Seed are life.

Yet many seeds and plants that have populated the planet for eons are at risk of disappearing because they don’t fit the corporate farming model. It is estimated that 75% of plant diversity has been lost over the last century. That’s where Seed Savers Exchange comes in.

Seed Savers Exchange

First- I want to give a shout out to the Seed Savers Exchange for their 2018 Summer Conference at Heritage Farm. I’m still buzzing with all the new information I brought home. I had to share some of what I learned with you all!

They’ve built a vibrant community of dedicated volunteers and staff, all starting with co-founders Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy in 1975. I was lucky enough to meander through Diane’s gardens with her at the beginning of the weekend.

Today, the 890-acre Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa grows over 20,000 plant species and has 13,000 members. Meeting some of these wonderful members and staff at their annual conference has increased both my understanding of seed saving and my excitement for it.  I mean with an onsite Seed Swap with people from all over- how could I not get more excited!?!

Plus, plant people are the best people!

If you garden, you’ve likely already benefited from the work of Seed Savers Exchange staff, volunteers and members. There are treasure troves of information on their site and at the store- visit online or in person, often!

Heirloom vs Hybrid Seeds

Patience with Nature

One thing to keep in mind when starting to save seeds is the at we’re really just helping nature along. Waiting long enough for Mother Nature to do her work is a big part of the initial learning curve. …Both waiting for the seed to be ripe enough on the plant and waiting long enough for the seed to be dry enough to put into storage!

In general, plants will tell you when their seeds are ready. They give you signs, like color changes or simply starting to fall off the plant.

Not all seeds are as showy with their seed ripeness, which brings me to Heritage Farm Field crew Leader, Rochelle’s advice, “spend a little time learning about the plant you are saving seeds from. Each crop has some specific information on how to work with it- but don’t be afraid to mess up. There are so many easy plants to start with.”

Wise words from a wise woman (who also really likes driving the farm)!

 Should we save our Own
or Buy from Seed Savers Exchange?

BOTH!

Yes, we can all save the Easy To Save Seeds at home. There are many beautiful books on seed saving, and I’ve got an article on the easiest to save for home gardeners.

Seed Savers Exchange also has a great person-to-person way to keep these home saved seed lines open. They call it “The Exchange” and it is a community of gardeners and seed stewards, sharing and swapping unique varieties you might not find anywhere else. The Yearbook is the printed edition of the Exchange, the gardener-to-gardener seed swap. Printed annually since 1975, the Yearbook is an unrivaled source of unique seeds, grown by home gardeners across the world. The SSE houses around 20,000 varieties at their headquarters.

Participants in the Exchange have saved thousands of rare heirlooms from extinction by connecting with new seed stewards to carry on seed saving traditions to the next generation. Many of the heirlooms that have entered the marketplace in recent years were shared here first, and many more heirlooms are still only found in the gardens of this community.

The Exchange works to keep biodiversity strong and garden traditions thriving. To give you an idea, they have over 8,400 listing for tomatoes. So this is a true non-profit. Actually, as one of the staff said, “we’re one of the few groups who actually want to go out of business. If enough people save enough seed and replant it- we won’t need to exist.”

And that spirit runs through everything they do. They even invite other seed companies to their events, talk about true community.

If you’re looking for a more local and small-scale way to start seed swapping check out you local Seed Library!

 Seed Storage

This is one place I could get MUCH better as I am saving way more seed varieties this year. It is recommended to store seeds in a cool dark place. And usually in a glass jar or plastic bag. Air tight containers will hold seeds viable for longer, you just need to make sure they are fully dried out before sealing it to avoid growing mold instead of more food

For the last decade or so, I mostly keep my home saved seeds in paper bags or paper envelopes in a cool dark area. Sometimes clear glass jars too.

Seed Saving Next Steps

• Check out the Seed Savers Exchange website for more online tips.  
• Look into MN SEED project for native plant seeds
• Read my other seed saving blogs:
  Seed Saving : Annual Flowers
  Seed Saving: Vegetables
• Our local White Bear Lake Seed Library, is housed in the downtown library and gives ‘seed saving talks’ quite frequently.

Once you get the hang of it, Lee Buttala, former ED of SSE suggested, “try to grow a few plants dedicated for seeds. Many plants grow in such a way that you can’t use them for both eating and seed saving.”

I hope I’ve inspired you to start saving your own seeds!  Like most things in life getting started is the hardest part- so please ask for help! Ask me- or find another local seed saver, there is such a great community of people working to ensure diversity in seeds.

Off to collect some calendula seeds… and dig into some of the amazing food ripening in my gardens!

Dig In!
Michelle

The post Seed Savers Exchange appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

I know that sounds dramatic, but saving seeds is a big part of why humans hunkered down into communities and began our long march towards civilization (we’ve still got on our marching boots though, right!?). Variations of those seeds still sustain us today. 

Until a few generations ago, most people planted what they had saved from the last harvest. With a few additions now and then from neighbors or travelers.

But for me and many home gardeners, saving seeds had fallen off our radars. It is making a bit of a comeback and I am encouraging as many people as I can to jump on this bandwagon with me!

To start saving seeds please remember:
Not all seeds are suited for saving!

There’s a simple trick to buying the right seeds so you can save + grow again.

Grow Heirloom varieties, or open pollinated varieties.  Hybrid seeds will not produce the same vegetable that you took the seed from.

Garden Planning, my Favorite!

I love getting those seeds catalogs and will have larger than anticipated bills at a few seed companies once I finalize my orders, but I am proud to be able to skip over a few seed sections because I’ve saved my own seed stock from what I grew last year.

Saving seed is intuitive- if we stop to see the plants we nurture as part of Mother Nature. Everything has a cycle, and the whole reason tomatoes exists is to grow more tomatoes so they make it easy for us. Or as Michael Pollan suggests in a few books, like The Botany of Desire and TED talks, “the plants have us working for them”.

Back to the real world application of all of this-

We’re half way through one of the coldest Januaries on record across the northern US, so most of us are looking forward to those lazy days of summer even more than normal. Oh Summertime; being surrounded by lush green growth, the sounds of birds chirping and bees buzzing, smelling flowers, picking strawberries warmed by the sun… (the weeding, mosquitoes, heat and humidity have conveniently faded into the back of our memories.)

And this is the moment the seed catalogs begin storming in, right when they know we’re at our weakest, most desperate state. Well played seed companies, well played.

The colorful pages of these catalogs offer escape from the winter weather and promise sunny days filled with so much growth it overwhelms our senses, often including our common sense.

A sample of saved seeds from my garden. Picked, dried, stored and ready to plant.

As much as I still revel in these catalogs and all they promise I’m able to skip over a few sections now because I’ve been saving seeds of plants grown in last year’s garden.

There is something so empowering about growing your own food AND saving your own seeds so that you can grow more food again next season- without the help of anyone except Mother Nature.

The simple act of bringing in a seed connects you to a 10,000 year-old heritage of saving the best seeds to better the food we eat. It also makes sense to this frugal mama because you save cold hard cash on your next seed. With both reasons, you get to play with Mother Nature and see what happens.

Luckily for us (and our ancestors), the process is pretty intuitive with most seeds. You pick a seed and save it. But like all the things worth doing, seed saving is worth doing well.

And I’ve found just the local lady to help us ALL learn to do it well!

Pam talking with visitors at the WBL Winter Market.

I’d like to introduce Pam Larson Frink .

Pam started the White Bear Lake Seed Library in April of 2016 and has been gaining steam and seed stock ever since. She also holds a Masters in Environmental Education and a Horticultural degree, so she knows her stuff inside and out. For those of you that were able to attend the White Bear Lake Winter Farmers Market, Pam was there representing the seed library.

The Seed Library at the White Bear Lake Library.

She also thinks a lot like me, “I think saving seeds connects you to the food you eat. It’s so easy to buy produce at the grocery store that you don’t understand that it’s more than just food. It’s soil and insects pollinating the plant and clean water and sun to grow the plant. And if you don’t take care of the soil and the water and the insects you soon will not have food.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Pam often shares her knowledge of seed saving during seed packing events at the WBL Library. Sign up for the email list to get notices of when packing events, classes and seed distribution events are coming up!

I’ll suggest the highly regarded books, Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth and  Seed Sowing And Saving by Carole Turner and The Seed Garden by the former director of the Seed Savers Exchange Lee Buttala

And here’s where the planning comes in!  It is easy to forget when you’re looking at all the glorious varieties in the seed catalogs that…

If you want to start saving seeds, you have to start with save-able seeds.

Look for seeds labeled ‘open pollinated seeds’. This also means NO HYBRIDS, often labeled as F1! These are NOT good options for seed saving. They will not ‘come true’ if the seeds are planted, they will often revert.

Reverting

Johnny’s Potomac Custom Mix (F1) Snapdragon Seed, which I still order even though the colors will never stick, now I know why!

Pam had a perfect story from her early days of gardening that explains this “reverting”… She had grown a beautiful rainbow of colored snapdragon flowers. So she decided to save the seed to enjoy the color burst another season. Pam planted the next Spring, getting sturdy snapdragon plants. But every single flower bloomed pale yellow. This is nature saying nice try The seed of a hybridized plant most often does not “come true” and reverts to one of the gene pools it was hybridized from. In the case of the snapdragon seeds, this meant pale yellow.

Swinging Squash

Things get a bit more complicated with certain groups that cross pollinate; squash are the notorious for cross pollinating with each other. Some open pollinating plants will cross pollinate. Seed growers have tricks like growing inside greenhouses, growing miles apart or bagging seed heads to avoid cross pollination. I might try to bag a favorite zucchini after she’s pollinated this summer!

Before I understood that squash were ‘swingers’  I had already saved and dried a few butternut and acorn squash seeds. So, after talking it over with Pam, I’m going to do my own squash experiment, I might grow something delicious, or something horrible. Either way, I’ll be playing with Mother Nature which is a win for me!

The Seed Stacks

Seed Libraries are places where people can ‘check out’ seeds to grow on their own.  The hope is that you can save some seed and replenish the seed stock the following Fall/Winter. They’re usually housed inside public libraries, but also co-ops and community centers. Checking out the seeds are free, but some ask for  membership info or volunteer commitments.

Our WBL Seed Library asks for membership info, but as Pam quipped, “There are no seed Nazis around”.  Started in April of 2016, the WBL branch is serving the community well, going through over 1,000 seed packets in 2017!  They take both home saved and purchased seed. With a few necessary caveats.

Donating to the seed library? Please keep in mind:
Heirloom or open pollinated varieties only. If they are home saved seeds, a few choice vegetable varieties; Beans, Peas, Lettuce, Sweet Peppers and Tomatoes, plus native flowers.

This year the White Bear Lake See Library is especially looking for some native pollinator plants like Milkweed, Liatrus/Blazing Star and Monarda /Bee Balm– but only the native non-hybridized varieties.

To save seeds of native flowering plants, wait until the flower forms a seed head, knock off seeds (or cut seed head) and bag.

So far, I’ve only ever saved enough seeds to use the following year, and keeping them in paper bags inside paper envelopes has worked well for me. But if you want to save for multiple years you’ll be better off storing in an airtight container- like a mason jar. Just make sure they are completely dry before you seal that jar!

Seeds make tasty treats too!

I want to give a shout out to the people who have worked to secure our right to save and share our own seed, with a Minnesota bill signed in May of 2015. The business of seeds is BIG business, and without the efforts of many groups working together to protect our rights to save and share seeds, thank you!

A few more online resources:

• Seed Savers Exchange– One of the best nationwide sources for heirloom seeds, they have a stunning selection of seeds for sale (but don’t get sucked too far in!)
• They also have their actual “Exchange” program, outlined HERE
• The University of Minnesota, as always has gathered simple, accessible practical information about saving Vegetable seeds grown in MN. 
• If you’d like another online read about seed saving, The International Seed Saving Institute has some easy to read info as well.
• White Bear Lake area residents, be sure to check out the WBL Seed Library’s Blog site and sign up for their emails, its a great way to connect with other local gardeners!

Like all things gardening, saving seeds is less daunting and way more fun when you get to talk to someone else who either knows what they’re doing, or is making the same mistakes as you are

I hope you can join one of the many local  Seed Library ‘seed packing events’, this is such a great way to find your local garden family!

A special thanks to Pam for sharing her deep plant knowledge and vision to help the community and creating our local Seed Library, thousands of plants and pollinators are thankful!

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

Will you try to save any seeds this year? Which ones? I’m determined to save my tomato and peppers this year!

Can’t wait to Dig into the Dirt again with all this talk of seeds!

Michelle

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