YouTube: How to Save Onion Seeds
Onion seeds don't stay viable as long as other seeds. Learn how to save onion seeds from your garden for a continuous supply of fresh seeds. Our latest video shows you how.
Joseph on his family farm. His seeds thrive because they have adapted to his extreme growing conditions.
Landrace Gardening with Joseph Lofthouse
This week on the Podcast, we journey down an unconventional rabbit hole with Joseph Lofthouse into landrace gardening.
Astrid and Matthew Hoffman inspect their Golden Berry or Uchuva plants.
Podcast: Seeds with Astrid and Matthew Hoffman
I met Astrid Hoffman back when she and her husband Matthew had just started The Living Seed Company in northern California. Since then, their company has grown to showcase far more than the original 22 seed varieties they sold in the beginning. Now they're providing locally adapted seeds from around the world. During our interview, we talk about what got them started. Astrid mentions Seed School from the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, as the point of inspiration that sparked it…
Lemon Cucumbers light up the garden. They taste like regular cucumbers but are more interesting to look at.
Ask Gardenerd: Saving Cucumber Seeds
Ann writes in to Ask Gardenerd this week: "Hi! Just came upon your site and LOVE it! A friend who lives up north from us just shared lemon cucumbers with us. We have never had them before and find them pretty neat. I haven't even tasted them yet. They told us how they save the seeds year to year for planting. Do you have any insight on saving the seeds? Would truly appreciate it. Lemon Cucumbers will definitely be part…
The Garden Seed Saving Guide by Jill Henderson
Review: The Garden Seed Savers Guide by Jill Henderson
If you like your books short and sweet then you'll love The Garden Seed Savers Guide: Easy Heirloom Seeds for the Home Gardener (Groundswell Books) by Jill Henderson. It's under 65 pages and gives you a basic guide to saving seeds for a range of crops, from lettuces to beans, from broccoli to squash. After lessons in seed nomenclature, pollination, and isolation distances, Henderson organizes the book into plant families to address specifics about saving seeds across a species. She…
Flowers appear at the tip-top of our tree kale plant.
Guess What! Tree Kale Does Go to Seed
I've heard colleagues say that tree kale never goes to seed, that it can only be propagated by cuttings. Well, my 10-foot tree kale would beg to differ. It's gone to seed after falling over in a wind storm (probably stress-induced) while it continues to produce tasty leaves. Tree kale is a perennial vegetable lauded by the permaculture community because it forms deep roots (obviously deep enough to withstand falling over in a wind storm). We propped that baby back…
Side shoots form tiny heads of broccoli you can harvest for at least a month.
Ask Gardenerd: Saving Broccolini Seeds
This terrific question came in from an inquiring mind this week: "Last spring I had a very tasty crop of Broccolini. I was impressed enough to save seeds at the end of the season. I've since learned that Broccolini is a cross between Italian Broccoli and Chinese Broccoli (a form of Kale). Was my seed saving a waste of time? If I try and plant these seeds, will they revert to one of the two parent plants? - Ed Callahan"…
Radish seeds are medium sized, so you won't need a very small screen.
Harvesting Radish Seeds
Locally adapted seed is an important ally in the garden. Seeds you save and plant again become more adapted to your climate, water conditions, soil, etc. Each time you save seed and then grow it out properly, that seed improves. Here are tips for harvesting radish seeds. Last winter we ran out of Purple Plum radish seed, so when we spotted one of our large roots bolting to seed at the end of the season, we seized the opportunity. Technically,…
Soil builder cover crop
New Year’s Garden Resolutions 2015
Happy New Year, fellow Gardenerds! 2015 is here, the days are growing longer each day, and seed catalogs have arrived. We've been poring over them during breakfast, marking off new heirloom discoveries to try this year. This exploration leads to New Year's garden resolutions every time. Here's what we're thinking: 1) Give Tomatoes a Little More Room We've always planted our tomatoes very close together, and for many years it worked great. But lately, with what seems like an undefeatable…
One of many carrot seed heads
Saving Carrot Seeds
Carrots are fun to grow at home and if you're lucky, some of them will bolt to seed at the end of the season. Then, if you grew an heirloom or open pollinated variety, you can save those carrot seeds. Saving carrot seeds is considered a job for more advanced gardeners, because the threat of cross pollination is high. Short growing seasons also complicate things (you may need to harvest roots in fall for replanting in spring in order to…