Category: Seed Saving

When announcing and starting the seed network, there was one recurring theme in conversations I had with others or in comments left here:

Be sure to tell people how to properly save seeds!

Often the person who said this then went on to tell me where the seed saving guide they personally wrote could be found, and suggested I promote it.

I too have written a number of seed saving posts!  Rather than go through them and link to them all here, I suggest using the search box on the front of this blog to search for seed saving.  Most of the posts I wrote were short and introductory in nature.  For many people my posts may be a good place to start, but you will probably want to read further.  For more detail, I suggest looking elsewhere on the Internet.  A few online guides I’ve come across and can recommend are:

Real Seeds

International Seed Saving Institute

Daughter of the Soil

Seed Ambassadors

For those who want to read about seed saving in rigorous detail, I would suggest Carol Deppe’s Book Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties.  Another good book is Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed.

The introduction of the Real Seeds guide really says it all, copied below:

You want healthy seed that is true-to-type and keeps well. You need to ask yourself these questions:

CROSSING

• Will these plants cross with any others?
• Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? (Usually bad)
• How does this happen? (Wind? Insects?)
• What can I do to control this?

POPULATION

• Do I need a minimum number to get healthy seed? (e.g. do they breed as group?)
• Or do the plants live on their own and self-pollinate?
• Have I chosen the best plants for seed?

SEED EXTRACTION AND DRYING

• Do I need to do anything special to the seed ?
• Is my seed well dried and well labeled?

The answers are different for each vegetable. So look in the appropriate section below, and you’ll know what to do. Its all pretty easy but you do need to look it up in each case.

If you know the answers to the questions above, for the particular variety you are saving seeds from, then you know how to save seeds properly.

Finding the answers to these questions usually requires some detective work, and it’s not always just a matter of looking them up.  Seed saving is not always an exact science, and many even very experienced seed savers will disagree over some of these points.  It can also depend on your climate and pollinating insects in your garden, as well as your proximity to other gardens or farms growing the same varieties.

The best thing to do is look up all of these questions in at least a few different sources and, where there are conflicts in the advice they offer, try to research further.  You can ask questions here, on other Internet forums or to other seed saving gardeners you trust.  Otherwise, just experiment.

If you are experimenting or are unsure of the quality of the seeds you save, don’t share them with beginning gardeners or without warning the person receiving them!

The Blogger Seed Network was mentioned in a post on the Observer Organic Allotment Blog!  For those of you who live elsewhere, together with The Guardian, The Observer is a well known UK newspaper.  Thank you Howard Sooly for making a great post on seed saving, and mentioning us too.  By the way, if you aren’t a regular reader of the Observer Allotment Blog, it’s worth having a look.  In the last year or so since I’ve been reading it regularly, they’ve made some excellent posts.

The number of varieties on offer via the Seed Network now rivals the number on offer at the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), the largest public seed saving organization in the world!  This came out in a recent Internet discussion with Dave at World Wide Seed Trader, who himself has roughly 10,000 unique varieties on offer, many virtually unavailable from other sources.  The SSE have around 13,000 on offer.  Since it’s probably reasonable to assume other Seed Network members have a few thousand varieties between them, we are pretty close to parity with the SSE.

Blogs and People

Our seed network not only has seeds, but people and blogs.  Recently several people have made posts relating to the Seed Network or seed saving in general.  It’s worth following the links on the Seed Network page (see the link below the carrot picture on the front of this blog), and reading what a lot of these people are writing.  Here are just a couple of examples.

Anna recently posted about some seeds she received through the network.

Val and Dan recently made some very informative posts about seed saving in general.

New Members of the Network

Jardim com Gatos, located in Portugal, is offering a Portugese radish among other things.  He has just joined a Portugese seed saving organization, so hopefully we’ll see some of their oferings reoffered by him in the coming years.

Lowarth Brogh, a box scheme (called a CSA in the US), has round courgette, anna schwarz winter squash, rainbow quinoa, mexican sour gherkin and maybe some black cherry tomato seed and is interested in anything used to the cold, and anything strange,exotic (and tasty-not asking for much!).

Risks

There was a very brief discussion on the risks of saving and sharing seeds on the Agriculture Biodiversity Weblog the other day.  It’s not particularly my view that in the face of common sense, serious risks exists with trading seeds.  On the other hand I recognise there are some risks present, and others may have a different opinion as me.  I would like to encourage an open discussion on this.  If anyone has any opinions or information, hopefully with some specifics, I’d like to hear.  Please do this either as a comment here or in a private email.  If I get enough concrete information, I’d like to do a post later putting together everyone’s ideas.

Gardeners Wanted!

Most people in the Seed Network are not being contacted by many people interested in seeds.  Throw away those seed catalogs, and get in touch with some Seed Network members!  The seeds are yours for the taking, and many of them are a lot more interesting than what’s available in gardening catalogs.  Even if you’re someone who normally buys your vegetable seeds from seed catalogs, consider trying a few from the Seed Network.

Of course the intention is you will save your own seeds for regrowing, but everyone has to learn sometime, so don’t be afraid to ask for some to experiment in saving with.  I’ll be posting some more information on seed saving later.

While some members in the Seed Network have their own rules regarding who they will send seeds to, most member are willing to ship seeds worldwide.  A few Seed Network members offer some things for free, and most others are flexible on how you pay for the seeds and will usually accept things in trade besides money.  Sometimes local currencies are accepted.

If you will be growing open pollinated or heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables in your garden this coming year, think about saving seeds and offering them via this network.  I’ll be posting some more about this, but don’t be afraid to contact me personally if you have any questions about this.  See the Contact link near the top on the front page of this blog.

Seeds or other Plant Materials Wanted!

If you save your own seeds or otherwise have self-propagated plants to offer other people, please consider joining the Seed Network.  You don’t need to have a blog to join!  If you don’t have a blog or another place on the Internet to list your offering, I will put it in a post here on this blog.  Please contact me if you’re interested.

The amount you have to offer is not important.  Yes, like I mentioned above, there is one Seed Network member offering 10,000 different varieties.  It’s also okay if you only have 1!  Just as important as having a lot of varieties available is having a large base of people, both offering and requesting seeds.

It takes time to learn how to properly save seeds, so if you don’t have any on offer this year, consider offering something in future years.