Nature’s Transformational Superpower
The Nature of Life is Change
Ahh, change.
Inevitable, inescapable, incredible, and inspiring – change is what drives our lives over time. Sometimes it happens abruptly, with a lot of fanfare and demands to be acknowledged or reacted to. And, sometimes, change is small, gradual, and quiet. It can happen right under your nose, and you won’t realize it until time has passed.
Parents know this all too well. One moment, you’re welcoming your new little one into the world, bearing witness to all of their firsts. Next thing you know, you blink and you’re in the passenger seat, gripping the door handle for dear life and pumping a brake pedal in the floor boards that doesn’t exist as they try driving for the first time. You blink again, and you’re hauling a mini-fridge up two flights of too-narrow stairs as you move them into their first year college dorm. You blink again, and they’re knocking on your front door with their own little ones in tow for an Easter egg hunt at grandma and grandpa’s house.
But when you look at them, you still see their first bike ride, all of their soccer games, and the time where they were small enough to fit in your arms. Time and change are funny like that.
At Seeds of Life, change is what inspires us to grow into all that we do. Every season of life is a testament to the power of transformation inherent to nature. After all, humans are part of the grand design of nature.
On the farm, founders Julie and Matt have been thinking a lot about change. It’s springtime, which is loaded with transformations of all shapes, speeds, and sizes.
From Winter to Spring on the Farm
Wintertime as a farmer often brings in the doldrums of your year. It’s a period of inactivity and rest, for both the weather and all of us below the clouds. Many plants become dormant during this season, requiring less water, less nutrients, and less active maintenance. Affairs in the greenhouse continue as normal. Aside from pruning and the occasional bout of polar vortex preparation, it’s a time of patience.
When the weather finally turns to brighter days, farmers like Matt end up knee deep in a unique sequence of changes everywhere. As the trees in the groves wake up from their winter hibernation, their watering schedules need to be adjusted and increased. It’s time to break out the fertilizer, so that the trees can push their new leaves out for a gorgeous green flush. Weeds pop out of the ground, happy to have precious nutrients available again. Pollinators big and small – like bees, ants, butterflies, moths, beetles, and bats – start making the rounds as flowerbuds appear and silently open. The days go from frigid to sweltering in the span of a few weeks, and then the rains come to saturate the earth below. A world of brown and gray is now a world erupting with color that becomes ever so slightly more vibrant, day by precious day.
From Seed to Tree
The real miracle of nature happens in the transformation of a seed. A seed is little more than genetic material and nutrients, neatly packaged in a hard shell and waiting for the right opportunity to come along.
Phase 1: Germination
When a seed finds the right conditions (usually regarding temperature and water requirements), it begins the process of germination. You probably know this phase by another name: sprouting! Water penetrates the seed’s external shell, softening it and activating the enzymes contained within. They get to work constructing a radicle from the nutrients available within the seed’s husk. The radicle is the first visible part of the plant that exits the seed, and it eventually becomes the first root. Roots are how plants access the bulk of their energy and nutrients, and they also help anchor the seed in place to give it structure against the elements when it emerges.
When the seed has enough access to nutrients outside of its husk through the radicle, it puts out a shoot – the external part of the plant that you think of when you imagine a sprout. The seed husk sometimes gets carried with shoot, but it will eventually fall off when the leaves emerge. At this point, the seed becomes obsolete, as the new seedling can access nutrients from its roots and sunlight through its leaves for photosynthesis.
Phase 2: Seedling
A sprout is little more than a newborn plant, and like a newborn, it’s still quite vulnerable. With time, the seedling will devote its energy to expanding its root ball. More roots means more nutrients, and more nutrients means more external growth. As more nutrients become available, the sprout grows thicker, taller, stronger, and leafier – all important qualities if the sprout is to make it to maturation.
Phase 3: Maturation & Pollination
At this phase, what was once a seed is now an established plant, with an expansive root system and healthy vegetative growth. It can weather the elements and happily puts out as many leaves as it can. Seasonality permitting, the plant may also flower (not all plants, but the majority do). Flowers open the plant to pollination, the way in which plants reproduce. Pollen contains the genetic material for future seeds, and it needs to be spread by the wind and pollinator species to help the plant reach its reproductive phase.
Phase 4: Fruiting and Seed Distribution
The goal of a plant’s life cycle is simple: make more of itself. Pollinated flowers become fruit. Cones, pods, berries and other fleshy fruits are all prime examples. The juicier, colorful fruits are meant to entice herbivores to eat them, eventually making their way through digestive tracts and being distributed through excrement (which is nutrient dense and like compost for the seed). And so, the cycle begins again.
Spring is prime time for germination, since the rains and warm temperatures are just right to activate dormant seeds.
The Symbolism of a Seed
We’re called “Seeds of Life” for a reason. A seed represents potential, the hope that comes with transformation, and the beautiful circle of life’s cycles that we all have come to count on as we walk through our days on Earth. Something so small, so precious, connects us all to the fundamental truths we all share. What seeds are you sowing this spring?
As always, we’re proud to grow with you through every season of life.