It’s spring, which means you may have start­ed your own gar­den, or maybe you know some­one who start­ed bring­ing up lit­tle seedlings months ago. Seeds are where all home gar­dens and farm­ers’ fields begin — but there are some key dif­fer­ences between the seeds that large agro-cor­po­ra­tions sell and the ones that you can choose to plant in your back­yard or balcony.

This week, we speak with Denise O’Reil­ly, the head of oper­a­tions at A’Bunadh Seeds and get down to the root of ques­tions like, what does it mean to save seeds, and why is it impor­tant? What’s an heir­loom vari­ety? Is that dif­fer­ent than a hybrid?