A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

I do have a question on growing beans for seed saving. I also have beehives
that may hunt the garden and crosspollinate but the bees usually are off hunting better nectar sources. Anyway, if I grow the pole beans along my fences and change varieties every 8 feet, can I gather seed from the middle of each patch and be fairly sure of purer seeds? I am assuming that like tomatoes there are tricks to keeping the seed fairly pure. For tomatoes, we gather the earliest blooms and plant varieties with different maturity so they aren't blooming all at once. I'm not going to be able to separate different varieties 20 or 50 feet apart to get pure seed like 'google says'... So what say you bean growers? What has been your experience. I'm also going to be growing some up the outside stalks of the corn patch....

I'm sorry that I don't have much good news for you @Vanalpaca! Bees are a real problem for seed saving! There are some tricks, like you mention with tomatoes - which is mostly about saving tomatoes from early blooms, so the flowers have had less chance of bees visiting. My honest opinion is bees are very haphazard in the way they fly, and the distances they'll go. To me, the only way to reliably save seeds is to get the bee numbers down. I've gotten rid of nearly all my perennial flowers that draw bees to save seeds. Runner beans are one of the last things I won't give up, and it's worth the risk to me. But there's no question those attract too many bees.

I don't do the separation distances commonly recommended with my tomato plants, or my bean plants. What I do is manage the bees, and do everything I can to discourage them from coming here. Even with those recommended distances if you have a fair number of bees around, it won't matter, the bees will cross pollinate things. A bee can fly much farther than 20 feet to get to another plant it's interested in. I don't put much stock in those isolation guidelines.

 

[flowerbug]

the most surefire way to do tomatoes would be to use the fine mesh cover on the branch or bloom and then when the flower has developed enough to ding it well so it self-pollinates. i think @Zeedman does this for his peppers.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

One update. I may have gotten a sprout in the Miner's Lettuce pot (forgot to mention that one.) I don't see the round leaves yet, but maybe those come later.

 

[heirloomgal]

the most surefire way to do tomatoes would be to use the fine mesh cover on the branch or bloom and then when the flower has developed enough to ding it well so it self-pollinates. i think @Zeedman does this for his peppers.

It's an option for sure, but it has problems too. Hard to cover to the ground growing plants with the mesh, and determined bees can still get in at ground level. Then they get trapped in there and go a bit flower crazy in there, probably causing more crossing than if there were no mesh at all.

 

[heirloomgal]

I discovered this week that my Devil's claw plants grow to 4 or 5 feet wide. This means I'll have to throw some out, because that is way too large for my garden, and for a novelty crop to boot. I could crowd them I guess, and that would probably limit their size. I still haven't hammered in where everything is going to go so their final placement is yet to be decided...

I see a few rows of carrots are up; you can really see what seed is fresh and what isn't. Unless something in red carrots causes them to germinate more quickly, because it's 'Kyoto Red' and 'Chantenay Red' that are up first. I'm looking forward to trying my new 'Manpukuji' carrots. Nantes tends to be the most favored carrot flavor wise, so we'll see what kind of competition these are.

DH saw a huge groundhog 2 days ago, another ominous sighting. But that night we heard a small coyote group vocalizing just behind the back yard. So, good timing. Go get 'em friends. I forgot to cover my two precious collard plants, and the lettuce seedlings, the last 2 nights - and nobody ate them nor the kale plants. So a good sign, though the front yard is always more safe than the back. On that note though, I can vouch for 'Feuille de Chene Blonde' as a lettuce that will live virtually as a perennial from seed. I planted it 3 years ago and it has reliably come back from seed every year since, with no intervention from me. I love a lettuce that doesn't need me.

 

[flowerbug]

It's an option for sure, but it has problems too. Hard to cover to the ground growing plants with the mesh, and determined bees can still get in at ground level. Then they get trapped in there and go a bit flower crazy in there, probably causing more crossing than if there were no mesh at all.

instead of covering the whole plant you can just bag with the mesh a few flowers/bunches until they form a fruit and then mark those tomatoes with a bit of yarn or something for later harvest and taking only those seeds.

 

[heirloomgal]

instead of covering the whole plant you can just bag with the mesh a few flowers/bunches until they form a fruit and then mark those tomatoes with a bit of yarn or something for later harvest and taking only those seeds.

Yes, tomato seed savers often do that. I've seen it less with pepper seed saving, usually people just cover a row. But people who use the blossom bagging technique all seem to say the same thing, that the bags tend to blow off in wind. I once saw a photo where a seed saver had built sturdy wooden frame square 'cages' with screen door type mesh on the sides. They slipped it over the plant during the flowering period, and removed it afterward. Beautiful look and nice technique, but not practical on any real scale.

 

[heirloomgal]

My new perennial pansies! Love these colors. I really hope it's true that they'll survive winter here. I underplanted my roses with pansies, periwinkle and lemon balm since roses take awhile to fill out and start to bloom. I noticed as I trimmed the roses today that, except for the shrub rose, most of them had dead branches that were not growing leafy matter. Lots of growth from the base, though some had branches growing foliage. I wish I knew more about roses. I should watch some videos on youtube to try and educate myself on how to treat them to get the best show.

 

[Decoy1]

Yes, tomato seed savers often do that. I've seen it less with pepper seed saving, usually people just cover a row. But people who use the blossom bagging technique all seem to say the same thing, that the bags tend to blow off in wind. I once saw a photo where a seed saver had built sturdy wooden frame square 'cages' with screen door type mesh on the sides. They slipped it over the plant during the flowering period, and removed it afterward. Beautiful look and nice technique, but not practical on any real scale.

I use bagging of flowering shoots for peppers as I’ve had some crossing in the past. For tomatoes I simply assume they will come true, as with beans and lettuces. I’ve had occasional bean crosses but not knowingly had any tomato crosses and I grow plants quite close together.

On my peppers, there’s no problem with wind as they’re in a polytunnel. They’re better with some agitation to encourage self-pollination though,and the flowers do fail to set fruit sometimes.

This year I’m experimenting more with isolation. I generally grow peppers in the ground but while they’re still small and in pots I’ve got single varieties in the window of almost every room in the house until they set a couple of fruit or so. At that point they can go out, the developing fruit having been tagged with twine, and planted in the normal way. So far it seems to be working well.

 

[flowerbug]

Yes, tomato seed savers often do that. I've seen it less with pepper seed saving, usually people just cover a row. But people who use the blossom bagging technique all seem to say the same thing, that the bags tend to blow off in wind.

a few ties to the stem should secure them, but of course you don't want them too tight.

I once saw a photo where a seed saver had built sturdy wooden frame square 'cages' with screen door type mesh on the sides. They slipped it over the plant during the flowering period, and removed it afterward. Beautiful look and nice technique, but not practical on any real scale.

yes, i wouldn't do that if i didn't absolutely have to, especially for just a few tomatoes and the short amount of time it would take (a few weeks or so).