Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
I was contacted recently by Nancy, who together with her partner Chuck runs a family farm and greenhouse in New York state, USA.
They have started a new blog, Garden Spotlight!
They are still in the early starting phase, but plan to write posts addressing some of their customers questions and provide growing tips for flowers and vegetables.
They are still looking for ideas for blogging topics, and I’m sure they would appreciate any comments or suggestions.
Okay, you’ve decided you’re interested in saving your own vegetable seeds, but what’s the first step? Here are some suggestions.
Seed saving topics range from very simple to very complex. Some people with PhD’s write on seed saving topics. This post is intentionally going to focus on the very simplest aspects of seed saving.
First and foremost you must have the right seeds! I posted about this a few days ago. Not only are hybrid seeds genetically unstable, but they are ‘unknown quantities’ in your garden. Seed companies generally keep the parent plant varieties a secret, and often the genetics of the parent plants are not useful to have in your garden anyway. This unknown genetic material can be a real problem if it unknowingly cross pollinates with other plants in your garden. There are times you want F1 hybrid plants in your garden when seed saving or breeding your own plants, but those that come from commercial sources are most often not desirable. In any case, when you are first starting with seed saving, be sure not to confuse the matter with commercial F1 hybrid seeds.
Inbreeding Annuals
Okay, let’s talk about what ‘Inbreeding Annuals’ means.
There are two breeding characteristics, inbreeding and out-breeding. Inbreeding means a plant has flowers that pollinate themselves. Out-breeding means the plant develops flowers that must give and receive pollen to and from other plants. There are very few cases of 100% pure inbreeding or out-breeding plants, so generally what’s considered is if a plant is mostly one or the other.
There are three types of plants; annuals, biennials and perennials. These have a 1-year, 2-year and unending life cycles respectively. At the end of the first year, annuals will go to seed and die. Biennials will go to seed and die after the second year. Perennials generally go to seed each year and continue to grow. Most vegetables are either annual or biennial, but there are some perennials too.
Inbreeding plants are the easiest to save seeds from both because they don’t easily cross-pollinate with their neighboring plants (and so different varieties can be grown in close proximity), and also because they are genetically evolved not to be susceptible to ‘inbreeding depression’.
Inbreeding depression occurs when the size of a particular plant’s gene-pool gets too small. Think of this in terms of human children who are born as a result of incest, they develop birth defects and other gene related health problems. The same thing can happen with plants, and all plants need a certain ‘breadth’ to their gene-pool. Plants that are naturally inbreeding plants have a much higher resistance to these problems then their out-breeding counterparts.
In plain-speak what all this means is you can simply grow this type of plant, even several different varieties next to each other, save the seeds, and not worry about any of the ‘usual’ seed saving issues.
Keep in mind that because no plant is 100% inbreeding, it is possible to have issues with cross-pollination and inbreeding depression. As a matter of pursuing ‘best practice’ gardening, try to maintain a little space between different varieties of the same kinds of plants if you can. Also try to save seeds from a few different plants, to help maintain gene-pool breadth and prevent inbreeding depression. Like almost all other aspects of gardening, there are few absolute rules with seed saving, only guidelines, and it’s always best to avoid problems when you can.
If two plants cross-pollinate, after the seeds which are produced from this crossing are planted and grown, the resulting plant will have 50% of it’s genes from each parent plant. In this way crosses are usually easy to notice, and it’s important to watch out for them and not accidentally save seeds from these plants. It’s always fine to eat these plants! If you are interested in experimenting, it’s also okay to save seeds from these plants for replanting.
The other thing to consider for best practice gardening, is always save seeds from the best looking and highest quality plants! This is very important. There are always small genetic variations between plants, and if you save seeds from the best plants you will preserve those genetic traits. If you save seeds from the worst plants, you will also preserve those traits! Sometimes it’s hard to grow something all year long, only to have to eat the worst ones and save the best ones for seed saving, but it’s one of those things you get used to and you will be rewarded in the long run with genetically superior plants.
As a rule, don’t eat from and save seeds from the same plant. Many plants will die after they have successfully produced seeds. For example, common beans and pea plants both do this. If you eat from these plants first, then let them produce more seeds and die, the resulting saved seeds will be much weaker than if you hadn’t eaten from the plant first.
What are the Inbreeding Annuals?
Tomatoes: This is reportedly the most common plant in the home garden, and it’s very easy to save seeds from a tomato. When purchased, tomato seed is almost always very pure. When you save your own seed, since tomatoes are not 100% inbreeding, expect about 2-5% of your saved seeds will cross. This isn’t a bad thing. You can grow some interesting tomatoes this way! Any crosses will be F1 hybrids and will not be genetically stable, but are fine to eat! I wrote an earlier post explaining how to save tomato seeds. In this case it’s okay to eat and save seeds from the same plant, but make sure to save seeds from the first round of tomatoes if possible.
Peas and Ordinary Beans: By ordinary beans I mean what Americans would call bush or pole beans and Brits would call French or dwarf French beans. Fava (broad) and lima (butter) beans are both out-breeding plants, as are runner beans. For seed saving, just wait for the plants dry out and save the seeds. What you might normally eat is the same as what you plant as seeds. These are not 100% inbreeding plants, so try to maintain some space between varieties and expect to see some crosses. Cross-pollination seems to be a regional issue, as people in the US tend to report less crossing than for example people in Europe. Crossing is probably at least in part dependent on local insect populations. Crosses can be easier to notice if you don’t plant similar looking varieties next to each other, and be sure to isolate or discard seeds from plants that have crossed so they don’t get mixed in with the next year’s planting by accident.
Eggplants (Aubergines): Søren recently made a great post showing how to save seeds from these plants.
Peppers: You can save seeds from both hot and sweet peppers. Just let the peppers fully mature on the plant and start to rot, then lay the seeds out on a piece of paper to dry. Seeds from hot peppers can be very difficult to save, because the hot oils in them can burn your eyes, skin and nose. Be sure to take the proper precautions for this (and wear rubber gloves!).
Lettuce: Simply let the plant bolt and go to seed, then collect the seeds. The seeds have dandelion like ‘parachutes’, so be sure to collect them before they blow away.
Søren of In the Toads Garden and I have recently been discussing the idea of freezing garlic planting stock.
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a few years now, and I’ve done some research on the subject, but I haven’t come across anything useful. In particular, I haven’t found anything to say ‘yes it’s possible’ or ‘no it’s not possible’. There must be seed banks out there tasked with this issue, and there must be some information somewhere, but I haven’t been able to find it.
I’m aware freezing it for eating doesn’t work well, and there is a big decrease in quality. It must however be possible to freeze it for planting stock, because in many climates it freezes in the ground while it’s growing.
Issues Discussed So Far
How long to expect it to last frozen, and how many years should we plan to test?
Will it keep more that a year or two? Ten years? What is a good amount of garlic to freeze now?
What sort of container should we freeze it in?
When I freeze seeds, I use a glass jar with a rubber seal. This is because no other storage container is truly airtight. Is this a good idea with garlic? When storing garlic for eating it is best kept in an open airy place, this is because it is still ‘alive’ and needs to breath. Will it need to breath in the freezer? Is it better to freeze it in a piece of paper or will it then dry out or get snowy?
Fall or spring planting?
Most garlics do better when fall planted and experience a period of cold weather. Will freezing garlic mean we can spring plant instead of fall plant, or even make it better to spring plant?
Bulbils, cloves or bulbs?
Some garlic types form bulbils. Is it better to freeze these rather than cloves? Is it better to freeze whole cloves, or is freezing the seporate cloves enough?
Different garlic types
As I’ve posted about before, there are 10 different garlic types or sub-types. Will these react differently to freezing? In what way do we need to test combinations of all of the above mentioned variables together with the different types?
Do you have any opinions or ideas on all of this? Do you have any suggestions of more variables we should test for or consider than what’s mentioned here? Please leave a comment and let us know!
Comments on this post are closed to prevent two separate discussions from taking place. Please follow the link on the top of this page and leave a comment on the original post on In the Toad’s Garden.
A few posts ago I mentioned Ruth Stout and her ideas of no-dig/no-till gardening, and this started a bit of a discussion on the history of Organic gardening in the comments.
It turns out Organic gardening began much earlier than I thought, and the Organic Guide just made a great post on this topic.
Many gardeners, experienced or beginners, have in the back of their mind they would like to save their own seeds. Perhaps you have even tried it before, but were frustrated or lost interest. One of the most common reasons for failure is not starting with the right seeds. In this post, I’m going to explain how to get the right seeds. This post is mostly about vegetable seeds, but many of the basic principles can be applied to other plants as well.
Other Seed Saving Gardeners
One of the best sources for seeds suitable for seed saving is other gardeners who save their own seeds. I’m not talking about someone who buys a packet of seeds, plants half, then gives you the rest. I’m talking specifically about gardeners who are experienced in saving their own seeds.
You can sometimes find these gardeners in the context of seed exchanges, perhaps fellow community gardeners if you have a community (allotment) garden. There are of course other blogs like this one with people behind them that save their own seeds.
By it’s nature, saving seeds usually means having a lot of extras on hand. You shouldn’t be afraid to approach people who save their own seeds and ask for some, they will probably be happy to give them to you. Of course you should be prepared to pay shipping costs and/or a small handling fee, and offer something in trade if you have it. Most people who save seeds will have plenty of extras to spare, and may not even have space in their garden to accept any seeds from you in return.
Everyone understands that when you are new to seed saving, you need some seeds to get started, and won’t have anything to offer immediately in return.
If you know you are growing seeds that have been grown and saved by another gardener experienced in this, and you trust they have probably done it right, then you know you are growing seeds suitable for further saving.
The Difference Between Hybrid and Open Pollinated (OP) Seeds
If you aren’t lucky enough to know another seed saving gardener, then you will need to buy some, and this can be very tricky.
The bottom line is that in order to save seeds that can be grown into plants identical to the parent plants, you must have OP seeds. Most common vegetable seeds are F1 hybrids, and seeds saved from these plants may be sterile and in any case won’t produce plants the same as the parents. Commercial F1 hybrid seeds are not made in the same way as normal OP seeds, but rather are made in special laboratories or factories.
Seed companies depend on people buying their seeds every year. If everyone saved their own seeds and traded with each other, there wouldn’t be any profit in selling seeds. One of the most important reasons why commercial F1 hybrid seeds were developed was to make it impossible for people to save their own seeds.
Choosing the Right Seed Company
Many gardeners are very attached to their seed companies. Because they buy seeds every year, they want high quality seeds and good customer service. Many of these same gardeners when they starting thinking about buying seeds for the purpose of saving their own seeds, are very strongly inclined to look for OP seeds from their present favorite seed companies. This is almost never possible to do.
Since the entire business model of most seed companies depends on you returning every year in order to buy more seeds, they would go out of business if customers saved and traded their seeds, and one of their most important goals is to frustrate any attempt at seed saving. While most seed companies sell some OP seeds, anytime you try to buy seeds for seed saving from a standard seed company you will be faced with very aggressive marketing intended to convince you to buy F1 hybrid seeds instead.
One of the first things you may notice when looking for OP seeds is they aren’t labeled as such. You may find occasional seeds labeled as an F1 hybrid, but none clearly labeled as OP. There’s a very important reason for this. Most contracts between the seed manufacturers and seed retailers forbid the labeling of OP seeds. Instead the seed manufactures want you to have to guess which ones are OP based on the written descriptions or expect you to incorrectly assume all seeds not labeled as hybrid must be OP. Many of the written descriptions are very misleading in this way, and sometimes F1 hybrid seeds are given the same or a very similar name to an heirloom variety. In this way, many would be seed savers buy hybrid seeds by mistake and waste their time trying to save seeds from the plants.
Many smaller seed companies are run by very honest people with good intentions, but because they resell seeds from other less honest companies, they find themselves having to follow the rules laid out by their suppliers.
Of course if you don’t know if a particular variety of seed is suitable for seed saving, you can call or email the seed company and ask them. But give this some thought. Suppose the person answering the question doesn’t understand the difference between OP and hybrid, and assumes you can save seeds from any plant. How are you going to know this? How are you going to know the person telling you a seed is suitable for saving is really telling you the truth and knows what they are talking about? Maybe after you’ve wasted your time trying to save seeds from an F1 hybrid you can complain about it, but all you are going to get is your purchase price refunded or get a new packet of seeds. Do you care if you get your money back for a packet of seeds or a free packet of seeds?
There have been cases of seeds that were labeled as OP turning out to be hybrids. If this happens, again, all that you can hope to do is get your money back.
Remember too that if you incorrectly try to save seeds from an F1 hybrid plant, you may not know this for two or more years after you buy the seeds. This amount of time makes it all that much harder for you to go back to where you bought them and expect good customer service.
If you try to buy OP seeds from a normal seed company, you might succeed in the end, but you are really going to punish yourself in the process.
The only way to make sure you are getting OP seeds is to buy them from a company that has a clear public policy of only selling OP or non-hybrid seeds! You will see this policy stated in the seed catalog or website. These companies are proud of the fact they sell these seeds, and will not try to hide it from you. Many state it clearly on their front page.
For example, look at the policy and front pages of the following seed companies:
Baker Creek (bottom of page)
Another Resource for Finding OP seeds
The Seed Savers Exchange in the US tracks OP seeds sold by commercial seed companies in North America, and publishes some statistics and variety names in a book called the Garden Seed Inventory. This book is a very useful aid in determining what seeds sold by standard seed companies are OP.
Obtaining OP Seeds Internationally
One of the problems many seed savers have is OP seeds are all but unavailable locally. Many countries have laws that forbid the sale of many or all OP seeds, for example the European Seed Laws. North America is one of the last places in the world where the free sale of OP seeds is allowed. There is an added benefit to getting seeds from North America in that, because of the history of the area with all of it’s migrants coming from all over the world and bringing many seeds with them, the choice of heirloom seeds there is very large. The favorable exchange rate with the US dollar and many other currencies makes it also an inexpensive place to buy seeds at the moment.
Many people incorrectly assume buying or sending vegetable seeds internationally is not allowed. In fact, in spite of it’s reputation as being something difficult to do, most countries allow it. In fact few diseases are carried by vegetable seeds that are not already present worldwide, so there is not really a reason for most countries not to allow their import.
I have not personally tried but my understanding is even countries like Australia and New Zealand, that have reputations as being very difficult places to even transport plants internally, don’t have a problem with vegetable seeds. These countries forbid the import of invasive species, and require all seeds be labeled with their Latin name, so they can be compared with their invasive species list.
Until this past year the US formally did not allow the import of vegetable seeds, but in reality they were almost always cleared by customs. Many other countries continue to have policies like this. This last year the rules for the US changed and now the import of most vegetable seeds is formally allowed by individuals, but a permit must be obtained in advance by someone who is a US resident. As far as I’m aware, sending vegetable seeds to Canada is not a problem.
Most countries forbid the import of seeds associated with major commercial domestic crops. For example you cannot import corn into the US, potatoes into Europe and so on. Also many countries forbid the import of live plant material, scions, bulbs and tubers.
Your chance of getting seeds through customs in any country will increase if you put the seeds in a clear plastic zip lock bag, limit the number of seeds to about 50 per bag and label it with the Latin as well as the common name.
