by Barbara Moore, founding member Seed Library of Galiano

This plant first floated into my awareness in 2012 while browsing Dan Jason’s Salt Spring Seeds catalogue. Our daughter had just survived a pretty intense bout of malaria after working in Cameroon. And now, here, I learned, was a locally available plant I could grow as a preventive and curative.

Artemisia annua, or Sweet Annie as it is affectionately known, is part of a large genus of plants which includes many potent and well-known medicinals, some of the most notable ones being A. absinthium (wormwood) and A. vulgaris (mugwort). In fact, the healing properties of this family are so vast and remarkable that in Spanish, wormwood is often referred to as the “Hierba Maestra,” or “Master Herb.”

Artemisia avnnua has been used extensively by the Chinese (known locally as ginghao) since 340 CE mainly to treat fevers. Yet it was not until the 1970’s that the essential Artemisinin component was identified and isolated as a treatment for Malaria. However, extensive recent research has shown the plant itself to be even more effective in treating and preventing malaria than the isolated pharmaceutical compound, because of what is known as the “synergy” between many active compounds within the plant. Our daughter and son-in-law have used it in subsequent stays in West Africa with repeated and remarkable success (in their words, “miraculous”). Amazingly, in contrast to the pharmaceutical treatments, the plant both cleanses the malaria parasites entirely from the blood, and also effectively treats strains of the disease which have become resistant to conventional treatment.

Even though malaria does not touch us in this part of the world, these findings speak to the incredible properties of the plant. For example, it has recently been featured as a possible preventive and cure for Covid-19. Though the verdict is still out on this use, the plant is currently being studied in major scientific research centres such as the Max Planck Society in Germany, who, after months of analysis, announced this past June that the extracts of dried Artemisia annua have been shown in the laboratory to be effective against the Covid-19 virus.

With all this in mind, I was curious to try to grow it. Dan Jason generously offered me a couple of packets of seeds which I successfully started and transplanted this spring. It’s always exciting to try a new plant and I was delighted to watch the tiny seedlings planted in late March sprout in our indoor growing area. Then they went to the greenhouse and finally into the garden in mid May. We left a couple of plants in the greenhouse with excellent results. The largest was a towering 8 or 9 feet. Most of the outdoor plants also did well and as luck would have it, our daughter and son-in-law were here in August at the opportune time to harvest them. The goal became to grow enough for tea throughout the winter. We dried and saved about one and a half kilos to supply tea two to three times a week for two people.

Sweet Annie is a stately delicate leaved annual, with a strong, arresting aroma, pungent yet sweetly aromatic. As a tea it is equally potent tasting! The flowers are tiny and inconspicuous, announcing that harvest is due just before they flower.

So this was a most intriguing plant to grow this year especially, and it really brought home reminders of plants’ abundantly generous properties to care for us – if we are open and aware and willing to work with them.

As is often the case, the pharmaceutical companies may discredit the ‘natural properties’ as opposed to the extracted essences which they have identified as superior. This big discussion often reveals the repeated themes of profitmaking control over locally trusted autonomy.

Certainly, this plant seems potent enough to be a useful part of a local herbal pharmacopeia. There are many, many articles and resources online. I’m also happy to talk to anyone about our experience with this newly loved member of our garden.
Now time to brew some Sweet Annie tea!

by Joan Robertson

It was a gift – though unasked for – a passing on from an experienced gardener to a novice: parsnip seeds, jam-packed into an unused church collection envelope. Only when I got home and sat with my four gardening books did I find out about the low germination rate of parsnip seeds. “Plant thickly!” was the advice. I did, and I swear, every single seed sprang to life, and I spent hours that summer, on my knees thinning.

I’d met Tim years before, at a retreat for return CUSO (Canadian University Students Overseas) volunteers. While most huddled, unloading feelings of guilt for their part in the cultural imperialism machine, Tim drifted through, twinkle in his eyes, nodding kindly. He’d already been up to Cambridge to read History.

That sense of play never left. In 1993, he did time for his participation in the Clayoquot Sound protests. He’d been assigned to a minimum security facility, and was apparently greeted warmly as a tree-hugger. A friend, who worked for Corrections, hurried in to get him released. Tim, however, was in the middle of a game of bridge, and wasn’t leaving ‘till the round was over.

My gardening books had parsnip seeds, along with onions, placed firmly in the ‘1 year viability’ column. So the next year, still a novice and fearing failure, I planted thickly again, and again spent time on my knees – and so it went. What my books hadn’t mentioned was what I began to notice emerging around me: sturdy stalks, shooting skyward from the parsnip roots left unharvested in the ground. By fall, they became small trees, standing in the garden like sentinels, their tassels of diaphanous seeds dancing in the wind. Once bagged, however, those seeds seemed to like their own company, gathering together in clumps, so again tended to get planted ‘thickly’ the next spring.

Tim has now, in his words, ‘left the party early.’ There was no cure for his progressive, debilitating disease. Still on my knees, thinning in the late spring, I look up, imagining Tim laughing at me, with a twinkle in his eyes.
This spring, slugs enjoyed all but three of the parsnips. I missed the energy of abundant parsnips in the garden, and, this fall, I harvested next year’s seed with extra care.

by Marlene Angelopoulos

I love seeds.

Can’t think of a favourite. They are all beautiful capsules of magic, but I really like the big ones! Pumpkins! Beans! Sunflowers! Easy to see and easy to handle and easy for the grandkids to watch them push through the soil and grow. Never a problem sowing too densely. Interestingly, the seed size doesn’t indicate plant size. For example, a little tiny tomato seed can become a six foot tangle of foliage and ripening fruit. Who would have thought it needed so much space!

Why do I grow and save my own seed? Seeds = food. To maintain a food chain free from GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) and to control my own food supply. To promote and preserve our agricultural heritage.

By growing seed genetically adapted to my specific climate and soil, I develop plants with proven performance, disease and pest resistance, superior quality, and most importantly: “Taste!”

Some saved seeds have stories. My sister and I still grow Dead Dad’s Beans. I know that’s a quirky name, but after he passed over 25 years ago it was how we started to identify them and it stuck. A memory. I still have a small vial of grain seed that was my grandfather’s. We are the living link of sometimes hundreds of years of growing heirloom plants.

Take your turn as a grower of these cherished crops. Save your seeds and keep planting!