Grow Your Own Vegetable Seeds The Professional Way

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HOW TO CHOOSE "PARENT" PLANTS

Once your vegetables are established—in late spring or early summer—select only the finest specimens for seed production . . . the ones that are most robust, have the shiniest leaves, are least bothered by insects, and seem truest to type. And don't judge merely by a single criterion—giant fruit, for example—but consider each plant's overall vitality. Remember, sickly plants yield fewer viable seeds . . . and tend to produce sickly offspring to boot!

Next, after you've chosen your "parent" stock, clearly mark each plant in some fashion (with ribbons or stakes or what have you) to set them apart from your "ordinary" eatin' vegetables.

If you're anything like me, you'll thoroughly enjoy selecting plants for such desirable traits as earliness, sweetness, hardiness, shape, color, productivity, and resistance to drought or pests. In effect, you will be developing your own strains . . . and chances are they'll be better adapted to the environmental conditions in your own particular garden than any commercial variety you can buy. This is because most of the large seed growers operate in California, and there's just no way they can breed plants that are specifically suited to the soil and climate here in northern Michigan . . . or any other part of the country except California.

CROSS-POLLINATION

The chief problem you—the home seed grower—will face in your propagation activities is maintaining the purity and vigor of your favorite varieties of fruits and vegetables from one generation to the next . . . and that largely boils down to preventing cross-pollination among closely related plants. For example, the various cole cropscabbage, kale, collards, broccoli, and the likeall derive from a common ancestor and therefore cross readily. So do beets and Swiss chard . . . turnips, rutabagas, and radishes . . . and different strains of cucumbers or squash or melons. Some vegetables even accept pollen from certain wild cousins. Carrots, for example, will cross with Queen Anne's lace (the common wild carrot imported into this country from Europe).

The offspring of crosses usually exhibit some—but not all—of the characteristics of each parent, depending on the roll of the genetic dice. But, as a general rule, they are decidedly inferior with respect to one or more traits that we value in garden vegetables (but which nature doesn't give a hoot about). Further uncontrolled crosses may eventually dilute the family virtues to such an extent that the strain becomes useless for cultivation. Then—as my neighbors would say—"Yer seed has run out!" So it's back to the catalogs and garden centers for a new supply.

The easiest way for the beginning seed grower to avoid this problem is to concentrate on self-pollinating vegetables—such as lettuce, okra, beans, peas, and tomatoes—which have flowers designed in ways that discourage or prohibit fertilization by other plants. (Peas, for example, have already pollinated themselves by the time the flowers open!) Still, to restrict your efforts to just these plants is to miss out on much of the fun, challenge, and satisfaction of growing your own seeds. (Believe me, you'll feel triumphant when—at last! you finally managelike an eagle-eyed chaperon—to discourage the rampant promiscuity of your crosspollinating vegetables.)

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