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 Last week someone called to ask me if the seeds I sell are heirloom seeds. For folks who don’t know, “heirloom” has come to have a particular meaning in the gardening world: a seed variety that has been saved and passed down in a family, usually for at least 50 years. This means that hybrid seeds, which are a cross between two varieties, are pretty much ruled out, since few people go to the trouble of producing their own hybrids. This definition started with the Seed Savers Exchange, I think, but it has gradually been picked up by large seed companies as a marketing ploy, so that even Burpee, a major purveyor of hybrids, markets heirloom seeds. It’s basically come to mean any open-pollinated (not hybrid) variety that has some distinctive traits.
The good thing about heirlooms is that they have been selected for particular human uses or places, like Blacktail Mountain watermelon, a variety that a fellow who lived in Montana developed, or yellow tomatoes, which were developed in the Victorian period for their mildness so they would make good jams and “figs.”
Hybrids are not evil and can be very helpful. They are not at all the same as genetically modified organisms, which are developed by completely artificial means. To make hybrids, human beings take the pollen from one plant and put it on the flower or another. The seeds of a hybrid plant are not sterile (they don’t have “Terminator” seeds); they will produce plants of the different varieties in their parentage rather than copies of themselves (as is the case more-or-less with an open pollinated plant). However, often you can collect seeds from a hybrid and select for the qualities that made the hybrid desirable and end up with an open-pollinated version after just a few generations. This happened recently with a sweet grape tomato. Hybrids tend to be more vigorous than open pollinated plants and often have been bred to have resistance to popular plant diseases. If you’re growing in an edgy place for peppers, for instance, you might have better luck with a hybrid pepper. Heirlooms often taste better, but not always, and hybrids tend to produce stronger, healthier plants with larger and more fruits.
 Avoiding GMO seeds The other side of the heirloom coin is that because large seed companies have made much more money by developing hybrids, they have let the purity of their open-pollinated seeds decrease. I have bought heirloom broccoli seeds, for instance, that produced nothing but what is called “off-types”–things that have only tiny heads or none at all, stuff that looks like kale, etc. Maintaining good seed stock means paying attention to roguing out oddballs, but that costs money. Big companies have just harvested the whole field and called it OP. So as much as an heirloom can be a good thing, it has to be from seed lines that have been well maintained.
 Typical male witch saving seeds Further, I have occasionally seed varieties being marketed as heirlooms when yes, they were heirlooms, but were developed for feeding cattle, not for human beings to eat–turnips that get big and woody, for instance. So heirloom is not a quarantee of quality eating.
I myself grow mostly open-pollinated seeds. I don’t use the term heirloom, since it implies a family tradition that rarely actually exists. I do grow some hybrids, though, like hybrid pickling cucumbers developed by an ag school in the early sixties to resist diseases. Disease resistance means not only increasing the likelihood you will get a crop in a bad year, but it means less spraying, and even if you only spray with neem, like I do, less spraying is good!
Some people like to go around the internet posting scare stories about how Monsanto is going to outlaw (or already has outlawed) private gardens and the collection of any seeds. This is just not true. Evil as Monsanto is, it does not give a damn about gardeners because little serious money is to be made from us in comparison to agriculture. It has focused its GMO technology on the money makers like rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans. So being financially insignificant, like most of us are, has its advantages. Btw, worried about GMO soybeans? Eat organic soybeans. They are tested not to have GMOs.
 "Priapus" Variety Heirloom Corn That said, if you are growing corn and are concerned about consuming GMOs (I sure am), you are well advised to grow colored varieties. Pretty much all the yellow or white corn in the US is contaminated with GMO genes. The good thing about corn is that each kernel is the result of wind-borne pollen and will show immediately if the pollen has come from yellow corn if it’s a colored corn, like the heirloom Bloody Butcher or Oaxacan Green (just remember that typically, these are flour or parching corns rather than sweet or corn-on-the-cob corns). You can also just buy colored cornmeal (I’ve seen blue and red available), colored corn chips, and colored taco shells.:) Using corn as a grain instead of wheat will also get you around the contamination of wheat with GMOs–and if you want to grow your own grains, with corn you won’t have to deal with deep plowing, threshing, heavy duty grain mills, and so forth, all of which is necessary for raising the popular grains. Another good grain substitute is potatoes: lots of wonderful heirloom varieties of those at Fedco Seeds, a seed co-op in Maine.
With some plants, tomatoes or beans, for instance, it’s easy to save seeds, because these plants are naturally self-pollinating. Once you have selected plants with particular traits over several generations and from a good number of plants, you can pretty much keep that variety stable, growing it out year after year and further selecting and refining for those traits. This is how many small farmers used to grow crops. You can learn more about the ins and outs of saving seed of various typical garden plants in Seed to Seed or go a step farther and learn how to develop your own veggie varieties in Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties. Nobody has really written about saving seeds from herbs.
But some plants are not heirlooms because they have never had named varieties. I have never heard of named varieties of belladonna, mandrake, or henbane, for instance. They simply have not been that widely grown and remain closer to the wild.There are a few named varieties of black nightshade (numbered rather than named, since these are varieties developed by ag schools), but these have been developed for food production in tropical climates. Could individual witches have developed named varieties? I don’t see that as very likely, since a lot of plants would have to be grown over many plant generations to do this, and belladonna and mandrake, for instance, are pollinated by insects rather than being self-pollinated, like a tomato, which means that individual plants would have to be isolated, etc. Landraces might be possible, and certainly with black nightshade, landraces abound. But that is a selection that just happens and is not directed by people.
All this is to explain why, for the most part, I am not selling heirloom seeds. They simply don’t exist for many of the plants that have traditionally had a place in the witch’s garden. Instead, each seed remains a repository of a huge variety of genetics. These plants, although still very close to the wild, have chosen to dwell near human beings. That says a lot.
 I ordered seeds for the shop the other day and took the opportunity to get some packets to grow out myself, things that are not really available wholesale or that I’d just like to have a look at. First, foxgloves. In the past I’ve tried growing Digitalis obscura and Digitalis parviflora, but I always bought these seeds from the same source and did not have much luck. This time I bought them from the German wholesaler that supplies some of my seeds. Their seeds are really nice (but more expensive), so I hope I will have better luck with them this year. I also ordered Snow Thimble foxglove seeds to grow out. These are white and have no spots. I like the name.:)
For the third and probably last time I’ll try growing Doronicum pardalianches, a leopardsbane that according to Gerard was once used as wolfsbane. It doesn’t have a particularly striking appearance, but it would be neat to have for historical reasons.
Another one I’ve grown in the past, Gold Leaf melissa, I reordered, because mine has gotten kind of scraggly on account of exceedingly dry conditions last summer, so I did not collect seeds from it and I’m not sure how much of it will survive. I like this plant a lot anyhow. Its leaves are a very nice golden green shading to bright green and it smells like sweet lemons, really nice.
 I finally was able to get some of the Gigantea variety of Chinese lanterns (Physalis alkekengi) again. Last year they were out. I want to grow my own seeds of this very popular plant, one that I myself find most cheerful in fall. When everything is brown, these lanterns positively burn ember red. Plus the berries are supposed to be edible.
Phinally Phytolacca (pokeweed) again, the Silberstein variety, which looks like it has been sprayed with a fine white paint. I grew this long ago but somehow lost it in my yard. This is a pretty plant, and I would like to gather and sell the seeds.
Last year I managed to germinate Artemisia genipi, a wormwood of the Italian Alps that is supposedly made into a liqueur, but the plants were killed by drought, so I am trying them again. I’ve always been partial to the artemisia family.
Although it will reseed itself prolifically under some conditions in cultivated fields cultivated areas, I’ll be growing Chrysanthemum segetum, or corn marigold. The variety is Eastern Star, which is a daisy with dark yellow surrounded by a band of butter yellow. I don’t grow many annuals, and I thought it would go well with the dyer’s chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria) that is colonizing the areas around the front sidewalk.
I wanted to see what the carnation “King of the Blacks” looks like. I figure it’s going to be a dark oxblood color, which Victorians considered a kind of black in terms of flowers. I like that color and I like carnations. It would be fun to collect those seeds, too. Another black one that I hope will be more black is a sweet pea called “Almost Black.” Looks like a dark blue-purple.
 Fuller’s teasel (Dipsacus sativus) is a neat plant that they actually used to make a kind of brush out of for processing sheep’s wool. You’ve probably seen all kinds of wild teasels. Their spines are straight. The fuller’s teasel has curved spines. Makes a nice decorative plant too.
I thought it would be fun to grow a red version of baby’s breath, a kind of vampire baby’s breath (Gypsophila elegans ‘Kermesina’).
Something I might regret growing is Japanese hops, since hops tends to be very rambunctious as a plant and climb all over everything, clinging with hooks (thus the ‘lupulus’ in its name–wolf’s claws). This species of hops is smaller than regular hops and is grown as an annual. I hope it will make some strobiles and that I can harvest some seeds. I love variegated plants.
Once again I’ll be trying black nemophila (heatwave and subsequent hail wiped out all my nemophila plants last year) and “Pennies in Bronze” moonwort, which makes bronze seedpods instead of silvery ones. Moonwort is a nice plant for cottage gardens. Not very “refined,” but bright purple flowers with crumply leaves, surprisingly cheerful.
Rue is on my list of witching herbs to grow and hopefully harvest (as well as use in combination with marigolds to keep dogs off my front lawn), but I also want to try a rue relative, fragrant rue (Ruta odorata). A customer told me about it last year, but outside of that, I haven’t found much info on it. Sounds interesting.
I’m trying to be more controlled this year re seed starting (ha!). I probably won’t be growing many food plants outside of shallots, but I did decide to try rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum), a wild food plant. According to Culpeper, it’s supposed to taste hot and spicy. It used to be widely grown in English gardens but has become somewhat rare. I’ve seen seeds offered for the past couple of years and will give it a try, although it’s mostly a coastal plant. I think it might like the area with the artemisias, which is dry and sunny.
 Lately I’ve been dealing with some customers who in my opinion are clearly mentally ill and not the subject of magical or demonic attack, as they claim. Over the years, when someone has told me they are under demonic or magical attack, probably at least half the time I feel that they in fact are. But recently it seems that many people are not apparently under any external attack but instead are experiencing mental illness of some kind. I’ve been ruminating over the differences between magical attack and mental illness in terms of how they are presented to the magical practitioner quite a bit and would like some help from those of you out there who have any experience along these lines. I would like to come up with a more systematic way of defining the differences between actual magical attack and mental illness, something more in the field of reason than intuition. Because it seems that many of the people I speak to who are in fact mentally ill IMO have things in common with each other, as if aspects of a culture produce a particular sort of craziness. Even the way they speak seems to have something in common rather than differing a good deal by individual, as is usually the case with any random person. This got me thinking. So here are some questions.
 From the perspective of cursing:
If you or anyone you know has practiced attack magic, what typically were the results intended and did they include insanity? Or was it more along the lines of physical injury, loss of job or status, breakup of relationship, and other stuff? IME, little attack magic if any involves driving another person crazy, but maybe that’s just what I’ve run into. Maybe just the torment involved of sending a spirit after someone is enough to drive the target mad, whether that was the intention or not? Because every one of the people whom I have deemed mentally ill claim that they are under attack from human individuals (witches, warlocks, covens, Voodoo priests, etc.) rather than simply being glommed onto by passing evil spirits, as a Christian might believe. Yet I have not run across many magic practitioners who tell me “I am trying to send a demon after someone to drive them nuts or to harass them mightily.”
 When someone is in fact cursed:
When you have encountered people who you are certain are under magical attack, especially through spirits that some person has sent to harass the person, what have been the effects you notice immediately, if any? I have noticed for instance that when talking to the person, I feel an unpleasant buzzing sensation in my head and get a headache. Sometimes I have felt extremely tired after talking on the phone to someone who is strongly targeted. I am interested in any kinds of sensations or reactions that practitioners out there have had when dealing with someone who they are pretty certain is under some kind of magical attack. Do you get any physical sensations? Or is your determination of the actuality of the attack based on the individual’s description of what they are experiencing (nightmares, weird physical effects that have no medical cause, a series of physical injuries or monetary disasters that seems more than coincidental, etc.).
 When someone is mentally ill rather than cursed:
When you encounter someone you believe is mentally ill although they claim demonic or magical attack, what is it that says to you that it’s mental illness they are dealing with and not magical attack? Someone mentioned to me one of the differences is that mentally ill people seem to demand immediate and repeated action and attention. From my own experience, I thought this was true. People under demonic attack seem not to call repeatedly on a daily basis, demanding I do something about their situation. Instead, they call, hesitantly describe their situation (hesitantly because sane people are aware that in our society, demons are not generally considered to be real), and ask for ways to combat the attack. In every case that I recall, the individual was under attack because of some ordinary thing–someone was mad at them for having an affair with someone else they wanted for themselves, or someone was trying to keep the individual from winning a court case against them–pretty mundane concerns, in other words. In contrast, in my experience the people I have considered to be mentally ill generally could not give any reason for the attack or claimed that their attackers just wanted their soul, fitting in with Christian ideas and/or with the concepts of the Satanic panic of the eighties. Likewise, sex seems to be involved much more with the mentally ill people. For instance, people have told me that demonic forces sent to harass them by witches were making them have sexual thoughts, or that people around them were actually demonic and causing their sexual organs to be stimulated from afar. And of course there are the people who are certain they are being attacked because they are very extraordinary (descended from great priests, etc.). Those are easy to spot, IME.
I would like to hear if others have noticed any commonalities with the folks they have run into in terms of who is targeting them and why. It would be helpful to all of us, I think, if we could come up with any commonalities that might help us recognize the difference. Also, I have wondered just how often it is the case that someone who is mentally ill becomes a sort of magnet for random spirits screwing around. Along the lines of the concept that the mentally ill are touched by the divine (which I am not putting forward as a helpful idea), are mentally ill people more able to perceive the spirit world? Finally, if you have determined that someone is mentally ill rather than under magical attack, do you ever consider giving them magical means to deal with it?
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Last week someone called to ask me if the seeds I sell are heirloom seeds. For folks who don’t know, “heirloom” has come to have a particular meaning in the gardening world: a seed variety that has been saved and passed down in a family, usually for at least 50 years. This means that hybrid seeds, which are a cross between two varieties, are pretty much ruled out, since few people go to the trouble of producing their own hybrids. This definition started with the Seed Savers Exchange, I think, but it has gradually been picked up by large seed companies as a marketing ploy, so that even Burpee, a major purveyor of hybrids, markets heirloom seeds. It’s basically come to mean any open-pollinated (not hybrid) variety that has some distinctive traits.
