Question #8 Where can I get non GMO seeds or plants for food?

This question seems to be at the forefront of many gardener's minds of late. I've done a lot of research for this one myself as I am a not so small scale urban gardener.

So which companies sell GMO seeds and seedlings? Which companies get seeds from Monsanto and its subsidiaries? Who is truly organic as far as seed production? All of these questions are linked together and so I am going to take some time to list many of the commonly known and not so commonly known seed distributors and what I know. I will also include links to their statements where I have found them. Note: these are going to be for American companies but if anyone wants me to investigate another country just drop me an email or message from the side bar.

Some of my garden plants

BE SURE TO READ THIS!
One thing I must say is that there have been a lot of ill rumors about seed companies buy from or being owned by Monsanto. Most of this is related to one source. Monsanto purchased a company called Seminis. Traditionally, Seminis was the source for many companies for award winning seeds of several varieties. Despite the purchase of this company by Monsanto the seeds produced and the production of those seeds has not changed with their purchase by Monsanto. When reading about the companies if you see "Monsanto Subsidiary" this is almost ALWAYS a reference to some seeds coming from Seminis and related to a long standing partnership between Seminis and the seed company prior to the Monsanto buy out. The same looks to be true for De Ruiter as well.
More info here. (Pay close attention to statements about to whom Monsanto sells GMO seeds)

HELPFUL INFORMATION: USDA Organic Certification Standards and Process
 
The Safe Seed Pledge, What is that?
This is a non-enforced (to my knowledge) pledge that a company signs stating it will not knowingly sell GMO products. More info here.


***************************************************

Burpee : Probably the most widely known seed company. For 135 years Burpee has been producing seeds, cultivars and plants for the American public.
Verdict: No GMO seeds, does purchase from a Monsanto subsidiary but these are NOT GMO. : Burpee's Statement on the subject

Cooks Garden : This company has a nice, wide variety of seeds and seedlings. I have ordered from here before and gotten beautiful, healthy seedlings.
Verdict: Owned by Burpee, so see above.

Seeds of Change: This is my seed and seedling seller of choice as they carry many heirloom varieties and some plants and seeds you can't get elsewhere. The downside is their stock sells out fast so if you don't plan early in the year what you want may not be available.
Verdict: Registered Organic. SoC seed source statement

Sylvania Natives :This is a nursery in Pittsburgh, PA that specializes in growing and selling native flower, tree and food plants.
Verdict: I know the owner personally. She collects all her seeds from her own stock or wild resources. I will personally vouch for the owner... but here is her statement too.

Johnny's Selected Seeds : I have never personally ordered from this company but I know others who have. They seem to have a nice variety of items and include heirlooms. The nice thing I see is that this is an employee owned company.
Verdict: They are Certified Organic by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Find Johnny's Seed info here MOFGA stadards for certification of organics is here.

Gurnsey's Seed and Nursery Co.: I have never ordered from this company and do not know anyone who has. They seem to have a beautiful catalog.
Verdict: I couldn't find any information on their seed sources or practices. If anyone has these from reliable sources please contact me and I will update this.

Jung: Like Burpee, this company has been operating in the US for a long time and is sort of a traditional source of seeds. They are a family owned and operated company.
Verdict: No GMO seeds, does purchase from Monsanto Subsidiary. You can see their very open product statement here:

Park Seeds I have never ordered from this company but have seen several good reviews of their product.
Verdict: No GMO seeds. Does purchase from Monsanto subsidiary. See their statement.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds: I had never heard of this company until I started researching for this question. They seem to have a beautiful selection of products.
Verdict: Statement to not knowingly purchase GMO or treated seeds. They also seem to encourage contact if you have any further questions about their policies.

FedCo Co-op Gardening Supplies This company promotes seed saving, GMO labeling and is also assocaited with MOFGA (See Johnny's Seeds for more info). See their statements on the Seed Links on the Left hand side.

High Mowing Organic Seeds: Another of those companies I have discovered via this list.
Verdict: Certified Organic by Vermont Organic Farmers. Statements, certificate and link to VOF standards here

John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds I know people who have had success with items purchased from this company.
Verdict: Associated with Van Engelen Inc but I can't seem to find anything about seed quality or sources.

Nichols Garden Nursery: Has seeds, plants and lots of other things for sale.
Verdict: Associated with the Safe Seed Pledge.

Grow Organic: This seed company I have no experience with. Again, another I found through this research. They look to have a nice variety. They also have a lot of useful information on their site about gardening and farming.
Verdict: Safe Seed Pledge and USDA certified organic. See the left side bar on this page

Renee's Garden Another company I found that I never knew about. Nice variety and they support school agriculture which is awesome.
Verdict: USDA Certified Organic

Seed Savers Exchange. I knew about this but had never looked into it before. I have also heard good things about this organization.
Verdict: Heirloom preserving organization. Go all the way to the bottom of their site and you will see "Untreated Seed Statement" there for more information.

Territorial Seed Company: Good variety. Seems to have some great garden tutorial videos. Nice garden planner software too.
Verdict: The third from the bottom FAQ addresses some of the ideas.  The claims are ambiguous and I want to look farther into this but haven't found any other information.

Tomato Growers Supply Company Specialty company for.. you guessed it tomatoes.
Verdict: Possible association with Monsanto subsidiary but I couldn't find a reliable source and they have no information about it on their site.

Wild Seed Farms: I have gotten some pretty awesome wildflower seed mixes from here. They sell other seeds as well.
Verdict: Though I have seen some third party sites claim they have taken the Safe Seed Pledge I can't find anything on their site about it.

Virtual Farms Seed Company: I never knew this company existed though they seem to focus on heirlooms.
Verdict: Has taken the Safe Seed Pledge

*************************************************


This is by no means an exhaustive list so if you are curious about a company I have not listed feel free to contact me with the company name. The easiest way to do this on your own is... either look through the company's site. Most will have badges and statements from the owner. If you are still concerned, use their contact information to ask questions, email or phone or snail mail. If the farm is local, many seed farms will offer tours or visitation to their farms. The resources are there to find out this information on any company, nursery or organization that sells plants and seeds for food and garden.

 

Question #7: Why is the sky blue?

This question comes from Sandra on Facebook.

Sandra, your question relates back to another question about the electromagnetic spectrum. When we consider the sky we have to think about the wavelengths of light. White light is coming from the sun to Earth. White light contains all the visible colors, we see this as a rainbow of colors through a prism. Of those visible colors, red has the lower energy and the longest wavelength, blues have the higher energy and the shorter wavelength.

Our air is full of particles, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, dust, nitrogen, water droplets and so on are present in the atmosphere. We can imagine that the sky is full of atoms and molecules floating around though they are too small for us to see with our eyes. (Until the dust and water droplets condense to make clouds or there is too many particles and we see haze or smog.)

Now, imagine a wavelength of light coming into the atmosphere. If it is a red wave it is coming in in wide waves. This red light has less of a chance of bumping into particles. If the wave is blue though it is zigzagging back and forth a lot more and has more chance of bumping into a particle. When a blue wave bounces into a particle it is dispersed. That means it is deflected from that particle and maybe into another and so on until it is eventually deflected toward the ground. This deflection is called the scattering of light.

So we have red light coming in straight and blue bouncing off in every which direction like this diagram:

From NASA.gov

With all those blue light waves bouncing in every direction no matter where you look there will be blue light entering your eyes.

The next question is why blue instead of violet? Violet has more energy and an even shorter wavelength.

There are four reasons for this. The first is the light itself. The light coming from the sun is not constant nor does it always represent every color in the visible light spectrum. Some of the highest energy light, the violets, are absorbed by the upper atmosphere. The blues and violet are scattered around but we are also getting some light that is reaching us unscattered. So, the violet and blue are lightened. We can see this effect if you are in an open landscape. On a bright, sunny, cloudless day the sky overhead will appear the bluest and will fade to a more and more pale color toward the horizon. The last reason has to do with our eyes. We have three major types of cones or color sensitive receptors in our eyes; red, blue and green. These are named because of the colors they are most sensitive to. Our blue receptors sense blues, indigos and violets. When we look at the sky our blue receptors are stimulated more than the red or green and so we perceive a blue sky.

And since I have forgotten to do this with past questions, from now on I will be citing sources. For this question it includes the following:

University of California
NASA's Space Place
How Stuff Works
Science Made Simple

Question #6 Why doesn't ice cream melt when you fry it?

This is a question I get asked a lot so I figured I would answer it now.

The first thing we need to discuss is freezing temperatures. For water it is 32 F (0 C) but milk is a little different. Due to the fact milk has solids dissolved in it, fats, proteins, etc. the freezing point of milk is 31.028 F or -0.5400 C. A little aside, one of the ways they determine if milk is watered down by a supplier or if the cow producing it is sick is they check the freezing point of the milk. If the freezing point is 32 F (0 C) then there is something wrong with the milk. Back to the ice cream. Ice cream freezes solid at about 5 F (-15 C). Most home freezers keep ice cream at or near this temperature. 

When we think about a scoop of ice cream melting that means that the temperature of that ice cream has raised from whatever temperature it was in the freezer to something between 5 F and 31 F. The higher the temperature the more milk like it is. The trick with fried ice cream is figuring out a way to dunk a scoop of ice cream into 160-190 F (71- 88 C) boiling oil in a fryer. How can we do this without the temperature of the ice cream reaching a point where it will melt?

There are a few things going on with fried ice cream.

First, most establishments that make fried ice cream chill the scoops of ice cream to a temperature that is colder than the ice cream they serve without frying. This gives a few extra degrees before melting starts. Sometimes extra large scoops of ice cream are also used to help have more of a core to keep the ice cream solid.

Second, the pie crust like shell on the ice cream insulates the ice cream from coming into direct contact with the hot oil. (Other possible crusts are tempura batter, corn flakes, nuts, cookie crumbs, tortillas,

Finally, the time that the ball is in the hot oil is just a few seconds. No more is needed because the shell is thin and cooks quickly.


Basically. you have extra cold ice cream in insulation (the crust) dipped in hot oil for an incredibly short period of time. This allows the ice cream to stay solid. If you let your fried ice cream sit too long the heat from the shell will reach the inside and begin to melt the ice cream. This is why fried ice cream is a dessert to eat immediately.

Question #5 Why do people poop corn?

From Zach on Facebook.

I was waiting for a question like this to come up. I am never disappointed.

Before we talk about why we poop out corn lets talk a little about seeds and the human digestive system.

An individual kernel of corn is a seed. Each ear of corn has many many seeds on it. Here is a diagram of a single corn kernel.

From http://www.corn.org

 We can see inside is the germ (or where the corn plant will develop from) and the starch/gluten which will serve as food to the young plant while it develops its first roots and leaves. Then we have the hull and fiber. The hull and fiber are not digestible by most animals, including humans.


There are several stages of digestion. The first is mastication or chewing. When it comes to corn this is a very important step. Chewing breaks open the individual kernels and exposes the starch and gluten which we can digest. If the kernel is not chewed and swallowed whole then the hull will be mostly unaffected by our digestive system the rest of the way through.

The reason our digestive enzymes and the stomach acids don't breakdown the improperly chewed (or swallowed whole) kernels of corn is that the hulls are cellulose. We, humans, don't have a digestive system that can break down cellulose so the corn kernel passes through the digestive system.

Having whole kernels of corn in your poop means that you did not spend enough time chewing your corn before swallowing it. The unchewed kernels are expelled in the feces (poop) with the hulls still intacted.

One side note..... there is an advantage to the plant for humans and other animals to poop out their seeds whole. Most seeds have a cellulose hull or coat that allow them to pass through the digestive system of most non-ruminant animals unless they are chewed. What this does is mix those seeds in the feces. If we imagine back before toilets or outhouses humans were doing their bathroom duty in fields or behind trees like the rest of the animals. The human or other animal would ingest a seed and then when they would go to the bathroom the seeds would be embedded in the feces. The feces provides nutrients (instant fertilizer) and water. An added bonus is that most animals will not dig in feces to acquire those seeds so the passing of the seed also offers a measure of protection to the seed from being eaten by something that will chew it better or can digest it.

Question #4 Why is there so much space between things in the universe?

From Zach on Facebook.

This question is directly related to the Metric Expansion of Space or the increase of distance between objects and particles in space. To really get a grip on this topic lets go all the way back to the Big Bang then work forward.

The Metric Expansion of Space from Astronomy Magazine and NASA: http://cs.astronomy.com/

At the moment just prior to the Big Bang all the matter and energy of the universe was in a single point. Technically it had not volume it was crushed in so tiny. At the moment of the Big Bang all of this energy and matter flew out of this volumeless point at speeds at (or some speculate even faster than ) the speed of light. Now all this matter is flying away from this point and starting to spiral and form early gas clouds and accretion disks and so forth. However, even these larger items that are forming are still being acted upon by the energy that came out of the Big Bang so they are being shoved away on all directions at the speed of light.

Gravity can hold these moving objects together. For example, every star in the Milky Way galaxy is being acted on by this initial Big Bang force, however, the gravity between all those stars keep them moving as a group. Think of it as a bunch of people swimming in the ocean. If a huge wave comes in they'll be pushed around in different directions and away from each other. If those swimmers are holding hands (the hand holding is gravity) then they will be moved as a unit by that big wave.

The Universe is 13.7 billion years old +/-. For these 13+ billion years everything has been moving at the speed of light or near the speed of light at least.

The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. Let's convert this term to meters per year (m/yr) so that we can compare it to our 13.7 billion years.

After we cross out all of our units we are left with the following calculation which will give us meters per year.

299,792,458*60*60*24*365= 9.454255 * 10^15 or written out it would look like this....

9,454,255,000,000,000 m/yr.

If you are not comfortable with meters that would be 5,874,601,701,065.775391 mi/yr.

That's a lot of distance to cover in a year. To put it in perspective it is 10 million times the distance from the sun to Saturn. This should start getting to the reason why things in the universe are so far apart.

While doing these calculations why don't we look at how far a particle, say a hydrogen atom, may have moved from the Big Bang if it were present at the exact moment of the bang and traveling away the entire time.

5,874,601,701,065.775391 mi/yr * 13.7 billion years. = 80,482,043,000,000,000,000,000 miles
or... 13,690,622,873.69648 light years.

How do we know this calculation makes sense?

We know that our hydrogen atom was traveling at the speed of light (i.e. one light year per year) for 13.7 Billion years. Our answer for how far it traveles is 13.7 billion light years (if we round.)

So what does this all mean? That means that 13.7 light years is the farthest distance two objects can be from each other. i.e. one object on one end of the universe to another object on the exact opposite side of the universe. Any distance smaller than this is a possible distance between two objects somewhere in space.

Let's take this back to something more concrete. This Hubble article and video explains it without all the math.

This NOVA article covers it as well.

An awesome Visible Universe poster from National Geographic. The timeline at the top may be very helpful.

Question #3: Why can you hear the ocean-like sounds in hollow things like seashells and pots?

From Zach on Facebook.

This question deals with the way sound waves move or more precisely bounce. Since the most common idea for this is a seashell we will work with this model.  We are going to imagine we are in a normal room. There are other noises around.. maybe people talking in the other room or cars driving by outside.

Sound moves in waves. Let's imagine the sound of the car. Sound waves come toward us from that car. Some bounce off of our body, some enter our ear, some pass us by and some, a small few, enter the shell we are holding near our head. The sound waves then resonate within the shell. Resonance means that the air and the shell itself are now vibrating at the same frequency as the sound of the car. Those vibrations of the shell then make it to our ear and we hear sound coming from it.

The interesting thing is that different shells sizes, shapes and shell thicknesses will change the frequency of the sound waves and therefore change the sound we hear. The same experiment can be done with cups of different sizes and materials. The one trick is to find an area with a constant sound to ensure that the frequency of the item vibration is different and not the frequency of the incoming sound. You can also produce a similar effect by cupping your hands over your ear at different distances from your ear. Angle of the object (particularly cup shaped objects.. cups, glasses, coconuts, etc) to your ear can also alter the sound you hear.

There are apparently even relaxing earplugs you can purchase? that replicate this phenomenon.

Question #2 What is in the space between the electron and the nucleus?

This question comes from Paul on Facebook.

The first thing is a little about the anatomy of an atom. The nucleus of an atom is made up of protons, with a positive charge, and neutrons which have no charge or are called neutral. Around the nucleus is the electron orbits or cloud. The negatively charged electrons are considered to be in a cloud because they are moving too fast to really be able to determine exactly where they are at an given time. The electron cloud is the area around the nucleus where we expect to find the electrons.

The distance Paul is looking for has a name, the Bohr radius. Named for the famed physicist Neils Bohr this radius is the distance between a proton and an electron in an atom or the distance between the nucleus and the electron. This distance is accepted as 5.2917721092(17)×10⁻¹¹ m or 0.53 angstroms according to Bohr's work.

If you'd like to get into the math of how to figure out where an electron is based on Bohr's model this is the equation:

where:
a0 is the distance from nucleus to electron
is the reduced Planck's Constant or Dirac Constant = 6.58211928 x 10^-16 eV*s
is the resting mass of an electron
is the elementary charge or -1.602176565 x 10^-19 C


Modern Quantum Mechanics gives a different value that is approximately 1.5 times Bohr's given distance. The difference in these values is due to how classical (Bohr's) model of an electron differs from how Quantum Mechanics sees the electron. Bohr's model is what people are used to seeing where the electron is some dot on an orbit around the nucleus of the atom. Bohr's model gives it an exact point and that can be measured precisely. Quantum mechanics on the other hand measures the probability of an electron to be at any point within an electron shell. (think of an orbit that is 3D where the electron can go forward, back, left, right, up and down with in a given area. this is the shell) Due to the 3D and probability qualities of the quantum measurements the values are different. As we work with larger and larger atoms the difference between the Bohr and Quantum numbers do fluctuate.

The equation for the quantum model is much more complicated. Part of this complication is due to particle wave theory which I am not going to explain in depth here. However, basically, it is the idea that a particle (electron in this case) can move both like a particle and like a wave.

ψ = ψ(x, t) is the wave function for the electron

x and t are the space and time coordinates

m is the rest mass of the electron

p is the momentum from Schrödinger theory

c is the speed of light

ħ is the reduced Planck constant

All the other variables come from quantum matrices which we are also not going to go in depth with at the moment. You can read a little more about how this quantum model is derived here.

The pictures below will help you understand the reasons why there is the difference between the Bohr and Quantum models and equations.

Bohr's model of a nucleus with electrons orbiting.
2 orbitals are shown as the rings.

Quantum model of the possible locations of electrons at any given moment.
2 shells of electrons are shown one in grey and one in red.

I hope that has answered your question Paul.

Question #1: Exactly how much of the color spectrum do humans really see?

This question comes to us from Flexcia on FB.

The first thing we must examine is the question. There is a common misconception that the full electromagnetic spectrum and color spectrum are the same. The color spectrum is, by definition, the visible light or the colors we can normally see. The electromagnetic spectrum is the visible plus other parts of electromagnetic energy. (see the image here.)

Electromagnetic radiation occurs in waves. The nanometer (nm or 10^-9 meters) measurement is how far it is from one hump of the wave to the next. This is called wavelength. Higher numbers mean there is farther distance between the waves and a higher energy, slower moving wave. Higher energy has shorter wavelength.

Here is a way to think about wavelength.

So, imagine you are holding this rope and the other end is tied to a tree. If you want to do slow waves you can move your arm slowly but if you want more energy in the waves you have to really move your arm with a lot of energy. This can help remember whether short or long waves have more energy.


Humans vision is limited to the visible light between 400-700nm. However, animals can see in other wavelengths. For example, birds and bees can see the visible spectrum and ultraviolet (UV) portions of the scales. Snakes and some other animals can sense the thermal infrared (IR) portions of the spectrum. Spiders only see green and UV. So there are all types of vision out there among animals.

Back to Flexcia's question. What part can humans see? The visible spectrum is our limit but there are millions of colors within that spectrum. Every color you've ever witnessed in a movie, a video game clothing, nature, all those colors are all in the visible spectrum.

Within that spectrum of visible light some individuals have more visual acuity. This means that some people can distinguish more colors than others. At the extremes there are things like red-green colorblindness where individuals can not accurately distinguish between red and green light wave lengths. The other end is those who have hyper-acuity. Recently a woman was discovered/found that has tetrachromat. Tetrachromat is the ability of being able to distinguish between more colors than the average person. If you want to test your own abilities to distinguish colors you can give it a try here.

While we are on the subject of seeing we should take a moment here at the end to discuss how we are seeing those colors. Most color we see is reflected light. Well what does that mean? Here's the best description for the process.

Imagine you are looking at a green leaf of a tree. Sunlight (which contains all the visible light colors) comes down and hits the leaf. Trees absorb light energy for photosynthesis. Tree leaves absorb all colors except green light. This green light reflected from the leaf and enters our eye. Because only green light is entering our eye that is the color we see. Leaves are green. Well, what about in the Autumn? Tree leaves are other colors. This is because of the change in the light that a tree is using.. absorbing.. as it prepares to go dormant.

Now, let's apply this principle to other things. Look at your shirt or a nearby object. Whether you are outside (in the sunlight) or inside (under white artificial light) all the visible spectrum colors are being produced by the light source. The item you are looking for is absorbing all the light colors except the one you see. So if your shirt is blue... it is absorbing all the visible colors EXCEPT blue.

If we expand this idea we can relate this back to electromagnetic radiation. Imagine it's a very sunny day. You spread out two blankets in the sun.. a black one and a white one. We all recognize that the black one will be hotter to the touch after being in the sun. Why?

The light we see is white. That means in order to perceive an item as white it is reflecting all the visible colors. None of the energy from those light waves are being absorbed by the fabric. (remember energy often creates heat). The black fabric though is absorbing all the colors. Technically, none of the light waves are being reflected to our eyes. The black fabric is absorbing more energy and therefore is hotter to the touch.

What about our computer screens? This is not reflected light. Instead of reflecting light from our monitor the monitor is projecting a certain color of light produced by the mix of pixels and their colors. High definition TVs often have more pixels per inch on the screen of the TV and more pixels per inch on the tape or video taken. This allows for more colors that give us a feeling of a higher depth or definition to the image.

I hope this answers your question Flexcia.

What is this blog?

This is an idea generated by my students. They thought it would be cool to have a place that was open for people to ask any science questions they might have and get an answer that was well researched. That is why this blog is here.

Who am I? I am a teacher, high school science. I am certified in biology, health science, environmental education, earth and space science and contemplating physics as well. I have spent quite a number of years (13 years now) in education in every grade from preschool all the way to adults in science, art and other subjects. In addition, to that, 8 years in the education department of a Natural History Museum. So that is a little about me but feel free to ask if there are other questions.

How this works:
1. Think of a science or science related question you’d like to ask.
2. Check the archives to see if it has been asked yet.
3. See that ASK a Science Question over on the side? Fill it in and send it my way.
4. As time permits I will answer questions in the order in which they are received. (Ideally, at least one a day.) I reserve the right to refuse to answer a question. Questions can be anon or with name.
5. If there are no questions at the time I will find a question of my own to answer.
6. any questions?

So full speed ahead to our questions.