Tuesday 30 August 2011

Saving your Seed!

Just to clarify things, before we start; this blog post is all about plant seeds... just wanted to make sure you knew that.

It is an unfortunate truth that sometimes organic goods can cost more than your standard contaminated variety. It is important then, to minimize costs wherever you can!

Seed Packs

If you plant your own garden, and tend to buy your plants and seeds new every year, then harvesting your own seeds can help save on the yearly start-up costs for your garden.

Harvesting seeds can be different for every plant - however a little bit of research will teach you when and how to harvest seeds for all your various plants.

What you will need to begin saving your seeds:

1. Knowledge about the life cycle of your plants.
2. If there are any specific ways you need to harvest the seed.
3. A place to safely dry your seeds.
4. A way to store your seeds until the following year. (Cool dry places are the best.)

Dill Seeds

If you would rather learn hands on without so much research, I have heard of a few workshops that will teach you how it is all done.

There are two; one in Ontario and one in Alberta. For more information on these workshops you can go here: Seeds of Diversity - Seedy Events

Another idea that I love is community seed saving. It is often the case that you will be able to harvest much more seed from your garden than you personally will be able to use the following year. However, you could organize a community project which allows members to swap extra seeds that they have harvested. There are many different ways you could go about this, but the key points would be to ensure that all seeds are properly harvested, stored and labeled; and of course ensure that everyone involved is organically inclined.

Homegrown Quinoa!

A few websites I have found that seem to include good and relevant information on seed-saving are the following:
Seed Sanctuary for Canada
How to Save Garden Seeds

I also came across this great video on the importance of saving seeds and tomato seed harvesting! (I didn't have a clue that this was how you found viable tomato seeds...)



Photos via LollyKnit, kirstyhall and net_efekt.

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3 comments:

  1. Love That video! What a great bit of knowledge!
    Thanks =)

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  2. Glad you liked it -- Thanks for checking it out!

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  3. This thing about seeds is so true...this summer most of what grew in my garden came up randomly from seeds, thrown into the garden in the form of compost from my organically eaten veggies. I had literally hundreds of plants spring up all over! We called it a mystery garden, as many squash type plants were indistinguishable from one another....it was the best garden I ever produced! All types and variety of tomatoes, even pea plants came up as a surprise and lettuce and chard and spinach that self planted from the year before....We are eating good at the moment! Love those little seeds!

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