Adventures of a Seed Detective
with Adam Alexander

For over 30 years Adam has been collecting vegetable seeds from many of the countries visited on his travels as a documentary film-maker.  It all started in the Ukraine in 1989 when he discovered a delicious hot but sweet pepper that was being sold in a market in Donetsk. The lady had a pile of her peppers on an upturned crate.  She had been growing this medium sized, thick-skinned three-lobed variety for as long as she could remember as had her parents before her.

Since then his travels have included discovering another hot, sweet pepper growing in an oasis in southern Morocco, heirloom chillies from Indonesia, Cambodia, Mauritus and East Africa.  He has found heirloom and native varieties in recent times in Syria and Burma – two countries where native varieties are under particular threat.  Some seed is now with the Heritage Seed Library.  As a passionate seed collector and saver Adam propagates orphan vegetables for the HSL and shares his collection of nearly 500 varieties with other collectors and growers in Britain and the rest of Europe.  He also acquires heirloom seed from the USA which he experiments with to see how well the vegetables can grow in a British climate.

On his travels he has had many surprising encounters and adventures and made a number of exciting discoveries – especially of peas and beans, tomatoes, capsicums and cucurbits.

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