Spring is finally here, along with the winds! And planting a food garden is what should be on everyone’s mind, as we see the cost of food skyrocketing and who knows what’s in the food we buy. You are what you eat. But, I’m throwing you a curve ball because I’m talking about saving your seed!
I know what you may be thinking, “Hey, Freddie, this is spring, how we going to save seeds if we haven’t planted?”. True, but before you plant, you need plan on seed saving before you even buy your seeds as there are two types of seeds, Heirloom and Hybrid. Heirloom, like the name implies, are seeds that have proven themselves to be viable generation after generation. Heirlooms produce seeds that will produce a new plant. Hybrids, however, may or may not produce viable seeds, as they have been selectively bred for specific qualities, not for reproducibility. So, it’s questionable is they are able to reproduce.
It’s important to buy heirloom seeds for three reasons. First, is the viability of the seeds. Reproducibility. The second is cost. Like everything else, the cost of seeds is rising, and now you are getting fewer seeds in each package. The third reason is epigenetics. You know what genetics is, well, epigentics are those factors that are passed along but are changed as an organism, like plants, adapt to their particular environment. For example, in our high desert climate, not all plants can thrive here. But many plants can if you carefully prepare the soil, the water, and sunlight for that particular plant. By doing that, if your plant survives the conditions you provided, here, and you save the seeds, the next generation will have already adapted to better survive our climate. It becomes easier for that next generation. So, this is probably the most important reason to save your plant seeds every season.
Here are a couple of examples. You may have heard of arugula, the spicy plant people add to their salads and sandwiches. Sorta tastes like black pepper. We planted a few heirloom arugula seeds in our garden. And we harvested leaves as needed and the plants continued to grow. Side note, arugula likes cool weather and it survives our winters, so planting should be late summer or fall. So we left if to grow and produce seeds. We collected some seeds, as the birds ate most of the seeds. Little did we know, the birds in tearing apart the hulls of the seed pods, they spread the seeds. And some of them sprouted, on their own the following fall. I occasionally would water the area as there is a small tree there. Well, three years later, each successive generation became less dependent on supplemental water, and continued to grow. So, now I let “nature” do it’s thing and I harvest arugula seeds as we need them. Pretty cool, right! That’s epigentics.
My first photos are of our arugula patch. You can see the stems have been bent over by the birds hanging on the plants, trying to open the pods for the seeds. The seeds are not quite ripe, but by watching the birds, I get an idea when we can harvest some seeds. Um, wonder how the birds know that!
Another example is a plant you probably never heard of is Typhon also spelled Tyfon, or called Holland Greens. It is an Asian turnip. I’ll probably write another article on this plant alone as it is super good for many reasons. Point is, it’s easy to grow and collect its seeds. I was recently told you cannot find it in the USA market so I did a quick search and concur. We had so many last year we gave a bunch away in hopes others would grow it. We are fixing to harvest some within this coming week and replant this fall.
Our Typhon has been growing well here! It tolerates the summer heat, though it prefers cooler weather, hence, it produces seed in the spring, just before it gets hot. See the second photos. Our Typhon is my example of epigentics, adapting to our environment and passing those traits on.
Both plants above are proven heirlooms. So buy some heirloom seeds and you’ll reap the benefits year after year! That’s why we save our seeds.
