Saving Seeds

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Spinach. This hardy annual has tiny, scarcely noticeable wind-pollinated flowers which can cross with other blooming spinach plants as much as one mile away. If you can avoid crossing problems, though, spinach is an easy plant to grow to seed. You might try selecting for later bolting by roguing out small, early seeders — and, of course, by getting your seed from plants that produce the latest seedstalks. Harvest yellowed or browned plants when the seed has matured. Rub off the tiny seeds while holding the stalks in a grocery bag.

Corn. Pollen from the tassels of this wind-pollinated crop land on the silks that line the ears. Popcorn, field corn and sweet corn will all cross with each other. To keen strains pure, then, plant seed varieties that tassel at the same time at least 1,000 feet apart. (Technically speaking, 1/4 mile is ideal.) Or you can avoid crossing by bagging ears you want to save. Before the silk emerges, cover each seed ear with a paper bag closed with a rubber band. When the tassels shed pollen easily, cut a tassel from one plant, rub it over the ear from another plant (Fig. 8), and replace the bag. Leave the bag in place until the silks brown, replacing it whenever it gets too wet.

Leave seed ears on the plants until they're quite dry—about a month after they're good for eating. Then pick, peel back the husks, and hang them up — leaving air space between each ear — to dry for several more weeks.

Corn is prone to run out if repeatedly inbred, so save ears from at least 25 plants if possible, and mix seed from those ears before planting. Some of the easiest corn traits to change by back-yard selection are earliness, lateness and ear height. Flavor, yield, nutritional quality and insect resistance are more difficult to improve.

Cabbage family. Cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, collards, kohlrabi and kale cross with each other and with turnips, rutabagas, radishes and horseradish. (Chinese cabbage and mustard greens won't cross with their leaf- and heading-cabbage kin but will cross with each other and the root-crop crucifers.) You need to keep flowering seed crops 200 feet apart or, if space is limited, intersperse rows of sunflowers or other tall plants with the crucifer seed rows to deter pollinating insects. Remember, too, that most crucifer seeds stay viable for as long as five years under good storage conditions, so you can save seed of one or two varieties each year and keep rotating them.

Excepting broccoli (an annual), all crucifers are biennials — they have to make it through one winter before they'll produce seed. Kale and Brussels sprouts are the easiest biennial family members for seed saving, because these hardy plants can overwinter in the garden even in cold areas. They'll then send up their seedstalks the following spring. Most of the other biennials need to be dug up — roots and all — stored in a root cellar and planted out again the following spring. (In some regions, you may be able to overwinter them under mulch or in covered trenches.) Many growers make an inch-deep vertical cut in replanted cabbage heads to help free the plant's growing point (Fig. 9). The tall seedstalks that emerge sometimes need to be staked to prevent breaking.

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