Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2014 - 48

G Going to Seed
Text and photos by elizabeth hunter

mountain
garden

The magic of seeds goes beyond Their amazing numbers and
viabiliTy. They're also, in many cases, simply beauTiful.

where to start

saving Vegetable seed
If you've never saved your own vegetable seed
but want to try, you need to know:
* You cannot save seed from hybrid plants,
because they won't breed true (resemble the
parent plant), or may be sterile. Save seed only
from open-pollinated varieties.
* Vegetables are pollinated in one of three
ways: a) by wind; b) by insects; or c) by themselves (self-pollinating). Self-pollinating vegetables (beans, lettuce, peas and tomatoes)
breed true, so start with them if you're new to
seed-saving.

Asters, above left, have seeds with fluffy parachutes to carry them on the wind.
Seedheads of Queen Anne's Lace, above right, look like little birds' nests.

my brother once remarked that
the best part of hiking wasn't the
hike itself, but the flood of wellbeing after the hike is over. The same
could be said for gardening. There's
nothing better than fresh-from-thegarden tomatoes and corn on the
cob - except the relief that comes
when a killing frost says, "End of
shift." All that remains is garden
cleanup, which is quite enough.
Even that can be postponed awhile.
Time to rest on your laurels and
begin enjoying your full larder
instead of battling bugs, blight,
drought and heat.
Time to walk down the road and
gather seed from the wild plants you
admired when they were blooming

plants have a problem with
which animal parents might
sympathize.
48 | BlueRidgeCountry.com

and want to get started in your yard.
Though saving vegetable seed is a
venerable tradition in the Blue Ridge,
I've never done much of that. (Too
many temptations in the seed catalogs that show up earlier and earlier
each year.) I'm more of a seed re-distributor than saver anyway. True, I
sometimes collect dried seedheads
from my marigolds and zinnias to
start indoors for transplanting out.
But most of the seeds I gather I scatter right away, where I hope they'll
germinate next spring.
I never set out on a fall walk without some small plastic bags in my
pocket. But plants past their prime
have more to offer than seeds. In his
great poem "Wild Geese," Wendell
Berry describes opening a persimmon
seed "to find the tree/ that stands in
promise,/ pale, in the seed's marrow."
What are seeds - every one, from
whatever plant produced them- but
promise, of the wild world's resurrection and return?

* Wind- and insect-pollinated vegetables will
cross-pollinate with other plants of the same species. Corn is wind-pollinated. Insects pollinate
most commonly-grown vegetables, including
squash, melons and cucumbers. In you want to
save their seed, these crops must be widely separated from others of the same species.
* Note about Squash: Yellow (crookneck,
straightneck and scallop), zucchini, acorn and
spaghetti squash - and pumpkins - are all varieties of the same species, Curcurbita pepo.
Likewise, turban, buttercup and hubbard
squash are all C. maxima. If you want to save
seed, grow only one variety of each species, for
example, just yellow crookneck and buttercup.
For seed to breed true, you need to separate
varieties of squash of the same species by 800
feet or more to avoid cross-pollination.
Otherwise, what you see is not what you'll get
next year.

when to harvest seed
Seed harvested before it's ripe won't germinate.
For seeds in pods (beans, peas, etc.), harvest
when pods are completely dry and brittle. For
seed in vegetable fruits, harvest after fruits
change color: cukes turn yellow; tomatoes, red,
orange or yellow; peppers, red or orange. For
lettuce, harvest just before seeds fall out of the
husks on their own.

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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2014

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