Lazy Seed Saving

© Wendy of Peace & Carrots Farm. Vermont

Having a broken leg does have a silver lining. I had plenty of time to read and plan. I went over all my homestead plans and dreams, arranged the house on paper, worked on crazy quilts and organized my

sewing/computer room. Another unexpected bonus was seed saving.

If you are serious about seed saving and the purity of saved seed, the best plants in your garden should be singled out. The earliest and best cabbage, beans, corn, etc. has to be allowed to go to seed. Some plants are annuals and they go to seed the first year, such as corn, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, marigolds, poppies and cosmos. Biennials are plants that take two seasons to produce seed. They include cabbage, carrots, parsley and beets. Here in Vermont those have to be over-wintered in a root cellar and planted out the next spring. Otherwise, the cold often kills them or the deer paw them up for winter sustenance. Farther south you have the luxury of mulching well and wintering them over in the garden. Another chore is digging up canna lilies, gladiolous and dahlias before the ground freezes. It's also time to dig or pull up remaining carrots, horseradish roots, Jerusalem artichokes to be eaten before spring, tender bay and tarragon plants and the herb roots that will be used medicinally such as echinacea and elecampane.

My seed saving was sort of an accident. I plant mostly open pollinated seed that is the best for seed saving, but sometimes don't get around to the saving part. I didn't save the earliest and best of everything. Sometimes it was plants like the peas that were too prolific and eventually abandoned. We saved lots and lots of peas! I was better with the tomatoes, snagging some of the best ones. To save these, squeeze out the seed into a jar, add water and let ferment. When there's some nice scum on the top and all your friends and family have been properly grossed-out, rinse the seeds well, throw out the floaters and put the sinkers on a plate to dry. Don't forget to put a label on each jar and plate! Tomato seeds all look like.....well, tomato seeds. You can save peppers the same way.

Pumpkins and squashes can be grown together and the harvest is just fine. Those seeds inside might be a strange cross, though. Every year the compost pile grows gourd-like zukes, bumpy pumpkins and other weird mutants. If you intend to save these seeds and want them to breed true, the ones that cross must be separated by space or flowering time. Corn is the same way.

Garden flowers are easy to save. Just let the flower heads go to seed and dry them. Make sure you pick the seed heads before they shatter or blow away. Most seed heads are opened up and the seeds then roll out or are easy to separate. Make sure the seed is good and dry, then pack, label, date and store in a cool, dark place until next season.

Somewhere out there I've heard it rumored that there are absolutely conscientious and perfect gardeners. They plan precisely in winter, label without fail, plant out everything at just the right time in the best soil. They harvest at the optimum stage and immediately preserve the food using impeccable technique, never leaving a forgotten bucket or mound of food to moulder. Yes, I'm convinced they are out there, but myself, I'm not even close!

Sure, I fill 30 cubic feet of freezer space and an 8x8ft. root cellar, eat fresh from the garden for months, and admire the jars of beans and bags of dried corn, popcorn and shallots around the house and the large shelf of winter squashes and pumpkins in the greenhouse. What am I complaining about? Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. As I look at all that was done right, I also think of the holes in the deer fence and the munched cabbage and beet beds sampled by those deer. I remember the garlic beds that never seemed to be weeded enough. The geese got loose and kept the bean plants pruned, and the visiting dogs trampled some flowers and Swiss chard. The grapes wait for the arbor that we meant to put up for the last eight years. Gee, I even bought new cedar posts for it, then snitched the posts to make the platform for the masonry bread oven in the field.

I've been thinking that life and gardens have a lot in common. Our dreams keep us going. It's probably a good thing we don't know what's in store for life or the garden. Neither can be totally planned or controlled. Some good intentions fly out the window. Serendipity takes over to offer unexpectedly beautiful flowers or vegetables and entropy happens, introducing chaos and compost. Isn't it great??!! The little things become the most important and the grandiose schemes are tempered by reality. Compost happens and Serendipity rules! By spring we will be anxious to do it all again. See you in the new year.

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 © Copyright Wendy

Article courtesy of Peace & Carrots Farm, Vermont

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