Think about that.
Can you imagine how quickly your savings can add up?
But, image how much money you can save if you don’t need to spend that $60 or $120 or $180 a year for garden seed and transplants.
I am talking about saving your own seed and starting your own transplants.
You could virtually cut your food bill down to nearly nothing just by saving seed, starting your own transplants and growing your own food.
First of all, saving your own garden seed need not be anything difficult. For centuries people have saved their own garden seed and handed it down to their children
Saving your own garden seed not only saves you a ton of money over time but will actually produce crops that are best suited to YOUR growing area.
Years ago I saved my own garden seed but then life got the better of me and I forgot about it for a while. But, with the cost of everything going up I decided to turn back to that old way of gardening in order to save money
Now, we spent around $20 last year on garden seed and around $50 on transplants for the garden.
This year we spent a bit more on garden seed but we bought it with saving our seeds in mind. This meant buying seed that was NOT hybrid seed and buying seed that will do well in our area.
We spent less than half of what we spent last year on transplants and wouldn’t have had to spend that but something got into our first batch of transplants and we lost pretty much every one of them.
We did things different with our next transplants and had much better success. It is not hard and we will br bringing you that information soon so keep watching for it
Most seed is not hard to save. It can be as simple as cleaning the seed from the seed cavity of your melons and squash and then drying them for next year.
Some plants like carrots and cabbage are biennial and take a bit more work.
Biennials will require more work and more commitment than the easy to save annuals. Biennial plants do not send up seed stalks until the second season.
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Carrots
Cauliflower
Celery
Onions
Parsley
Parsnips
Rutabaga
Salsify
Swiss chard
Turnips.
If you are put off by that then just saving the seeds from the easy plants will save you money and when you get more comfortable with the process you can move on to the biennials.
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Pepper
Radish
Squash
Tomato
Watermelon
So, when planting your garden this year keep in mind which kinds of seed you would like to save and be sure that they are open pollinated or heirloom seed. You CANNOT save seed from hybrid seed as it will not grow to be like the parent plant. You will not know what you could end up with. It may be completely uneatable-no flavor, off taste, tough, etc.
Squash
Peppers,
Melon
Cucumber
Pumpkin
Spinach
You CAN pant more varieties but you will need to cover the blossoms before they bloom (open) with a paper bag, piece of cloth something to keep insects from pollinating the blossoms. Then YOU need to pollinate them yourself.
This is not as difficult as it may sound. Many people just use a small paintbrush to get the small bits of yellow pollen onto it and then transfer it to another blossom. Keep doing this until all blossoms on each plant that you are planning to save seed from have been pollinated.
Either wash the brush thoroughly or use a different one for each different crop to prevent cross contamination of your seed.
These can be washed, dried and re-used each year.
Or, I have used my finger to pollinate the plants. Stick with one type of plant and just keep spreading the pollen from one plant to another until all are well pollinated. Then cover each blossom and wash your hands well before moving on to the next crop.
Tie a piece of yarn or cloth to each plant that you will be collecting seed from so that no one will accidentally pick it and eat it resulting in the loss of your seed for next years crop
This is just a basic primer to get you started so that you can plant items that you will be able to save the seed from come Fall.
We will be posting more in depth information soon on how to save seed from biennials, how to process, dry and store seed for next years crops.
We have loads of information from life experience and years of research, it just takes time to get it all posted on here
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