart like it. And it was sweet and fruity and just fab. And um he so I said to him and Ellie, they told me about it and how they'd be maintained it and you know, they were so they were so proud of it. And I said, Oh, could I could I possibly have some seeds, please? And they said no. And I so I was a bit and they said, no, it's not because we don't want you to have seeds, but we only save seeds from particular fruit that we are going to grow the next year. And we want all those seeds. But I looked at my mate Robert, Professor Damo, and he said, it's all right, Adam, don't worry. He said, I've got some in the gene bank, which you can have. And so, and I've I've now been growing that for a couple of years, and I've also been mixing up different lines of it because I've had it growing with other people in different places. I grew nine plants this year. I am still harvesting today. There right, there are a few left ripening in the greenhouse. And I again I'm trying to really work over the next few years to get it to grow well outside. But out of nine plants, over 30 kilos of fruit. And and and and that's and not all the um trusses set because it got very, very hot, and I had some aborted trusses. But these they're just to die for. And they I've got more passata than I know what to do with tomato soup in the freezer. Fantastic. Unfortunately, loads of seeds. So those I'm very keen to share. And I I I sent a note to Robert to say how excited I was with this and how well it was doing, this um ox heart. And would Ellie and uh Zorba mind if I shared some of the seeds? Because I think more people should be growing it. And I got a message back saying, Ellie and Zorba absolutely thrilled that you want to share the seeds of their tomatoes with other people around the world. And I thought, that's what it's about. That's what it's all about, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, that's sort of a brilliant, brilliant way to to close off the the chat. Um the accidental seed heroes is the newest book. There is a previous book, The Seed Detective. Um, both of them are available in all usual places. I'll put a link to your website in the show notes anyway, should anyone wish to click through that way. But they are in the in the usual places as well, they're not hard to find the books. Um it's been an intriguing chat, really, really interesting. Um it's also really, really important stories. So there's there's the fun element of it, which is really important as well. There's the trial and error, but it's really genuinely important work that you know these seed people are growing around the world are are doing around the world, and obviously you documenting it and bringing it to the fore and telling those stories is is highly important as well. So, Adam, thank you very, very much for coming on Master My Garden Podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you very much for inviting me, John. I've really enjoyed our conversation and um yeah, I'm I'm with you all the way. This is this this is really important stuff, and how we tell our stories is absolutely at the heart of how we win the hearts and minds of people who not only are growing vegetables but also deciding where they're getting their seeds and where they're buying that food. Um, but uh great stuff, thank you very much. I'm off into the garden, the sun's shining.
SPEAKER_01:So that's been this week's episode. A huge thanks to Adam. Uh as I said, that is really important work. Um those stories, those stories and those connections from you know the little old lady who's topping up her her old age pension with sowing seeds and then growing a variety that ends up getting translated around the world. And you know, it build builds resilience into the system. Yeah, I don't want to talk about you know food security and things like that, but when you have seeds like this being circulated around in communities, that gives you a security that isn't available in any other way. Like you talk about what Adam said about the people in Ethiopia, that's a place that we typically associate with you know hunger and famine and so on. But they're in their own ecosystem, they're creating resilience. Resilience and a and uh and a system where they're not relying on anyone else. And as I said, this is deeply important, and those stories and that seed saving and and protection is really, really important. So The Accidental Seed Heroes is the latest book, The Seed Detective is the previous one. A fascinating chat with Adam. Uh, I'll put the link to his website in the show notes, but definitely check him out on his social channels as well. Really, really fun, fun stories, but also deeply important stories, and definitely worth checking out. And that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening, and until the next time, happy garden, and you can see that.