The Diggers Blog

We can admire English gardens for all the right reasons but sourcing our vegetables and fruit seeds from their damp, cool climate is absurd. English gardeners cannot grow tomatoes, capsicums, pumpkins and melons, let alone more...

Botanicus Organicus. Seeds not modified by man. These botanic originals form the backbone of Australia's finest gardens, our botanic gardens. These species have adapted to millions of years of ecological change growing in natural organic more...

This claim is easier said than done because Monsanto has acquired 50 seed companies in the last 10 years. They acquired the world's largest vegetable seed company Seminis but as its focus was on hybrid more...

The Diggers Club pioneered the rescue of heirloom seeds over 19 years ago. Since then commercial seed companies have concentrated on creating hybrid and genetically modified forms of vegetable seeds because they are vastly more more...

In the last thirty years nearly all the tall romantic flowers we associate with cottage gardening have been replaced in our nurseries by dwarf, early flowering bedding plants with enlarged flowers. F1 hybrid petunias, pansies, more...

The tomatoes we eat today are the most altered fresh food we serve at the table. The original tomato that arrived in Europe 400 years ago, pomodoro (golden apple), has now become large and red more...

Genetically engineered seeds have been developed as a vehicle to extend the sale of weedicides and pesticides. Totally reliant on the protection of patents, they give corporations, for the first time, ownership of life forms more...

Every seed merchant prospers by selling highly priced hybrid seed that they now own which replaces open-pollinated heirloom seed, that we all own, with a low profit margin. So the movement back to growing heirlooms more...

The world's largest seed company, Monsanto, has used its monopoly over GE crops to acquire the world's largest vegetable seed company, Seminis, in 2005. It then purchased De Ruiter Seeds, the dominant breeder of glasshouse more...