SSE

[jmsieglaff]

I am considering joining the SSE and I know many of you are members. I have a few questions I'm hoping can be answered. Thanks!

1) I do not isolate or bag tomatoes, so would it be better not to offer varieties if that is the case? Or state as such? If sharing do you implicitly agree to follow best practices for preventing crossing?

2) I see varieties listed in the exchange have price, a lot are $4.00. So as a member you have access and pay that price to SSE or the individual offering the seed?

I guess those are my biggest questions, any other tidbits would be appreciated too.

Thanks,
Justin

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by jmsieglaff

I am considering joining the SSE and I know many of you are members. I have a few questions I'm hoping can be answered. Thanks!

1) I do not isolate or bag tomatoes, so would it be better not to offer varieties if that is the case? Or state as such? If sharing do you implicitly agree to follow best practices for preventing crossing?

2) I see varieties listed in the exchange have price, a lot are $4.00. So as a member you have access and pay that price to SSE or the individual offering the seed?

I guess those are my biggest questions, any other tidbits would be appreciated too.

Thanks,
Justin

I can answer your first question easy.
I know people that are members for a long time and dont bag or isolate and offer seeds there.

Worth

[KC.Sun]

I'm a member there too. The price you pay is to the member that offers the seeds. The annual fee goes to SSE if I understand correctly.

The part that discourages me from ordering seeds, a lot is manual ordering if I understand correctly. Then payment is made by cash or check depending on instructions of seed lister.

There are discounts too if I recall correctly. Discounts are available if you offer seeds.

If you offer seeds, you may qualify for low quantity seeds not available to most.

The thing I was really looking for was something more electronic, but at this time it isn't something that is available.

[ilex]

1- I think most people do not bag tomatoes. I don't but I say so in my intructions.

2- you pay the member offering the seeds. Members can specify other prices and method of payment. I accept paypal and I'm sure many members do too. Many times you can arrange a trade.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by KC.Sun

I'm a member there too. The price you pay is to the member that offers the seeds. The annual fee goes to SSE if I understand correctly.

The part that discourages me from ordering seeds, a lot is manual ordering if I understand correctly. Then payment is made by cash or check depending on instructions of seed lister.

There are discounts too if I recall correctly. Discounts are available if you offer seeds.

If you offer seeds, you may qualify for low quantity seeds not available to most.

The thing I was really looking for was something more electronic, but at this time it isn't something that is available.

I'm a long time Life Time SSE member going back to about 1989 or so and a listed member until last year.

It depends on what you really want from your SSE membership as to your reasons for joining. If you have lots of experience and know how and when to rogue out wrong plants, that is good, b'c not all seeds offered by all listed members are always uncrossed.

For those who have grown a few hundred varieties no where's else will you find the number of tomato varieties listed, that is a fact.

So if it's new varieties you know nothing about and that's what you want, so be it, but also know that Tania lists a lot in the Yearbooks and info for many of what she lists comes from the variety descriptions in the Yearbooks and Tania does have a lot of rare ones and more common ones that she sells seeds for.

LEt me clarify what KC said above. SSE gives suggested prices for those who are listed and unlistedmembers as well as non US members , but many of us disagreed with that and now each listed member says what prices they request and then gives contact info,most an e-mail, some not. So no,no shopping basket kind of thing.If anyone knows how thick each Yearbook is, with listings for anything you might be interested in, but yes, the tomato section is the largest of all sections.

There is also an online version of each yearbook, no,no shopp ing basket and I had my varieties listed in both the paper and the online, and after jus tONE year with the online I went back to just the paper.

Also know that SSE puts out a PUBLIC catalog with lots of varieties of all sorts of things and their prices are higher than most listed members listing the same varieties.But alsoknow that selection in thePUBLIC catalo is MUCH less thanin the Yearbooks, for instance, in the 2015 PUBLIC,nuts, I left it over by my bed, there may be about 40 tomato varieties in that one and they state how many in the Yearbook which I think is over 4,000..

Many listers offer a dealie, as it were, so many packs for X and a lower price for X + packs/

So I no longer automatically refer folks to SSE b/c it depends on what they want. And I almost forgot to mention that there are many foreign members, such as Ilex from Spain who also offer varieties and in the 2015 Yearbook he was offering 73 varieties,

As for crossed seed, in all the years I was listing several hundreds of varieties and I can remember only about 10 varieties that were crossed since there was no way I could bag the several thousand plants and varieties I was growing each year. BUT, the X pollination rate where I grew my stuff in NYS is quitelow,but not true in more southern states at all.

The mission of SSE is seed/scion,tuber,etc, preservation, not a seed company per se, but SSE itself is THE largest lister of all and so many of us have wondered about that.

Preservation of varieties depends on people growing them andapssing seeds on to others and that was the original intention and SSE has helped in that regard by making so much available.Many memebrs are owners of seed companies and it's one way that varieties can also be made available.And for me personally I've made many long lasting friends via SSE.

Anything else I can helpwith?

Carolyn

[jmsieglaff]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Having those questions answered definitely helps.

Not having a huge garden and being somewhat new to growing heirlooms in bigger numbers (I grew Sungold, Black Krim and some red F1s for years but now for the past few years I like to trial as many heirlooms and OP tomatoes as I have room for). I see so many varieties that sound interesting that I want to go grow over the coming years (many of which I've already obtained seeds for). With seed catalogs and trades with folks here, I have easy access to so many varieties that sound interesting to me. I'm sure I could try as many new varieties as I have space for without tapping into the SSE members area for many many years.

It does make me think, when SSE started there was nothing else like it. If you wanted to grow all sorts of tomatoes, it was essential. Fast forward to now, we have online shopping, Tatiana's tremendous resource and seed sales, Internet forums like this where we all swap seeds, it does make me think in my mind why would I need to be a SSE member? I suppose the answer is I don't. But having the ability to access varieties would be nice should I want something specific. Perhaps more importantly, there is something about supporting an organization you feel is doing something worthwhile and important. I think that might be the biggest reason for me to support SSE and become a member--whether I list/purchase seeds from other members or not.

Thinking about SSE, I wonder how the Internet has impacted their membership, etc. Are younger gardeners joining or are they leveraging what is available on the Internet and not joining? Just thinking out loud.

Thanks again for all of your thoughts.

[Worth1]

I dont think SSE is what it used to be.
There is a long thread about it somewhere here.
The name Amy Goldman comes to mind.

Worth

[PhilaGardener]

SSE turned quite political internally, and in some folks' opinions got distracted from the core mission of curating, conserving and sharing heirloom varieties. A lot of people left SSE because of all that and are not likely to go back.

[jmsieglaff]

Originally Posted by PhilaGardener

SSE turned quite political internally, and in some folks' opinions got distracted from the core mission of curating, conserving and sharing heirloom varieties. A lot of people left SSE because of all that and are not likely to go back.

Unfortunate to hear things like this. I'll keep an eye on the seed catalog and keep them in mind. They are not that far from me, so I think I may visit sometime.

[Cole_Robbie]

http://proliberty.com/observer/20090920.html

[jmsieglaff]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

http://proliberty.com/observer/20090920.html

Whoa. Things got political maybe an understatement. Quite the internal war it sounds like.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

http://proliberty.com/observer/20090920.html

And I went through all of that when I was a very active SSE member. I could say much more, but won't.

For many years Amy was a best friend. She used to drive up from Dutchess County where her country estate was located, I've been there many times, and she also has a great apt in NYC as well. And she knew of me via the newsletter OFF the Vine which Craig LeHoullier and I used to publish and was mentioned in an SASE catalog when Jeff McCormack still owned SASE.

The first time she came up was b'c all her plants that her gardeners had put out froze, she called and asked if I had any extras, I did, and gave her about 200 seedlings.

She continued to drive up each summer and pick tomatoes from my field, take them back home and save the seeds.

Oh yes, there's so much more I could post, but all of that was in the past, yet as far as Amy herself, she still serves as a Consultant to the Board of SSE.

Carolyn

[Cole_Robbie]

The legal aspects of any dispute always interest me. The worry seems to be about corporate entities taking SSE seeds, genetically modifying them, and then obtaining patents. I don't see what was keeping them from doing that in the first place, since SSE didn't have any legal control over the varieties, at least in an intellectual property law sense.

And at least as far as the way patents are supposed to work, they are not granted for traditional breeding techniques, to the breeder or anyone else. I can't just grab a breeder's latest work and run to the patent office, and then keep that tomato from the breeder. That's not to say such a thing has never happened, but it would be an abuse of the system. The larger problem is that IP law is so expensive to litigate, only large corporations have enough money to do so. It's the most lucrative specialty among attorneys. One of my professors called it "The Sport of Kings."

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

The legal aspects of any dispute always interest me. The worry seems to be about corporate entities taking SSE seeds, genetically modifying them, and then obtaining patents. I don't see what was keeping them from doing that in the first place, since SSE didn't have any legal control over the varieties, at least in an intellectual property law sense.

And at least as far as the way patents are supposed to work, they are not granted for traditional breeding techniques, to the breeder or anyone else. I can't just grab a breeder's latest work and run to the patent office, and then keep that tomato from the breeder. That's not to say such a thing has never happened, but it would be an abuse of the system. The larger problem is that IP law is so expensive to litigate, only large corporations have enough money to do so. It's the most lucrative specialty among attorneys. One of my professors called it "The Sport of Kings."

For many years SSE would send to us money to purchase new varieties we had listed and most returned the money and then that stopped. We were always told that the viarieties were still ours and if we wanted back seeds at any time, if we lost them, they would be there for us. That turned out not to be true since some requested their seeds back and were asked to pay money for them Also were told us that the backup place for those stored at SSE was at the Fort Collins CO USDA place.


Not one of us was asked if we wanted our seeds sent to Svalbard, they were just sent. At the time I was able to find some links that listed what had been sent and yes, some of mine as well.

It was all done before the fact before we were told and yes, many did worry about who had access to them b'c it wasn't just SSE sending in varieties, it was also seed banks from several countries.

Legalities.

If I'm told that seeds of my varieties would always be in a safe place and I would have access to them and if I lost some of those varieties, my experiences with SSE up to that time led me to believe what was said was true.

IMO no one OWNS those seeds in a legal sense,if anything they belong to the person who lists them and to those of us who sent them to SSE all those years. I never sighned any papers giving over my ownership of seeds to SSE

I want to be very clear here that all was well when Kent and Diane Whealey started and ran SSE, then Kent was forced out and his son AaronWhaley, yes Aaron spelled it differently, but Aaron was not cut out to do that, he left and moved more north and opened the following:

https://awhaley.com/

Fred Hempel has seeds produced there as do some other breeders and yes, one can also buy seeds off the site.

So from my perspective I see two phases of SSE, Kent up to when he was forced out, skipping over Aaron since he knew it wasn't for him and I used to edit the tomato section of the online and catalog version of the tomato section for him and he also asked me about what new varieties they should be looking at for seed production.

The second phase then being the post Aaron phase.

Carolyn, and it gets more complicated than that, in a legal sense if that's how you want tolook at it b'c what about the person I got seeds from and what about the person(S) who gave the seeds to the person I got it from. One darn mess, really,

[PhilaGardener]

Here is one interesting and informative (to me) account of plant IP from the perspectives of those who breed and share new varieties.

https://opensource.com/life/14/11/li...pen-food-seeds

Particularly egregious are attempts by agribusiness to lay claim to heirloom traits like deep orange carrots that would block anyone else from breeding, developing or distributing anything that has such a trait.