Hen Gymro
Triticum aestivum · acc. W-0114
Tall winter bread wheat off the Irfon valley. Goes over in a wet August and gives you a loaf worth the trouble anyway. Needs a stake or a hedge.
- Sow
- Oct–Nov
- Depth
- 25 mm
- Count
- 200 seeds
- Germ.
- 94%
£3.20
What we do
Take seed. Send some back.
Six lines are open to growers this season. Packets are small on purpose — enough for a bed, not a field — because what we need is fifty people growing one thing each, not one person growing fifty.
Open this season
Six packets
Prices cover the envelope, the postage and the testing. No accession is ever sold — you are paying for the handling of something the library holds in trust.
Cwm Hir Marrowfat
Pisum sativum · acc. W-0876
A drying pea from the abbey cottages, saved continuously since at least the 1930s. Grows to 1.6 m and will pull down anything you tie it to.
- Sow
- Mar–Apr
- Depth
- 50 mm
- Count
- 60 seeds
- Germ.
- 88%
£2.80
Pentre Ifan Black Oat
Avena strigosa · acc. W-1203
The old Welsh bristle oat. Takes thin, sour, wet ground that will not carry anything else. Our lowest germination and our most requested line.
- Sow
- Mar–May
- Depth
- 20 mm
- Count
- 250 seeds
- Germ.
- 79%
£2.60
Radnor Red Ribbed
Brassica oleracea · acc. W-2440
A kale, purple-stemmed, hard as nails. Stood −14°C at Presteigne in 2010 with no cover. Cut it from November and it will still be feeding you in April.
- Sow
- May–Jun
- Depth
- 10 mm
- Count
- 150 seeds
- Germ.
- 91%
£2.40
Vaughan's Bolter
Beta vulgaris · acc. W-3318
A leaf beet Elin selected out of a bolting crop because she liked its stubbornness. Named against her wishes. Cut-and-come-again from June to hard frost.
- Sow
- Apr–Jul
- Depth
- 20 mm
- Count
- 100 seeds
- Germ.
- 96%
£2.40
Abbey Blue
Vicia faba · acc. W-1988
Small blue-seeded field bean, autumn sown. Fixes nitrogen, breaks heavy ground and feeds you in July. The line we most want multiplied this year.
- Sow
- Oct–Nov
- Depth
- 75 mm
- Count
- 40 seeds
- Germ.
- 90%
£3.60
When to put it in
Sowing band, this season's six
Windows are for 200 m above sea level in mid-Wales, which is where these were selected. Anywhere south or lower, bring everything forward a fortnight.
Hen Gymro
Sow October to November
Harvest August
Cwm Hir Marrowfat
Sow March to April
Harvest August to September
Pentre Ifan Oat
Sow March to May
Harvest September
Radnor Red Ribbed
Sow May to June
Harvest November to December
Vaughan's Bolter
Sow April to July
Harvest June to November
Abbey Blue
Sow October to November
Harvest July
Sowing window
Harvest / seed ready
Everything else
What things cost
| Service | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit an accession | Number, record, cold storage in perpetuity, duplicate to Kew | Free |
| Standard packet | 40–250 seeds depending on species, with the test figure | £2.40–£3.60 |
| Bulk cereal, 250 g | Enough for 100 m² of multiplication plot | £14.00 |
| Germination test, your seed | 200 seeds, 14 days, written result | £18.00 |
| Grow-out contract | One accession, one season, cages and stakes supplied | £180 per season |
| Cleaning & winnowing, your harvest | Up to 20 kg through the Clipper and the screens | £45.00 |
| Group visit, up to 20 | Two hours, the loft, the store and the ledger | £90.00 |
Before you ask
The awkward questions
Can I sell what I grow from your seed?
Yes, and please do. Sell the crop, sell the flour, sell the plants. The one thing we ask is that you do not sell the seed itself under a new name, and that you tell anybody you pass it to where it came from and what its number is.
Why won't you send me twenty varieties?
Because you will not save any of them. We have forty-seven years of evidence for this. One or two lines, grown properly and reported back, is worth more to the library than a box of twenty that all get sown in the same bed and cross.
What does “report back” actually mean?
A postcard is fine. Sowing date, what the ground was like, whether it came up, when you cut it, and whether you saved any. Ten lines. If it failed we want that most of all — a failure at 300 m in Cumbria is a data point we cannot generate here.
Is any of this certified or approved for commercial sale?
No. These are conservation varieties, distributed under the amateur-variety and gene-bank provisions. They are not on the National List, they have not been through DUS trials, and several of them would fail uniformity testing on purpose. That is not a defect; it is the reason they still exist.
Do you take deposits from outside Wales?
We take anything with a documented history from anywhere in Britain and Ireland. If it comes from further afield we will usually put you in touch with the collection that ought to hold it instead — a seed is worth more in the region that shaped it.
Requests open on 1 October
The list goes out by post and by email on the same morning. Tell us which one you want and roughly what ground you have.