Green (Living) Review: seed saving

Showing posts with label seed saving. Show all posts

HOME SEED DRYING & STORAGE

plant picture

This is a really important bit. You need to dry your seed out, or it will not keep.

Seed that is air-dry is not really properly dormant - its just napping;
so it is still burning through its stored reserves of energy and will soon run flat - like a mobile phone left on.

Also, you can't put it in a sealed container as it is still breathing - it would suffocate. And without a sealed container, it will soon reabsorb water from the air on the first humid day, and start getting ready to germinate.

How can we dry the seed at home?
We'll use dry rice to suck the water out of the seed & get it really dry. Then it will hibernate completely.

You need to get:

a big jam-jar with a good lid,
an old pair of tights,
a rubber band,
and some rice

You need to use at least twice as much rice as you have seed. It doesn't matter if you have too much rice, but too little won't work.

Free Seeds and Plants: 6 Ways To Get Them for Your Garden

Gardening can be a pricey hobby, but it doesn’t have to be. Savvy gardeners have ways of increasing their collections without emptying their bank accounts. Let’s look at six economical ways to get more seeds and plants for your garden.

1. Propagate Your Own Garden Plants

If you have time and patience, propagating your own plants is the best way to get exactly what you want at a fraction of the cost of a full-grown plant. For home gardeners propagating includes growing plants from seeds, cuttings, or divisions.

Annual flowers and vegetables are easy to grow from seed at a fraction of the cost of buying starter plants. In fact, many do better when started from seed sown right in the ground. Taking cuttings involves cutting a piece of stem, putting it in a pot with a light soil or soilless mix, and keeping it moist until it grows roots.

You can divide most perennials and many shrubs by separating sections of roots and stems and planting these divisions in the ground.

Growers unite to protect their seeds

The Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA) and Soil association (SA) has been launching a Seed Savers’ Network for farmers and growers in the South West an the weekend of October 11 to 12, 2014. This regional network will be the first of many launched around the country with the aim of empowering farmers and growers to breed their own seed and develop appropriate, locally adapted varieties.

This initiative comes in response to the steady loss of appropriate seed for small-scale production and increasing moves at the European level to further concentrate control over our plant genetic resources to corporate interests.

Daniel Burston, a grower in Devon said: “For thousands of years farmers all over the world have been creating, preserving and renewing seed diversity by breeding and saving from the plants in their fields. The diversity of agricultural seeds and the freedom of farming communities to have control over them is fundamental to our food sovereignty.”

“With this network we are creating practical on-farm solutions to rebuilding our agricultural biodiversity. Now we need political will to support these initiatives rather than continuing to sell the common inheritance of our seeds to the highest corporate bidder!”

The LWA campaigns for farmers and growers to have rights to obtain seeds from their own harvests, to breed and to distribute them.

The LWA is an official member of the international peasant farming movement La Via Campesina that represents 200 million small-scale producers around the world. We campaign for the rights of small-scale producers and lobby the UK government and European parliament for policies that support the infrastructure and markets central to our livelihoods.

http://landworkersalliance.org.uk/

Why we should revive the art of saving seeds

Tomatoes to French or runner beans, there’s no need to buy seeds. Simple steps save them and preserve heritage varieties, advises our Vertical Veg man as part of his series about container gardening

Seeds from a heritage variety of French beans Until 50 or 60 years ago, saving some of your own seed was an integral part of the gardening year for most vegetable gardeners. Over generations, their dedication helped to create a rich diversity of vegetable varieties, adapted to suit the local soil and climate. Knowledge of how to save seeds has largely been lost by amateur gardeners and today many of us assume that they are something you have to buy in packets from seed suppliers.

This is a shame. Not least because there is something immensely rewarding about saving a few of your own seeds. You get to watch them grow the following year. You can share them with your friends and neighbours, or give them away as presents. You can take them to seed swaps to exchange for other intriguing varieties. And by saving your own seeds you can also help to preserve heritage varieties, many of which are in danger of being lost.

Some vegetables are easier to save seeds from than others. When growing in a small space, it’s easiest to save good quality seeds from “self-pollinated” crops. This is because self-pollinated plants hold all the genetic information they need for healthy offspring within one plant (so even if you are only growing one plant you can save seeds from it – although the more the better). Self-pollinated crops include tomatoes, French and runner beans, lettuce, peas, chillies, and peppers.

Saving Vegetable Seeds

How to keep the ones you love… seeds of plants that is

Saving and storing seeds from your own vegetable and herb crops is a thrifty way to perpetuate your favorite varieties from year to year. Open-pollinated varieties, including heirlooms, are the best candidates for seed saving. Unlike hybrids, their genetic traits are more likely to remain stable from generation to generation—although, if you’re saving seeds to be used for growing microgreens or sprouts, genetic stability is less important.

Some crop species tend to pollinate themselves (selfers), while others rely on insects or wind to deliver pollen from nearby flowers (outcrossers). Peas, lettuce, and tomatoes are selfers and are unlikely to cross-pollinate, even if several different varieties are growing in the same garden. For outcrossers, such as squashes, brassicas, and onions, genetic purity can be ensured only by growing a single variety of that crop in isolation from others or by excluding stray pollen with a greenhouse or other enclosure. Isolation cages are used by commercial growers but aren’t practical for the average home gardener.

Seek out the healthiest, most productive plants for seed production, and look for traits that are worth preserving. With crops for which early bolting or flowering is not desirable, such as lettuce and basil, save seeds from the specimens that are slowest to flower.

Once you’ve gathered seeds, be sure they are thoroughly dry before packaging them in envelopes or jars. Label the packages with variety name and the date you collected the seeds, and store them in a cool, dry place to maintain their freshness.

Beginner's Guide to Home Seed Production

Beginner's guide to seed production, including pollination, collection of seeds, and planting seeds of beans, beets, cabbage, carrots, corn, cucumbers, cantaloupes, watermelons, lettuce, onions, peas, pumpkins, squash, radishes, spinach, tomatoes, and turnips.

Seed production is a science in its own right, and a complete study of the subject would take many volumes. This article is meant to be only a very basic guide for the beginner who wants organically grown seeds-free of any chemical-and who enjoys new challenges in gardening.

Home Seed Production

Saving the seeds of garden vegetables really isn't too difficult if you observe a few basic rules:

[1] Plan your garden with seed collecting in mind which means, for one thing, that the original plants must be standard varieties, and not crosses. This is because seeds produced by hybrids give very unreliable results: The offspring may revert back to either parent or even turn out to be something quite unexpected!

[2] Many closely related plants can cross if they're grown near one another (how near depends on the method of pollination for the particular species). Thus, if seeds are to be saved from the yield of a small plot, only one variety each of most vegetables should be raised. A larger area allows more freedom to diversify provided you understand the mechanics of fertilization in whatever crops you're growing, and arrange your plantings accordingly.

Some plants, for example, are wind-pollinated, and cross readily as their fertilizing dust drifts on the breeze from flower to flower. Variants of such a species must therefore be widely separated (or screened from one another by several rows of corn or a similar tall crop).

Other garden favorites are pollinated by insects and had better be grown in single varieties on the average homestead, since you can't control the movements of the small flying "helpers". (Commercial seed producers separate different varieties of such Vegetables by at least a quarter mile and often much more. — MOTHER.)

The greatest scope for diversity in your seed-saving program is among self-pollinating plants (those that have both pollen producing anthers and pollen-receiving stigma enclosed in the same flower). Accidental crossing is rare with these species and close relations can be grown in a modest-sized plot with little risk of mixing the strains.

[3] Remember to collect seed only from individual plants that show the best characteristics of their kind. Don't just settle for the first ripe specimen in a particular row! Careful selection of the finest, most vigorous stock may result-over a period of time-in a special sub-variety that's particularly well suited to your area or soil.

Before going any further with this article, of course, it's only fair to warn you that most authorities on horticulture don't recommend the saving of seeds from the home vegetable patch and it's true that your harvest's offspring won't be as uniform and predictable as those obtained from a commercial grower (who operates under controlled conditions). Nevertheless, this is a fascinating project, a real money saver at current prices, and a good alternative for the organic gardener who wants to be sure his future plants are free of chemicals.