Seed-Saving for Dummies

In the backyard, tall tufted wands of lettuce seed stalks are waving in the August breezes. The Bronze Arrow plants, a highly touted American heirloom oak leaf variety, were grown from seeds saved in the autumn of 2010. Out of several varieties, these are the most prolific: luxuriant with seeds ready to take off on their little white parachutes. I have been cutting off the puffy tops and dropping them into a brown paper shopping bag labeled with as much information as possible: collection date, variety, source (i.e. grown from saved seed, purchased seed, or nursery starts).

I used to happily collect seeds from whatever plants in the garden made it through their full life cycle. Then, as I learned more, it became clear that not all seeds are created equal.

The biggest factor for a backyard gardener to be aware of is that some plants are inbreeding and self-pollinating. They don't rely on bees or insects and don't need pollen from other plants. Everything happens right at home in self-contained flowers on a single plant. These are the garden introverts: lettuce, peas, beans, and tomatoes are examples. They have "perfect" flowers, meaning they possess both male and female structures in the same blossoms on the same plant. The blossoms of peas and beans are often pollinated from within before they even open because the stigma (pollen receiving structure) and anthers (pollen producing) are very close together and mature at the same time. Inbreeding plants evidently have the remarkable ability to produce vigorous offspring generation after generation without outside infusions of genetic material.

The garden extroverts -- such as chard, broccoli, and zucchini -- are outbreeding and cross-pollinating. They like to attract insects to carry their pollen around and fertilize the nearby blossoms of plants in the same species. Beet pollen will fertilize chard blossoms and vice versus. Different varieties of broccoli will gleefully co-mingle, as will zucchini. (Now I understand why my carefully gathered Romanesco broccoli seeds gave rise to plants which sported odd, purplish, lumpy heads instead of the gorgeous lime-green, laser-sharp, Fibonacci-spiraled heads I was expecting. Purple sprouting broccoli, I'm looking at you! These cross-bred plants had the less desirable features of both parents -- very few side shoots and small shapeless heads).

Inbreeding seeds, on the other hand, left to themselves (as they prefer) are likely to produce a plant that resembles its parent -- because it usually has only one parent. They breed true.

I have now realized that I am a complete neophyte at understanding the mysteries of plant genetics and will simplify my seed-saving habits, sticking with the easiest, most predictable types, such as lettuce.








Still, there are complications, even at the beginner level of seed-saving. It's important to make sure that the seeds you are gathering come from non-hybrid plants. Hybrids are new varieties created by combining two plant lines with distinct features into one line that joins the best of both. Hybrid plants grow well, but, even if self-pollinating, they produce seeds that revert to the separate, less desirable features of the parents. If you grow hybrids, there's no point in saving the seeds; you have to keep buying the seeds or seedlings to keep the defining characteristics. (Often, it's well worth it: the fabulous Sungold tomato, for instance.)

Fortunately, it seems like most of the lettuce seedlings I pick up at the local nurseries happen to be non-hybrid heirlooms.

Australian Yellow is a tasty heirloom with crinkled, chartreuse leaves. The seedlings were part of an All-Star mix from Cottage Garden nursery. These seed stalks, despite being chomped by deer, have grown back and are almost ready to be harvested.







The Garrison lettuce -- a dark-red oak leaf variety grown for its attractive baby leaves which are a popular addition to mesclun mixes -- also came from Cottage Gardens. These seed stalks, too, were chewed down by deer. They are still in the blooming stage.

There's plenty of material here for further adventures in seed-saving, even for beginners.

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Sources of information used in this post:

Daughter of the Soil
http://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.com/2006/07/f1-hybrids-what-every-gardener-should.html

Seed Savers Exchange
http://www.seedsavers.org/Content.aspx?src=helpfullinks.htm

International Seed Saving Institute
http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi.html

Lasagna Gardening: Gourmet Version

Although the winter garden has served us well, the plants aren't as large and sturdy as in previous years. Case in point: the rather spindly Bronze Arrow and Black Seeded Simpson lettuces pictured above. The vigorous volunteer Forget-me-not seedlings are taking over the bed.

The soil in all the beds is overworked, I think, because as soon as one crop comes out another goes in. I do add organic matter whenever possible but, clearly, it's not keeping up with the demand. What to do? Although there are now enough beds to let some go fallow and pile them with mulch for a season or two, I don't seem to be able to make time for that forward-looking task: the immediate gratification of planting and harvesting gets in the way.

Solution: lasagna gardening. As I understand it, this approach involves building what amounts to a mini-compost pile of layered materials -- hence lasagna -- with soil on top like a very thick layer of Parmesan cheese. The claim is that the plants grow just fine even as the various layers are slowly breaking down and enriching the soil.

It's certainly worth a try. Maybe it's the perfect way to have our vegetables and eat them too -- to build soil and grow plants all in one smooth operation, just the way Mother Nature does it. And there is the immediate gratification of planting right away.






So today I ventured out to the yard to turn one of the garden beds into a yummy casserole of nutrients for the hungry roots of some lettuce seedlings from Cottage Gardens.

The hardest part -- which required violating my no-dig philosophy in order to get a quick fix to the problem of declining fertility -- was removing all the old, overworked soil. Once that was taken care of, after lots of little weeding breaks to rest my aging lumbar vertebrae, the rest was fun. All it took was layering in the best ingredients I could find to make up a real gourmet masterpiece.

The first layer was some hand-selected, carefully-aged sections of newspaper gently moistened with the hose. It was not too thick, just one or two sections worth of newsprint. The worms love this stuff, so I hope the newspaper will draw them to the area and get them interested in turning all the undigested organic matter into the top grade soil amendment only they can create.







The second layer was an inch or two of well-aged, locally-sourced manure from Pt. Reyes Compost, self-styled "purveyors of premium poop." The version I used is cheekily called "Double Doody," a mixture of cow and horse droppings, and the bag is marked by an image, half cow, half horse that reminds me of the two-headed Pushmi-pullyu creature from the Dr. Doolittle stories.







The third layer was thick pads of organic alfalfa hay, sprinkled with some high quality general purpose organic fertilizer (Whitney Farms Tomato & Vegetable Food, with a 4-5-3 balance of nitrogen, phosphate, and potash).






Next came a layer of leaves, also locally sourced (just down the block) and organically grown. This layer, too, was dusted with fertilizer. In fact, all the layers were, starting with the bare dirt before the newspapers were laid down.






The last layer was shovelfuls of the original dirt from the bed. There was room for more than half of it to fit back in, so there should be plenty of room for the lettuce to take hold, right on top of the gourmet lasagna layers. I soaked the whole assemblage thoroughly and let it mellow a bit.







It was nice to find a fair number of earthworms in the soil. I sure hope some red wiggler worms will show up to start digesting the layers of organic matter.






The last step was to set in the lettuce seedlings -- Forellenschluss and Garrison. Hope you like my casserole, little guys. Enjoy!

A Fine Spring Day

Hello sour grass, my old friend! Welcome back again. Here you are with one, lone, bright-faced bloom lighting up a neglected corner of the yard. Can spring be far behind?

It was such a splendid, dirt-under the fingernails day I ended up spending the whole morning in the garden. The usual inspection tour -- lately just a quick look around our damp, cold, scraggly, uninviting backyard patch -- turned into a flower photo op.

The first oxalis blossom opened nearly a month earlier than last year -- mid-January as opposed to the week of February 10. (One of the great features of a garden blog is the gradual accumulation of exact data from year to year.) Spring does seem to be running early. There are golden fields of wild mustard blooming already out by the coast and our neighborhood is sporting the first gorgeous tulip magnolias.






The volunteer arugula has put forth its trademark four-petaled blossom, delicately veined like the wings of some kind of exotic helicopter insect. I've seen the hummingbirds buzzing these blooms.






Here is borage -- not a very good photo. I'm sure it looks at lot better than this to the bees who gather here.






The pea plants are blooming again, unfurling like the Japanese folded paper flowers that "bloom" when you put them in water.






More flower origami: elegant black-trimmed fava bean blossoms are opening on three-foot tall stalks.






These hot pink rosettes aren't flowers at all, just some garden art that resulted from the thinning out of an overgrown clump of volunteer chard. Lots of the leaves had been so thoroughly mined by leaf miners that they had rotted into slime during the rainy spells. Yuk!

Undaunted, and energized by the unexpected spring day (I know, I know, it won't last), I weeded and trimmed until the plants could breath and soak up the sun. The lipstick chard pictured above is growing back from a venerable gnarled stump, all that's left of a plant that grew six or seven feet tall last season.






There are several varieties of chard in the patch, some growing from over-wintered stumps, some springing up for the first time.






Here's a shot of the north half of the winter garden. The oxalis and the borage are in the back corner where the fences meet; the arugula is to their right, the peas are in the foreground twining up the wooden stakes, the favas and the patch of chard are out of view to the right. In the foreground you can also see spinach, lacinato kale, and a bed of sponsored arugula. In the background are a couple of beds of lettuce. Out of view are broccoli and leeks. The paths are covered mostly with miner's lettuce. And that's about it.

We are harvesting lettuce, miner's lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale, and chard. We are waiting for broccoli, leeks, another round of peas, and favas.

Ready to pick or not, edible or not, everything looks beautiful on this fine spring day.

New Year's Eve Tomatoes

At the closing of the year we are still putting tomatoes in the nightly salads: just a few to make them last as long as possible. Of course, in dark December they don't have the rich flavors of August, yet somehow the minimal spark they provide pulls together the lettuce, spinach, and arugula into a unified burst of flavor.

The hanging vines out in the garage are picked over and bedraggled, so this won't be going on much longer. It's been a good run.

Picking up a Six Pack . . . of Lettuce

All the lettuce is going to seed and we are in a lettuce emergency. No recourse but to run out for a six pack of seedlings. This is a "summer salad bowl mix." It looks promising but requires patience and deferred salad gratification.





Meanwhile, seedlings of seeds gathered from Bronze Arrowhead, Forellenschluss, and of course Black Seeded Simpson are developing. They were planted August 13, but not in time to bridge the gap. We have to (sob) buy lettuce at the store.

Lettuce Transition

This morning's harvest of lettuce marks a transition from the last fading remnants of our glorious spring salads -- the tall narrow speckled leaves of Forellenschluss -- and the first picking of summer greens -- the full ruffled leaves of Red Sails. Red Sails seedlings were planted out May 8, with an estimated Days to Maturity of six to seven weeks. Since the first Red Sails have reached harbor on June 6, less than a month later, the DTM most likely should be calculated from when the seeds went into the pots at Gaddis Nursery, not from when the seedlings went into the ground in our backyard.

Regardless of the details, it looks like we will not be suffering a Lettuce Gap and will not be having withdrawal symptoms due to salad deprivation.




There are still a few stalks of bolting Forellenschluss that can be gleaned for enough leaves to tide us over the next couple of weeks.




However, once all the stalks start forming buds it's all over but the seed saving.





Fortunately, there are new plantings coming along under a couple of shade houses made of old lace curtains draped over some re-purposed tomato supports.






In one shade house, The Red Sails is farthest progressed. The Salad Bowl seedlings from Sweetwater Nursery went into the ground on May 29 so it will be awhile before I can start plucking one or two tender leaves from each plant.





Eventually, if all goes well, there will also be some Raddicio to add to the salad mix. The seedlings from Sweetwater Nursery are still in their planter pots, waiting for some room to open up in one of the beds.






Already nestled into the second shade house are Endive seedlings, also from Sweetwater, planted on May 29.

When the plants fill out, we should have a really nice mix of sweet and tangy greens to keep us in our accustomed almost-daily salads through the warm months. This may seem like good planning but it's really just happenstance: I saw several plastic six packs of lettuce seedlings hidden in a corner of the display of summer plants at Whole Foods and bought them all.

We have gotten so used to eating our own lettuce that it seems worth the effort to find out if it can be a year-round experience.

In with the New

For the record, the Red Sails lettuce seedlings were planted Saturday, May 8. The wire frames are for draping shade cloth over on warm days.




Here is the installation with shade cloth (an old lace curtain) in place. In the foreground are the going-to-seed Black Seeded Simpson plants.

We are still harvesting lots of lettuce and have enough on hand in the fridge to provide salads through the week. But it's not at all certain the Red Sails will reach harbor in time to make a continuous supply. What I can find out about Days to Maturity is six to seven weeks -- but is that from germination or from planting out of seedlings? I hope the former because this is not just an intellectual question. Fresh garden salads are at stake!





This Bronze Arrow seed stalk has its own spiky beauty. I will let the various lettuces go to seed and see if it's possible to establish some lettuce generations. It's always a thrill when plants start coming up on their own and it's always interesting to see which plants are willing to do that. Black Seeded Simpson seems to like our yard, but that's the only variety so far that comes up on its own.

Runaway Lettuce

Somehow the lettuce got away from me when I wasn't paying attention. All of it is putting up seed stalks as fast as the warming days and nights will allow.

The Black Seeded Simpson is farthest along with its pretty buds -- some of which have already opened into bright yellow dandelion-like florets which will eventually turn into dandelion-like puffballs composed of tiny white parachutes with black seeds attached.

The cycle of life moves forward and any inattentive salad eaters will be left behind.





The photo above doesn't do justice to the dramatic spikes of the Bronze Arrow lettuce.




And even the Forellenschluss, which I thought was going to tide us over until I could get some replacement plants going, is putting up flagpoles and signaling its intention to turn things over to the next generation.




I've got some seedlings of Red Sails -- a slow-bolting, heat-tolerant variety -- ready to go in the ground. And there is a bed available. Time for action!

In the meantime, we can keep picking leaves from the bolting varieties, for a short time. The problem is that once the plant puts up that stalk, the number of leaves suddenly becomes finite. No longer will it simply grow more leaves to replace the ones that are harvested. All energy goes into making seeds and passing on its precious DNA.

Will there be enough leaves to last until the new plants grow! Will there be a Lettuce Gap?????

Survey of the Winter Garden

Rain, rain go away. Oh well, I can't go out and play in the mud so I might as well use the time to record for posterity the winter garden of 2009 - 2010. These photos are from January 22, a couple of weeks ago. The plants look pretty much the same now.

None of the winter plantings grew as fulsomely as I had pictured in my imagination last fall. Perhaps I got them out too late (October), or perhaps they are just biding their time for a spring surge. At any rate, they have kept us in salads and winter greens all through the dark months.

Pictured above is a bed of Dinosaur and Redbor kale, slug-tattered but productive. We've also been getting nice kale from volunteers around the yard, Siberian and Curly Blue, I think. I was
given some seedlings a few years ago and now they come up on their own.




Romanesco broccoli (from nursery starts), which has been growing very slowly and has not yet formed heads. Around the edges of the bed are little cilantro plants (from gathered seed). Although still small, the leaves have spiced up many a salad.



The purple sprouting broccoli (nursery starts) also has not produced anything yet but broad gray-green leaves. Quite successful as an ornamental.



Sparse looking spinach patch (Bloomsdale and Gigante d'Inverno, from purchased seed). Every now and again I can pick a leaf from each plant to fill out a salad, but so far there is not enough to cook with. The California poppies are starting to grow here and could easily take over this bed.



Assorted chard (from gathered seed). The back row includes plants from last year that just kept going, re-sprouting from the base that died back in the summer.



Rainbow chard (nursery starts) surrounded by parsley that just keeps going from last season.



Assorted lettuce (from purchased and gathered seed), including a volunteer Black Seeded Simpson seedling that I moved here from one of the paths where it had sprung up. In front is some red chard that just won't quit.



Forellenschluss lettuce (from purchased seed).



Black Seeded Simpson lettuce (from gathered seed).



Bronze Arrowhead and Red Lollo Antago lettuce, ravaged by slugs but still producing a lot for eating -- eating by people, that is.

These beds have been in continuous use, summer and winter. It may be that I need to re-examine my soil building program to make sure they have enough fertility to sustain so much growing.

A Brief History of Salad

Here is a festive basketful of salad fixings:

Arugula
Black Seeded Simpson lettuce
Bloomsdale spinach
Bronze Arrowhead lettuce
Cilantro
Fennel
Forellenschluss lettuce
Gigante d'Inverno (giant of winter) spinach
Miner's lettuce
Red Lollo Antago lettuce

We have gotten addicted to the heady combination of different textures, colors, and flavors in this rich assortment of raw greens. Mixed with a little finely chopped tomato, drizzled with good olive oil and a few drops of basalmic vinegar, and sprinkled with coarsely grated Parmesan or a bit of crumbled goat cheese -- it becomes a feast in a bowl. We eat it almost every night. There are lots of other ways to compose a salad, of course, but that particular combination seems perfect. The only limitation is the capacity of the lettuce and spinach plants to put out new leaves fast enough to keep up with our capacity to consume them.

As a child of the fifties, I grew up eating the standard salad of the times: a wedge of iceberg lettuce with some kind of pinkish bottled dressing poured over it. Then, newly emigrated to California just as the various revolutions of the sixties were getting started, I recall being amazed by the simple salads of romaine lettuce and bright red cherry tomatoes my new friends were preparing. I had never seen, or tasted, such things. It took no time at all to join in wholeheartedly in the culinary experimentation going on on all sides.

Now, California cuisine is standard fare everywhere and our nightly homegrown combo is actually pretty ordinary. After all, there's no radicchio, frisee, endive, mache, baby beet greens, mizuna, or mesclun mix. There aren't any edible blossoms.

Note to self: Harvest the lone calendula blossom and use the petals to jazz up the salad.

Winter Bounty

We had only three nights of temperatures in the twenties. By Thursday we were back to cloudy skies and predictions of rain, finally fulfilled today. All the winter-hardy plants are looking really perky now, coming into their own as their summer compatriots are reduced to limp brown rags, or, in the case of the nasturtiums, green goo.

This afternoon I went out in the rain -- accompanied by a wild-eyed, stir-crazed canine companion -- to do a little picking.

Pictured above, top row, left to right: Redbor kale, Blue Curly kale, a few leaves of dinosaur kale, right below the dinosaur kale some Red Lollo Antago lettuce, Rainbow chard, with some Bloomsdale spinach right below.

Bottom row, left to right: cilantro, Bronze Arrow lettuce, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, arugula (a self-seeding volunteer coming up all over the garden), Forellenschluss lettuce.

A festival of vitamins and minerals!




The lemon tree seems fine. Some of its leaves have more of a yellow tinge than they did before the freeze, but that's all.

First Big Storm of the Season

As promised, a major storm gusted its way through the Bay Area today. With remnants of a Japanese typhoon amping up its wind and rain power, there are plenty of stories of blocked roads, downed trees, and power outages. My tour of the backyard showed only minor local effects, however. A small branch of one of the white locust trees fell onto the leaf pile.


The hollyhocks were flattened. I'm sorry to see them go, but they have had a nice run. This is the second batch after the first round grew so tall they fell over all on their own. I had to cut them down; then this junior varsity team took their places. Now the season's really over.

The wheelbarrow was almost filled by what were evidently record breaking downpours.


The Red Sails lettuce was also flattened. I'm hoping against hope that they will be able to stand up again. I might try to prop them. Lettuce season is not over! We need those leaves to keep our salads going until the new seedlings size up.


Here's what the Red Sails looked like before being cruelly struck down before their time: putting forth proud stalks with little florets just forming. And the leaves are still tasty.