This post is a follow up to the last two posts.
The last concept in seed saving is that it’s very important to save seeds from the right plant or plants. This is the easy one!
Always save seeds from the best plant or plants available
That’s it! What exactly makes the best plant is simply what you think it is. The strongest plant or most productive. If you can taste it without distroying the plant, then the best tasting plant.
It’s always best to save seeds from a number of plants, in order to help maintain a good sized gene pool, but if there’s one plant that really stands out or is exciting for some reason, be sure to save seeds from that one apart from the others for separate replanting. Sometimes new plant varieties are discovered this way!
Many people think when they plant seeds for something all the plants will grow to be exactly the same, but this is only true with (commercial) f1 hybrid plants. If you’re growing your own self saved seeds, seeds saved in another garden or purchased OP or heirloom seeds, there will always be small differences in the plants. Perhaps most of these differences will be too small to notice but often there will be good or bad differences that stand out from the others. It’s very important to preserve the good and discard the bad!
All plants have a sort of genetic drift over time, that left on it’s own will result in plants that are less productive with an accumulation of undesirable traits.
In fact most varieties need periodic ‘grow outs’, where large numbers of plants are grown and seeds selectively saved, in order to clean them up and revitalize them. By doing this a litte bit in your garden as you go along, you help keep the variety healthy.
DIY plant breeding by selection!
While all plants have chance genetic variations from time to time, plant breeders intentionally create new varieties by cross pollinating two or more plants and creating hybrids. Once this is done, the genetics of the plants become unstable for several generations. Arguably the first few generations more plant breeding skill is needed because this is when selection is made for very specific traits.
After the first few generations the basic plant is there, with the traits the plant breeder choose, but the plants are still somewhat unstable. This is an ideal time for you to take the plant into your garden and finish off the breeding! At this point the number of chance genetic variations is much higher than usual, so it’s much easier for you to grow a few plants in your garden and choose your favorites to save seeds from. In this way, you develop your own variety custom made for your own garden.
I’m currently aware of two plant breeders offering plants at this stage:
Alan of Hip-Gnosis Seed Development
I’m sure there are others around offering similar seeds, so don’t be afraid to look around the Internet yourself.
Thanks for the link friend and also for the link to real seeds, I hadn’t ever heard of them before and nor did I know about Ben’s work with hybridization, dehybridization, and segregation of seeds. It’s great to see others doing this.
Ken Ettlinger of Long Island Seeds also does a lot this type of work over at http://www.liseed.org
Check it out!
Thanks for the great articles. Here at Seedy Farm we’re working on untangling some hybrid varieties that gardeners love and getting them stabilized as open-pollinated varieties. Bridge to Paris is the only one we offer in the catalog so far. Our Seed Library is a great way for Northeast gardeners to get involved in seed saving and share with other gardeners. Sow local!