Planting seeds: How heirloom vegetables have helped this UAE farm flourish in the desert

A stroll through Greenheart Organic Farms reveals rows and rows of vibrant vegetation, regardless of the early October temperatures. Yet most producers in the Gulf don’t even start growing crops until this time around of year. “We’ve been growing all year,” says Elena Kinane, the farm’s founder. “Nobody would believe I've kale in October.”

And there's a lot more than just kale. Kinane also offers 20 types of tomato, nine varieties of cherry tomato, and 10 types of aubergine, plus numerous types of pepper, okra, courgette, collard greens, spinach, and more, all grown from naturally harvested seeds. Of the, 200 types of vegetables are available for sale; 80 percent of these heirloom and most of them organic and natural and 100 percent chemical-free.

Heirloom seeds are thought of as old seeds - sometimes even hundreds of years old - created by natural harvesting or open pollination by birds, insects or the wind. They’ve generally adapted over time with their specific regions, climate, and soil.

Kinane says heirloom seeds will be the reason her farm is indeed plentiful year-round. By contrast, hybrid seeds, which produce the vegetables entirely on most supermarket shelves, are engineered to grow in a range of conditions but don’t adapt, therefore last only three to four months and can't be reused. They always have to be purchased again, and in the UAE, they’re typically earned from overseas. Heirloom seeds, alternatively, can be used again and again, and finally, become desert-proof.

“We’re not trying to change the environment to match the crops; we’re changing the crops to match the environment,” Kinane says. “It is a lot more energy and financially intense to change the climate. Seeds and soil are living things; they will adapt.”

Greenheart Farms has had such success using its heirlooms that Kinane has completely done away with hybrid seeds for chilies, tomatoes, beans, lettuce, and peppers, among other vegetables. Amaranth, a protein-rich green, is probably the most successful desert plants up to now, she says, as is chard, red okra, a Hungarian wax chili, and Malabar spinach.

Kinane starts the harvesting process by testing several seeds, then narrowing them down over two to four years. She’s currently testing 17 types of heirloom cucumbers and hopes to narrow it right down to five.

She plants a mother seed, then once it is continuing to grow, takes seeds from that plant, and plants them again. If the next iteration thrives, it’s successful.

That is slow work and may take years to discover a successful variety, as was the case with Kinane's fennel. It took five years on her behalf to look for a seed that could survive the UAE heat. She sourced a variety from Italy, on a little farm in Florence.

This painstaking process is partly why it has taken Kinane 10 years to get her farm to where it really is today, however now it’s flourishing and Kinane could not be more proud. “I could supply most of Dubai with all the current greens they’d ever need.”

She says persons are skeptical of her process because it takes time. “It’s slow, and persons don’t like slow, however now that we’re at this stage we're able to ramp it up within three years and have an enormous impact.”

There have been investments in hydroponics and other new technologies in farming over time across the UAE, but not all of these have already been successful, says Kinane. She believes an investment in organic heirloom farming is cheaper and produces greater results.

Goats and chickens provide manure for compost at Greenheart Farms, making the soil nutrient-rich. Kinane also uses techniques such as interplanting garlic, celery, and marigolds as a sort of pest control - the smell repels insects - and laying her vines as low to the ground as possible where in fact the air is cooler.

“We can’t exclude nature, that’s not normal,” she says. “We make an effort to work with it up to we can.”

Chemical-free, organic and natural produce is healthier for humans than food is grown with chemicals and, arguably, it tastes better, too. When Kinane started planting her own food almost twenty years ago, it had been for personal health reasons. Then, when her daughter was created, she decided to turn her passion into something bigger.

“I was just overwhelmed with love and thought, I must do something to greatly help feed kids healthy food within their formative years,” she says.

Now, she hopes the lessons learned from greater than a decade of dealing with regenerative seeds and soil might help expand access to organic food over the region.

“When you have the seeds that work, the yields learn to go up and prices begin to decrease. Soon, more customers are able to organic and natural food, and food security increases. That’s what it’s all about,” she says.

A little seed bank on the farm is key to its future. Such banks are being used to preserve genes necessary for drought tolerance, disease resistance, taste, and other qualities, and also to prevent the lack of genetic diversity. Kinane is saving up a bank of plants that can grow in the desert, regardless of the high temperatures.

Running Greenheart Farms could be exhausting. Kinane and her team of 11 harvests, plant, and compost each day. They also gather and plant all seeds yourself, a labor-intensive, detailed process, not forgetting maintaining delivery orders (customers over the UAE can order products from the farm’s website).

However, when asked if she ever considers picking right up and moving somewhere greener, more fertile, and simpler to grow, her answer is easy: “I’ve been here for 25 years, that is my home. And if you can create it work in the UAE desert, no one can say you can’t make organic and natural work {anywhere else|somew