SIMPLE SEED SAVING

The cost of seeds can be quite prohibitive for some so why not save your seeds instead, and all for free? And there are other reasons too, as Dr Anton Rosenfeld, knowledge officer of Garden Organic, explains

- Dr Anton Rosenfeld

There are plenty of good reasons to give seed saving a try. For many, taking control of the seed production process is a satisfying step further towards self-suffiiency, reducing the amount of items you need to buy or bring into your garden. It is also a way of maintaining seed that is not easy to find commercially and this can make an important contribution to preserving biodiversity and the resilience of the varieties that we grow on a small scale. 

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE? This might be the first consideration as you may not have the space to have a crop remaining in the ground for much longer than normal. Peas, beans and tomatoes are easy to save seeds from, as the seeds are more or less ready at the time of harvest. A lettuce will bolt and flower pretty readily too, so won’t take too long to get the seed from. However, plants such as carrots and brassicas take a lot longer to flower, so ground is required for an extended period if you want to save seeds from these plants.