Seed Saving Circle 2016?

[Jayb]

Hear hear, here.

Fingers crossed for those gorgeous looking and sounding chillies 

[Jayb]

[galina]

Yes it is a troublesome year for many things.  And something as exotic as Kajari Melons which are let's face it not so easy to grow even when conditions are right,  are affected too.  Sad.  A lot of effort wasted, but still a learning curve. It is sad, but every time something goes wrong, we learn and we appreciate it so much more when it all goes right.  I give everything I try that is in this league a second chance, but if I can't make it work after the second time, I draw a line.  Unfortunately the UK is borderline climate for many crops that love warmer conditions.  And our clouds which are so much of a feature even on a nice sunny summer's day give us far more shading from sunlight than more southern countries have.  This has two big effects.  Everything takes longer to mature (or won't work at all) but also this - flavours develop differently.  For example in tomatoes we do get wonderful flavours with good acidity to sugar balance, whereas grown in sunnier climates the same tomatoes are just 'sweet' without the depth of flavour.  Not much consolation when you don't get to eat Kajari melons at all, Sparrow.  No doubt you tasted the fallers.  Did they have seeds at all inside?  Such a shame they dropped prematurely. 

I am waiting for lettuce seeds to mature whilst it is not damp and rainy.   Because it is a difficult year, we will appreciate all our seed returns much more. 

[galina]

Sparrow, hope the fish pepper will be ok.  Never tried or tasted them but they look great.

I have finally at last a set isolated/hand pollinated White Volunteer squash.  Let's hope there are plenty of seeds inside.  I really want a second one, but that might be pushing it a bit at this time of year.  No female flowers at all at the mo. 

Just for fun this photo: after we came back from the hols I had several White Volunteer Marrows and this conjoint twin is one of them 

[galina]

At last I had another matching pair of female and male White Volunteer flowers that were getting ready to open on the same day.  Yesterday afternoon I tied them to prevent opening for saving pure seeds.  A member has expressed an interest in saving pure squash seeds, so I decided to take a few photos today about how I isolated and handpollinated this White Volunteer squash.   

The problem with squashes, courgettes, winter squash, pumpkin etc is that their large yellow flowers are so very attractive to bees.  And bee pollination means that we get the squash we are expecting (if we started off with pure breeding seeds), but what is inside the seed is quite likely a cross with any number of varieties and if we grow these seeds next year we could get allsorts.  If we want to be sure of the same variety we need to isolate and handpollinate.  See first picture.  The bee is trying hard to get inside the tied flower but can't because it is isolated with garden string.

The second picture shows the female flower I selected.  A female flower has an embryo bump under the flower, the male flower does not. 

The third picture shows the male flower which I had also isolated with garden string.  I took the string off and tied it around the base of the embryo fruit under the female flowers.  This is to mark a handpollinated fruit with pure seeds inside, so I don't pick it for eating.  I have removed a couple of the petals and the pollen grains inside are very visible. 

Then I opened the female flower with great care so I don't destroy the petals and can close the flower again after hand pollination.  I dropped the pollen grains inside and also used the rest of the male flower on the inside of the female flower like a paint brush.  Then I tied the female flower again.  This is to stop bee access, as I don't want any stray pollen from another variety contaminating my pure hand pollination.  The photo shows the female that has been tied again and the remainder of the male flower after hand pollination.  Fingers crossed this pollination 'takes' and I get the second White Volunteer I want.

The last photo shows the first hand pollinated White Volunteer, which is now a sizeable marrow and has beige skin.  There is a string around the neck of this fruit.  It will grow a bit longer on the plant and then store for a few weeks more - hopefully with a good amount of seed for the seed circle.  If the second fruit takes, it is a bit late in the season, but with any luck we will have plenty more outdoor growing time (and a few more weeks of indoor storage before I harvest the seeds).  Fruits must be overmature for the seeds to ripen and be viable.  As long as possible on the plant and then a bit more ripening time indoors when frosts threaten, produces good seeds. 

[pumkinlover]

Interesting and informative post Galina, I had hoped to save  Potmerion seeds, but when it is an allotment it I kept missing the flowers at the right time. Plus I had the excuse I wasn't sure what to do, now I have no excuse but I think that it is a bit late in the season for squash, the two plants I had were not very forthcoming at producing flowers anyway so I think that I have missed the boat.

[Robert_Brenchley]

I've had a lot of problems this year unfortunately. First I went blind in one eye, back in April. that's temporary, and it's slowly improving with treatment. But I still can't see much through that eye, and I've been told that my sight won't come back as before. then they found I had high blood pressure, and the meds have brought back all my old CFS symptoms. So I've been too exhausted to manage the allotment. I need to go and harvest the potato berries - I can hardly bear to go to the plot when I can't do anything on it - and hopefully there are going to be plenty of seeds for the swap.

[sunloving]

Gallina that's a brilliant and informative post. Last year I had some very lovely looking but bitter melons from saved seed that illustrated very clearly to me how important it is to prevent cross pollination. Many thanks

[galina]

Pumpkinlover and Sunloving,  well there is always next year. And it does not always work for me either.   I failed utterly with the winter squash I wanted to save seeds from this year.  Plenty of seeds left from a better year for more tries and it will work eventually, hopefully next year.  The little handpollinated fruit on the White Volunteer courgette looks much fatter than the embryo was, but a lot can still go wrong at this stage.  I dread those huge slugs we found in MIL's garden.   

Hope things are improving for you Robert, did you go to the plot?

The lettuce I wanted to save seeds from is good news though.  I have got about half the seeds I need for the seed circle.  And more are developing daily, they look like miniature dandelion clocks with white fluff and the seeds underneath.  The lettuce is called Cresonnette Marocaine, originally from the Organic Catalogue but they don't stock it this year.  I had a brain fade and thought it was a cress when I ordered it  but it is a dark green, looseleaf lettuce that flowers very late (and is therefore quite difficult to save seeds from unless it is a drier than normal autumn).  And I was very happy with it -  very crisp crunchy lettuce.  Last year I managed about 30 seeds, this year I think there might be 30000 from the 8 plants I set out.   

[sunloving]

  hello all, I'm finally getting some ripe biquhinos. They are a lovely banana flavour but small and very very mild, you just get a little heat near the stalk. They are drying well for decorations and seeds to share.

I think it would be good to cross these with something hotter and larger maybe a Bulgarian carrot?

But this year they were isolated and the only other pepper within 30ft were those mini sweet bites.
X sunloving

[pumkinlover]

I love milder chillis. They look very cute.

[markfield rover]

Well, the tomato - Gazzi yellow egg- has done well and is now my favourite yellow tom, sometimes you can see why fruit falls out of favour and becomes rare but this a good'n . Now the peas not a good year but I have just enough to put together " variety" pack a sort of "flight of peas" as a fancy restaurant would have it.

[galina]

More seedsaving pitfalls.  After prolonged dry weather, beans can germinate inside drying pods on plants.  The harvested pods were getting crispy dry on the windowsill and this is what I found when I shelled them - several seeds had started germinating inside the pods.  Thankfully not very many of them   

[sunloving]

My broadies were like this and the Alaskan peas. It's a dilemma do you pick them early and risk immature seeds or leave them to dry and get germination or rot! It has been very humid here for months. It just means every envelope of seed that makes it is even more precious.

I love a new cherry/ grape tomato to try. I grew yellow pear which were lovely but blight prone due to massively productive flower heads. Maybe a golden egg is just the thing!

I though all was lost with the jelly melon until I discovered two whoppers this morning. Fingers crossed. X sunloving

[galina]

My 'Pretty in Purple' hot peppers are, well just that ............... so I thought I could add a few seeds to the circle.  These are almost ground cover outside and certainly very well behaved in a small pot on the window sill.  Very pretty small chilis, shiny purple ripening to dark orange red.  There is also purple in the foliage and in the flowers, which are white with the purple tinge.  Really delightful to look at and the plants make good presents too.

My seeds originated from the amazing seed swap parcel that Jeannine and Jayb organised a few years ago and I have grown them twice since from own seed. 

[galina]

More bean seedsaving surprises.  With all 'borlotti' type bean seeds, inverse colours are quite common.  Many seedsavers think that these are crossed seeds and discard them.  But they are not crossed, they are just colour inversed.  I had a particularly nice set of inverses and semi inverses this year with Grandma Walters beans.  The white seed with red markings bottom right is the normal colourway for this bean.  The simple inverse is the much redder looking type.  What happens is that the red dots turn white (reverse colours), the white background turns red, but the stripes stay red (not inversed).  The overall effect is a much redder looking bean.  In addition I found one seed that was inversed on the underside and normal on the top and another that had a partial inversion on one side only.  All of these markings are within what happens when several 'switches' during colour development are set one way or another, with the most common being the white with red markings.

I expect all of these seeds to be true-breeding as these colour changes are not an indication of crossing.

Sorry for slightly blurry photo.   

[galina]

Adding a picture of pepper 'Pretty in Purple' showing shiny purple pods on small purple tinged plants.  The orange fruits are the final mature colour for this pepper.   

[galina]

More seedsaving pitfalls.  After prolonged dry weather, beans can germinate inside drying pods on plants.

Sorry, just noticed that I should have said: after prolonged dry weather, followed by heavy rain ........... In other words, I should have picked the drying pods off the plants before the rain and all would have been well   

[pumkinlover]

Interesting information on the   borlotti beans, Galina.
Look forward to Pretty in Purple, not that I like hot chillis but will grow because they are so pretty.

[galina]

I though all was lost with the jelly melon until I discovered two whoppers this morning. Fingers crossed. X sunloving

Good  stuff, Sunloving!  Don't worry if they are still green when you have to harvest them because frost threatens.  They will turn bright orange in storage, when they taste lovely and when the seeds ripen. 

[galina]

Look forward to Pretty in Purple, not that I like hot chillis but will grow because they are so pretty.

They are by no means lethal hot.  I used a whole one in cooking yesterday and it made the sauce barely luke-warm.  Just looked it up on the Scoville scale and it is 8000, compared to 300000 of Piri Piri, Rocotos etc.