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VICTORY GARDENS: On What You Need To Know About Saving Your Favourite Seeds

by Lisa Giroday, Sandra Lopuch and Sam Philips | Saving seed is a rewarding exercise in self-sufficiency of the utmost kind. People actually used to save their seeds to continue their vegetable gardens instead of continually purchasing their seeds from suppliers year after year. Thankfully, there are several local and sustainable seed companies that can do the work for us and provide non-hybrid, organic, non-GMO and heirloom seeds. But if you feel like giving seed saving a try, now is a good time to be collecting seeds, as the wet season is still only looming (or is it?), and many plants are set to go dormant for the winter. Corn, tomatoes, broccoli, beans, herbs, et cetera are all whispering at you to collect their seeds now to re-sow for next year.

Alternatively, you could always collect seeds for their many culinary uses. The approach of winter nicely coincides with the drying and preserving of herbs, and it’s pretty satisfying to have a kitchen stockpile of both when cooking (a couple of our favourites are fennel and coriander seeds).

What do you need to get started? Just some seed saving envelopes and a pencil to label your findings.

Three other things you should know…

1.) There are “dry” and “wet” seeds. Dry seeds are typically found on the stalks of some plants, grasses, grains, or in a seedpod. A wet seed is found inside fruits such as apples and tomatoes.

2.) Open pollinated vs. hybrid seeds: open pollinated means that the seed is the true or singular genus of a seed variety. The seed has not been cross-pollinated, so it will produce the same variety of plant as the preceding year. A hybrid seed is one that is the result of the cross breeding of two cultivars by humans. Widespread use of a relatively few mass-marketed hybrid seed varieties is said to be eliminating many open-pollinated varieties, especially the local variations that were naturally developed.

3.) Within open pollinated varieties, self-pollinating plants do not cross-pollinate and tend to remain the same as their predecessors. Open pollinated varieties that rely on the hard work of bees to pollinate are called “outcross” varieties, and have a greater chance of their seeds differing in characteristics from the original plant. Self-pollinators include tomatoes, beans, peas, peppers, eggplant, lettuce and chicory. Outcross varieties include beets, cabbage, spinach and parsley.

Need a seed saving mentor? Check out the book, Saving Seeds As If Our Lives Depended On It by Dan Jason, founder of Saltspring Seeds.

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Victory Gardens is a team of local urban farmers for hire. Lisa, Sandra and Sam help transform tired or underused residential and commercial green spaces into food producing gardens. Their goal is to challenge the way communities use space and to participate in the change needed to consume food more sustainably. For the rest of the growing season, they’ve hooked up with Scout to share some cool tips and tricks on how to get the best from of our own backyards.

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