Seed Saving

Why save seeds from your garden when it’s so much easier to run down to the local hardware store and grab a few packets? Well, it’s easy, for one. And you can save seeds from the specific plants that have done best in your garden, thereby creating a personalized seed collection for plants that not only have the characteristics you want, but have proven their suitability for the unique ecosystem of your backyard.

Besides, seed saving is a tradition older than agriculture itself, and one that has helped to both create and preserve the biodiversity necessary for our very survival.

Consider this: since the early 1800’s, 85-90% of tomato, pea, corn and apple varieties in this country have become extinct. Over the last century, we’ve lost 75% of the genetic diversity of food crop species - not varieties of species, but species themselves - and with each passing year, we lose another 50,000 varieties. In 1900, we depended on some 1500 different plants for our food, with countless varieties for each plant. But today, 90% of our food comes from only 30 plants, and a mere 4 (including wheat and corn) constitute 75% of our diet.

Shades of the Irish Potato Famine.

You see, variety isn’t just about impressing the neighbors with 5-pound tomatoes. It’s about staying three steps ahead of the critters and blights by nurturing enough variation within a species that it is easily adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions and can be readily replaced when diseases or insects strike down one or more varieties of that species.

Yet given the mandate these days to plant so few species and varieties of those species, not to mention the ability of diseases and insects to rapidly adapt to the slightest change, we leave ourselves open to multiple replays of the 70’s, when our corn crops were lost, or the 80’s, when our vineyards were decimated – or even, given extreme conditions, a New Millennium Potato Famine.

And you thought what you were doing in your backyard wasn’t important. Au contraire, dear reader!

Besides, it’s easy. Seeds from annuals are the easiest to save, but be sure to collect them from open pollinated heirlooms. You can save seeds from hybrids, but the resulting plants won’t resemble the parent, instead reverting back to one of the varieties used to create the hybrid.

And open pollinated heirlooms are extremely diverse in their characteristics, which is one reason they’re so important. This diversity is why there is often inconsistency in the quality of heirlooms from the same batch of seeds. The simple truth is, with heirlooms, some plants will do just a bit better than others in the soil and temperature and other conditions of your garden. What this means is you can pick and choose the specific plants that have done best in your backyard’s ecosystem and save seeds from them.

The first step is to consider the characteristics you want. Look at overall plant vigor, flavor, insect and disease resistance, and tolerance to environmental conditions, like wind. Size can be a factor, but it’s best to think about the plant as a whole and choose for the sum of its properties, and not a single quality. Otherwise, you run the risk of, say, monster tomato plants that yield little fruit and fall over at the first hint of wind.

Some people go so far as to protect the flowers of their chosen plants from any possibility of cross-pollination. But that’s not necessary unless, like me, you’ve planted three varieties of the same plant in the same plot.

Then, when the time is right, start gathering.

For tomatoes, choose a fruit that’s just past eating-ripe. Squeeze its innards into a glass jar and add water. Cover with a light cloth and let sit at room temperature. In about 3 days, mold will form and bad seeds will float to the top, while good seeds will sink to the bottom. Scoop the mold and not-good seed from the top, add more water and let sit another day or so, repeating until no more seed floats to the top. Rinse the remaining seeds and spread on a plate to dry.

To save watermelon seeds, scrape seeds into a strainer and rinse thoroughly. Then, add a bit of dish soap to some water and gently wash to remove sugars from the seed coating. Rinse well and spread out on a plate to dry.

If you want seeds from a plant with seedpods, like nicotiana, you can wrap a paper bag around the pod and, when the pod bursts, your collecting is done.

To properly store, it’s important to control for heat and moisture content. Make sure that your seeds are thoroughly dry. Commercial operations and experienced seed savers use ovens, but that’s not a good idea for us amateurs because too much heat will spoil the seed.

Instead, allow them to dry on plates for as long as possible. Then, on a day with low humidity, place them in marked envelopes and put those envelopes in a glass jar - except legumes, which you should store in vented bags. Add a packet of desiccant or drying agent like the silica packets in boxes of new shoes. Or you can make your own by wrapping a tablespoon or two of non-fat dry milk in a tissue and tucking it in the jar. Put the lid on and store in a cool, dark place, like the refrigerator. And voila: you’re set for next year’s garden.

If you’re interested in learning more about seed saving, there are some excellent books out there. I like Nancy Bubel’s “The Seed-Starter’s Handbook” and Suzanne Ashworth’s “Seed to Seed.” And my favorite website on the subject is Southern Exposure Seed Exchange at http://www.southernexposure.com/index.html.