...and the leaf has got a very very strong garlic flavour so you can use this in
all various types of cooking, whatever you want to cook. And it just means you've got a
really strong garlic, um it's quite strong it's got a very garlic-like flavour!
Okay, so this particular one, the garlic chive is one of the easier plants to save seed from
because the actual seed sits on a flower stem and the actual seed itself is at the top of the
plant on the end of the stem. And, basically what happens is you pick the stems just as you see the
seeds themselves start to go black so when you when we start to see
the black seeds appearing in the stem that's when you pick them as you can see we've picked about
20 or 30 heads here and these have been maturing on this plate so we don't eventually lose any seed
so once you get to a certain dry stage like it is there all you basically do is just shake the seed,
rub the seed and let the seed fall down. See how you see how the seed just drops off
and it won't matter if you get a little bit of the outer seed husk in there because
that's nice and dry as well. So, basically, you just keep on going with that,
the seed is just falling straight off the plant
there we go
so we'll end up with two or three thousand seeds here easily, just out of that one
little bush that we showed you. Okay so this is actual garlic chive growing it's only a small
bush. It only grows about 300 millimetres high, It comes out in a long flower stalk and then the seeds
sit on top of the flower stalk and you use it the same way as you use onion chive you just
break the leaf off and the leaves have a very strong garlic flavour.
You can use this in all various types of cooking, whatever you want to cook.
And it just means you've got a really strong garlic...um it is quite strong! It's got a very
garlic... very much a garlic like flavour and you can put that through all types of cooking
and if you haven't got any bulb garlic on hand you can use the actual garlic chive as a substitute.
So this is the very first plant that we've saved at the homestead here, so it is quite a historic
day and we're really looking forward to be able to saving this seed and then being able to hand
them out to friends and family. So, as you can see we've got the rough seeds and the actual
husk around the seeds on the plate here so what what we're going to do now we don't want to save
all the husks of the seed with the seed itself because if there is any moisture content
in that they could cause the seeds to rot. So, what we're going to do now is we're going to put that
into another bowl, the whole lot. Give it a quick wipe then we're going to use a sieve to actually sift
off all the seed husks.So we put that into that one, okay. Just give it a little bit of a shake,
see all the seeds just dropping to the plate.
So, we've gotten rid of
probably 90 to 95 percent of the seed husk there.
As you can see if we look at that most of the seeds have actually
fallen through the sieve and left all the husks we don't need. So there we go.
So that's that process. Now it's still got a little bit of fine husk in there
but that doesn't matter, that that can be stored with the seed and that won't affect the
seed at all, it doesn't have to be perfect as far as cleaning the huss off the
seed. So now what we're going to do is transfer that to a little container
like so
and we want to protect the seed as much as possible, especially if you're storing the seed.
Most seed will store for five years and still be viable.
This is in the allum family, that's the onion family so certainly we'll get five years, five
to seven years if it's stored in a cool dry place. Part of that process of storing seeds properly
is you put them in a little sachet. Here is our little sachet and that stops any moisture
getting into the seed, especially from the outside but they can still breathe in
there but they'll be nice and stored away. Then what we do with them is we put them into a
an envelope. It's really important to actually label every seed that you process because it's
very easy to forget what they are if you're just chucking them into an envelope and don't put what
it actually is, if you end up with 10 or 15 or 20 varieties of seeds it's very hard to
identify them later.So this one here is the garlic chive, so we'll just put the garlic chive down.
It's also important to put the date on which it's been saved, so it's April
at the moment and it's the year 2022. That means that when you store your seed in
one to two or three to five years time later you'll know exactly how old the seed is and the
basic viability of the seed. As it gets beyond five years that viability will
start going down a little bit but you'll still get 90 to 100 percent germination out of that for the
next five years or so. We put that in an envelope and the other thing about putting them in a little
sachet is you don't need to sow all at once. If you want to sow some one year
just take some out of the sachet and you've still got a sealable sachet. We put that into an envelope you
don't have to we don't have to seal the envelope just fold it over and
now the next process is very very important. It goes into a sealed container because at the end
of the day you don't want silverfish and you don't want mice, you don't want anything getting into it
and eating your seed! Put it into a container with a top on it.
There you go...that's the whole process of saving
seed in general but in particular in this variety it's how to save
garlic chive seed. I hope you enjoyed it and please don't forget to subscribe to our channel.