Grow Your Own Vegetable Seeds The Professional Way

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No matter what the experts say, you can grow your own viable, true-to-type vegetable seeds ... year after year! The secret? A few professional techniques—such as hand pollination, caging, alternate planting, and roguing—that you can practice in your own back yard.

Several years ago—when we were first building up our homestead here in northern Michigan—I suddenly realized that no matter how much food we coaxed out of our soil each year . . . we would not be truly food self-sufficient as long as we relied on outside sources for seed. There we were, feeling a little smug because we seldom had to visit the local grocery store . . . yet at the same time we depended entirely on a large, remote seed-growing industry for our "daily bread". Clearly, our whole concept of selfsufficiency had a flaw in its very foundation.

At first, I was sure that saving seeds couldn't be too difficult. After all—we reasoned—if the pioneers had done it, we could too! In practice—of course—the whole idea turned out to be a little trickier than I had anticipated. Those first vegetables grown from our own garden seed were—to say the least—a trifle unusual . . . if not exactly inedible.

The peas and beans seemed normal enough, but the radishes had rather strange shapes and 1 couldn't really tell which cucumbers to pickle and which to slice. As for the squash and pumpkins: Let's just say that the youngsters carved some mighty weird jack-o'-lanterns that year, while their parents canned vegetables of dubious genealogy that were arbitrarily labeled "squash".

I sought help from my neighbors—all of them old, experienced farmers—and every one I asked tried to talk me out of my new enterprise. "Ya can't do it," they said. "Yer seed'll `run out'." Meaning, of course, that my vegetables would lose their unique varietal characteristics through crosspollination with other, closely related plants.

Now, I know that most garden books and horticultural experts will tell you exactly the same thing. But I say that you can consistently produce viable, true-to-type vegetable seeds . . . IF you know a few tricks of the trade and IF you're willing to invest the time and labor that serious propagation requires.

The secret of success lies in adapting such techniques as hand pollination, 'caging, alternate planting, and roguing-methods used by commercial seed growers to keep their strains pure and vigorous-to the particular requirements of your garden. I know it's possible because—after years of experimentation, and a good bit of advice from plant-breeding experts—I have the seeds and crops to prove it!

My squashes now look like squashes. My pickling cucumbers no longer cross with my slicing types. I even know how to obtain good seed from the tricky biennials (such as carrots, beets, and cabbage). While it is true that the children kinda miss those weirdo jack-o'-lanterns they used to carve . . .I now feel a special satisfaction knowing that my garden can renew itself each year. Our pantry shelves are currently packed with jars of potential new crops, and the cycle of growth feels continuous and complete.