Collecting Seed

“One for the rock, one for the crow, One to die, and one to grow.”
- English saying

We are in the process of collecting the seed from our current garden for next year. This is always an exciting time for us. As all gardeners know all the hard work in the world cannot hold off Mother Nature so you hold your breath and hope that everything went alright and that your heirlooms produced strong seed for the season to follow. Deep inside you know that the fall harvest is right around the corner and it will be time for sweaters and knit hats before you know it.

So far it looks as though things have gone pretty good for us. There were a few disappointments due to poor planning and pest but for the most part I am very satisfied. Our golden peas produced nearly half a pound of seed which means next year the 3rd generation planting will be all our own seed stock. We have marked a few particular stalks of corn to save specifically for seed. Last year three ears of corn gave us about a mason jar full of seed. I think we will aim for five ears this year and give some away to fellow gardeners and maybe look into a local seed exchange as well. We have three varieties of beans drying on the vine for seed also. We are currently drying some seed from our “yellow” watermelon, truth be told I was not super impressed with it but I want to continue the strain in case someone else may want it.

These are just a few of the items we are collecting for next years gardening project, there are also a few varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers as well as zucchini that we want to try and save too. If you happen to be growing heirlooms for the first time and need a bit of advice I recommend going to The Seed Savers Exchange website. They have some really helpful information in regards to saving seed; you can find them at www.seedsavers.org I have used their techniques to successfully save my own seed the last two seasons.