Real growers Saving your own seed
Neil Munro recommends that all gardeners grow plants for seed saving alongside those being grown for food. Space is a consideration as it’s necessary to plant a reasonable quantity (20 cabbage plants for example) to maintain the genetic diversity of a variety. The spacing between plants will also need to be greater – up to 45cm (18in) rather than the usual 30cm (12in) in the case of cabbages. You can, of course, intercrop your future seed-bearers with quick-growing vegetables that will be harvested before this additional space is needed.
S A V E OUR SEED
“Likewise beetroot and leeks,” continued Neil. “We start them off late in the summer then lift and over-winter them in dry compost before planting out in March. It’s the flowers that we want, not the roots. So when most people have pulled their carrots for eating within weeks of planting, we leave ours to grow on to maturity. The most viable seed comes from the primary flower or main shoot, but early carrot seed is immature and so it needs time to ripen.” Sometimes the library still needs to grow a crop conventionally to check that the characteristics of a particular variety are being maintained and that the taste remains good. These are then sold in the shop or used in the restaurant at Garden Organic. “For our seed producers around the country we offer a set of guidelines on growing for seed. We need to ensure the integrity of the seed and that vegetables such as broad or runner beans that cross pollinate easily are grown on ‘isolated sites’ where they are unlikely to become contaminated.”
Cleaning up
Once the seed is produced on site or sent in by the Seed Guardians, the process of cleaning begins. Different-sized sieves are used to accommodate the various sizes of seed. The sieves remove the chaff. For seeds coated in jelly or with a fleshy surround a wet cleaning method is used. Before the cleaned seed is stored it has to be dried: “We don’t want the seed to remain warm and wet or it would soon rot,” explained Neil, “so we begin the process of removing the moisture content in our drying room. The seed can then be stored for anything between eight and 30 years.” Entering the seed store is like going back in time to the days when offices had card filing systems rather than computers. Kept at an ambient 10˚C to 12˚C, racks of labelled 18 June 2011 Grow it!
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Above: The familiar crinkled seedcase of beetroot Below left: Collecting tomato seed. After sieving, the seed will need to be cleaned and dried Volunteers help to pack the seeds. Paper envelopes allow seeds to breathe
boxes bursting with envelopes fill the room. “We keep the seed in paper envelopes so that it can continue to dry out.” Every consignment of seed that arrives at the library is given a batch number so that it can be traced back to who grew it and where. Then, if there are any problems or if, as in the past, it turns out that a particular variety doesn’t match up to the characteristics, all can be solved. “We handle 50,000 packets of seed a year and every seed is hand counted. It’s very labour intensive, so we rely on our band of volunteers who come and help with all the various jobs involved in running the library. We keep historical records too on every type and variety of vegetable, with botanical photographs illustrating, for example, the colour of the flower, the number of peas or beans in a pod or the shape of a vegetable. Seeds are distributed from December to the end of February and then we’re outside growing the next lot of plants.” Clearly the work going on at the Heritage Seed Library is invaluable. The harvesting of seeds and the processing and cataloguing that follows is helping to preserve varieties of vegetable for future generations. It’s a service that kitchen gardeners – and everyone – should be grateful for. One day we may need to draw on this library and the effort invested now will all pay off.
Further information
0 Heritage Seed Library, Garden Organic, Ryton Organic Gardens, Coventry, CV8 3BR. Contact: 024 7630 8210, www.gardenorganic.org.uk 0 The library is always on the lookout for volunteers between March and September at the Garden Organic headquarters, providing the perfect opportunity to learn how to save seed. 0 If you would like to become a Seed Guardian for the Heritage Seed Library, or have a go at planting some of the heirloom varieties to eat, you need to become a member. As a member, you receive your choice of free seed and can help to preserve the heritage of gardening. Contact details as above.