Conserving old food crop varieties is the work of the Irish Seed Saver Association. Jane Powers discovers heroism in their efforts
'I'd like to put in a word for the swede," says Jo Newton, seed bank co-ordinator of the Irish Seed Saver Association (ISSA). "It is the most underrated vegetable. It doesn't take up much room. It doesn't have many pests and diseases. And it grows to a big size. In the past," she continues, "you'd have been in love with a vegetable like that! It gave you a huge amount of nutritious food, and it could be used as an animal feed, as well as for human consumption."
Nowadays, however, this most heroic of Irish brassicas is largely absent from the supermarkets' and greengrocers' shelves, its homely bulk ousted by more glamorous produce flown in from southern Spain and Africa. ISSA's work - to conserve old food crop varieties - is crucial when it comes to the swede, and other traditional varieties that are fast disappearing.
The organisation holds a large collection of Irish swedes: some, such as 'Best of All' (sweet, golden-fleshed and harvestable until April) and 'Tipperary Turnip' (sweet, mellow and remembered with fondness by rural people) were retrieved from the Horticultural Research International seed bank at Wellesbourne in Warwickshire. Others, such as the Northern Irish 'Major Dunne' (standing proud of the soil's surface and thus not prone to eelworm), were donated by individuals whose families had saved seed for generations. "There is a lot of Irish heritage in a swede," remarks Newton.
There is heritage galore in other brassicas also: in the cabbages and kales that were once the staples of the family vegetable patch and the small farmer's field. These, too, are being conserved at the Seed Savers' headquarters in Capparoe in east Clare. An outstanding variety is the hardy and vigorous 'Delaway' cabbage, which came from Charles Hughes in Mayo. It doesn't grow into a head, producing instead huge, tender leaves - and unlike most cabbages, it doesn't mind an acid soil.
Yet most of the brassicas came from Wellesbourne, where seed had been deposited in the 1980s by a Dr Murphy, who had collected 70 vernacular varieties from all over Ireland. These were acquired by ISSA's founder, Anita Hayes, in the mid-1990s. Every year a few kinds are grown and the seed saved - and the strain is thus preserved for another spell.
"They may look similar," says Newton, "but the genetics are different." The various landraces (traditional varieties adapted to specific local conditions), by virtue of their broad spectrum of genes, are exactly the sort of plants that are valuable to modern breeders. And, as she points out, repatriating vegetables to their native land is always good.
One such returned emigrant is the 'Baun' onion, also from Wellesbourne: "a good, big, white onion, hot and tasty, and a good keeper". It was bred by Irishman Barney Crombie, for Irish conditions. At ISSA, the plan is to bulk up the seed by growing it solely for seed harvest for a year or two, and then to trial it as a field crop, to see if it might make a commercially viable replacement for imported, less climate-specific onions.
There are about 400 varieties of heritage vegetable seed conserved here, and they are grown out in rotation (the best way to protect a variety is to cultivate it and harvest the seed periodically). Around 100 different vegetables appear on the ever-changing annual seed list, which is available to members (the public may also buy seed by mail order).
Recipients of seed, says Bridget Carlin, ISSA's fundraiser, should in turn be saving their own seed and building up their own gene banks to safeguard the biodiversity of this country's ethnic food crops. "A lot of these old varieties are on the verge of extinction, so we want everybody to grow them, whether they have a window box or a 1,000-acre farm. We want to make sure they don't disappear again."
Not all the vegetables are Irish: there are landraces and heirloom varieties from all over the world, including a large collection of Latvian tomatoes. One of the most popular of these is the delicious, yellow, pear-shaped 'Dzintare Lasite' (which cropped in my greenhouse until December last year). A couple of seasons' growing and regrowing the progeny of this variety in ISSA's west of Ireland polytunnels has helped it adapt to our peculiar Irish climate. "Our seeds," says Jo Newton, "have a lot of wet, misty, cloudy genes in them."
Which brings me to the actual site in east Clare where the Seed Savers operate. Surrounded by low, hump-backed hills and newly-planted native woodlands garlanded with honeysuckle and willowherb, it is especially appealing at this time of the year. The fruits in the native Irish apple collection (another important project) are swelling with promise; wrens and chaffinches are busy with their summertime chick-rearing. Lumbering brassicas are bowed over with seed, while elegant chards have grown lanky, ribbed stems - topped with lime-green rockets of still-to-ripen seed.
Peas are podding, beans are budding, onions have transmogrified into floriferous white tennis balls, and a stand of 'Giant Red' carrot in flower is a creamy froth of umbels danced over by edgy bumble bees. A handful of children offer to help with the digging, on condition that they are paid with freshly picked peas. It is easy to work outdoors at this bountiful, happy time.
It's a different story when the rain is driving down, and the mist and clouds have obscured the gentle hills. Facilities here are basic: the main building is a glorified shed, the seed drying room is a converted shipping container, a domed tarpaulin tent does service as a workshop - and the less said about the composting toilet, the better. Yet the 16, mostly-part-time, workers are among the most committed you will ever meet.
Their work, besides conserving vegetables and apples (they grafted 5,000 trees of 90 apple varieties earlier this year), and stone fruits such as gages and plums, includes collecting native grains, trialling old cultivars of flax seed (one kind proved to be higher in Omega-3 than fish oil), giving courses, and supporting initiatives in other countries (Mongolia, for instance).
In other words, the people here are a bit like the Irish swede: highly versatile, adaptable to fair weather or foul, full of goodness - and rather heroic.
jpowers@irish-times.ie