Before I moved to my homestead, I was gifted a huge jar of heirloom seeds by a friend who understood what we were trying to do and had experience in seed saving.
我还记得我如梦似幻地整理着小袋的豆子、羽衣甘蓝和甜菜;我对园艺的无知和缺乏经验,暂时充满了未来丰收的美好憧憬。
At the bottom of the box, there was a set of instructions on seed saving that came with a strange ending exhortation: “If you save seeds from your harvest, you’ll never need to buy from us again. We wish you well!” They must have been homesteaders, too.
若干年后,距离我的第一个时刻已经隔了好几英里,经过了好几季的园艺劳作,我可以确认那些有远见的种子销售者的承诺。再加些东西,那个盒子就成了我的花园。Some of the seeds I planted the first year were allowed to mature and produce seed, giving me seeds not just for the consecutive planting seasons, but for as long as they were continuously planted either by me, the people我和我的后代分享了我的盈余。
The heirloom seeds I’ve carried on aren’t my own creation. They are a continuation of a heritage of seed saving that has kept and improved those old varieties for hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of years. It’s a tradition that anyone who plants a garden can take part in, if they so choose.
Now, the practice of seed saving for the next planting season may seem like a relatively simple endeavor, but it actually has a learning curve that I hadn’t anticipated back when I was sorting through that box, so many years ago. I should mention before we get much further, that if you’re unfamiliar with seed saving, you should check outour earlier article on the basics.
I now have a few gardening seasons under my belt and a few lessons learned that books never taught me. With the hope you too can start your home’s own seed vault, I offer here my tips and tricks from our organic, heirloom-seed-run homestead that may help you along the way to seed self-sufficiency.
Seed Saving Terms You Should Know
Heirloom Seeds
Most of us know about the wonderful colors and shapes of heirloom tomatoes at the local farmers market, but a surprising amount of people don’t realize that term extends far beyond tomatoes. Heirloom vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs are seeds that are open-pollinated, can breed true, aren’t genetically modified, and (in some cases), have been around for thousands of years.
Hybrid Seeds
最简单地说,杂交植物是通过同一物种的两个不同品种交叉授粉而产生的,但在现代,这也可能意味着植物可能与不同物种杂交,转基因,或以超出其自然、正常范围的方式改变。杂交品种通常繁育不真实,甚至可能产生不育的种子。
Pure Seed
Heirloom seeds that reproduce true to type aka just like their parent plants.
Breed True
The ability of heirloom plants that have been fertilized by the same variety to result in bearing pure seed.
Open-Pollinated
传粉植物可以通过自然过程传粉的植物,包括自传粉、风传粉和昆虫传粉。
Self-Pollinating
Plants that are able to fertilize themselves and therefore produce pure seeds automatically.
Insect Pollinated, Wind Pollinated
These are plants that require wind or insects for fertilization, and require isolation from other varieties to bear pure seed.
5 Things I Never Knew About Seed Saving
Now that we’ve covered the basic jargon to know about seed saving, here are five things I didn’t know about saving seeds that I learned after my first few seasons.
1. Saving True Seed Requires Knowledge and Planning
If you have an heirloom plant, you have a treasure — a link in an unbroken chain of plants that have been grown and allowed to produce pure seed. Your garden becomes a continuation of gardening generations who selected strong, vigorous plants and passed on their offspring.
In order to keep that chain unbroken, however, you need to protect your blossoming crops from cross-pollination. You’ve probably heard of hybrid dogs and hybrid chickens, but cultivars of the same type of crop can hybridize too. Avoiding it is not just a matter of planting just one type of cabbage and one type of turnip. Plants in the same family can hybridize as well.
I learned that the hard way when I saved zucchini seeds one year without taking into account that I had also planted two other summer squash varieties in close proximity. Once you decide to become an heirloom gardener, you’ll need to become familiar with the different families of garden plants and how they are pollinated. You’ll quickly learn which plants can cross, and then you can plan accordingly.
以下是一些(但肯定不是全部!)例子。There are four distinct species of squash, andthey’re all insect-pollinatedand liable to cross within species. You could either choose to grow only one type of a family per year, or try your hand at hand-pollination and bagging blossoms. Corn is wind-pollinated, and even if youonly plant one type of heirloom corn, your seeds may be hybridized if a close neighbor is growing a different type, or if you’re across the road from a GMO cornfield.
Related Post:Heirloom Seeds: What Are They?
Domesticated carrots are the same species as wild carrot (Queen Anne’s Lace) and will be hybridized if their wild counterparts are growing nearby. You can suspect hybridization if your saved seed from an orange type carrot starts producing white carrots. The cabbage family includes arugula, kohlrabi, kale, broccoli, and mustard, just to name a few, and they all mix freely.
一想到要把所有这些植物家族谱系都排列整齐,你是不是就头晕目眩?我希望不是这样。我更喜欢把它看作是我要解决的拼图游戏,在冬天靠近木火炉的地方,每年我都在规划我的花园。好消息是,有一些常见的自花授粉作物是一种省事的方式来节省种子。
如果你是新手,试着用手保存下祖传豌豆、西红柿、茄子、生菜、豇豆和中国长豆的种子。它们很容易产生真正的种子,不会与任何东西杂交。
如果你(像我一样)想要长期种植传家宝作物,并对挑战感到兴奋,我将推荐这本关于园艺植物家族、授粉方式以及如何保持它们的一致性的优秀资源:苏珊娜·阿什沃斯(Suzanne Ashworth)的《种子到种子》。It is my go-to reference for figuring out what’s getting planted in my garden every year so I can plan which plants will be allowed to go to seed, and keep my seed vault pure and strong.
2. Some Seeds Take a Very Long Time to Mature
When you get into seed saving from biennials, you are in it for the long haul. The name literally means “two years” as some plants will take a full two years to produce mature seed.
The first time I saved parsley, for example, I was shocked to find the seeds I planted in April of 2017 didn’t give me more parsley seeds until September of 2018 (it was worth the wait, as one single seed became hundreds). In the meantime, I got a minor harvest of parsley leaves for tabbouleh and pasta salads.
Related Post:How To Choose, Collect, And Save Garden Seeds
If you have limited garden space, understand that your biennials will take up residency for longer than the radishes and lettuce that happily go to seed within a season. A strategy for managing this is to plan to save one or two biennial seeds a year. You’ll wind up with hundreds of seeds from most plants which keeps you from having to overwinter each plant every year.
Plan to save from cabbage and beets one year, rutabaga and Swiss chard the next, and so on. Keeping a garden journal or logbook is an important means to keep track of your plans and make sure you have all the seeds you need for every season.
3. Seed Saving Requires a Lot of Space … in Addition to the Garden Space
On our homestead, we plant dozens of different species of garden plants nearly year-round, trying to get as much goodness from our food plots as possible. As a result, I’m nearly always in some stage of processing seeds at any given part of the year. Once I’ve harvested a mature fruit or seed stalk, there are a few places they may need to go.
即使它们成熟了,许多种子仍然需要完全干燥才能保持稳定和可储存。种子中残留的任何水分在密封和冷冻储存中都可能带来致命的灾难。在干燥的同时,也需要保护它们不被啮齿动物和伺机而动的鸟类叮咬。我们用一个专用的种子干燥脱水机(又名冰箱)来解决这个问题。通常一年中的大部分时间都是满的。
Some seeds need to be threshed, hulled, or otherwise cleaned after drying. Other seeds — such as tomatoes and cucumbers — need to be fermented for a few days to separate the seed from the fleshy pulp surrounding them. All seeds need to be labeled while they are processed to keep the varieties from getting mixed up. Finally, your saved, dried seeds need to be carefully packaged, labeled, and stored so that all your hard work can be ready to grow in the next planting season. This all adds up to quite a production!
我厨房的一个架子每年都会变成“种子加工地”。然而,这是一种对空间的利用,我喜欢把所有明亮的、闪闪发光的、模糊的或鹅卵石的未来花园像珍宝一样包装起来。
4. Saving Hybrid Seeds Might Still Be Worth Your Time
With all this discussion about preserving heirloom seeds, it can be easy to think that messing around with hybrid seeds is not worth your time. I (and others!)am here to assure you that is anything but true. As long as the hybrid was still pollinated naturally and produced viable seeds, those seeds want to grow, and they don’t really care what their label was.
And while the results will be anything but predictable, it can be a worthwhile and exciting endeavor if you have the garden space for it. After all, a lot of heirlooms had their start as happy accidents or intentional crosses. Generations of selective breeding have stabilized them into true seeds.
当我刚开始保存种子的时候,我保存所有种子,即使我不知道品种。从商店买到的西红柿、农贸市场上的南瓜、乡下掉落的水果——所有的一切都是种子,可以收集、干燥,然后尝试种植。然而,我天真的热情是值得的,因为它让我认识到种子的潜力,以及尝试培育新品种的兴奋之情。
For example, I planted seeds from a maturemad hatterhybrid pepper given to me by my sister. From the seeds that sprouted, I got a single second-generation pepper plant that was an unexpected carbon copy of the original hybrid, and a few other plants of tiny, fiery hot, intensely fruity peppers that I couldn’t get enough of.
Seeds from both were saved and will be planted. After a few generations, maybe I’ll end up with my own, stable variant of mad hatter pepper, and a second bonus breed.
我还在农贸市场种下了番茄的种子,当时我还不知道番茄的品种。它显然是一种杂交品种,因为培育出来的植株一点也不像原来那个又大又多汁的切片番茄。相反,我收获了一株高产的植物,结出的果实很小,像浆果一样,看起来几乎和所有番茄的祖先秘鲁野生番茄一模一样。
They were intensely sweet and produced well past my other tomatoes, so their seed has also been saved so we always have a “snack tomato bush” somewhere in the garden.
That all said, not every experiment has been successful, of course, but I’ve learned with every seed I’ve planted.
I tell these stories to try to fan the flame of experimentation and exploration that created the hundreds of thousands of varieties of garden plants. Every seed you plant in the garden is a result of humans selecting for traits they liked and continuing to practice seed saving from successive generations. Do you have a green thumb for adventure? Who said we ever have to stop discovering?
5. Mature Fruits Don’t Look Like Anything You’d Expect
如果你习惯了杂货店的农产品,你可能不会意识到,成熟的菜园蔬菜有时和你以前买的不一样。直到你开始保存种子,你才意识到我们吃的大多数蔬菜都是在它们成熟之前吃的。甜的小西葫芦,脆的绿黄瓜,闪闪发光的茄子,美味的秋葵都是在它们的婴儿期就可以吃的植物。
Once you start seed saving, you’ll learn that every fruit needs to reach maturity to have mature seeds within. And sometimes that maturity can be super unexpected. Mature pickling cucumbers are staggeringly huge and turn a wonderful orange or deep yellow with hard skin.
成熟的茄子已经失去了光泽,但暗淡的表皮覆盖着棕色、坚硬的种子。成熟的秋葵也会变得出乎意料的巨大,坚硬的外壳充满希望。最让我惊讶的植物是瑞士甜菜。一年前,它还是一把多肉的、松散丛生的叶子,现在已经变成了巨大的、蔓生的种子柄,上面覆盖着瘦长的臂,每一寸都长出奇异的种子疙瘩。
Though these matured fruits are certainly past their prime eating-wise, it doesn’t mean that they’re all inedible. I’ve made fine salads out of ripe cucumber (it’s opaque white and a bit tough, but still tastes pretty much like cucumber when the dressing is on it) and savory soups with giant, fully ripe zucchini. If all else fails, chickensusually appreciate vegetable bitsthat others don’t.
我在保存传家宝种子方面的冒险和不幸经历仍在继续,但我希望这篇文章能激励你去尝试一下。学习如何保存种子,通过精心选择来改善品种,以及杂交品种的实验,曾经是园艺的自然组成部分。
在你的宅基地工具带中添加节约种子将会使你更自给自足,更有见识,和你的菜园更有联系。If you have additional resources, please share them in the comments below, and I’ll leave you with some of my favorite resources for finding heirloom seeds and learning how to continue their cultivation through seed saving.
Leave a Reply