[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Ger-Poland-Volhynia Digest, Vol 75, Issue 5

[Krampetz at aol.com]

Surely SOME of the returnees had friends in the area that did have  seeds.
Even in today's war-torn areas there are commercial enter prizes even  if
 run out of a car trunk.
 
Bob K. 
 
 
In a message dated 8/6/2009 1:10:42 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
edwards.mark at comcast.net writes:

The answers thus far have dealt with better times, but the  original 
question was, where, upon being forced by the  Russians to return to burnt out 
villages and no real commercial sector  in existence at the end of WWII (or to 
Volhynia after being forcefully evacuated  during WWI) , did they obtain 
seed?  Due to extreme hunger, I find it hard  to believe they would have the 
foresight to leave even one plant to go to seed. 

 
 Message: 1 
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2009 17:51:48  -0700 (PDT) 
From: Helen Gillespie <hgillespie at rogers.com>  
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] garden seeds 
To:  ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org, Carol Duff  
<cmduff at redwing.net>  
Message-ID: <663000.85803.qm at web88005.mail.re2.yahoo.com>  
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 

I'm not a gardener,  but we always had a big garden at home when I was 
growing up. My mother would  keep some seed from year to year from the harvest 
(peas, beans etc.) but only  the biggest, but others she would buy new.  I 
would think that the new  packaged seeds would be a quality strain whereas the 
seed gathered from  regular harvest might eventually "wear out" and not a 
produce a quality  harvest, especially if the seed was not "selected".  Even 
the tomato  plants that grew from seed from composted tomatoes were never 
quite as large  as those grown and purchased as plants. Genetics, really. 

Helen  

--- On Tue, 8/4/09, Carol Duff <cmduff at redwing.net> wrote:  

> From: Carol Duff <cmduff at redwing.net> 
> Subject:  [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] garden seeds 
> To: edwards.mark at comcast.net,  ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org 
> Received: Tuesday, August 4,  2009, 1:09 AM 
> Much later than WWII we sent family 
> members in  the DDR garden vegetable 
> seeds.? When we were able to visit with visa  and 
> dictated visit details 
> by the DDR, the relatives  excitedly showed us the 
> vegetables grown with 
> "Minnesota  seeds" next to vegetables grown with DDR seeds. 
> There was no 
>  comparison in plants.? Those that we had sent were so 
> much bigger and  
> greener.? Maybe family members did this at WWII time 
> also.?  Carol