Course in Denmark ‘teaching the teachers’ in seed saving, February 2019

The Danish project team from Frøsamlerne (Danish Seed Savers) invited 15 seed savers from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania for a course ‘teaching the teachers’ in seed saving from 15. to 18. February 2019. The course was part of developing an educational program in saving seeds of heritage plants and included testing the materials and pedagogical methods.
Simon von Siebenthal, Vivi Logan, and Louise Windfeldt have been the core of the Danish project team.
On Friday Louise showed them around central Copenhagen. The theme was “The Power Centre is where the food comes in”. Afterwards they were on a tour in the Botanical Garden with one of the retired gardeners. Then they went to Simon’s place: Farendløse Mosteri near to Ringsted. They stayed here for 3 days to do the course in seed saving.
On Saturday, Vivi and Allan Clausen taught principles of seed saving and practical seed saving. This included genetic theory, scientific naming, pollination distances and, not least, lots of practical exercises in cleaning seeds. The students tasted the carrot that Allan is growing on his farm: Nantes Fancy, Hegnstrup Stamme (FS 0591) as part of the teaching of principles for the selection of carrots for next year's seeds.
On Sunday, Inga Bach taught knowledge of 0-tolerance diseases needed for swapping and selling seeds in the future. Louise gave a brief overview of Danish horticultural history, and Simon talked about Danish Seed Savers long history with Danish and international seed legislation.