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Saving Seeds from Biennial Plants

In January I posted an introduction to saving seeds.

In this post I would like to go into a little more detail on saving seeds from biennial plants.

Biennial plants are ones that go to seed during their second growing season, usually in the spring. Many people who save their own seeds don’t save seeds from biennials because they think it’s too much trouble, but this isn’t necessarily so. All plants are a little different, and it’s not possible to say everything about all of them, but here are some general tips. Some example of biennial plants are parsnips, carrots, cole plants (cabbage, brussel sprouts, turnips, kale and so on), celery and celery root (celeriac), parsley, beets and swiss chard.

What many people don’t realize is that by saving your own seeds from biennials and other plants is that the resulting seeds will be more suited to your garden and climate than the original seeds, and will likely improve in both productivity and quality of harvest from one year to the next, especially if good roguing techniques (see below) are used.

If you live in an area with a mild climate, chances are good that all you will have to do is let these plants stay in the garden and harvest the seeds in the spring. In some cases, covering the plants with a layer of straw or other mulch can help them survive through the winter.

If your winter is too harsh for the plants to survive, you may need to dig up the plants and store them in a root cellar through the winter. In a few cases you may need to grow them in a greenhouse or similar structure, possibly with heating. In this later case, it may very well be too much trouble to try to save your own seeds.

If you store the plants in a root cellar, you will need to maintain a steady and low temperature and a moderate to high humidity. It does not necessarily need to be underground, but it does need to be protected from the effects of direct sunlight, so probably will need to be north facing. Depending on the type of plants stored, you may need to protect it from freezing, or otherwise provide some source of heat. Plants are normally dug from the garden and stored in wet sand or sawdust for the winter.

Whatever plants you are saving roguing is critical. All seeds will contain genes and traits that effect their suitability for growing in a particular location, their productivity or their quality in other ways. The goal in saving seeds is to select the best plants and consequently the best genetic traits, for growing in the conditions present in your garden. If you are growing cabbage or brussel sprouts, you want plants whose yield is large, solid and attractive. If you are growing a root crop like beets or parsnips, you want only properly shaped, large and good tasting roots. Of course you can’t taste the plants if you are going to save seeds from them, but only save seeds from plants that you think would be the nicest to eat. If you are saving roots, dig them up and look at them! Replant the ones that look nice. Destroy any plants that do not have desirable qualities.

As a rule, plants normally produce large quantities of seeds. In general, it is not necessary to have a lot of plants to have a good seed harvest. It is however a good idea to save seeds from at least a few different plants, as a way of preserving your gene pool.

Once you have selected the plants you are saving seeds from, go around the garden and identify any possible plants that they may cross-pollinate with and figure out how you are going to isolate them. Destroying genetically compatible plants is the easiest way to prevent cross-pollination, but in some cases this is not possible. Depending on the plant, it may be possible to construct a cage or other covering to prevent insects from cross-pollinated the plants. Providing enough distance between the plants may be all that’s necessary.

If you live in an area with wild Queen Anne’s Lace, you will have a difficult time saving seeds from carrots. Queen Anne’s Lace is really a wild carrot and will easily cross-pollinate with what you grow in your garden. Because the pollen from these plants is very fine, and carried large distances by the wind, it is difficult to isolate them with barriers.

Exactly what plants are genetically compatible is complicated, and frequently the source of disagreement between gardeners. The best thing is to ask around for advice, or research the matter on the Internet.

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Fava Beans and Other Cover Crops

Crop rotation is a very important aspect of a healthy garden. If you plant the same types of plants in the same space year after year, you will deplete the soil and provide a breeding ground for plant diseases and pests. Different types of plants have different rotational needs, for example members of the garlic and onion family should only be planted in the same ground once in 4-5 years, while cole plants about once in 3 years. It is wise to make a rotation scheme for your garden depending on what is necessary for the plants you grow. Crop rotations do not necessarily happen on an annual basis, for example you may follow garlic which is harvested in June or July, with a plant like turnips that can be planted in August and harvested a few months later.

In between other crop rotations, many people plant cover crops. A cover crop is one that is not necessarily intended to be grown for food, but rather the primary purpose of it is to improve the ground and keep it covered. Ground that is unused for too long will erode and accumulate weeds, and planting a cover crop can avoid this. One particularly useful type of cover crop is the family of leguminous nitrogen fixing plants. As well as loosening and improving the workability of the soil, these plants will take nitrogen from the air and fix it into the ground, leaving the ground richer in nutrients than before the plant was grown. Often cover crops are turned into the ground by digging or with a garden tiller after they are grown, leaving the ground richer in organic material.

Some example of common cover crops include winter rye, different types of clover, field peas, beans, yellow mustard, buckwheat, phacealia (a type of flower), as well as many other plants.

One of my favorite cover crops is fava beans. Fava beans have one of the highest rates of nitrogen fixing of any cover crop. They also also produce one of the highest rates of compostable organic material per square meter. They will loosen even highly compacted heavy clay soil. They are also very tasty to eat, both as a fresh shelled bean and as a dry soup bean. They are an excellent substitute for garbanzo beans when making hummus.

Quite a few fava bean seeds are needed to plant a relatively small area. To plant an area of 50m2 (500ft2), you will need between 0.5-3Kg (1-7 lbs), depending on how densely you plant the seeds. Since a typical packet only contains 30-60 seeds, you will need quite a few packets of seeds to plant an area like this. Most people, including farmers that grow them, normally get around this problem by saving their own seeds. It is normally too expensive to purchase seeds for growing every year. Seeds are saved from the plants after the plants mature and the pods turn black. Fava beans can cross pollinate, so when saving seeds only grow one variety at a time or space different varieties far apart.

Fava bean seeds don’t keep well. Purchased seeds are normally treated, which significantly improves their germination rates. If you save your own fava bean seeds you will need to count on low germination rates, and increase planting density accordingly. Planting densities given here assume germination rates typical of commercial seeds, and you will need to increase these densities according to your own experiences with the seeds you save and grow yourself. When storing fava beans it is important to keep them in an open container. If you have problems with rodents eating the seeds in storage, try glass jars with holes poked in metal lids, or try constructing your own containers made of wire screens. Fava bean seeds also freeze well, and can be stored in a freezer after they have been completely dried. Seeds that become moldy or develop large black spots in storage should be discarded.

As a food crop, fava beans are not one of the most productive. A relatively large area needs to be planted for a modest harvest. In addition, preparing fresh fava beans can be a lot of work as most people will remove the skins of the seeds before eating. In general, it’s more useful to think of fava beans primarily as a cover crop, with the added benefit of being able to provide a little food as well. In terms of food harvest, the smaller seeded varieties are better than the large seeded varieties.

Fava beans can be grown in a few different ways. They can be planted densely, then turned into the ground when they are young. In this case they are usually planted in double rows (two parallel rows 2.5 cm (1 inch) apart). These double rows are spaced 30cm (1 foot apart), and the seeds within the rows are spaced 15cm (6 inches) apart. They should be turned under before they get too woody, and while they can still decompose easily.

When growing fava beans for seed or food, they should be planted in single rows 30cm (1 foot) apart, and seed spacing should be 15cm (6 inches). In this case the plants will be too woody to simply turn into the ground, and will have to be collected for composting.

Fava beans are cool weather crops, and should be planted as early in the spring as possible. They can go into the ground as soon as it has thawed enough to dig. In some places fava beans can be planted in the fall and overwinter. Different varieties will survive different temperature extremes, but typically will survive to -10C (about 15F). Fava beans do not compete well with weeds, and one very good way to address the problem of weeds is to grow them together with another leguminous nitrogen fixing cover crop to smother the weeds. White clover is an excellent choice here, but other cover crops will probably also work well.

All leguminous nitrogen fixing crops depend on a naturally occurring bacteria in the soil for fixing nitrogen. Once any sort of bean or pea is grown, the bacteria stays in the ground for a very long time, and it is not an issue. If it has been a very long time since a nitrogen fixing plant has been grown in a particular spot, the bacteria will eventually establish itself there after planting something like fava beans, but it will take a long time. In the meantime the fava beans will grow very slowly and will be weak. Commercial inoculants can be purchased to treat the seeds at the time of planting. These can be a considerable help in establishing this bacteria.

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Weed Burner

Weed Burner

For an update on this article see: Weed Burner, Part 2

Until chemicals began being used around the 1950s, weed burners were an important means of controlling weeds in agriculture, but today have almost been forgotten. Above is a picture of the weed burner I use.

Even though weed burners have not been widely used for a while now, the underlying technology of gas burners has improved dramatically in that time. Modern gas burners are much hotter and more efficient.

The weed burner shown above is one of the smallest models that will connect to a propane bottle, and the flame is shaped in a point. They can also be purchased in even smaller models that use a canister of gas similar to what a camping stove uses. Flames can be shaped in a point for use close to crops or wide intended to be used to cover large areas quickly. Sizes range up to tractor size that burn several kilos of propane per hour.

In Europe, some organic farms have been using weed burners where the flame heats a ceramic plate, which in turn burns the weeds. This is the so called infra red weed burner. The advantage of this is you don’t have an exposed flame, and the risk of starting a fire is less.

Okay, moving from farms back to gardening. There are circumstances in which it can’t be used. It is an exposed flame, and you can’t use it in a dry climate or around flammable materials. This makes it hard to use at the same time you use mulch, because most mulch is flammable. It also does not work against established weeds, as the only thing it does is burn the leaves off which just grow back again.

What is it good for? It works very well against weeds up to and including the cotyledon stage. For example if in the spring, your garden gets dusted by seed from dandelions or other weeds and they start sprouting, they can all be quickly destroyed with a weed burner. It will also destroy unsprouted seeds. If you have some compost that has been contaminated with weed seed, it can be spread out to a thickness of about 1 cm, and burned with the weed burner. Or you can just pass the flame over the top your compost pile to kill any seeds that may be there.

It is very easy to cover a large area quickly. My weed burner will cover about 100m2 (1000 ft2) in about a half hour, but there are circumstances when it takes longer like the ground is frozen or cold or there is a special problem that is being addressed with it.

The weed burner can be helpful right after plowing or rototilling the ground, because sometimes seeds are exposed and burning the pieces of exposed roots can help weeds from re-establishing themselves in the ground.

If you have a patch of established weeds, that you don’t have time to take care of before they go to seed, the weed burner can be used to slow their growth for a few days by burning the tops of them off. Of course this can also make them more difficult to dig them up when you finally get around to it.

In the last few weeks I have been using the flame to burn some things in the garden that would otherwise be more difficult to remove, like patches of dried out grassy weeds.

My garden is very large, about 1000m2 (10,000 ft2), and I plan to expand it in the coming years. The ground is also hard clay. Both of these things make it difficult to remove weeds under any circumstances, and in general I have a major problem with weeds. I can imagine if these things were not true, a weed burner would be less useful.

Having said all of this, I am really happy with it. It has become one of my favorite gardening tools. There is a reason why chemical weed killers became more popular, they do work much better, and this tool is certainly not going to solve all of your weed problems. It is however a great tool to use together with other organic methods for controlling weeds.

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Seed Savers Exchange

Recently I became a member of the SSE, and a few days ago I got my first seed ‘yearbook’ from them, and I felt it deserved mention here.

It’s really quite an experience to open this seed listing for the first time. Most of us are probably used to thinking a seed company is large if they offer 1000 different kinds of seeds. This year there are 12,284 unique varieties in the SSE yearbook. Besides having all the usual vegetables, it includes fruit trees, garlic, water chestnuts. It includes virtually every ethnic food you have ever seen.

Many of the listings come with stories about how this particular variety was passed on in a family that came from Europe or discovered growing in the wild somewhere. There are many varieties of plants you will never see in a normal seed catalog or sold by a commercial seed company.

All of the varieties are offered by people (756 of them in 2006), or in a few cases small businesses, that grow the plants themselves and will send you samples of seeds or plant cuttings in the mail.

Okay, so what’s the catch? Can anyone get these plant samples? There is not much of a catch, and mostly these are available to anyone who becomes a member and asks for them.

There are a few caveats however.

Although it is not a requirement, there is the hope, that as well as ask for samples you will also grow some of these plants and reshare them. Some of the samples listed are either in short supply or in danger of being discontinued, and are only being offered to other people sharing samples or to people who offer a firm commitment of growing and sharing the plant. The number of samples restricted in this way is very small.

It is also a reality that most people offering plant samples live in the US or Canada, and people living elsewhere have to pay extra shipping and handling costs and will likely not be able to order live plant material like fruit trees or garlic. People living outside of North America also have to pay considerably more for membership, to cover the extra postage for sending membership material.

Finally, when you order plant material you are not dealing with a company, but with 756 individuals. None of them take credit cards, and if you don’t live in the US or Canada you have to think about how you are going to pay them in their local currency. Most of them take cash, and some might even accept foreign currency, but probably not many. If you order 10 packages of seeds, you will probably have to send 10 separate letters requesting them.

For anyone interested in growing unusual plants, this is very valuable resource. In addition, the overall trend of the number of people supporting the SSE by sharing their seeds is in decline, and more people are needed to support it. I would encourage anyone who thinks they might be interested to become a member.