To those of you interested in supporting us to save the last remaining heritage brassicas

Ruapehu cauliflower going up to seed  

To keep our cabbage, cauli, broccoli, kale and Brussells sprouts seeds strong and alive for the future we are going to have to work very hard.

For many years now the range of varieties available has been getting less and less, we have less than 10% of the cultivars left that we had 100 years ago, and recently we have discovered that 90% of the open pollinates (those varieties that were developed from the heritage lines after the second world war for early commercial growers) are gone as well. This means our food in the shops is almost totally grown from hybrid seed which we know does not contain essential nutrition needed to keep us strong and healthy. We must act now!!!!

Brassicas are traditionally a very important part of our diet and nutrition especially in the winter months so it feels very important that we return to a process that will keep our seed strong for the future

Brassicas are far more difficult to grow to seed than most other crops and they are at a greater risk of being lost than most other crops

Growing brassicas to seed  requires a space that is 2 kms from other flowering brassicas and it requires more space than the average home gardener has to do the job.

You must plant 300 plants, pull out (rogue) the hundred weakest, saving the 200 most true to type plants, then grow them on to seed. The seeds are planted in early autumn and the seed harvested the following summer. This kind of a growout can be done on a regular basis every few years however on it’s own it is not enough to keep the seed strong for the long haul. We are hoping we’ll find growers around the north that can do this part of the job for us.

It is a two year process to do a comprehensive growout. The Institute will need to do this for each brassica it holds in it’s collection every ten years.

We estimate it will cost $4,000 over 2 years to do a comprehensive growout. . The  seed companies used to do this but no longer do and connections we have say that brassica seed is weakening world wide because of this.

To do a comprehensive growout you must plant a minimum of 300 plants and do the initial rogueing of the 100 weakest or least true to type plants. At the point where your 200 plants are mature and ready to eat, .you must dig up the  6-10 best cabbages, broccoli etc with the dirt around their roots and plant each of those plants far from each other where they can’t cross with each other. Maybe far apart ( 2kms) or maybe into pollen cages as we will, which hold bumble bee hives.

This means that they will self pollinate.

Harvest the seed from each of these plants and store separately.

The next step is to grow 50 plants from each of these six plants all together in one place. Because they were self pollinated there will be a lot of variation in these plants as any weaknesses will be amplified. When they get to the eating stage choose the 10 best plants out of each 50 , let them all go to seed and cross pollinate again. This means you’ll have 300 plants flowering again, and will harvest a lot of quality seed.

If we do the comprehensive grow outs here at Koanga each year and each line needs this done every 10 years then we can hold 10 brassicas in our collection and know they will be strong for the long haul. We will be very certain to be selecting for northland conditions and over time these 10 cultivars will be very special.

We need your help to make this a success, because this will never be an economic thing to do

We’re aiming to have $4,000 worth of adoptive parents to do this each year. The names of all the ‘parents’ will be listed in our catalogue ( and website) each year..

If you’d like to ADOPT A BRASSICA we’d love to hear from you. You can chose to donate any amount of money,  every dollar will help. Thirty adoptive parents at $100 will cover each years growout. .

This year we are growing  Mammoth Red. We have no heritage red cabbages that have been  grown out by us or even in New Zealand at all by seed savers as far as we know and red cabbages add a lot to our salads and winter ‘greens”.

We have budgeted $1,000 towards the total cost of $4,000 from our membership fees  i.e. all of our members are contributing. If you'd like to help in additional way please see below please copy this page and complete below then either post or e-mail to us info@koanga.org.nz

YES I”D LIKE TO BE AN ADOPTIVE PARENT of the MAMMOTH RED CABBAGE

Name

Address

Email address

Amount donated

Cheque

Card number

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