Every time I visit Daphne's Dandelions - a great blog on growing veggies and more - I see her icon to the Seed to Seed Challenge. Finally, my curiosity overtook me and I followed it to One Green Generation which at first perusal looks interesting. The seed to seed challenge asks gardeners to grow a something, that they have never grown before, to seed for growing out again the following year.
I would like to match and 'raise' this challenge to say that this year:
"I am going to grow all the vegetables that I can feasibly grow given space constraints to seed which includes biennials that I have overwintered."
I normally try to do this on a small scale, and I always do this with easy to save seed such as most legumes and tomatoes, but this year, I'm going to include members of the brassica (cabbage, broccoli etc...) family, and root crops, including saving some of my self seeding greens for other people to enjoy.
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Seed Saving Resources?
If you are new to seed saving then welcome aboard. Not so new but would like to learn more then may I suggest such great resources as The New Seed Starters Handbook by Bubel (Thanks to a lucky birthday present, I have two copies so if you know me then feel free to borrow one) and Seed to Seed by Ashworth. An old hat at seed saving then you might enjoy (if you haven't already read it) Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties by Deppe.
The easiest beginner seed to save are: Beans, Peas, and Tomatoes.
4 comments:
I'm going to try (again) to save some seed this year. i have had limited success and lots of failures. I tried last year to save some scarlet runner beans but they got moldy..not sure what I did wrong. My parsley did really well last year...I'm waiting to see if it will make a return appearance this year and go to seed.
irena
I've had that happen in beans before and have found that it is because they were not dried long enough or that the room they were in was a bit too humid. Runner beans are tricky for us in Ottawa because our season is borderline for maturing them so I do have to bring them in before they are fully dry on the vine normally then I let them dry and dry and dry adn when I think they are dry... I let them dry a couple more weeks.
What kind of parsley is it? My italian flat leaf so far has always come back.
I'm almost done with the Deppe book. I've loved it. I've read very little about seed saving before and it is quite informative. I'll post about it once I finally finish. Seed to Seed is also waiting to be read.
I'm am going to save many more seeds this year. Seeds can get rather expensive to order every year so why not just save them for free. Plus I will then have lots to trade! Once I get through my current reads, I will have to do some seed saving reading.
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