Seed Saving: When Seeds Aren’t Really Seeds

When you are thinking about saving your own garden seeds, don’t forget that many plants reproduce asexually. In this case you won’t get any seeds, and there is no risk of cross pollination or inbreeding depression.

Propagation With Cuttings

Tomato plants are one of the most common garden plants that can propagated with cuttings. Normally cutting a small branch off of a tomato plant and placing it in purchased cutting medium or sometimes just dirt, potting soil or compost will work.

Not all plants will reproduce this way, and some require rooting hormone or other special treatment.

Bare Bones Gardener recently did a post on this subject.

Tubers

Potatoes are probably the best known example of this. After you grow a round of potatoes, by saving some of the smaller tubers for replanting you can keep regrowing the same variety.

Jerusalem Artichokes are another good example of this, although many people regret growing these because the tubers are difficult to remove completely from the ground and quickly turn into weeds.

On the more exotic side, I have been growing the Añu Plant and Søren has been growing the Yacon plant, both from the Andes mountains in South America. Emma from Fluffius Muppetus sent me some Chufa nut tubers, that I hope to try this spring.

Topsets and Root Divisions

Many onion and garlic related plants reproduce this way. Of course many of my readers already know I grow a lot of garlic, and this is done with root divisions. The garlic bulbs are the roots of the plants, and by planting the individual cloves you get more plants. Garlic also sometimes forms topsets, which are called bulbils.

I grow a number of perennial onions. Shallots multiply with root divisions, and topsetting onions form topsets.