Eggplant seed should be as easy #seedsavingformarketgrowers as tomatoes and peppers. They are selfers with crossing rates similar to peppers. (That means you will get some crossing if you don’t use isolation distances but not heavy crossing.) And again, this is one of those crops where the seed is in the vegetable part. So you … More Eggplant Seed Frustrates Me
You would think beans and peas would be a natural fit for #seedsavingformarketgrowers They are selfers and don’t cross much. They are pretty much all open pollinated, so you can easily save solid market varieties. And they are fun to shell!!! But, if you’re a market gardener, I don’t think beans and peas should be … More You Can’t Pick Your Bean And Save It Too
Lettuce is another good candidate for #seedsavingformarketgrowers It needs NO isolation distance. That’s right, lettuce is a SUPER SELFER. It is exceptional to see any crossing in lettuce. Even if the plants are grown side by side. And pretty much all the lettuce varieties you use are open pollinated. I don’t know of any hybrid … More Lettuce – The Seed Saving Super Selfer
Saving pepper seed is even easier than saving tomato seeds. As long as the fruit is nice and ripe, all you have to do is: split the pepper open, scrape out the seeds, dry those seeds on a counter, and voilà! (Plus you get the seedless peppers to eat or freeze.) But peppers also cross … More Pepper Seed Is Even Easier Than Tomato Seed!
1. You’re already growing the seed bearing part. (Those are those bits inside the ripe fruit.) Unlike onions or arugula or most other veggie crops, there are no extra steps to get to your crops to go to flower and produce mature seed. 2. Tomatoes are selfers (remember last post?) so they barely cross. It’s … More 3 Reasons Tomato Seed Is Easy To Save
Is #saveseeds on your farmer bucket list? But you’re afraid of scary old cross pollination? Depending on what you grow, you might not have to be scared of that bogeyman! There is one group of crops that barely cross pollinate at all. And those crops are called SELFERS. Selfers have hermaphroditic flowers that are wrapped … More Don’t Be Afraid Of Saving SELFER Seeds!
These are 3 peppers from my Scotch Bonnet Remix project. They are F3 fruits from a cross between Scotch Bonnet and some unknown sweet pepper. That means this is 3 generations since they crossed. We have a few hundred plants in the field and I’m trying to choose a handful to grow out next year. … More How To Choose Which Peppers To Keep For Seed
Once upon a time you found the sweetest pepper. You were making your way through a pepper field where no 2 plants looked the same. A field of F3 plants. That is 3 generations after two distinct varieties cross pollinated each other. In this case, a Scotch Bonner (a Capsicum chinense). with an unknown sweet … More The sweetest pepper you’d ever tasted
