The seed garden 90 mins pam dawling 2020

The Seed Garden
Planning for Seed Saving
and Lots of Vegetables
©Pam Dawling 2020
Author of Sustainable Market Farming and The
Year-Round Hoophouse
www.sustainablemarketfarming.com
www.facebook.com/SustainableMarketFarming

I live and farm at Twin Oaks Community, in
central Virginia. We are located on Monacan land. We’re
in zone 7, with an average last frost April 30 and average
f first frost October 14.
Our goal is to feed
our intentional
community of 100
people with a wide
variety of organic
produce year round.
www.twinoaks.org

1. Why grow seed crops?
2. Which seed crops combine best with food
production?
3. Population size
4. Isolation distances
5. Selecting “mother plants”
6. Wet seeds and dry seeds
7. Seed crops in the Twin Oaks vegetable garden
8. Summer hoophouse use for seed growing
9. Seed storage and germination testing
10.Resources
What’s in this presentation

1. Why grow seed crops?
 Diversify your sources of income. Often seed-growing has a
higher dollar per hour than growing food
 Earn some money during the winter, when seed companies pay
(and produce sales are down).
 Keep good Open Pollinated seed varieties alive and
available. Support small seed companies.
 Seed crops have a longer, slower season and a less
pressured pace most of the year.
 For some crops, you can grow seed and food at the
same time, from the same crops.
 Improve a variety to best suit your climate, your customers, be
more tolerant to a disease or a pest.

Selling your seeds
• It’s possible to sell your seeds directly by joining Local
Harvest and selling on their website, where there are over
a thousand entries on seed for sale. You can create a free
listing with http://www.localharvest.org/ if “You are a
direct marketing family farm that does not grow GMOs, a
producers’ farmers’ market, a business that sells products
made from things grown locally by family farms, or an
organization dedicated to promoting small farms and the
‘buy local’ movement.” Even eBay now has heirloom seeds!
• USDA Certified Organic seed is much in demand, but
uncertified sustainably/ecologically grown seed also has a
market, especially for heirloom or heritage varieties.

Expanding seed sales
• Most seed growers continue to grow a mix of crops — a seed
crop, like any other crop, could fail.
• But if seed growing really suits you, you could move more
towards growing seeds and away from other crops.
• When you are ready to grow a commercial seed crop, contact
seed companies before the start of the season to agree on a
contract.
• Some seed crops (okra, winter squash) can sit around for a
while drying, with no particular hurry.
• Others will need more immediate attention.

2. Which seed crops combine best
with food production?
Start small
• Read up about seed-growing and isolation distances required.
• In your first year, avoid unfamiliar crops or too many different
seed crops. Grow one or two seed crops for yourself.
• Keep records of your dates and quantities – the timing might
be critical and some crops will work better than others.
• Biennials (onions, carrots, most root crops) are a bit more
complicated – they need a 2nd growing season to get seed.
• Hybrids are not the place to start either. Seeds saved from
hybrids produce very mixed progeny, some of it useless!
While experienced seed growers can develop stable strains
from a hybrid, this requires years of work.

Double benefits
Have your crop and eat it too: – tomatoes, peppers,
watermelon, winter squash.
• Crops where you eat the ripe fruit can provide mature seeds
too.
• You may be able to eat the earliest fruit and save seed later
(cucumbers), or save seed first and eat the later fruit. Don’t
save seed from plants past their prime, and don’t risk your
seed crop by reducing much the time it has to mature.
• Greens grown for seed can also provide a small leaf harvest
without detracting from seed production.
• You can eat the produce from the edges of a block planting
and save seed from plants in the center — this helps preserve
the purity of the seed without “wasting” the edge plants.

Food for thought
• Getting two crops from one
plant can take more time
compared to simply mashing
whole tomatoes.
• Not all fruit crops can provide
both food and seeds at the
same time. Cucumbers are
eaten as under-ripe fruits,
and the seed is mature when
the cucumber reaches the
yellow blimp stage.
• Photo Twin Oaks Seed Farm

What type of crop to grow?
Recommended for Beginners:
 Open-pollinated varieties.
 Crops you can easily grow to maturity in your climate.
 Crops you only grow one variety of, or can easily grow far apart.
 Crops your neighbors don’t have growing nearby
 Vegetatively produced clones, eg seed garlic, yellow
potato onions, shallots, sweet potato slips.
Ideas to Consider:
 Flowers that attract beneficial insects
 Crops with harvests either at the end of the main
season, or weekly for the month of August (plan to pace yourself)
 Crops that grow without much attention in underused spaces, eg high
summer in the hoophouse.
 Varieties where you want to increase the seed availability

Biennial plants
• Biennials (such as onions, carrots,
most other root crops) need a second
growing season to make seed.
• Some crops may be left over-winter in
the field, others are replanted in
spring.
• In the second year the flower heads
and seeds will form.
• Leaving the roots in the ground over
the winter is easier, but if your
climate gets very cold, or fluctuates a
lot (ours does), or if you have lots of
voles (we do), then digging the roots
and storing in a cool, damp root cellar
is wiser. It also gives you the chance
to select well-shaped roots as your
seed stock.
Photo Small Farm Central

3. Population size
• Never save seed from just one plant (unless it’s the second
to last on the planet). Grow a big enough population of
plants to keep enough genetic diversity for future
adaptability and to prevent a genetic “bottleneck.”
• With self-pollinators (inbreeders) such as beans, 20 plants
may be enough - self-pollinated varieties are already
genetically quite homogenous, and there is little gain from
a bigger population.
• For out-breeders (cross-pollinators) grow at least 100 to
avoid inbreeding depression, which leads, over time, to
lower quality, less vigorous plants.

How long will it take?
There is, as yet, no published table of
time from sowing to seed crop
maturity. Lettuce can take up to 2
months beyond the eating stage to get
to the mature seed stage
(See Fedco’s charming Activity
Guidebook in the Living Tradition of
Seed Saving, Eli Kaufman
http://growseed.org/GenerationtoGen
ernation.pdf)Flowering lettuce
Photo School Garden
Weekly

• The isolation distance required for a particular species depends on
whether the plants are self- or cross-pollinated.
• Self-pollinators use their own pollen to set seed, without any transfer
of pollen from other plants. Because avoiding unwanted cross-
pollination is not an issue, isolation distances are smaller.
• For example, tomatoes mostly self-pollinate, and only
require an isolation distance of 75 to 180 feet (23–55 m).
• Cross-pollinating (outcrossing) plants may be wind- or insect-
pollinated. Isolation distances (from other crops which could
pollinate your crop) are large.
• For example, bees fly a long way, so cucurbits (crossers) have long
isolation distances of 1,500 feet (460 m), or even as much as half a
mile (800 m) if you have no physical barriers. Wind-pollinated
crossers usually have the most genetic diversity and pollen that
travels furthest, so they need the longest isolation distances.
4. Isolation distances

Ways to improve isolation
• Barriers such as buildings, hoophouses, and tall
crops - corn or sunflowers, can help a
borderline isolation be more certain, especially
for insect-pollinated crossers.
• Collect seed only from the middle of a planting
block, rather than at the edges.
• If you are determined to get seed of a
particular crop, use advanced tricks - bag, cage,
hand pollinate.
• Observing isolation distances can restrict what
you can grow for food, but if your growing
season is long enough you may be able to have
a zucchini crop for early market, then sow
pumpkins for seed, and ruthlessly pull up the
zucchini before the pumpkins flower.
• This is known as isolating by time.
• If your season is long enough and the crop
maturity quick, you could grow two seed crops. Photo Bridget Aleshire

Negotiating isolation distances with
neighbors
• Once you know the required isolation distance for your crop,
make sure your planting map gives you this space.
• Early each year we write a “Seed Saving Letter” to others
who grow plants nearby, to tell them where we plan to grow
our seed crops, and asking them not to plant anything that
could cross-pollinate within the isolation distance.
• In return, we offer seeds or transplants, and we also ask
them if they have any seed saving plans we need to know
about.
• Some cross-pollination can still occur with selfers.

5. Selecting “mother plants”
• Grow enough to allow for rogueing – remove
off-types as well as existing fruits from the
immediate neighbor plants.
• Also rogue out diseased plants and any early-
bolting plants of crops you don’t want to bolt.
• If you are selling seed, you have a responsibility
to maintain that variety and all the genetic
diversity it contains. You will need more plants
than if you are just keeping seed to resupply
yourself.
• If you are improving a variety, selecting for
certain desirable traits, be particularly selective
about mother plants.
• Photo Wren Vile

Tomatoes, cucumbers, melons,
peppers, eggplant
Wet seeds are embedded in the
fruit. Wet processing has 4 steps:
1. scooping out the seed or
mashing the fruit,
2. fermenting the seed pulp for
a few days,
3. washing the seed and
removing the pulp
4. drying the washed seed.
Wet-processed seed is naturally
cleaned during the fermentation
and washing.
6. Wet seeds
Garden Peach Tomato.
Photo Irene Hollowell

Dry seeds
Legumes, okra,
corn, radish, lettuce,
spinach, beets, flowers
Dry seeds are found in pods,
husks or ears, and dry down
on the plant. Dry seed
processing involves
1. harvesting the pods or the
entire plants,
2. completing the drying
indoors if needed,
3. cracking or breaking the
pods to release the seeds.
4. Screening and winnowing
Edamame. Photo Raddysh Acorn

Dry seed cleaning
• While small quantities of seed can be cleaned with basic kitchen
equipment, if you move into larger quantities, you will want to buy
some of the specialized equipment available, or make your own.
• After drying, dry seeds and chaff are sieved through 2 different gauge
mesh screens: the larger one keeps back the big chaff and lets the
seed pass through; the smaller one keeps back the seed while letting
the small chaff pass through. After screening, the seed is winnowed,
using a box fan and a sheet of cloth or a
plastic tub to catch the seed.
Dryingseedinahoophouse.
PhotoPamDawling
Next two slides of dry seed cleaning: Courtesy of
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

A woman uses the wind to winnow rice on the roadside in Viet Nam.
We like the convenience of an electric fan.

7. Seed crops in the
Twin Oaks vegetable garden
• We have grown, selected
and saved seed from paste
tomatoes, watermelon,
edamame, southern peas,
gherkins, okra and some
flowers grown to attract
beneficial insects (cosmos
seed is very easy to collect).
• From time to time we have
saved seed from other crops,
if a need or an opportunity
presents itself, eg leaf beet
• West Indian gherkins. Photo Nina Gentle

Roma paste tomatoes
• Roma is an OP paste tomato variety that was reliable and
productive, but our yields were reduced by Septoria leaf
spot.
• There didn’t seem to be any commercially available
Septoria-resistant variety when we looked, so I decided to
develop our own resistant
strain.
• The reward for
developing a strain of
Roma that is resistant to
Septoria is of great value
to us – healthy plants for
a long season.
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Planting our Roma tomatoes
Roma tomatoes with
Florida stringweaving.
Photo Bridget Aleshire
• Tomatoes are self-pollinating, so planting 200, pulling out
any off-types, and making a selection of 80–100 of those
plants would be enough genetic diversity.
• We don’t put any tomato plants of any other varieties
within 180 feet (55 m) of any of our Romas.
• We put out our 530 transplants as usual, two feet (60 cm)
apart in late April or early May. We use the Florida string-
weave system, with a metal T-post after every
two plants and
a new round of
twine each
week.

Selecting and marking for variety
improvement• Monitor the plants, marking ones
with healthy foliage and ones
yielding very well.
• Use flagging tape: green or yellow to
show healthy foliage with OK yield;
red for abundant fruit with OK foliage
(some plants get 2 ribbons!).
• Tie tape on the T-post next to the
chosen plant, with a bow or knot on
the side of the post facing the plant.
• Do this once a week, on the day
before the crew comes through to do
a harvest (no good looking for high
yields when they’ve already been
picked!)
Flagged Roma plants.
Photo by Kathryn Simmons

Biodegradable flagging tape
3.0 mil Nonwoven Cellulosic
Roll Flagging $2.59
Presco Biodegradable
Flagging Tape is made of
material derived from wood
pulp. Degrades in 6–24 months
(depending on conditions).
Completely nontoxic.
https://gemplers.com/
PRESCO Biodegradable Flagging
Tape

Harvesting our Roma tomatoes
• After 1-2 weeks of monitoring and flagging, we start picking for
seed, on those same just-before-bulk-harvest days.
• Our method combines well with crew harvesting most of the fruit
as food.
• If you are growing the variety only or mainly as a seed crop, you
would save all the seed from the chosen plants, or from the whole
row after pulling out any unpromising plants (“rogueing”).
Harvesting
Roma
tomatoes.
Photo Twin
Oaks
Community

Harvesting for seed
• We assess the flagged plants and
take ripe tomatoes from each plant
that has both flags, or has one flag
and is not worse than average on
the other factor.
• If the plant no longer looks so
great, we remove its ribbon.
• If a plant without a ribbon starts to
excel in healthy foliage as the
season wears on, we add a ribbon.
• We don’t add many red ribbons
after the start of the harvest,
because we want to keep selecting
for early fruit, and plants that yield
well later are not what we want.Photo by Raddysh Acorn

Ripening tomato seeds
We pick about 5 gallons (19 L) for seed each week. We store
those buckets of tomatoes in a secret location, where no
one will eat them, for 5 days, which lets the fruit get
completely ripe.
Ten gallons of ripe
tomatoes ready to
process. Photo
Pam Dawling

Processing tomato seeds
I cover the fruit with water, remove and cut each
tomato in half lengthways into a clean bucket.
Tomatoes cut
in half ready
for seed
scooping.
Photo Pam
Dawling

Scooping tomato seeds
Using a soup spoon, I then scoop out the seeds into another
bucket and put the empty “shells” into another clean bucket.
We make sauce and salsa, including the “shells”
Tomato
“shells” for
sauce-
making.
Photo Pam
Dawling

Fermenting tomato seeds
Photo showing larger scale harvests from
whole tomatoes.
Twin Oaks Seeds Farm
The seeds ferment in the bucket in a shed for 2-3 days,
nominally at 70°F (21°C), until bubbles stop.
We stir 2 or 3 times a day.

Washing the tomato seed
• When fermentation is
over (no more
bubbles), we take
several clean buckets
and a sieve and wash
the seed clean.
• This art gets easier and
quicker with practice.
• The good seed sinks to
the bottom.
Washing a seed ferment. Photo
Twin Oaks Seeds Farm

Washing the tomato seed again
Third wash.
Photo Pam Dawling
Seeds after second pour.
Photo Pam Dawling
• Pour off the top half of the ferment (mostly no good) into another
bucket.
• Add water to both buckets, stir, let things settle and then pour off the
tomato pulp and no-good floating seeds from both.
• Consolidate the better stuff in one bucket, the worse stuff in another,
and pour away the water. Add more water and repeat several times.

Finishing washing the tomato seed
Roma seeds strained in a sieve.
Photo Pam Dawling
Adding fifth (final) wash water.
Photo Pam Dawling
After about 5 rinses, the water is clear and the seed is clean.
Strain it through a sieve

Tomato seed drying
• Spread the seed to dry with a fan, on a window screen or
paper towels.
• After 6-12 hours, scrape the clumps of seed off the surface
with a putty knife, turn them over and crumble the clumps by
hand. After 2 days, once the seed is thoroughly dry, gather it
into a paper bag and add some desiccant.
• We hold back on storing in an airtight container until we’re
absolutely sure the seed is dry. (More on storage later.)
Drying tomato seed from
5 gals of tomatoes.
Photo Pam Dawling

Seeds drying on screens. Photo Twin Oaks Seed Farm

Fitting tomato seed work into our
schedule
• Here’s how we fit it together in an efficient,
easy-to-remember way:
– we harvest seed on Monday
– scoop on Friday, which is the day the Food Processing crew
are making sauce.
– we start the fermentation on Friday, wash on Monday, set
those seeds to dry and harvest the next batch.
• We usually do 4 or 5 batches of seed, during August. It’s not
good to save seed from plants in decline, so get started as
soon as you can, and quit while the going is good. We sell this
seed to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
• 20 gallons (76 L) of Roma tomatoes makes 130 gm of seed.

Crimson Sweet watermelons
• We started growing Crimson Sweet watermelon seed to get
larger, earlier, disease-resistant melons.
• I’m also hoping that by never bringing
other watermelons into our gardens we
can avoid seed-borne Watermelon Fruit
Blotch Disease. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
• We had a long way to go, improving early ripening of our
watermelons, because we had been using hay mulch for
weed control, which cools the soil, delaying ripening!
• We now use the biodegradable black plastic mulch (Bio Telo
Mater-Bi — we’re not USDA certified, so the fact that it is
not yet OMRI listed doesn’t matter). This change alone
gives us melons almost 4 weeks earlier than using hay, and
we could reduce our planting from 430 to 300 plants.

Watermelon on bioplastic
Watermelon growing on biodegradable plastic mulch. Photo Nina Gentle

Selecting and marking watermelons
• By transplanting, we have already started selecting healthy
plants
• In July, as the melons ripen, I walk through the plot with a
grease pencil (china marker) and number 30-40 selected
melons.
• I look for big melons with vigorous healthy vines. Cucurbits,
although cross-pollinators, show relatively little inbreeding
depression, and a population of 25 plants would be enough.
I’ve tried other ways to
mark melons (flags, magic
markers) but the grease
pencil works nicely. Having
a big number right there on
the skin of the melon works
to stop any crew about to
harvest it.
Photo Nina Gentle

Numbering watermelon
Mark chosen watermelons using a grease pencil. Photo by Nina Gentle

Larger scale watermelon seed harvest
Twin Oaks Seed Farm

Watermelon seed harvest
• Once a week I harvest for seed, taking melons that are very ripe and
discarding any that don’t look healthy.
• I like to only deal with 6 to 8 melons each time. I keep notes of which
numbers I harvest each week, and assess them for size, ripeness and,
once I open them, taste.
• I take a big knife, several clean buckets and a big spoon (and a damp
cloth — it’s messy!). I cut the melon across the middle and taste from
the heart. If I don’t like the taste, I don’t save seed from that one.
Scooped–out Crimson Sweet shells.
Photo Kati Falger

• It can get hard to find all the
numbered melons (that’s
where the notebook comes
in handy, so I don’t waste
time looking for one that I
already harvested).
• I abandon any numbered
melons that don’t ripen early,
and I sometimes add any
huge melons that pop up
after the initial numbering.
• Earliness is important to us,
though, so I only harvest four
or five times and then stop.
For us that’s an August task.Crimson Sweet watermelon. Photo Nina Gentle

• If the taste is good I scoop out
the heart, which is seedless,
into a very clean bucket, for
eating later. Then there is a
layer that is thick with seeds. I
scoop this into the seed
bucket.
• Lastly I scoop the outer flesh,
also relatively seed-free, into
the food bucket. The
scooped-out watermelon
flesh makes great smoothies
and sorbets.
Crimson Sweet quarters. Photo Southern
Exposure Seed Exchange

Watermelon seed fermenting
• These seeds get
fermented for about 4
days, stirring daily, then
washed similarly to the
tomato seeds and dried.
• For example, if I harvest
and scoop on Tuesday, I
wash on Saturday and set
the seeds to dry for
several days.
• One Crimson Sweet
watermelon yields 22
grams of seed; 22 melons
yield one pound of seed.
Photo Pam Dawling

Fermenting cucurbit seeds
Photo Twin Oaks Seed Farm

A method of straining seed ferments
Twin Oaks Seed Farm

Okra
• We only grow one kind of okra
(Cow Horn — it gets big without
getting tough), and nothing that
would cross with it.
• Saving seed is just a matter of
flagging choice pods on good
sturdy plants, and letting those
pods ripen.
• It’s true that leaving pods or fruit
on a plant to ripen will decrease
the yield of food from that plant,
so it is important to balance
your goals and not lose your
cash crop for the price of a small
packet of seeds.
• Cow Horn okra. Photo Kathryn Simmons

• We collect the dry pods
before they shatter
• We dry the seed in a
mouse-proof place.
• It’s a large seed, and the
dry pods shatter easily, so
it’s simple to separate the
seed from the pod pieces.
• We don’t need a lot of
seed, so it’s not a major
undertaking.
Cowhorn okra, flagged.
Photo Raddysh Acorn
Marking okra

Breaking open okra pods, extracting seeds

Flowers
• We plant “islands” of flowers to
attract beneficial insects to our
vegetables. Some of these flowers
have very easy-to-collect seeds.
• Cosmos, French marigold, calendula
and dill can all be left growing until
dry seeds appear in their heads.
These can then be rubbed off into a
paper bag.
• Clearly this way of growing seeds
uses only a small population of each
plant, so seed saved this way cannot
be sold, but it is fine for home use for
vegetable growers doing a bit of
farmscaping.

Sunflowers
• We grow sunflowers throughout our vegetables, and sometimes
we save seed from those. It’s best to leave the developing head
on the plant as long as possible, so that it dries down well and the
seed fully matures.
• The trick is to keep the birds off. Our answer is to tie a bandana
over the head, knotted at the back.
• When the sunflower stalk dries out, remove the seed head and
complete the drying in a place protected from mice.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

8. Summer hoophouse use for seeds
• Hoophouses can be great places to grow seed crops. We pull
a sheet of shadecloth over our hoophouse in early May
• Inside a hoophouse the hotter air can hold more water
without causing damp plants. Additionally, the walls of the
hoophouse provide a partial physical barrier to prevent cross-
pollination.
• Check that you have no other crops growing near enough to
cross-pollinate.
• We have grown southern peas, soup beans and edamame for
seed.

Hoophouse summer legume seeds
• Summer legumes make a great class of summer hoophouse
crops (either as produce or as seed crops).
• Where it is humid or rainy, it is hard to grow dry seed crops
such as legumes, lettuce, spinach and beets outdoors.
• Compared to outdoor crops in our climate, legumes grown in
the hoophouse have very clean, unspotty beans and pods.
Mature southern
peas in the
hoophouse.
Photo Wren Vile

Growing bean seed
• Most bean species are largely self-pollinating, so you will
likely have pure seed with 100 feet (30 m) isolation
distance, or barrier crops of flowers to distract pollinators.
• According to Nancy Bubel, in The Seed Starter’s Handbook,
bean seed is ready when your teeth can scarcely make a
dent in a sample bean. Maturing happens fast in a
hoophouse.
Mississippi Silver
southern peas in our
hoophouse. Photo
Twin Oaks Community

Southern peas
• We sow in mid-June-mid-July,
when we pull up our early
warm-weather crops such as
cucumbers, early tomatoes and
squash.
• The seed crops mature in late
October or early November,
just when we want to
transplant our winter salads
and greens.
• We tried a July 27 sowing, but
it was a bit too late — we
didn’t harvest much.
A 7/25 sowing of Carolina
Crowder peas in our hoophouse.
Photo Nina Gentle

Southern pea string-weaving cats cradle
How we support the southern peas in our hoophouse. Photo Nina Gentle

Edamame
• Edamame does particularly well in
our hoophouse.
• Growing it under cover means we
get beautiful pods (an important
feature for edamame!).
• An advantage of this crop it is that is
picked all at once — take it from me
that you do not want a crop that
requires daily harvesting in high
summer in your hoophouse, unless
you live in the Far North.
• We like Envy edamame, a short bush
type that matures quickly. We sow
July 27 and harvest Oct 4–13, or Nov
9 for seed.
Edamame pods in the hoophouse.
Photo Raddysh Acorn

Shelling beans or soup beans
• Shelling beans or soup beans have given good results in the
hoophouse.
• We sowed July 13 and harvested for eating from late
September until mid-October, when we let the last pods
dry out for seed.

Two seed crops in a year
• Clifton Slade in Virginia overwintered
collard greens for a seed crop the next
spring. He is in zone 7b. He grew a whole
tunnel full.
• Clif direct seeded Champion collards 12/1.
• On 2/15 he started rolling up the side
curtains every day, to vernalize the plants.
• 90 days from sowing, 3/1, he had greens.
• Although he had not intended to sell greens,
he did sell about 1000 lbs (450 kg).
• On 3/10, the plants flowered. Seed matured earlier than outdoors.
• Clif harvested the tops of the plants into totes, using pruners. He had
100 lbs (45 kg) of pods, which gave 30 lbs (14 kg) of cleaned seed.
• The yield was double that grown outdoors.
• Seeds were bigger than outdoor-grown seed, with good germination

Clif’s second seed crop
• After pulling the collard seed
crop, Clif transplanted okra in the
hoophouse.
• Clif was the first to market with
fresh okra, and got a good price
• Once other growers were selling
okra, Clif stopped picking
• He let his plants grow a seed crop
• The seeds were very plentiful and
in very good condition.
• Okra really benefits from hot
weather!

Hoophouse biennial seed crops
Ira Wallace of Southern
Exposure Seed Exchange
suggests that winter greens can
be interplanted in a hoophouse
with biennials such as carrots or
onions for seed. As the biennial
plants grow bigger the next
spring, remove the greens and
let the seed plants grow.
Flowering carrots. Photo Wren Vile

West Indian gherkins
• I first saw these unusual
pickling cucumbers at
Monticello.
• The origin of the variety is
uncertain, but the seed
was probably brought to
Virginia by people enslaved
by Thomas Jefferson.
• West Indian Gherkins are
very heat tolerant and
disease resistant.
• They are resistant to
Peanut Root Knot
Nematodes, which is why
we started growing them.
Photo Nina Gentle

West Indian Gherkins
• These gherkins do not cross
with regular cucumbers, nor
with watermelon (although the
leaves resemble watermelon
leaves)
• We trellis them in our
hoophouse (they are very
sprawling long vines, left to
their own devices.)
• We harvest one end of the row
for pickling and one end for
seed
• We sow 3/31, transplant 4/21,
harvest picklers starting 6/12
and pick the seed crop 9/28 –
10/2.
• Photo Bridget Aleshire

Leaf beet
• Leaf beet or Perpetual Spinach, is a type of
chard.
• When seed was unavailable one year, I dug
up a few outdoor leaf beet plants in the
fall and replanted them in our hoophouse.
• Leaf beet is biennial, so in the spring tall
flower stalks grow up and make seed.
• For better seed growing, a bigger
population of plants would be needed to
guarantee genetic diversity.
• The second year that I did this, I learned a
trick of beet seed growing:
• Cut down the first tall stems that appear
and you get many more flower stems, at a
shorter height — two advantages: more
seed, less stem.
• An unexpected benefit was the wonderful
smell of the flower heads!
• Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

9. Storage
• Seeds must be stored dry and cool and airtight once dry.
• Make sure your storage places are mouse-proof.
• Initial storage can begin when seeds are down to 8 percent
moisture. At this level, seeds break or shatter when you try to fold
them or hit them with a hammer. They don’t bend or mash.
• Put them in a jar (optionally with an equal weight of a desiccant
such as silica gel) for 7 days. For USDA Certified Organic, check the
OMRI list before using desiccant - only use allowed materials.
• Then remove the desiccant and put seed in a labeled bag inside a
labeled glass or metal container with an airtight lid.
• For long-term storage, put your airtight jar or can in the freezer.
• When removing seeds from the freezer, allow the container to
warm to room temperature for a day before opening. This
prevents moisture from condensing on the seeds.

• Take a thick paper towel, fold it lengthwise, unfold it and spread 50 or
100 seeds along the inside of the fold. Close the fold, dampen the
towel with water and roll it up loosely. Put it inside a loosely closed
plastic bag and set the bag somewhere at a suitable temperature.
• Beware the top of gas water heaters: this inhibits tomato seeds and
other nightshades.
• 75°F (24°C) is good for most vegetables, 80°F (27°C) is better for
tomatoes and peppers, 85°F (29°C) for melons.
• See Nancy Bubel, Seed Starter’s Handbook, for ideal temperatures
for different crops. Often the top of the fridge is suitable
• Check twice a day (the air change will help the seeds even if you
know it’s too early to see sprouts).
• Count the sprouted seeds after 7 days and remove the sprouted ones
• Repeat after another 7 days and add this count to the first one to
calculate your percent germination.
Germination testing

Seed Saving and Plant Breeding Resources
 The Seed Garden, Micaela Colley and Jared Zystra, Seed Savers Exchange,
 Seed to Seed, Suzanne Ashworth, 1991, ISBN 0-9613977-7-2
 The Seed Savers Handbook, Jude and Michel Fanton, ISBN 0-646-10226-5
 Back Garden Seed Saving: Keeping Our Vegetable Heritage Alive. Sue
Strickland, 2001. ISBN 978-1899233090
 Vegetable Seed Production, Raymond A.T. George, 1999
 Seed Production: Principles and Practices, Miller McDonald & L Copeland
 Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, Carol Deppe, 1993, ISBN 0-316-18104-8
 Organic Seed Grower, John Navazio, 2012, ISBN 9781933392776
http://chelseagreen.com/the-organic-seed-grower
 Diseases and Pests of Vegetable Crops in Canada, Ronald Howard, 1994, ISBN
0-9691627-3-1
 Principles of Plant Breeding. 2nd Ed. R.W. Allard, 1999.
 Seed Starter’s Handbook, Nancy Bubel,
 Knott’s Handbook for Vegetable Growers, 5th Edition, Donald Maynard, 2006,
ISBN: 978-0-471-73828-2 Widely available online
http://extension.missouri.edu/sare/documents/KnottsHandbook2012.pdf

More Resources
(Checked Jan 2020)
Seed production manuals from The Organic Seed Alliance
https://seedalliance.org/publications/
 https://seedalliance.org/publications/principles-practices-organic-
bean-seed-production-pacific-northwest/
radish-seed-production-pacific-northwest/
spinach-seed-production-pacific-northwest/
 Beet Seed Production: Quick Reference
 Broccoli Seed Production: Quick Reference
 Winter Squash Seed Production: Quick Reference
 Cucumber Seed Production: Quick Reference
 Tomato Seed Production: Quick Reference
 Sweet Corn Seed Production: Quick Reference
 Kale Seed Production: Quick Reference

Even More Resources
 The Seed Savers Exchange https://www.seedsavers.org/
 The Grassroots Seed Network https://grassroots-seed-
network.sharetribe.com/
 Organic Seed Resource Guide https://eorganic.org/node/378
 Activity Guidebook in the Living Tradition of Seed Saving, Eli Kaufman
http://growseed.org/GenerationtoGenernation.pdf
Seed production manuals from Saving Our Seeds
www.savingourseeds.org/growguides.html :
 Isolation Distances Seed Processing and Storage
 Bean Seed Production Brassica Seed Production
 Cucurbit Seed Production Pepper Seed Production
 Tomato Seed Production
 Publications on seed saving from Saving Our Seed SOS (different from
Saving Our Seeds) www.savingourseed.org/pages/ResourceGuide.html
 PRESCO Biodegradable Flagging Tape –
https://gemplers.com/products/presco-biodegradable-flagging-tape

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