Community › Community › General Gardening › Sowing and Growing › Seed saving › I’m not very scientific!
I try to save all sorts of brassicas, spinach, lettuce, parsley and parsnips (both germinate well if just left to it to seed themselves), onions, various flowers, runner beans if they survive… this year I’m letting some long beetroot go to seed and perpetual spinach, if it ever will! Sometimes it all goes wrong, I’m still a bit haphazard. I don’t use much space because I haven’t so far kept several plants of each variety seeding for the genetic variation, generally I just leave one or two (and work round them while they seed), I’m not very scientific and haven’t been doing it long enough to notice whether or not they’re degrading in quality.
I haven’t grown squashes although for some reason I always save the seed from bought ones! It’s very wet here with a short growing season (Scotland) but this year coming I’ll have the use of a polytunnel – hooray! – so that will extend my range hugely. I’ve been researching more about seed saving because of the EU business (Real Seeds has lots of good info) and I’m planning to be a bit more careful and systematic – maybe grow a bed of ‘seeders’ every year, select really good plants and take note of what happens. Do you think if I grow seeders in the polytunnel for protection from the wet, I’ll end up with delicate strains?