What Seeds are You Saving?

digitS'

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We know that the heirloom bean gardeners are saving bean seed. It is a great big part of what motivates their gardening, what interests them.

What else? What seed are you saving this week or soon?

I realized that saving pea seed this month has interfered with my habit of sowing a fall crop of snow peas in the final week of July. My intention is to use the same piece of ground where some Mammoth Melting have been maturing seed for another sowing of Oregon Sugar Pod. Should be able to pull those vines and do that sowing, tomorrow ... in August!

Today, I will make a list of varieties that require fresh seed from the tomato patch this year.

:) Steve
 

Ridgerunner

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Other than dried beans I'm saving Purple Hull peas. I have a few to finish hulling then it's a matter of sorting the good ones.

Later I plan to save zinnia and marigold seeds. Probably cilantro/coriander, a bit undecided as I already have so many.

That's probably it for me. I don't plant enough other open-pollinated things to make it worthwhile starting plants. I buy starts.
 

Zeedman

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Hopi Pole limas
Aeron Purple Star runner beans
Serbian pole, Fortex, and Soissons Vert common beans
Chinese Red Noodle & Chinese Long Green yardlong beans
Sugar Magnolia snap pea
Fledderjohn, I-309, Ji Lin 5, Mandarin A, and Sakamotowase soybeans
Pentagreen okra
Goldie ground cherry
Bitter melon, a long Chinese hybrid I've been trying to stabilize (5th generation, appears very stable)

Am growing Gretel eggplant, allegedly a hybrid... but I'll try saving seed anyway, if the season proves to be long enough. I'd really like to see if I can stabilize something open pollinated & productive from it, to replace Casper long-term. Its worth trying.

Some nunas beans became root bound waiting for transplant... which even after transplanting, appears to have shocked them into flowering!!! I may actually get some seeds... but I'm holding my breath, don't want to count those eggs/seeds before they hatch/dry. A couple of the flowers appear to have already set pods. Its been cooler the last few days, Aeron Purple Star has finally set a few pods as well. Hopi Pole has a long DTM, but has begun flowering, so I should get some dry seed.

A dismal year, no tomatoes or peppers for seed saving, and only about 15% of what I had planned... but not a total loss either.
 
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flowerbug

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tulips, hyacynths, peas, pinks, columbines, bunching onions, and, yes, beans...

i used to habitually gather seeds wherever i went.

is there something that someone wants? perhaps we have them and i can get
some seeds... :) (not an enabler, nope, not me...)
 

Pulsegleaner

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At the moment, the only things I have saved are the rat tailed radish and the cat thyme, as they are the only ones to set mature seeds so far.
As they mature, I will try and save seed from everything that produces it. With the number of things I'm growing for which I no longer have and outside source, I don't see as I have much choice.
 

flowerbug

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If the deer end up eating it before I get the seeds, I'd be glad to take you up on it! :)

i have not noticed them eating the leaves/flowers in the summer/fall, but they can at times trample them when going for something else and in the middle of winter when there is nothing else to eat they'll eat the radishes. so i think you'll be ok... :)
 

digitS'

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It has been 2 weeks since DW picked those 2 tiny Coyote cherry tomatoes - rescuing the tomatoes and the seed they contained from the field mice (alleged thieves).

Today, I walked over the Coyote plant that volunteered in the weeds along the neighbor's fence. The plant had been killed by last week's frosts but had grown across the garden's perimeter path through the summer. Didn't even notice that I had walked on it until I'd taken one more step and there was a large canine footprint. The coyote has been back!

Today also, I took those seeds out of the 2 cherries and spread them on a paper towel. They went out in the October sunshine. I had wanted to give the fruit extra time thinking that full seed maturity might better be achieved that way. Really, I don't know if that is true or not. Do you know?

Steve
 

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