uce high-quality fruits and vegetables that can better withstand external stresses like insects, drought and over-watering.
“There have been tremendous improvements bred into new plants — and those new plants, with those new improvements, can only be acquired through new seeds — they simply aren’t there in saved seeds,” said Tom Wickham of Wickham’s Fruit Farm in Cutchogue.
Mr. Wickham said he spends up to $1 on a single seed for some varieties of tomatoes he grows.
“While there is a place for heirlooms among people who really like it, they are not going to feed the world,” Mr. Wickham said. By using hybrid seed, he added, “You get a healthier plant and you don’t have to use a lot of pesticides that you would otherwise have to use.”
But both longtime local growers said they recognized the significance of keeping historic first-generation seeds.
“That’s important,” Mr. Wickham said. “All of those all varieties have one quality or another that is sort of unique. And probably there are farmers who will prize those qualities and will want them.”
Should farmers start saving and producing their own seeds, Mr. Ettlinger said, it will allow them to develop varieties suited to their individual farms, soil, farming style and their own population of insects and diseases.
Ms. Gaylor said that as varieties are lost — local ones especially — so are the genetic materials allowing them to flourish and adapt to different conditions. She points to a little-known wild Long Island tomato as an example.
The Shinnecock Native, a mid-sized cherry tomato, was first discovered growing on Shinnecock tribal land on the South Fork more than a century ago.
“It wasn’t being grown here, so I went looking for it,” she said. “I could find only one person that is saving it.”
That was five years ago, and she found it through a grower on the nonprofit Seed Saver Exchange, a nationwide coalition of seed savers and sharers.
“It’s a very sweet tomato,” she said. “Every year we grow a population of 50 plants. It produces like crazy as soon as the [seeds] drop to the ground.”
To explore the variety of seeds available for sale through Salt of the Earth Seed, visit the company’s website at northforkseeds.com.