A Nice Article about Seed Saving

A good read:

The living lottery of seed saving

 

For me, seed saving is as much of the harvest as picking fruit, veg and flowers. 4 Reasons for saving, free seeds (my favourite price), improving non-F1 strains by re-selecting, preserving varieties that aren't commercially available, and having a bit of fun seeing what happens.

Today we walked to our plot to harvest seeds from some rather good sweet peas that were left to go to seed, a bit of a rush because heavy rain was imminent and lots were ready to pick.

Finished collecting all the dry pods just as it started tipping down, and extracted all the seeds back at home, but about 15% were spoilt by recent wet weather. When I know I'm going to seed save, I'll normally reserve part of the crop exclusively for early seed saving.

Weighed 50 seeds, then all the seeds, and calculated I have around 2,000, with probably another 1,000 more to to ripen. T&M sell 20 for £1.99, so I already have £199's worth.

As I was also growing 2 other varieties close by, I may even have something different produced when I dow them next year.

 

I'm growing Manx marvels just for the seed this year

 

I recently went on a visit to Kings Seeds in Essex for a guided tour. It was interesting seeing the laboratory. I learned a couple of things about successful seed storage and sowing. Store in the fridge or somewhere cold, use seed compost for sowing and always use tap water when watering.

Having always stored my seeds in a tin in the greenhouse and watered with rainwater I can see where I've been going wrong. Although I've had reasonable results in the past I'm taking these tips on board to see if my success rate improves.

 

We popped to our local Wyevale GC yesterday as we had some vouchers to use.Saw some pots of white hardy cyclamen for sale at £2.99 for a small plant so the corm can’t be that old.

I think I shall carry on growing mine from seed and when big enough will start to flog them although I have already planted out my larger plants into my garden.I think I must be sitting on a goldmine

The seedlings are this years crop from flowers pollinated last August /September 2017 and then harvested in July this year.The bare soil in the containers will soon be full of little leaves as they don’t all germinate at once in the warmth of the greenhouse

The tray of flowering plants have been hand pollinated by me and possibly the bees and are just getting their leaves showing

 

I've saved some seed of my Black Russian tomato.

 

I like pretty red tomatoes - is there a difference in the taste of black ones?

 

Black Russian are not pretty and red; they are big, knobbly, dark but not black and they taste delicious!