(footsteps clattering)
(leaves rustling)
(tools clattering)
(birds chirping)
(seeds rattling)
(footsteps crunching)
(seeds rattling)
- [Charles] Seed saving brings another whole dimension
to gardening your own home sown seed.
It feels very empowering
that you're taking the cycle right the way through.
And I've got some examples here.
And we're going to see some seeds that I've sown,
and then saving seeds.
And I'll show you some ideas of how you can do it.
And here's just to give you an idea
of one of the more difficult ones.
Onions.
Like all root vegetables,
it actually needs to be, you need to store a bulb
or root over the winter, because it's biannual.
It will then flower and make its seeds the following summer.
So these four onions here, these were multi-sown in a clump.
I just pulled them out of the ground.
And I would save the biggest one there,
mainly because, well, it's probably got
a bit more genetic information to make a big one.
And also, its size means that it's got more energy
to make a nice vigorous flowering stem
and seeds next summer.
So I'll keep that over winter, plant it in the spring,
possibly in our climate here,
which is rather damp, in the polytunnel.
That will give me more chance of harvesting
some dry high quality seeds next summer.
So there's a bit about thinking ahead with some of them,
whereas other seeds are much quicker,
like French beans, for example.
Onions, by the way, do cross pollinate.
They need to cross-pollinate to make viable seeds.
So you can't just grow one onion plant.
You would need ideally six, maybe even eight.
So that all the flower pollen cross-pollinates.
Then you get a stronger, more viable seed,
whereas French beans and peas, as well,
you can do from one plant only.
So these are some French beans
which I sowed last late spring,
grew through the summer, saved the seed late summer.
And I sowed them this spring.
And this is one of the beauties of home sowed seed.
Every one came up.
Well, maybe one out of 40 didn't.
But you know, you got such strong germination
and it's that home sowed quality.
These seeds are used to growing here,
and they just want to grow again.
Sometimes I find with seed I've bought, you know,
it's a bit reluctant.
And then other ones that we'll be looking at
is broad beans and lettuce,
and I'll just mention also, coriander.
So somewhere here, I think it's there.
Yeah.
Coriander is a nice example of home sow seed
because it's, you can see, quite a large seed,
easy to handle, easy to clean.
And it is a one that needs to cross-pollinate.
It's one of the carrot family, Umbellifers,
so like carrots, dill, coriander, parsnip,
they all need a few plants.
So I let a few of them flower, which is very nice,
nice for insects, kept the seed last summer.
And again, when I sowed them this spring,
they all came up very happily
and they made beautiful coriander.
So the reason partly I was doing that was
this is a very nice variety I've discovered,
called Cruiser, which is particularly large leaves,
and has been very successful here.
So let's have a look at some different varieties
of vegetables for sowing and seeding.
(birds chirping)
So peas, which peas and plants
to save the seeds from?
Well, the main decision with peas is do you like them?
If it's a variety you like the flavor of, go for it.
And then you just want to make sure
it's a reasonably strong plant
and that you choose some nice pods.
I really don't want to over-complicate it.
So this is Oregon Sugarpod.
There were two different sowings here,
these being a bit earlier, they didn't get quite as vigorous
as the ones at the other end,
but still good for keeping seed.
And to give you an example,
there's different stages of growth here.
Like I've picked one or two,
there or there, or here.
They're at different stages of maturity.
And here's one that actually, that's good to eat.
That's not ready for keeping seed from yet.
But we can eat that.
Any of these are good.
So the pod has started to go leathery and dry.
It's a decent sized pod.
All of them are decent sized pods.
So let's have a look and see what's in here.
Nice, that is seven seeds,
and they all look good.
What you can find sometimes with peas is pea moth,
only four in that one.
I've not noticed that makes a difference necessarily,
but there is a pea seed that I wouldn't keep,
which is kind of broken a bit.
And sometimes you can get seeds
which have been eaten by a pea moth caterpillar.
I'm not seeing any here actually.
But you would know that, because basically,
they've got a hole in and little caterpillar debris.
But these peas are not yet dry.
The actual peas are not dry.
I find though, from picking pods at that stage,
not totally dry, these are still good and viable.
So I'm going to pod these out at this stage.
And then they will dry, say, in sunlight
on a window in the house for about a week.
And you've then got dry seed, which is good to go.
And that's really all there is to it.
Then just keep it in a, say, a yogurt pot or an envelope.
And sow it the following spring,
so this is Oregon Sugarpod, but any variety of pea,
you can do something similar to this.
You're waiting until it's harvest,
we've eaten some pods from here, but we didn't eat them all.
And we left some to go to seed.
(birds chirping) (doves cooing)
Broad beans.
So these are spring sown.
There were sown in February and there's the last few
that I didn't pick.
So I left them. (pod cracking)
Whoops, to dry for seed.
And that is an example of broad beans ready
for saving the seed.
Now there is a proviso to broad beans,
which is that they will cross pollinate.
And actually, these ones did have
a different variety growing here.
These are Monica, they're very tasty beans,
so I want to save some seeds from it.
And that one was Aquadulce Claudia.
So I'm not actually gonna save these seed,
but we're going to eat them.
You can eat them as a dry bean in the winter,
soak them overnight and then eat them.
But I've got some other deMonica growing over there,
same as these, same.
Everything's the same about them,
except that they've been growing just on their own
without any other broad bean varieties nearby
to cross-pollinate.
How much distance you need?
Well, every book, article says something different.
I find, in practice,
it's not as far as it's often claimed to be.
I think a lot of the distances given
are playing on the safe side.
So in terms of my garden here,
probably from here to the compost heaps,
I think you'd be safe, in terms of a distance,
because there's often things in the way
that slow down the passage of insects.
For instance, between here and the compost heaps,
there's those tall beans there, for example.
So, you know, there's often that happening,
or a hedge or something.
But whatever it is, you let your pod get reasonably dry.
Like peas, it could be a bit less dry.
Some of these pods are not quite as dry.
So this one's a bit leathery and green still.
You can see the pod, the beans are a little bit more green
and rounded, not quite so shriveled.
And these would still be good
to shell out and keep for seed.
You just want to make sure they're dry
before you put them into a jar or a packet,
however you going to store them.
Here are two different vegetables,
which are both good to grow in isolation,
in terms of you only need one.
Actually, I didn't put that very well, really.
What I meant is you don't need several
for cross-pollination.
So this one lettuce has enough genetic information
in it to carry on the strain, the variety,
which is Grenoble Red.
It's one of my favorite winter varieties.
So this is a lettuce.
And I sowed it last September.
And we were picking leaves off this very plant
from late November, every fortnight or so,
until the middle of March.
And at that point, I selected it as being a nice sample
of lettuce, basically,
big leaves and strong, bushy growth, very healthy.
And we stopped picking it.
So it made a heart during late March and April.
And then by May, the heart broke open.
It makes these flower stalks.
Lettuce flowers are a little bit of a disappointment.
You don't really see much.
They're kind of pale yellow and very invisible.
And then the flower buds become these seed pods.
So inside each little pod here,
which has that tuft on top, I've lost a few there.
But basically, that's lettuce seed there.
And these are pretty well ready now.
So there's no advantage I'm seeing to leave this any longer.
I'm going to untie it from its stake,
twist out the whole plant, and hang it upside down,
under cover in my garage, over a sheet,
in case any seeds drop out, and let it dry some more.
And then after three or four weeks,
all of this will be really dry
and it'll be fairly straightforward,
not that easy, actually, to get the seed out.
What we've found as a good method is rubbing.
Get that whole thing and rub it
between two big blocks of wood.
For example, you've got to work a bit
to get the seeds out of the pods which are holding them.
So that's lettuce.
And then down here, we have a much quicker one
to seed, which is French bean.
So these, is my lovely favorite variety,
Orinoco Yellow potted French bean,
and you can see how the pods we haven't picked
are getting quite fat and full.
They're feeling hard, actually now,
not ready yet, in terms of seed,
but the seed is well developed inside there already.
And it's probably about three weeks from now
to that becoming a dry pod with little white seeds in.
Actually, I've got some from this variety,
which I sowed last autumn.
Whoops, saved last autumn.
And that's what they look like.
So they're not very big. (beans rattling)
And each of these pods might have five
or six little seeds like that in them.
And that was all from two plants.
In fact, this year, I'm just doing one plant,
'cause I've got so many more than I need.
So one plant like this can give up to a hundred seeds.
You know, viable seeds.
That's after you've sorted out the little ones.
So seed saving off the simple vegetables like this
can be very, very worthwhile.
You know, how many French bean plants do you need
to produce a crop?
I'm selling quite a few here.
And just in this polytunnel,
I've got 25 plants and selling quite a few a week.
So you don't need many.
And with the lettuce that we were looking at, that's like,
one plant makes thousands of seeds, maybe 2,000.
Way more than I need for even commercial use.
So seed saving like this is a good thing
that you could do, maybe with your friends,
and some of you do one and some do another.
And just to finish off, we're gonna have a look
at one of the neatest of all, really,
and simplest is tomatoes.
(footsteps crunching)
(birds chirping)
Tomatoes are really one of the simplest and nicest things
to save the seed from because you've got the bit you eat
already, is where the seed is,
so you haven't got to do anything special to save seed,
but there's one thing you do need
to be careful about is to sow seed only
from open pollinated tomatoes,
which means they are not F1 hybrids.
Hybrids have been inbred artificially,
and then when you sow their seed, they don't come true.
So Sungolds are a very nice example,
a lovely tomato which quite a few of us grow,
but you can't save the seed.
I did try it once, and I got all sorts
of horrible tomatoes growing as a result.
They were not nice to eat.
But you can save side shoots in the autumn.
That's another story.
But for saving seed of most tomatoes
which are open-pollinated like these are,
so there's four different varieties here,
and I can save seed from each one.
And I know that they will grow true.
They won't have cross-pollinated.
So it's just a beautiful one to start with maybe.
And all you need to do is get a ripe tomato
like that, and then cut it open and save the seed.
And one little tip is to...
Not a huge number in that one, but enough to be worthwhile.
Put the seed into a little jar with some water
until they start to ferment.
You can go a bit moldy.
Might take three, four, five days.
And then that helps to break down
the germination inhibiting deposits
on the outside of tomato seeds.
So you can do that and then drain off the liquid,
clean them up, rub them out,
dry them, and you have your tomato seed ready
for sowing next spring.
(birds chirping)
(water gushing)
So the first step is scraping out all the seed you can find,
and it'll be a variable amount,
according to the size of the tomato.
Then you place it in a cup with water
and fill the cup with water and stir it around a bit,
and that will wet it and help the fermentation to begin.
(spoon clinking)
After, up to a week, you will start
to see mold on top, and that's a really good sign.
If you don't, it could still be all right.
It depends on how much tomato is in there.
We only left this five days, so it's not that good.
(utensils clinking)
(water trickling)
And the final stage is to drop the contents
of your sieve onto, card works well,
'cause that doesn't, it doesn't stick to a plate so much.
Put it in a sunny windowsill for up to a week
and you've got your seeds.
A dry room in the house is a good place to store seed.
Also in the case of this room, this is a conservatory.
So it's very good for finishing off the drying process.
This is some pea seed, which we shelled that this morning,
and just dropping them in to a tray
lined with newspaper, and it'll just sit
on a sunny windowsill and it will dry.
And in fact, that's the difference here.
We did the same with these seeds last week,
almost exactly a week ago.
And you can see how quickly they've dried
and gone pretty hard.
In fact, the seeds in this black tray here,
I wouldn't say they're 100% dry now,
but they're very close to it.
Within a few days,
I'll be putting them into pots just to store.
I don't want to keep them in the sun for too long.
In fact, I've done it for up to a month
and they've been fine.
It doesn't affect the germination.
And you can see how many seeds there are there.
It's not difficult to save a lot.
These peas I'm keeping for pea shoots as well,
so they're a very useful seed to save.
And then garlic is another example of something very simple.
So this is some of this year's garlic harvest,
which actually I grew in the polytunnel.
I find under cover you get really reliable,
clean garlic, a big size.
And so I'll just choose some of these biggest bulbs,
break open, and choose the biggest cloves from them,
plant them, and so it goes on.
And some of this garlic I've been saving now for 17 years
without buying any more.
So you can do that.
You don't need to...
Once you've gotten some garlic you like,
and it's growing well for you,
just keep saving seed from it.
And even if it has rust on,
I find that it still grows healthily
and you can save the seed from it.
And I should just mention potatoes too,
because that's a nice one to save your own,
keep medium-sized potatoes, sort of ax-sized,
even if they're a bit green,
and just store them in the normal way.
Plant them the following spring.
On the whole though, with potatoes,
it's recommended, and I think it's probably true
that you don't want to keep them for more than one year.
There's a risk of some virus coming in.
But certainly for one year, you're safe to do that.
And I'll sign off on that note.
It's like seed saving,
it's a whole 'nother skill to learn.
Don't underestimate some of the potential difficulties,
weather mostly, time as well.
Sometimes how much space you need in the garden to do it
when you're doing vegetables that need cross-pollination,
that's probably the most difficult.
Like, so beetroot, for example,
six beetroot plants going to seed,
that's quite a lot of space.
Bear all those things in mind.
There's an article I've written which is,
I think, free online, Permaculture Magazine.
There's a chapter and stuff
in my new book about seed saving.
But do a bit of homework and then have a go.
You will enjoy it.