Tag Archives: Seed Saving

Simple Seed Saving: Marigolds

October 3, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Easy to grow, beautiful, and handy to have around, marigolds have earned a spot in many home gardens. Their bright, ruffled blooms and rich, musky smell make them alluring to humans but off-putting to many pests. They are among the easiest seeds to save. There’s very little processing. You just need to harvest the seeds and let them air dry for winter. Here’s how to save marigold seeds step by step so that you can have plentiful blooms all next season, too!

Choose an Open-Pollinated Marigold Variety

If you have marigold seeds from us, you’re all set; all our flowers are open-pollinated. However, if you purchased seeds somewhere else, you may want to double-check that your flowers are an open-pollinated variety rather than a hybrid.

Hybrids may not produce flowers that resemble what you grew; sometimes, they revert to what one of their two parents looked like. However, if you don’t mind a little surprise variation, you’re always welcome to save seeds from hybrids!

Wait Until Your Marigolds Are Mature

As with any plant, you want to ensure the seeds are fully mature before you harvest them. For marigolds, you want to wait until the petals have dried out and the base of the bloom, the seed pod, has started turning brown. Letting the seed pod get as brown and dry as possible is best. However, in rainy years, you may need to harvest the seed pods while they’re still green on the bottom. The seeds may mold if it’s a rainy year and you wait too long.

Marigold Seed pods (left), seeds (middle), dry petals (right) — Seed pods (left), seeds (middle), dry petals (right)

Remove the Seeds

Next, you want to remove the seeds from the pods. First, pull the petals off. Usually, they come off easily, and you can set them aside for composting. Then, you can split or peel the seed pod open to pull out the seeds. When the pods are dry, this is easy.

Marigold seeds have an odd appearance; they always remind me of porcupine quills, but don’t worry, they’re not sharp! They’re long and thin, almost needle-shaped, with a black or dark gray tip and a white or cream-colored top.

Pick out any leftover pieces of petals and pods as best you can.

Dish of marigold seeds and some seed pods — Dish of dry marigold seeds (left) and unopened seed pods (right)

Dry the Marigold Seeds

After your seeds are clean, it’s time to dry them. They may seem dry already, but they still have moisture, and they may mold in storage without proper drying. Spread the seeds on a plate or towel and let them dry for a couple of weeks.

Label and Store the Seeds

After your seeds are fully dry, you can package them in an airtight container for storage. Keep them somewhere cool and dark. Make sure to label your container with the variety and date.

Follow these steps to save marigold seeds for next year’s garden. In the spring, you can use your seeds to start marigolds indoors for early blooms. Marigolds germinate quickly, so you can also direct sow them. Many folks have found they make excellent companion plants, and you can plant them alongside many vegetables and herbs, including squash, tomatoes, beans, and basil. As flowers mature next season, you can repeat this process to save marigold seed.

Garden Advice

Saving Seed: Ancient Beginnings

March 31, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

For thousands of years, human history has been intertwined with seeds. We depended on the seeds we grew and stewarded to provide food, medicine, fiber for clothing, dye, and many of the other building blocks of our lives. Saving seed altered the way we lived, farmed, ate, and celebrated. Vandana Shiva probably put it best when she said, “seed is not just the source of life. It is the very foundation of our being.”

Our journey with seed saving and agriculture has been long and complex. Humans didn’t just decide one day to give up our nomadic lifestyles and settle down; we transitioned to agricultural societies over thousands of years. So when did it first begin, and why? Why did hunter-gathers start saving seeds and then selecting them for specific traits?

Why Did Humans Begin Saving Seed?

Today, there are many qualities we focus on when saving seed. We select for traits like flavor, vigor, cold-hardiness, color, size, drought tolerance, and more. These qualities probably weren’t the focus of ancient seed savers. They had to deal with other issues first.

So far, researchers have found that hunter-gathers first started to save and select the seeds of regionally available grain crops. The first characteristic they probably focused on was the “non-shattering trait.” In wild plants, being able to spread your seed is highly advantageous. Plants disperse their seeds in several ways, including wind, animals, and water. In wild cereals, the seed heads shatter, and the seeds drop from the plant as soon as they dry and mature.

This trait presented a considerable roadblock to efficiently gathering large amounts of grains for humans. They had to time gathering grain just right before it was dropped or blown off by the wind. It was also much harder to harvest without waste, leaving so much up to chance.

Researchers found some of the earliest evidence of humans selecting for non-shattering rice along the Lower Yangtze River in China. The non-shattering gene was also found in einkorn (wild wheat) in Tell Qaramel, an archeological site in modern-day northern Syria, and in barley and emmer (wheat) in several parts of the Fertile Crescent or what is now portions of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Kuwait, Turkey, and Iran (Allaby et al., 2017).

Developing grains with the non-shattering trait that retained their seeds was an enormous breakthrough for humans and would have improved the reliability and productivity of these cereals. It also represents when our lives began to intertwine with seeds. Humans were not just gatherers anymore; we became seed savers.

When Did Humans Begin Saving Seed?

So when did this all begin? Studies in recent years have shown that initial seed selection for those non-shattering traits began occurring long before we initially believed, dating back to the Pleistocene glacial era roughly 30,000 years ago (Allaby et al., 2017)!

These initial seed selections did not mean these early seed savers were becoming full-time farmers. These were still largely nomadic hunter-gathers supplementing their diet with wild cereals that they helped encourage and cultivate. Humans throughout the world were still mainly living nomadic, hunter-gather lifestyles until roughly 12,000 years ago, during a period which has been dubbed the “Neolithic Revolution” (National Geographic Society, 2022).

Ancient terrace rice fields in Yunnan Province, China

The Development of Agriculture

There is evidence of fig tree orchards in the Jordan Valley from roughly 11,300 years ago, signs of squash cultivation in Mexico date to at least 10,000 years ago, and cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs were all domesticated in the Fertile Crescent between 13,000 to 10,000 years ago (National Geographic Society, 2022). So what changed to make humans take up farming full-time? Scientists are not entirely sure.

In some regions like the Near East, this period brought about climatic changes that suited the production of annual plants. In other areas, a decline in natural resources as populations grew may have forced people to supplement their diets (Weitzel, 2019). An acceleration of domestication of plant varieties also coincides with the invention of sickle farming technology about 8,000 years ago (Hays, 2017). Some researchers even believe that agriculture took off as societies began to recognize private property rights. Simply put, humans like to own stuff (Chatterjee, 2013).

While these are all relevant theories, none of them likely caused the shift towards agriculture in its entirety. Humans moved towards agricultural societies for different combinations of reasons that varied over regions and cultures.

From these humble beginnings, humans continued to grow and save seed. Cultures across the world bred and stewarded their own staple crops and livestock. These varieties became essential parts of our everyday lives, our heritage, and our culture.

Saving Seed Today

Today, there are relatively few people saving seed. We are no longer hunter-gatherers trying to supplement our diets or subsistence farmers trying to grow every calorie we consume. Most of us don’t even grow a portion of our food, but today seed saving is just as important as it was thousands of years ago. When we fail to continue the work of stewarding seeds, we lose thousands of years of work and information. We lose biodiversity. We lose culture. We lose flavor. We lose celebration.

If you have the ability to take on one extra garden project this year, save seed from your favorite variety.

References

Allaby, R. G., Stevens, C., Lucas, L., Maeda, O., & Fuller, D. Q. (2017). Geographic mosaics and changing rates of cereal domestication. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 372(1736). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0429

Chatterjee, R. (2023, March 30). Why Humans Took Up Farming: They Like To Own Stuff. NPR. Retrieved May 13, 2013, from https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/05/13/183710778/why-humans-took-up-farming-they-like-to-own-stuff

Hays, B. (2017, October 23). Humans altered the evolution of crops 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. UPI. https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2017/10/23/Humans-altered-the-evolution-of-crops-10000-years-earlier-than-previously-thought/3981508767201/

National Geographic Society (2022, July 8). The Development of Agriculture. National Geographic. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/development-agriculture/

Weitzel, E. M. (2019). Declining Foraging Efficiency in the Middle Tennessee River Valley Prior to Initial Domestication. American Antiquity. https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2018.86

Garden Advice, Seed Saving

Beginners Guide to Seed Saving

November 3, 2022 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Southern Exposure strives to promote everyone’s right to save seed. We know that many backyard gardeners don’t have the time, space, or desire to save all of their own seeds, but we love seeing gardeners try to tend a variety or two. The pandemic further reinforced just how important seed saving is. We saw a surge in sales, especially of staple crops like corn and beans. Seed saving is easier than you think! Follow this beginner’s guide to seed saving to get started saving your favorite varieties.

Selecting Varieties

If you’re going to save seed, it’s essential to save it from the right plants! Hybrid plants are the first-generation crosses of two different parents. If you try to save seed from these crops, it probably won’t be true to type, meaning that the plants may be different in appearance, flavor, or other characteristics than that hybrid you grew.

Open-pollinated

Open-pollinated varieties are the crops you want for seed saving. These stable varieties have been bred to produce the same crop year after year reliably. You may notice that some open-pollinated seeds are listed as heirlooms.

Heirloom

The word ‘heirloom’ does not have a strict definition, but it’s generally used to reference open-pollinated varieties that have been passed down from generation to generation. Southern Exposure considers varieties to be heirlooms if they were bred before 1940.

Planning Your Garden

If you’re a small gardener hoping to save a few seeds this fall, you don’t necessarily need to have done any special planning. However, planning a garden for seed saving will improve your success.

Isolation Distances

When preserving varieties, you need to prevent them from crossing. You probably know that an Amish Paste Tomato could cross with a Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter Tomato, but there’s more to it than that. Plants in the same family can also cross. Cabbages for instance, could cross with broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, and other crops in the brassica family.

Crops need to be isolated to maintain varieties. Isolation can be achieved by distance or succession planting so that the crops aren’t blooming simultaneously. You can find isolation distances for different crops here.

Seed growers may also achieve isolation by covering blooms with bags and hand pollinating or growing in high tunnels.

Population Size

Diversity is key! To maintain genetic vigor, you need a large enough population to preserve genetic diversity. Saving seed from a single pepper plant may be fine for a year or two, but it isn’t a good long-term idea.

Learn more about garden planning for seed saving with this fantastic post from SESE seed grower Debbie Piesen of Living Energy Farm.

Garden Planning for Seed Saving

What to Look for When Saving Seed

When you save seed, you’re determining the next generations of that crop’s characteristics to an extent. Generally, if you’re trying to maintain a variety, you want to save seeds from those plants that display the typical characteristics of that variety or are true-to-type.

However, you may also want to select for certain characteristics. For example, you may want to save seed from tomato plants that displayed the highest resistance to late blight.

There are several characteristics you can select for, including:

Trueness-to-Type
Earliness
Vigor
Cold Hardiness
Color
Stockiness
Drought Tolerance
Disease or Pest Resistance
Lateness to Bolt
Flavor
Uniformity or Lack of It
Size & Shape
Storage Ability
Productivity

Consider marking certain plants you know have some of the desired characteristics. That way, you can be sure you’re gathering from the correct plants when it’s time to harvest seed.

Seed Saving from Annuals

Many of the crops we save seed from are annuals. Their life cycle takes place during a single season. They start as a seed in the spring and produce seed by fall.

These are excellent choices for beginner seed savers. They include squash, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, peas, basil, and more.

Harvesting

When harvesting for seed saving, remember that some crops will need to mature beyond what you would typically allow for eating. For example, cucumbers should be fat and yellow, jalapeños should be red, and sweet corn should be dry and hard.

Fermenting Seed

Some seeds have a gelatinous coating that you’ll need to remove before drying and storage. In the wild, this coating will help preserve the seed and temporarily inhibits germination as it lies on the ground until the following spring. In a garden setting, we want this coating gone before planting. Crops with this coating include:

Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Squash

To remove this coating, place your seeds into a jar or container and cover them with water. The containers need airflow, so don’t put a lid on. However, you can cover them with a cloth or coffee filter and a rubber band to keep out fruit flies.

Let this mixture ferment for three days, stirring it once a day. It’s okay if you notice some mold growing on top. After three days, add more water and stir the mixture again. The viable seeds will sink while the pulp and bad seeds will float, and you can pour them off the top. Drain your viable seeds.

Drying Seed

No matter what type of seed you harvest, you want to ensure it’s fully dry before storing it. The seed should be dry and brittle. Larger seeds, like pumpkin seeds, should snap when you bend them, not flex. Smaller seeds should crush under pressure instead of flexing.

After adding your seeds to a container, check it regularly for the first week or two. If you notice any condensation inside the jar or other signs of moisture, remove your seeds and dry them further.

Biennials

Biennial crops require two growing seasons to reach maturity and produce seed. They need to go through a cold period called vernalization to produce seed. These include beets, Swiss chard, bulb onions, cabbage, collards, Brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli, carrots, turnips, and others.

Many biennial crops can survive temperatures into the 20°Fs. In parts of the south, you can easily overwinter them. However, further north or in the mountains, they may need heavy mulch or season extension like high tunnels or row cover. In the far north, you may need to pull plants once they go dormant and bring them into a cool space like a root cellar before replanting them in spring. Read more about saving seed from biennials here.

Storing Seed

Ideally, it would be best if you stored seed somewhere cool (about 50°F), dark, and dry. You can use seed packets that you’ve made or like those we offer on the website. You can also use mason jars or other containers you have on hand.

Label everything with the variety and date you stored or last tested your seed.

Testing Seed

You can do a simple germination test at home to ensure your seeds are still good before planting time. Take ten seeds and place them folded into a damp paper towel in a container or bag (to help hold in moisture). Set your container in a warm place.

The amount of time you’ll need to leave them will, of course, depend on how long whatever type of seed your testing requires to germinate. Be sure to keep the paper towel damp. You may have to sprinkle water on it if it begins to dry out.

The number of seeds that germinate will give you a rough idea about their germination rate, and you can plant accordingly. If you have a lot of seeds, testing more than ten will give you a more accurate percentage. Even if only half germinate, you still use your seed; just be sure to plant thickly in the case of direct seeding or multiple seeds per cell when starting indoors.

Saving seed from even a single variety can help you become more self-reliant, expand your knowledge of plants, and deepen your relationship with your land. We firmly believe that seed saving should be available to all. Follow this guide to become a seed steward.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange