Here’s a reason to save seeds
A seed shortage? Really? Gabriola gardeners, if we need incentive to save our seeds, articles like this should do it:
Dreaming of biting into a garden-fresh cucumber sandwich this summer? Better order your seeds now.
A poor growing season last year and increased orders from Europe could make it difficult for home gardeners to get seeds for the most popular cucumber variety and some vegetables this spring. Farmers, who usually grow different varieties from home gardeners, aren’t likely to be affected.
Seeds for what’s known as open-pollinated cucumbers seem to be most scarce, but carrots, snap peas, and onions also could be in short supply. [continue]
This is an article from an American publication, so I wonder how much of a shortage we’ll see from seed suppliers in Canada. Well, still — t’was a wake-up call for me. I’ve decided that my 2010 resolution is to save seeds from my garden.
Filed in gardening 5 Comments so far
5 Responses to “Here’s a reason to save seeds”
cheryl on 04 Feb 2010 at 9:59 am #
I’m not a expert on saving your own seeds by any means but I do know that in order to even have seeds to save you need a seed garden, aside from your regular harvest eating garden. If you want to save say bean seeds you’ll have let the plant go past it’s eatable time. This is true with most of the seeds you want to save. So you’ll have to double your growing space in order to save enough seeds to make it worth while. gardening.about.com/saving seeds is a good sight to visit on this subject.
Gabriolan on 05 Feb 2010 at 1:38 pm #
I realize that I’ll need to plant extra in order to allow for seed saving. But I won’t have to double my growing space, because each plant produces multiple seeds.
Take garlic, for instance. I plant one clove, and that grows into a head of garlic. Each head has maybe 8 cloves, right? So planting one extra clove of garlic in the fall gives me 8 cloves to save for seed stock the following summer. Other plants (like tomatoes) have way more seeds in each specimen, so I don’t think I’ll need to plant much extra for seed stock there.
I figure I’ll do my garden as planned, but mark some of the best plants for seeds. Then I’ll let those plants go to seed, and save that seed. Since I need only enough seed for personal use, that ought to work fine for me.
cheryl on 05 Feb 2010 at 2:49 pm #
I guess that will work if all your going to save is garlic and tomatoes seeds. I suppose it all depends on the type of plants you intend on saving for. If your family like to eat peas and carrots beans, cucumbers, squash and or zucchini. And your garden will only allow space for a certain number of plants then you have to figure out how much you want to eat and how much will be left for saving. You have to save enough for next years eating crop and for the next years seed save. One plant of beans will yield up to five or six pounds of beans which if your freezing or canning will be say for a family of four, five or so meals. Carrots take up alot of space. as do cucumbers albeit cucumbers if its a good plant will give you enough
fruit to save a couple to let go to seed. All I ‘m saying is you have to work out what works for your family. Not every family who grow their own food can do it in a couple of garden boxes. I know a family here on Gab who’s garden takes more then half of their yard in order to put up for the winter months as well as summer eating let alone letting some of it go to seed. So what ever works for you. I’ll even try to save seed this year my garden is quite small so I have to can or freeze as much as possible. Yes each plant produces lots of seeds but in order to save them they have to go beyond the eatable period so you loose that plant for eating. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes.
Andrea on 05 Feb 2010 at 3:38 pm #
I don’t consistently save seeds for everything I grow, but do save certain varieties that I particularly like or are expensive or hard to get, and occasionally end up saving seeds by default because I’ve missed harvesting something in time and might just as well let it go to seed :)
I wouldn’t say you need to double the size of the garden. I find that a seed packet usually grows more plants than we really need for our family of 4, unless it’s something that we plan to freeze in vast quantities, in which case it would be worth planting extra for seed saving.
You probably know this already, but if you are going to save seed you should avoid hybrid varieties (heirlooms ALWAYS work well – by definition), and only plant one variety of each species you want to save, otherwise they could cross pollinate and you would get weird varieties possibly with undesirable properties next year. Also, if there are other gardens near yours, you might get weird cross pollination. I’ve never found that to be a problem but then I’ve almost always gardened way out in the boonies with no near neighbours. For certain species this might not be a problem, depends on how far the pollen can travel.
The other thing is to make sure your seeds get good and dry, and stay that way. I like putting them in a mason jar once they are dry. Some people save silica gel packets that you get with electronics and such, to keep in the jar to keep the seeds dry. I dry fava beans and jacob’s cattle beans etc for cooking as well as for seed stock, so I don’t use silica gel but you can make a nontoxic equivalent with dry milk powder (I wrap it up in paper towels secured with a twist tie, a primitive but effective solution).
Andrea on 05 Feb 2010 at 3:45 pm #
Among the many good reasons to save seed, which occurred to me to mention immediately after I sent the last comment, is that it is a good way to get organic seed (assuming you are growing organically) which is still not easily available for many varieties. And usually costs more too.