Seed saving tips for beginners
Author - Dawn McLachlan
Our starting place as seed savers is to always choose open-pollinated or heirloom varieties to grow. Make a record of the seedlings you start off and don’t bother saving seed from hybrid varities. You’ll notice that the packets will have F1 written on them, or that the seed catalogues will tell you this.
The next thing you should learn when growing for success is how your plants propagate. Your vegetables will reproduce either by cross pollination, self-pollination or a combination of both. Most will be insect pollinated, but some, including sweetcorn, spinach, chard and beetroot for example, are pollinated by wind. Try to learn the method of propagation for the plant you wish to grow and encourage this environment for the plant. For example, if your plant is propagated by insects and you are spraying everything with pesticides you will never collect seed from it. If it needs the wind and you’ve got it shut up in polytunnel, you won’t have the results you need. A bit of research at this stage is very important because it will help you place the plant in your growing space, and guide how you take care of it throughout the growing season.
Growing for seed takes advance planning. Once you have chosen which crop you wish to gather seed from, you should take particular care to maintain those plants long after you have harvested the other fruit or vegetables from that patch. It is also wise to make sure you are selecting the finest and healthiest looking plants to set seed. There is no point in collecting seed from the plants that were weak or that failed to thrive because there is every chance their seeds will do the same. It is wise to keep a seed diary so you can track growth for things like germination time and time between fruit, flower and seed. It is not simply a case of leaving things to “go over”, but to shift your mindset to a place where you are looking at two crops from your plants; the crop you eat, and the crop you plan to grow next year.
Some plants are easier to save seed from than others, but a good place to start is to examine the most crops we most commonly grow in our home plots. Study the plants you want to grow, and the things you like to eat. If you are going to invest valuable space and time on this, make sure it’s things you actually like to eat!
In short…
A little research will give you advice specific to each and every plant in your patch, but there are a few tips common to all plants.
Don’t leave seed saving to the last minute, think in advance about the needs of your plants and make it happen right through its growing cycle. Nurture your seeds plants with every bit as much care as you do your eating plants.
Watch your plants carefully for the strongest and most true-to-type individuals and gather your seeds from them. The parent plant will give you an idea of what to expect from the seed. If you only save seed from the weedy plant that is the last one left, the chances are you will grow weedy late plants from that seed or that it will not germinate next year at all.
Storage matters. Take care with your labelling and storage. Don’t put all that effort into saving your seeds to then consign them to confusion and mould over winter
Never forget your pollinators! There can be very few of us who are not aware of the vital role that insects play in our gardens. If you spray to remove or prevent the insects you don’t want, you will inevitably be destroying the insects you do want. If you want successful seed it is far better to work with nature, than against it. Instead of spraying against aphids, grow companion plants that will encourage useful pollinators like hover flies and ladybirds to eat them. You won’t produce successful seed without pollinators. I tend to work with the mindset that I’m growing a third for this year’s table, a third for next year’s, and a third for the wee beasties.
You can’t beat the support of other local growers. Even if you don’t have an allotment yourself you will often find that allotmenteers love to talk about veg and are a mine of useful information about growing conditions in your local area. Have a wander down there, or see if there is a local group on social media
Seed saving is worth it. Our great grandparents didn’t have to buy seeds. Instead they simply saved from the plant that grew best for them, and then grew it again the following year. They swapped seeds with their friends and family and the plants they grew adapted to suit the places they grew them in. F1 hybrid seed does not have this adaptability because it is designed to grow exactly the same plant in an ideal environment, but we don’t all live in an “ideal” environment. To manufacture an “ideal” environment takes vast quantities of fuel, water, and pesticides, all of which are damaging to our world.
Save seeds, save money, save the planet - it just makes sense.
This blog by Dawn McLachlan is an extract of a chapbook first published in 2020 as part of The Town is the Garden Project in Huntly, Aberdeenshire
The Real Seeds Company is an excellent place to source your seeds and you can also get a copy of their guidance sheet for seed saving by following the link below.
https://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedsavinginfo.html
