"One of the nicest things that we have is the potato," writes the soon-to-be 80-year-old rosa storkle in her book "potato festival. She put her book together with love, and with just as much love she still pursues conservation farming to safeguard the diversity of varieties and to let others share in the fascination of the tuber. The potato is her hobby. She has around 300 varieties from 50 countries around the world at home. Many brought them to the seed festival in volkach, where they found rubbing sales.
2000 visitors attracted
That's exactly what it was all about at the seed festival of the "open house" association, which again attracted about 2000 visitors on saturday, this time to the mainschleifenhalle in volkach. The organizers barbara and martin keller wanted to inspire the visitors with the diversity of the varieties. They are all seed resistant, which means that their seeds will grow into plants that have the same characteristics and shape as their parent plants. The variety can therefore be propagated naturally, as in the past.
Propagate in your own garden
This is the rough concern of the organizers to propagate varieties in their own garden. Because it is their firm conviction that such seeds belong to the people and not to any corporations.
Exchange table important
Of course, the exchange table of the seed ark was not to be missed. "That used to be self-evident", female meike hartlieb. Looking at the many visitors in the hall and at the exchange table, christina straub is convinced: "the interest is there, it just needs to be awakened."
Cultivators wanted for cereals
This year, the festival was expanded to include a variety of cereals. Klaus fleibner from the bavarian state agricultural institute (lfl) is looking for farmers who are replanting old cereal varieties. Grell's lower franconian wheat is already being propagated at lfl. Fleibner is happy if it will soon be baked bread in gnodstadt.
Many lower franconian landraces have disappeared. However, the wheat varieties gelchsheimer dickkopf and opferbaumer begrannter are still available as seeds. Fleibner has about 700 varieties to choose from, about 500 of which are cereals. The rest is distributed among flax, rape or reuben, for example the remmlinger runkelrube.
Like emperor wilhelm
The pomologist frank schellhorn from thuringia, who himself had about 65 apple varieties with him, was the man in demand. "Tastes like emperor wilhelm," he said of an apple brought in by a visitor. Even from the look it came, but with only one apple he did not want to commit himself one hundred percent, it could also be an apple of a samling. Schellhorn wants to preserve rare varieties, reintroduce fruit to nature and help those who want to plant scattered fruit.
River wild fruit
Wolfgang graf has dedicated himself not to apples, but to the speierling, the elsbeere or the kornelkirsche. Many visitors took young plants with them, but they also had the opportunity to purchase this wild fruit in liquid form as a brandy. Daughter julia graf explained that the fruits were also good in jams, for example with apples or quince.
Pure juice
The "main schmecker" (main tasters) are concerned with sustainable fruit and bee products from the region. Business manager krischan cords had pure apple juices from bohnapfel or "lohrer rambur" or mixed juices with speierling, as well as brandies, which were partly distilled from the fruit of only a few trees.
Rough offer
Countless seeds have changed hands. No one knows how many of these pastries were on offer. Veit plietz from schwarzach had a lot of seeds with him, feather corn, showy beans, sugar peas and much more was on offer at roland wust from habloch/pfalz, 80 different varieties of tomatoes and twelve varieties of potatoes were on offer at wolfgang holzheimer from wurzburg, visitors could choose from over 400 different varieties of vegetables and herbs at klaus lang from wolfegg, including the "brown wolfegg bean", which came from his grandmother.
839 tomato varieties
Andrea and werner illini from wassermungenau love and live diversity. "Unfortunately, there are only 390 of them," says andrea illini, laughing, "but she has a total of 839 varieties of tomatoes and 70 varieties of peppers. And their thick-fleshed, juicy chili or sweet peppers also found new friends. Those who bought seeds received the right tips on sowing and care from all the suppliers.
Also represented were the wurzburg campus garden, an urban gardening project on the university campus, and the intercultural generational garden from mainstockheim, germany. The wide range was rounded off by specialist literature and french wooden gardening tools.