What kind of peppers?

[Converse]

  My family just found a new favorite....from a store.... and we want to try to grow these in our AP system this year.  At Costco we were able to buy bags of mini sweet peppers.  There are a mix of orange, yellow and red peppers in the bag.  Some look like mini bells, others are a little elongated 2-3 inches long..  Yum!  The trouble is I cannot find anywhere on the bag or on the company website that the product came from that indicates the name of the peppers in the bag.  I'd like to buy some seeds and grow these ourselves..

   Does anyone know what sweet mini peppers I might be describing, so I could buy seeds?

  The bag shows:  Dolcebaby    Sweet mini peppers.   Distributed by Divine Flavor LLC 

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Awesome sleuthing Vlad! Monsanto owns many seed companies so always buy organic seed or you are likely buying GM seed. But even then, according to the USDA, if GM crops accidentally cross breed with organic ones the farmers can still sell their goods as organic - i'm guessing that is including seed. What can you trust any more. 

[Vlad Jovanovic]

Well apparently with this one... DNAP-Bionova-Seminis they were into transgenetic technology waaay before Monsanto bought them out (like the 1980's even)...So finding pertinent releases or statements wasn't all that hard (remember there was a big marketing push a good while back where GM foods were being touted as the best thing since sliced bread, and a time where companies, far from hiding their GM en-devours were actually tooting their horns loud and proud as part of the green revolution...And all of those guys are/were pretty high profile players it seems.

I imagine that USDA definitions could grow to include (purposely produced) GM seed as well in the near future, if it hasn't already...If you look at who is regulating these matters, it's no surprise. Kind of like a copy/paste strategy of what BigOil did with all the various regulatory commissions (infiltrating key and not so key positions) back under King George II.

I don't keep up on that stuff so much as I don't live there anymore (and don't want to go totally crazy)...But what's up with "Whole Foods" of all people caving in to Monsanto..? Sad, if I understood it correctly. 

[Rebecca B]

That 70% figure pertains to processed foods like tortilla chips, soda pop, etc.

"The most common GE crops in the United States are soybean, corn, cotton, and canola. Because many processed food products contain soybean or corn ingredients (e.g., high fructose corn syrup or soy protein), it’s estimated that 60 to 70 percent of processed foods in grocery stores include at least one GE ingredient."

Personally, I'm even more upset about the foods labeled "natural" in Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc. which may be made from GMO ingredients. Incongruous, IMNSHO.

Also, be aware Monsanto's GMO sweet corn became available in stores last Aug.

In 2005, Monsanto bought the large seed wholesaler Seminis, plus other smaller seed companies. Monsanto now owns 40% of the seeds available to gardeners---but that doesn't mean the seeds in packets you buy are GMO. (See my earlier post.) There are seed companies that do not purchase from Monsanto; please support them.

The Organic Consumers Association and other groups are working hard in California to get enough signatures to get the required labeling of GMOs on the fall ballot. I'd ask you to support that effort, too. 

[Carey Ma]

I only use open pollinated seeds! Even with these seeds I am a bit skeptical. One gust in the wrong direction and one could loose years of painstaking work as my family did back in the early eighties. Now I bag and cage any plant I want to propagate from seed. There is no winning this battle. The best we can do is support groups like seedsavers. The word organic doesn't mean sheit today. Just because it is grown the organic way doesn't mean its not contaminated. Though hybrids may or may not be any better, I still stay clear from them.

[Converse]

  Well all this is NOT reassuring at all.

   Grow a in a greenhouse.  Hand pollinate everything.  Make sure all your brassicas are separated to be sure they do not cross pollinate,etc...  So I need a HUGE green house...maybe even my own bee hive in there.

    Make sure to do my research on who really owns the seed companies (research back to the parent companies - not just who is listed on the package lable) I plan on purchasing seeds from.

  In the mean time I am buying mini peppers for my family to eat.  I cannot trace the Divine Flavor Co. back to Semini or Monsanto...but by the mere fact that the name of the packing Co. is very similar to a company who is associate with these, AND the fact that the produce is a product of Mexico, ...I am not reassured it is not some very tastey GMO food.

 

   Wow!  I am reminded of a Tom Lehrer song ( a satire-song writer) that says something about "don't drink the water and don't breathe the air."  But maybe it should be applied to the USA and include "don't eat the food".

    I really do appreciate all the information everyone has added here.  I just now need time to digest it all, and figure out how I am going to apply it to my situation.

   

[TCLynx]

I want to note a few things here.  We are talking about a few different issues though the GMO thing is the scary one.

It should also be noted that a huge amount of the NON-GMO seeds and products out there sold for produce farming are also hybrids so less likely to be easily grown from the seeds of the produce.  Sometimes this is simply a product of the fact that when breeding a new trait it you can often wind up with unexpected results and the product seeds will only produce one generation of that desired trait before you slump back into a more random gene pool of the parents, it takes many plant generations to breed from hybrids to a stable reproduce-able heirloom variety (hence why they become heirlooms.)

Other times, like when a company decides they want to patent a hybrid or variety, they want to keep control of that variety and be able to get more money if anyone else tries to sell it.  This can still be done with regular plain old hybrids but it is also done with GMO as well.

And in some cases, seed companies will create hybrids (often NON-GMO) that the offspring will not breed true or to them better yet, won't germinate at all.  They are trying to make sure that the growers always have to come to them to buy the seeds to keep producing their prized products.  Heck, there are cucumbers out there that don't require pollination because the female flowers will product fruit all on it's own.  Those hybrids are desirable to many truck farms and market farms since they can grow in a greenhouse without worrying about pollinating acres upon acres of flower and still get heavy production.  This sort of thing might work well enough for the truck farms as long as the seed companies have an ample supply of seeds.

For Home gardeners or old fashion farmers who intend to save a portion of their seeds each year in order to keep going instead of buying new seed each year, well you need to go with heirlooms, self pollinating varieties, and open pollinated varieties and make sure you are far enough away from other farms/gardens etc and probably bag flowers and hand pollinate certain things if you want to keep things pure and even then a real challenge.

But in the end, you know if you save the seeds and you plant them and they grow and you like what they produce, then spend a few more generations saving those seeds from the plants and you may create your own new stable variety.  It may not be exactly like the original package of mixed peppers from the store but if you are eating those peppers from the store anyway, I'm not sure that it would be any worse for you to grow the seeds and eat the product if it turns out to be any good and continue that way.

We hate the GMO and all that but it's here, no getting rid of it now.  Perhaps we can get labeling and maybe stop new production of more and more scary things but what is existing now is here.  It has escaped control (as any organism will) and even if no more of the seeds are ever produced, what DNA has already escaped into nature and is contaminating the organics and where ever else, it's here and we are stuck Living with it.  We best go on living and figure out how to deal with it rather that fearing it or trying to hide from it. 

[Converse]

  Thank you for this perspective, TCLynx.

   The trouble I have with all of this is that I want to grow healthful food for my family.  I'd buy all organically labled food ( and non-GMO as far as is possible) if we could afford it.  It is just sad for me that I found something that our family was considering a treat (the peppers) that they really like that should be very healthful for them....and now come to find that it may be next to impossible to grow these exact peppers.   I am going to try to find seeds as suggested in an earlier post, from a few catalogs. AND considering where the ones I bought in the store are grown, they are most likley GMO? 

  I understand the whole hybrid thing. Basic Plant Biol. 101.  I'd referred to that in my first posts. ( I also understand that GMO and Hybrids are two different thigs)  It is a bit discouraging though to try to do AP, and need a green house due to our climate, and the more I want to include in the system, the more I find I need to separate them (the plants).  This makes the green house need to be bigger and bigger.  Hard to do on a tight budget.   I can set my sights smaller.  It is just discouraging.  (Maybe its cabin fever setting in- there is still snow on the ground and more falling).

   Yes, GMO may be here to stay, and I want to avoid it as much as I can.  This is going to be tricky.  Like you pointed out, TCLynx  'it's here and we are stuck Living with it'.  At this point I am still in the learning phase as to just how much this is mixed in with what is available out there in storesand in our seed supply.  Not fear, just learning, and a bit discouraged.  A few years ago I was so surprized to find how much soy is is everything we buy in stores too. I am allergic to soy, so most everything served in our household is made from scratch. I am a lable reader by necessity. SO now I find I need to look to see if things are non-GMO too? Since it is not required to be indicated on lables in the USA, growing our own is the best option....translates to a bigger greenhouse.  Extensive home canning and drying to be able to produce enough to eat from our garden all year.  Good thing we live in the country.  A patio AP system won't do this...

     I am not panicking (yet).  It is just that I want to be able to provide the best I can for my family, just ilike so many here on this forum.  It is turning out to be more and more complicated the more and more I dig into the issue.

      Those peppers are tastey....I hope I can find non-gmo seeds available.

[Steve Vaitl]

As Carey pointed out, one gust of wind and you can not be sure your "organic" is going to produce "organic"! Pollen can carry on the wind for 1-2 miles depending on the direction, speed and humidity! So unless it is in a 100% controlled and sealed environment, it is a crap shoot.

And unless offspring are being produced via cuttings, the DNA of offspring will be altered due to fertilisation by gametes unless the plant is self-pollinating. Which many tomato and pepper varieties now days are self-pollinating.

[Edwin Mercado]

Seed Savers Exchange sells numerous types of pepper seeds on their site including these:

Pepper, Mini Red Bell

Pepper, Mini Yellow Bell

Pepper, Mini Chocolate Bell

And you don't have to be concerned about GMO seeds, because they don't sell them.

From the site:

"All varieties offered for sale by Seed Savers Exchange in our catalog and on our website are untreated, non-GMO varieties. "

Hope this helps.

Ed.

[Converse]

  Thank you!  This is good news!