The Vegetable Gardener and The Art of Seed Saving

Photo by Steve Richey, Unsplash.com

A couple of years ago, after seeing a pattern in the kinds of vegetables my family and I like to grow in our vegetable garden, I decided to look into seed saving to see if I could reuse various seeds from our family's homegrown favourites.

When I started seed saving, I wasn’t sure what I had to do before preserving them or if I could just through them in a Ziplock bag (or the freezer) and forget about them until spring.

Luckily, there are resources dedicated to teaching keen gardeners how to preserve their seeds so they can use them again. USC Canada is an organization dedicated to the preservation of seeds as well as the sale and consumption of good (ecological) seeds—non GMO seeds, and non hybridized seeds that still maintain their flavour and nutrients.

USC Canada has a handy seed saving document that not only details seed harvesting information, but also information on how to clean the seeds as well as how long the seeds will maintain their viability. For example, did you know you can store carrot seeds for three years and tomato for five years?

Seed saving is not difficult or time consuming. Once you have mastered it, saving seeds will save you money (and the time it takes to remember to order or go to the store and purchase them every spring).

What you need to know to save seeds

The procedure to save seeds depends on the type of fruit or vegetable, but, for example the tomato – if you are like me you probably have an over abundance of tomatoes at the end of the growing season. Well, take one or two of your overripe, soft tomatoes and scrape out the jelly with seeds into a jar and cover with water. Leave it to ferment for three or four days (or until it gets mouldy). Then decant with new water and throw away any floating seeds – only keeping the ones that did not float. Then spread them on a paper towel and let them dry out for about a week. Then put them in a paper bag or envelope and store them for up to 5 years! The key is to make sure your seeds are completely dried out before storing them.

Why save seeds

In addition to saving money, by saving seeds you are helping to preserve the genetic diversity of fruits and vegetables.

By saving seeds from fruits and vegetables that grow well and eventually building up enough stock to rotate what you grow in your garden every year, you are helping to maintain genetic seed diversity and keep various species of fruit and vegetable plants alive and well.

How to get the kids involved

Getting your children involved is a great way to get them interested in the environment, food, and sustainability. It's also a great way to show children where their food came from, and how they can produce it themselves (and keep producing it).

Younger children love to get their hands dirty! Let them help harvest the seeds from the chosen fruits and vegetables. You can also throw in some math lessons by having them help count the seeds.

Seed saving and recycling makes for a great science experiment for kids of any age and, regardless of how old you are, if you like gardening there is always a sense of pride and satisfaction when the first sprouts breaks out of the seed and dirt to say hello.

For more information on seed saving, as well as "good" seed companies (I buy mine from Cubit's Seed Co.), visit USC Canada.

Do you save seeds? From what fruits and vegetables? Leave a comment and let us know.

Gardening for dummies

by Lara My seedlings were outgrowing the tray that they were planted in but it was still too early to move them outside. (I had to ask twitter if I could put them outside or not, because I really do have no ideas what I'm doing :))

I heard that you could make little pots out of newspapers that you can then plant in the ground when they're ready. GENIUS!

Only problem was that neither my husband or I could figure out how to do it with just the instructions.

So youtube to the rescue. You really can find everything on the internet now.

Once we have figured out how to make the pots, Kiernan helped me with the folding, for the first one. (Expect you'll have to make the rest on your own :))

Then we filled them with dirt and planted the seedlings. Caution, don't put very much dirt in, the newspaper pots... not THAT sturdy.

But they're doing the trick. I water them a bit at a time in my window and hope that in a week or two I can move them outside into the garden.

How's your garden doing?

Lara Wellman is mom to 4 year old Kiernan and 2 year old twins Quinn and Juliette. You can read her personal blog at Gliding Through Motherhood, about her weight loss journey at Losing it in Ottawa, and her social media blog at Larawellman.com

Gardening for dummies : planting seedlings

by Lara I most certainly do not have a green thumb.  I've killed many plants in my day and I'm not really into all things home repair and lawn maintenance.  But last year I decided I would actually plant a garden (after talking about it for 5 years) and I took enormous pleasure in tending my sad little garden and eating the tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers it produced.

This year I decided to take it a step further and plant some things from seeds in the house.  I was nervous - I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm not great at reading instructions (it's good to know these things about yourself :)) so I went to Walmart and bought a kit.  Add water. Add seeds. Cover and ignore.  PERFECT!

This tray required us to pour about 7 cups of water into those pellets to puff them up.  Then you tore them open, put a couple of seeds in and covered the tray with a lid to put in a not sunny spot.

We planted cucumbers, two kinds of tomatoes and watermelon.  We went to the store and bought the seeds together and Kiernan specifically requested the watermelon, making them his pet project and all the more interested in taking part in whole process.

He then made drawings with his dad of all the kinds of plants (using the seed packages to help) to put into the tray so we would remember what row was what.

I then put the lid on and dumped it on the dining room table because the twins were getting crazy and the time for paying attention to this ended abruptly. Which is just further proof that anyone can do this.

A few days later I went in and saw all of them had sprouted! I took the lid off and moved it to the greenhouse window we're lucky to have in our kitchen.

In the coming weeks I will be attempting to transplant them into individual pots and then out into the garden.  I'll be documenting the journey here, so stay tuned!

Lara Wellman is mom to 4 year old Kiernan and 2 year old twins Quinn and Juliette. You can read her personal blog at Gliding Through Motherhood, about her weight loss journey at Losing it in Ottawa, and her social media blog at Larawellman.com