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Author

Sara Friedl-Putnam

SSE website homepage

SSE launches website redesign

The new Seed Savers Exchange website highlights the impressive impact of nearly 50 years of participatory preservation efforts, and offers a closer look at current programming. SSE aims to engage people of all ages and backgrounds in gardening and seed saving and facilitate their ability to grow healthy, heirloom food.

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A female deer in the woods.

How to build a deer fence with fishing line

Anyone who has an orchard or garden knows how frustrating it is to work day in and day out only to find deer have eaten your lettuce, trampled your tomatoes, pulled up turnips and carrots, ripped the leaves off your young apple trees, or eaten the fruits off the trees.

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six-pack of tiny, green tomato seedlings, with two white labels on the left side

Indoor Seed Starting 101

There are many compelling reasons to start seeds indoors, but a few sprout to the top. It’s a great way to grow long-season crops in cool climates. It creates an opportunity to harvest fruits earlier. And did we mention it’s fun?

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container of green seedlings wrapped in brown paper towels

A Month in the Seed Lab

From planning for the next year, to processing and packaging seeds from the previous growing season, there is plenty of work to keep everyone (including interns!) busy at Seed Savers Exchange in winter.

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one red-yellow apple nestled in tree boughs

Laura Ingalls Wilder: Pioneer, Author, Orchardist

Beyond the years covered in the beloved Little House on the Prairie series, and before the books made Ingalls a household name, Laura and her husband, Almanzo, tended an orchard in Missouri, growing Missouri Pippin and Ben Davis apples. Both varieties are part of the Seed Savers Exchange collection and are offered on the Exchange.

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Yellow sunflowers tower over a wall of red-flowering runner beans.

Quintessentially British: The Unjustifiably Shunned Runner Bean

In the United States, runner beans are undervalued as an edible crop and usually grown as ornamentals for their large, showy, often scarlet-colored flowers. American horticulturalist Fearing Burr recognized their eating qualities in his 1863 book Field and Garden Vegetables of North America, stating “its value as an esculent has not been generally appreciated.” This remains true today.

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