Each spring, farmers and gardeners "put another season's promise in the ground," in the words of the late Canadian singer/songwriter Stan Rogers. In New Hampshire, most plows have been retired, but May and June weekends thrum with the sound of rototillers. High food prices and a slow-growing pubic appreciation for food that's locally grown, fresh and often organic has caused home and market gardens to proliferate. Call them victory gardens in the war on high prices, cardboard tomatoes and food grown not for taste but the ability to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to market.

Many gardeners have already sent off their seed orders. Some plan to buy seed locally. Before ordering, here are some things to think about.

For several years, food scientists have been saying that the day may soon come when grocers will routinely say, "Yes, we have no bananas. " Almost all the bananas consumed in the United States and other developed areas of the world are clones of a single species called Cavendish. For the past few years, two types of fungus have been spreading that decimate Cavendish plantations. Crop scientists warn that the banana species, the world's fourth most important food crop after rice, wheat and milk, could soon be wiped out. That would cause mass hunger, starvation and economic disaster in some nations. Other monocultural crops are similarly endangered.

That brings us to the second story.

In late February, on a Norwegian island 700 miles from the North Pole, a seed vault dug into a sandstone hill covered with permafrost opened. In photographs, it looks like the secret home of a James Bond villain. The cave is an international repository where the seeds of tens of thousands of species will be sealed and stored at a temperature that will keep them viable for hundreds or thousands of years.

The seed bank is a hedge against calamities similar to the Irish potato famine. It is a repository of the genetic diversity of the plants that have fed humans for thousands of years.

Which brings us to the third story.

Maine's legislature is considering a bill to protect farmers from lawsuits by big seed companies seeking damages from growers whose crops are found to contain patented genes. It's a tactic similar to the lawsuits filed by record companies over illegally downloaded music from the internet. Those genes from a hybrid plant don't have to be downloaded illegally, however. They could have been in pollen blown by the wind or carried by insects, but that doesn't matter. If the gene is found in the farmer's crop, the seed company considers it a patent violation. The Maine law is an attempt to protect farmers whose crops are inadvertently contaminated with patented genes.

This season, gardeners can help protect thousands of un-patented, open-pollinated heirloom species grown by past generations. Some may not resist disease or drought as well. Others won't tolerate the herbicides agribusiness uses instead of a hoe, or be of uniform shape or color. But almost all of them will taste better than their mass-produced relatives, and they tend to wear nametags that are apt for our times, such as the tomato varieties "Mortgage Lifter" and "Bloody Butcher."

Good luck, and may your garden grow.