With the economic squeeze tightening from all directions, the idea of getting
something for nothing is more appealing than ever. Why shell out for packets
of seeds, then, when you could get them free from the crops of flowers and
vegetables in your garden? Making your own clothes and baking your own bread
are back in fashion; growing your own plants from seed may well join them.
Harvesting your own seeds – and swapping them with friends and neighbours –
used to be common practice, but fell out of favour after the second world
war, as commercial supplies became more widely and cheaply available via
mail order and through garden centres.
With seeds ripening as autumn approaches, now is the ideal time to get
started. The bonuses are that you know where they come from (with zero
transport miles), what they taste like and that the variety will grow
successfully in your garden. Even better, those you cultivate gradually
acclimatise to the specific local conditions, becoming har-dier and more
productive.
Seed saving also plays an important role in preserving biodiversity. Every
year, hundreds of plant varieties drop off the list of those registered for
commercial use (known as the National List; www.defra.gov.uk/planth/pvs/
listing/index.htm), when seed companies consider them to be no longer
commercially viable. This means we are losing a vast number of useful, tasty
and interesting varieties, as well as reducing the overall gene pool. These
include the lettuces ‘Avon Defiance’ and ‘Wind-ermere’, peas ‘Bijou’ and
‘Suttons Achievement’ and ‘Fry’ runner beans.
Supermarkets have played a key role in the demise of many varieties of
vegetables, especially those that don’t travel well or have thin skins and
therefore poor longevity. What a vegetable tastes like seems to have been a
subsidiary factor in the variety survival stakes. Among recent tomato
outcasts are the white beefsteak ‘White Princess’, the wonderful-tasting
‘Green Grape’ and the tangerine-coloured ‘Tangella’, which won a Royal
Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit in 2006.
Saving seeds not only makes sound economic sense, it also helps to keep alive
such outlawed varieties. Nor do you have to restrict yourself to your
current selection of plants: save all your extra seeds – labelled clearly –
and go to a swap event. You could set one up yourself with your neighbours –
or fellow gardeners if you have an allotment – or attend one of the
organised events around the country. Most, such as the Brighton-based Seedy
Sunday (which attracted more than 1,300 people in February), take place
early in the year, allowing time for the seeds to be collected and dried,
then swapped just at the time when gardeners are thinking about what to
plant for the coming season.
If you can’t wait until then, take envelopes and a pencil to gather freebies
at the Great Seed Giveaway, Hestercombe Gardens, Somerset, on October 1 and
15 (01823 414180, www.hestercombe.com).
The Heritage Seed Library’s (HSL) harvest open day at Garden Organic Ryton,
near Coventry, on September 20 (024 7630 3517, www.gardenorganic.org.uk/events
), will have experts on hand for advice and tastings of some of the produce
grown as a result of seed saving.
“I think people have forgotten how to save seeds, because they haven’t sat
back and realised how easy it is,” says Rachel Crow, who works at the HSL.
“Take tomatoes, for example. You only need to save those from one plant –
think how many you get.” The HSL does an invaluable job of ensuring that
varieties of vegetables lost from the National List are kept for posterity.
It holds about 1,000 varieties in its library; 350 are awaiting trial, a
sample of which are tested each year.
About 200 of those already in the collection are made available to HSL members
through a catalogue. They include many traditional heritage varieties, such
as the broad bean ‘Martock’, which dates to Elizabethan times, and heirloom
varieties that have been handed down from gardener to gardener and never
made it into commercial catalogues, such as the climbing french bean ‘Mrs
Fortune’.
Seeds don’t have to be endangered to be worth saving. Among the simplest
flowers to try are nasturtiums, love-in-a-mist, marigolds, sunflowers,
aqui-legias, honesty, perennial mallow (malva), chinese lantern (Physalis
alkekengi), sweet peas, poppies and a range of herbs, including hyssop and
chives.
The simplest vegetables to start with are french beans, peas and tomatoes.
Certain crops cross readily, for example pumpkins, courgettes and squashes,
so if you want to be purist about preserving the exact variety, you will
need to hand-pollinate one or more fruits and close the flowers with rubber
bands to prevent insects getting in and messing up your good work.
Sprouting broccoli, cabbages, cauliflowers and kales are all members of the
same family (Brassica oleracea) and will cross with each other. If you are
collecting for next year, for absolute purity of progeny, you need to make
sure there are no other brassicas flowering within a mile of your garden,
from which insects can carry pollen. This may all sound complex, but it
doesn’t matter if crops do cross-pollinate unless you want to be purist
about your varieties.
You can save your own seed potatoes, too, although be aware that this can lead
to the build-up of viruses, and is therefore recommended only if your soil
is disease-free. Plant the potatoes in a different location on a minimum
four-year rotation to prevent problems.
It is important not to save seed from F1 hybrids – those produced as a first
cross between two distinct, pure-bred lines. Hybrid seeds are prized as they
produce uniform plants and usually result in an increase in yield. Saving
them is undesirable, though, as the genes separate out, producing extremely
variable progeny, with the offspring unlikely to be identical to the parent.
In other words, the superior qualities of the F1 hybrid disappear.
Check the original packet to find out whether you have used F1 seeds. And save
those from open-pollinated plants, rather than ones that have been
hand-pollinated.
The easiest vegetable seeds to save
Tomatoes - Scrape out the seeds from the flesh, which you can then eat. Leave
them to dry on a piece of kitchen roll that you have labelled with the
variety. In spring, put the kitchen roll on some compost on a plate on the
windowsill, and water. The paper will rot and the seeds should germinate.
Transfer to pots when they are big enough to handle.
Runner and french beans - Leave a whole plant in each row to go to seed and
ripen in the autumn. When the seed pods are completely dry and brittle, snip
their stalks from the vine, then bring them indoors and shell out the bean
seeds, discarding the pods. Spread them out on a plate and leave on a
windowsill, out of direct sunlight, for a final drying-off. Store.
Lettuces - Leave about seven plants to grow flower stalks and set seed.
Harvest continuously as they ripen by shaking the flower heads into a paper
bag. Leave to dry indoors and store.
Fower Power
For plants such as marigold, love-in-a-mist, poppies and chives, allow to
flower and set seed. Let the seeds dry on the plant before cutting off the
flower heads and putting them into large brown envelopes. Shake out the
seeds and remove any debris – you can do this by putting them through a
sieve – then store.
Back Garden Seed Saving by Sue Stickland (£9.95, 01225 484472, www.eco-logicbooks.com
). The website of the Real Seed Company (01239 821107, www.realseeds.co.uk)
has plenty of tips on saving seeds, and for a full list of Seedy Sunday and
other nationwide seed-swapping events, go to www.seedysunday.org
.
Check where seeds are on the plant – some, such as tomatoes, have seeds in the
fleshy parts, while others, such as cabbages and onions, only form seeds if
you resist the temptation to harvest and eat them, and instead leave them to
flower and set seed. Be vigilant – different seeds ripen at different times.
Save seeds from open-pollinated plants only, not from F1 varieties (see the
packet). Keep varieties well separated in the garden to prevent
cross-pollination. Save seeds from the varieties you like best and the
healthiest plants. Allow seeds to ripen fully before collecting. Harvest on
a dry, wind-free day to prevent rotting. Spread seeds out on a plate and
leave somewhere cool and airy to dry. To store, use brown envelopes, well
labelled with the variety and date, and put in a plastic box with a lid to
prevent moisture and attacks from mice. Store in a cool, dry place.
