From the garden to the seed packet
Saving seed starts while the crop is still growing. Which plants should you keep for seed, how will their flowers be pollinated, and when can you harvest? In this English edition of Dein Saatgut fürs nächste Jahr, Steffen Bauer follows a seed crop through the growing season and into storage.
What the book covers
Choose a first project
An open-pollinated pea or common bean can teach you how to set plants aside, harvest mature pods and keep a batch identifiable. The book explains how the decisions change when you want to save seed regularly or conserve a variety over several years. It covers parent plant selection, pollen sources and ways to manage crossing.
Harvest for seed maturity
A cucumber for seed needs more time on the plant than one for the kitchen. Lettuce seed heads can shed their seeds before you collect them. The crop profiles show what to watch for and how dry pods, seed heads and fleshy fruits call for different harvesting and processing methods.
Keep seed you can identify and test
The processing chapters cover gentle threshing, cleaning with sieves and air, and extracting seed from fleshy fruits. The storage chapters help you decide when seed is dry enough to pack and what to record on a label. A germination test can then inform your sowing plans for next year.
Worksheets for your seed garden
Use the worksheets to plan a seed crop, record parent plants and pollination, and track batches through harvesting, cleaning and drying. The book also includes seed labels, a storage record and a germination test sheet.