Topic: Anybody saving next years seed?

[Pigletwillie]

This is to complement the thread asking if eople are buying their seeds for next year yet.

We have saved

several heritage tall peas,
lots of pole beans for haricots/ butterbeans including some Serbian / Croatian varieties,
rose de roscoff onions and banana shallots
lots of flower seeds from hollyhocks to agapanthus

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/2007/10/be-prepared.html

Are any of you guys avid seed savers ?

[Lindsay]

I'm sure there are plenty who are avid seed savers on here! 

Having had success with pumpkin seeds in the past, this is my first year at trying to save some other types of seeds - french green beans, courgette, melon, butternut squash and potimarron, basil, tomato and aubergine.  I hope I'll be successful - but I'll still be buying the odd packet of seeds to make sure!

Could other seed savers perhaps give some feedback as to which are the most successful?

[star]

Ive saved
French Climbing Beans
Flat Leaved Parsley.....not many seeds developed
Spinach

Not much really, a few flower seeds. I want to leave one parsnip to go to seed next year. Unfortunatly I didnt plant enough for seed saving as well with only having a small space.
I will be getting some from Real Seeds though.......I love the Heritage varieties.

NEED A LOTTIE!!

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

saved spaghetti squash seed last year - some come true and some had crossed with a courgette, and was half and half, so not very good. Also had problems with some winter squash seed virus affected. Won't save squashes as they're difficult enough as it is

pigletwillie - by butterbean do you mean the Spagna di wotsit?

[Pigletwillie]

Yes indeed Rhubarb thrasher, Spagna blanco.

I only save seed from one pumpkin grown alone on one plot in an attempt to keep it "clean", all the other squash wtc are grown on another plot and the seed is not saved due to crossing.

[Biscombe]

Because Of the fiddle isolating flowers, Ive only saved tomatoes and calendula, and I'm going to try painting unopened chili flowers with PVA glue to keep the seeds pure! but forgot to isolate squash seeds! oh well, means I can go online shopping for seeds!!!!

[Garjan]

My advice is to glue the flowers after hand pollinating the chillis. ;D

[dtw]

Pumpkin seeds and various chilli seeds, however I didn't get many chillies this year except from my two year old bolivian rainbow. (see my next thread for a picture).

[artichoke]

I save leek seeds because I am shocked by how few there are in bought packets, and to me a leek is a leek, I am not in competion with the growers of giants. So far (four years) they have done OK, and there are hundreds of seeds in one head.

A friend saves runner beans, and has an ambition (utterly pointless) to force them to evolve as black beans rather than speckled. He only sows the blackest each year and it's working!

When spinach beet/chard goes to seed I let them scatter for a bit, before chopping them down and digging them up. Later, I dig up their seedlings and plant them in a row. They are a lovely mixture of the red and yellow ones, white ones, and basic green ones, and seem to grow away very well. The same with flat leaved parsley, or any other sort (though parsley did very badly this year for some reason, and I may have to fall back on ancient packets - I always pre-germinate them to avoid disappointment).

I planted some of my own shallots last autumn because I couldn't get any official ones in October, and they got some sort of rot, but as everyone's did around me, I don't think that was necessarily the reason.

[redimp]

The onky seed I have saved this year is parsnip seed.  My runners etc were such a disaster that I did not have enough beans. 

Re: The chillis and PVA glue.  Chillis are self pollinators which will cross pollinate if not fully pollinated by the time the flowers have opened.  Therefore, you can glue the flowers before they have opened without pollinating the flowers first. 

[Jeannine]

Saving squash seeds is relatively easy if you grow from the four seperate families that won't cross pollinate, if you have more than 1 squash from thr same family they will of course cross.If anyone is wanting to try I can tell you the family if you tell me the name of your squash XX Jeannine

[Biscombe]

Re: The chillis and PVA glue.  Chillis are self pollinators which will cross pollinate if not fully pollinated by the time the flowers have opened.  Therefore, you can glue the flowers before they have opened without pollinating the flowers first. 

I thought that was the case

[LesH]

      This year i've saved,cucumber, marrow and pumpkins.
Also broad bean, runner and french climbing beans.
  Artic king winter lettuce and mixed lettuce leavesas well as radish.
 rudbeckia,sunflowers, sweet williams, lychnis coronaria, morning glory,
foxgloves and sweet peas.

[cleo]

Usually just tomatoes-but this year I`m going to save the seeds of `Boldog Hungarian Spice`-it`s a sweet pepper for drying and grinding for paprika.

Simpson`s seem to have dropped it from their list(unless I looked in the wrong place)

[littlebabybird]

cleo, seeds-by-size sell Boldog Hungarian Spice

[MrsKP]

this is my second year of saving Mum's Naughty Marietta french marigold, first year of Red Marietta and Jolly Jester French Marigold, Love in the Mist, Poached Egg plant, sweet peas.  My only veg saving is Supersprout's Gigantes beans.

Hope to see lots of third generation butter beans next year !
 ;D

[Garjan]

Selfpollinating chillis, I didn't know that before. :-[
I had a vision of Biscombe waiting forever for her chillis to produce fruits with pure seeds!

Next year I will use glue as well.
Are there any other crops that can be treated like that?

[miniroots]

I've let couple of my heritage carrots run to seed -

How do you know when the seed is ready?

[glosterwomble]

I'm relatively new to seed saving so I'm only starting out with the easy ones, French beans, runner beans, peas, calendula, french marigold.

Our plot neighbour grew some lovely butternut squash from seeds saved out of a Tesco squash so I am going to give it a try. I know it might not work as they could have been F1's but I'll plant some from bought seed too.

I love the idea that you can slowly develop a plant that will be unique to you and will have adapted to your local growing conditions.

[antipodes]

ah you have reminded me to save some seeds from the only tomato plant that survived this year's disaster!! It gave mini egg tomatoes that were nice and tasty. someone gave it to me so I don't know the variety, but if it works, i think it must be a good resistant type.

Does anyone know if you can save broccoli seeds? Mine went straight to flower and gave lots of seedheads I could save lots if they can be used that way...