Seed Saving Circle?

[ellie_may12]

I'm in! I will save some of my heirloom tomato seeds. I'll also have cushaw squash, luffa, birdhouse gourd and maybe some cypress vine(if any one wants flowers).

 

[Wifezilla]

I am germination testing some stuff I saved now. I would have had results already but hubby accidentally threw out the seeds. He thought the glass I had them in was just dirty

 

[Mackay]

I'm interested in learning about this too but it may be quite a while before I have anything worth passing on to anyone....

except for my potatoes! I was given some great seed potatoes guaranteed to store well until May. They are growing like gangbusters.

Does anyone know about potatoe seeds? All my potato plants are now flowering and I was wondering about collecting seeds just in case for some reason I loose my seed potatoes over the winter.

I planted some heriloom pink tomatoes. I have lots of greenery and repeated yellow flowers that just keep dying and new ones coming but no tomatoes. We do have a shortage of bees around here and next year I will be sure to plant more early flowers to bring them around.... and I will also be looking seriously at getting some mason bees.

Meanwhile I've been trying to figure out how to pollinate these tomatoes... last night I went out and literally rubbed the flower heads into each other...gently of course.

A couple of weeks ago I went and collected wild grass seed. We have some spectacular clump grass that grows up to 3 and 4 feet tall along the highway and in pastures that grows well with little water, its rich green and grows into huge clumps... which would be excellent for planting around our ponds where we don't want to mow grass. I really didn't know what I was doing.. it seemed like the seeds were ready for collection as they just fell off the stalks. I let them dry in room air for a couple of days then put them in a plastic baggy then into the frige.

I wasn't sure when to plant them... I think I will try in early spring next year in planting pots to see what happens. This will be my first seed collection experiment...

 

[DrakeMaiden]

I haven't tried collecting potato seed yet, although I was thinking about it recently. I looked really quickly and found a blog post about it for you. That might get you started anyway.

Good luck with the tomato pollination. I believe I remember hearing that all you really need to do is shake the plants to move pollen around . . . you don't actually need bees, although bees help. Could it be that conditions just have not been favorable for fruit set yet?

I'd love to see a photo of the bunching grass you speak of. I would like some native bunching grass for my "lawn" as I am not inclined to mow grass, generally speaking. It has been my plan to naturalize my yard, and bunching grass was part of that plan . . . it just hasn't been my highest priority. Anyway, I think you have two options with the grass seeds. If you want to go low labor, and you have sufficient seed, I would scatter the seed where you want them to grow in early fall. Germination will probably be hit or miss. If you want to baby them and get a higher germination rate, I would start the seeds in early spring, in containers, and just make sure you keep the grasses watered all summer. Then transplant in the fall.

 

[old fashioned]

Drake...(or anyone else).....I hope you don't mind my resurrecting this thread. Can you tell I'm getting impatient for spring planting? Or that seed saving & gardening is my passion?

I'm still working on inventorying all my seeds to find out JUST what I have & what I might want or need. So I guess this post is to see if there is still any interest & to what direction you intended it to go.

 

[tortoise]

I'm in for this fall. I don't have enough to share for this spring.

 

[Pirtykitty]

Count me in when ya'll get ready.. I love to trade seeds and have a lot of heirloom seeds.

 

[GOOGLE NIKOLA TESLA]

Are people doing this still. This idea sounds brilliant!!
We could set up a mail list like the participants PO box or mail box, for the circle for the fall and have people send out a divided amount of seeds of there best healthiest harvest of fruit or vegtables. At the least make it 10 seeds or greater to make it worthwhile. But i know it would be hard to know if something is heirloom... If people dont respond in the harvest time they would be taken off the send list, because it wouldnt be faIr for them to not send there seeds and get everyone elses.

Well i dont know what harvest ill have but i would try this out. We could essentially improve plant genetics and make resistance to pests or disease by doing this, if people take individual times to examine the plants.

If we think about the big picture. If 100 people participated and had 50-100 different types of plants grown(each person sending out one type of seed), we as the group would get 50-100 different types of seeds in one yr! The small inputs of everyone would make a wonderful seed collection for all participants as a group..

 

[Dawn419]

GNT,

I'm glad you brought this back up as I was going to do so earlier but got side-tracked.

I should have Cherokee Purple and Arkansas Traveler tomato seeds to share, plus Cilantro/Coriander, Lemon Balm and hopefully Greek Oregano. There may be more but I'm not sure just what yet.

 

[Marianne]

I should have sunchokes :/