(bright gentle music) - This is an overview of saving seed, a few tips on how to do it. And some reasons why it's
so highly worthwhile. Like for example, I hadn't done it before but this year I saved
seed from salad rocket, so it's different to wild rocket and that flowers in the
spring, salad rocket flowers in the spring, and you get seed pods in early to mid summer and I managed to catch them before the weather changed, they were still dry and crisp,
and I crushed out the seeds walking on the pods, got
lots of salad rocket seed, and sowed some late August is, or anytime in August is a very good
time to sow salad rocket. In fact, we sowed these
on the 9th of August, at the same time as we
sowed some bought seed of salad rocket, bought this year, so as fresh as you could buy, basically, and that's the difference,
homesaved salad rocket, bought salad rocket,
from reputable company. I'm quite surprised myself
actually at the difference, but except what I, more by that one, I noticed pretty
consistently homesaved seed comes up strongly, it's usually fresh, but even if you sow it the following year, you know how old it is,
which when you buy seed, it just says, packeted
year end and usually it doesn't tell you actually
how old the seed was when it went in the packet. So this is a way of knowing
exactly the age of your seed. And as long as you respect the parameters for growing each vegetable,
which are different, then you'll get good quality. And all vegetables do
have different needs, in terms of sowing seed, some
are difficult, some are easy. The really easy ones, 'cause
you just need one plant of each, are pea, French
bean, lettuce and tomato. And I'll show you some examples of those. But first let's go and have a look at three more difficult ones. (bright gentle music) Four years ago in fact,
we did make a video about how to save seeds
of the simpler vegetables, and do check that out. This is about the ones which
take longer, need more space. And it's perhaps a bit harder
to judge when they're ready and you need the weather
to be on your side as well. So for example, we have
onions and I brought along a few onions here to give an idea, like onions are biennial. So the same with all of these, in fact, perhaps before I begin,
it'd be fun to ask you, you know, do you recognise
what's growing here? Particularly those first two vegetables. And so, furthest from
me is actually carrots. And all of these were planted in March as roots from the year before
because they are biennial. So they grow in the first
year after you sow the seed and then you plant, whether it's onion, beetroot, carrot, in this
case, these are beetroot. There's just seven beetroots there. And see how much space they're taking. So you plant them, we
planted these in March and then they've grown up,
they make a seed head, a stalk, the original root becomes
all woody, which is fine, and then you get the seed heads, and then it's judging when to harvest. And the reason there's quite big areas of all these vegetables is because there's a minimum number you need to have good cross pollination which gives you a strong pool of genes. It's the opposite of the French
bean, pea, lettuce, tomato where they can create
enough genes from one plant flowering and setting seed
and the seed comes true. And I discovered this the hard way. One year I had, a few years back now, a lovely red mustard in the poly tunnel from winter salad, and it
was strikingly different, to all the other mustards there, thicker, darker leaves, gorgeous colour. I thought, oh, I'll save seed from that. And it flowered in the
poly tunnel was easier 'cause it's dry
environment and everything, and I saved the seed in
the middle of the summer. It got big, and then I
sowed the seed that autumn and I couldn't believe it. I said, what's going on? A homesaved seed, you
know, normally shoots up, it was weak, lacking in vigour and the results were disappointing, lovely colour but just general weak. And there were not enough genes in that gene pool of the
cross pollination needs (indistinct), so if you wanna save seed of mustard, brassicas as well, you need quite a few plants, which means you need a lot of space. So these are factors to consider before you launch into too
much seed saving at home and I wanted to just
give you a visual example of what it can look
like and what's entailed in some of these other vegetables. Like it starts with selecting
a good onion, in this case. So there's eight onions there. Interestingly, you get
many stalks from one onion. It's like multisowing in reverse, so you put one onion in the ground, you get several stalks,
loads of seeds potentially. And choosing which onion to grow, there's three different ones here. Like that's an onion which
has bolted this year. So I wouldn't want to,
or try and save seed from that one because you're more likely, not totally likely to get some bolters when you sow the seeds
from it the following year, it's something you don't want, basically, you want a nice onion with a thin stalk, a thin dry head. These were pulled at the same time, that one's still got quite a fat head. And this one you can
see is nice thin head, that's the one I would go for. So these kind of, you can choose traits or characteristics, by
selecting the vegetable you're gonna save the seed from. So, and this is actually
not red onion here. These ones here, Rose de roscoff, it's a beautiful onion
from Brittany in France, and I selected from last
year, my eight nicest ones. I'm pushing it a bit, but it's probably from eight there's enough of a gene pool. 10 would be better, 20 would
be even better, more space. So eight of these went
in the ground in March and they made all these flower heads. And the thing is to somehow catch these before they rot, if it's,
we're now 19th of August, if it was wet for the next two weeks I'd probably lose most of
these as potential seeds. But if we get alternating sun and rain, like we have been, I might get it. Waiting for these to dry enough that you can crack them open
and find the seeds in there. So it's potentially a
lot of onion seed here, fingers crossed. Beetroot, slightly different,
more space demanding, as you can see, there's
seven beetroots there. It's the variety Boltardy,
which I particularly like but which has been really
letting me down recently is another reason to homesave seed, if you can manage to improve the gene pool with your own selection. So I selected particularly
nice large Boltardy beetroots from storage over winter, put
them in the ground this March and that's what's happened so far. In fact, we lost one, it blew over. There's a question of
supporting the seed heads 'cause there's quite a lot of weight here, and yeah, one was caught
with the mower I think, we lost it, anyway, I still
think there's enough plants for the cross pollination
and I'm watching, watching, watching, and
when we see, for example, this one here, where it's
just going a bit more brown, I'm looking for a browning of
the stalk and the clusters. Strictly speaking, beetroot and spinach, there's some spinach
hanging under the roof of the compost bay, that I
pulled a couple of weeks ago and that's now gone this
brown and we're ready to rub those seeds out. And they look very like
this, related plants. So rub out the clusters when they're dry, but first of all, well,
once they're mostly dry I'll twist them out,
hang them up somewhere, under a roof and let them fully dry and then we'll process
them to take out the seed. And carrots beyond that, is more difficult even than these two because of the potential cross pollination with neighbouring wild
carrot, which in our case we call it cow parsley
growing in the hedgerows, will cross pollinate and
then you would end up instead of a lovely orange root, that's Oxhella, it's a
lovely fat winter carrot, and the wild carrot has
a long, thin, white root so you get an interesting
amalgam of those two. And I still can't be
sure that they haven't, what we did was we put a mesh cover of where you see those
four posts over the top. And there was just a
little hole in that mesh which we hadn't spotted
and before you knew it there was more insects inside
that mesh than outside. I think we've got some
crosspollination there, but we're gonna save the seed anyway, so having got this far, and this is as far as I got so far, I just
pulled off one little head that was going brown there,
they're sort of ripening at different speeds, and then underneath all this faff, you know
this is with homesown seed, you've got quite a lot
of separating out to do. There are some carrot seeds,
which I think I'll sow one or two, even this autumn, or very soon. It'll give me an idea of how they grow and whether we've got good seed, before we do a big sowing, say next year. And I've also got in my
little magic box here, couple of other seeds, just to, you know, we don't often talk
about, well, we do talk about seed potato, or don't
think of this as seed saving but in my book, you can do
this, not everybody agrees. I've saved my own seed for three years now and so far results are good. You know, there's all these warnings, if you save your own seed,
well, how do you get virus or whatever, probably things
you'd have seen anyway, but that's Charlotte
and so I'm just keeping, just in a sack in the shed, at this stage, they don't
sprout until it gets colder. And then I'll bring them
into daylight in January, that's called Chitting, and plant them next May,
probably April, May. So that's homesaved potato
seed, you can do that. And then garlic, likewise,
so that's actually from seed I've been saving
now or growing and saving, for 28 years, and you just
take off the larger clove for planting your garlic. So select your nicest
bulb, at harvest time just put them on one side
so you don't eat them. And then you can bring them
out in October to plant them and that's Softneck
garlic, Hardneck garlic. They come true, if you've
grown those two together, there's no flower involved so
there's no crosspollination. So, these are easy to save,
like the potato they come true. And we'll finish off in the conservatory, just look at a few other homesaved seeds with a slightly different
qualities, or edge to them. (bright gentle music) So here are some examples
of seed I've saved, and a selection, which
I'll explain briefly so you can see what's involved and decide if you think you can do it. Like lettuce, potentially easy, because just one plant,
you can get loads of seed. That's Grenoble red seed
that I saved two years ago actually I think, (giggles)
but it's still good. It comes up for three, four years just with somewhat declining vigour. And this is another lovely variety, 2019 Maravilla de verano, and
that's how I often store seeds in little brown envelopes or
whatever, can be polythene if you're totally sure it's dry. And this is what the lettuce
seed looks like as it's drying. So I rubbed some out of
the plant I pulled up and it was still a tiny
bit damp, I realised. So then I just rubbed out a
bit and hung the plant to dry in the garage until it's fully dry and then we'll finish doing this and you get all this
stalk and flowery stuff. And the seed is there, it's
these little white bits, maybe you can see underneath. And then you separating,
check the last video, or read up about that bit of
winnowing in the wind to do it. Easier to save, ah, peas in
terms of getting the seed anyway, because for one thing with peas, you're very close to having
the seed at the point of eating the peas yourselves
and just keep them unpicked for another month or so. Four varieties I really
like, Hurst Greenshaft, Starlight, Tall Sugar and Alderman, so they're just each one
in its jar or packet, totally feasible and possible and not difficult to do or to store. And I find they keep for
quite a while, peas again, two, three years stay viable. Similar story for French beans. So all of these are French beans of sorts, are ones that I found can
work with just one plant, including soybean, actually,
that in the middle there grow a bit of that for edamame. Borlotti bean, this I'm
growing entirely for eating, but the bonus is that
you've got the seed as well. So from whatever eating stock
we've got, of that winter, we'll just take out a few seeds
to sow the following spring. And French beans, well, you
could eat these as well, so this is dwarf French
bean, and you can see it's a nice sample of seed, which has been in there
since last September. And I would back this again
for another two or three years, and it's a variety called Orinoco, it's a lovely yellow bean. And then broad beans,
these do cross pollinate. So if you had different
varieties of broad bean growing nearby, they won't breed true. Here, in Homemakers where I've not gotten nearby allotment holders makes it easier. I just grow Aquadulce claudia. And interestingly,
that's Aquadulce claudia from two years ago, it's
my favourite variety. And this is Aquadulce
claudia from this year. And you can see there's a difference in colour and appearance a bit. But I do find that the broad beans, I've sowed some two years old this year and they came up perfectly,
they kept really well and I'm again, just storing
them in these containers. As long as the seed is dry, fully dry when it goes in containers
like this, you'll be okay. And to get them dry what
I do is like put them in something like that
or whatever on a tray, on a sunny windowsill, to achieve that. Now, why are these tomatoes here? It's 'cause I wanted to
emphasise an important point about hybrids and open pollinated. Open pollinated means it's just kind of normal, natural
growth and breeding. And these two tomatoes, for example, Black Russian, Berner
Rose, lovely tomatoes. And so we're just gonna eat them, but before eating,
we'll scoop out the seed and save it and process it a bit. This lovely tomato called Sungold, my favourite cherry tomato,
is not open pollinated. It's an F1 hybrid. So, if you save seed from this one which I did a few years ago just to see, 10 seeds gave me 10 plants,
and they all grew differently, and none of them were
particularly nice to eat. So don't do that. Hybrids you can't sow,
well, you can sow seed from but they won't grow true,
so check, just check. And these are all open
pollinated varieties of tomato I saved seed from this year so far, I just put them again, in
a little brown envelope once the seed's fully dry. You can do similar for flowers. So that's Marigold from
last year, rudbeckia, any flower that you particularly like, you often need quite a run of dry weather in the autumn for the
lovely flower to develop into a seedhead with viable seeds. This is getting more difficult now. So for example, melon,
these are Minnesota Midget. A lovely variety of
medium to small melons, which I saved from one plant last year. And that worked from one plant, was fine, the more important part was there was no other melon variety nearby, otherwise it would cross pollinate. Say I'd grown Petit Gris
de Rennes next to it, like I'm doing as it happens this year, that I can't save seed
from either of those without the risk and probability
of them merging together, cross pollinating, which,
you know, you might not mind, it's entirely your call,
it's just to be aware that that can happen. But I reckon again, I've got a lot of seed from that one plant last year. And so, I'm good for at least next year, I reckon with that amount of seed. Similar story for spinach. So this is what my homesaved
spinach seed looks like. It's not the perfect sample you will get with bought spinach, but it's
not far off it, actually. There's a few bits of
fluff and debris in there, but a lot of nice seed,
and I'm finding that, do you know the nice thing
is not a hundred percent on this one actually, spinach is funny, and many other variables but I'm happy with how it is germinating
and growing above all, lovely dark green leaves from that. This is coriander, and
it's still drying actually. So that's from one plant which was growing close
to some other plants, so there should have been
good cross pollination which it needs. It's a member of the
carrot family, and both, they all need that. And it's been on this plate to dry, again, before I store it in a jam jar probably, and we can eat it, so it's another one of those edible seeds, that's
gives you double bonus. Lamb's lettuce, don't
think you can eat this one, but it's easy to save, and in the spring, Lamb's lettuce, your final harvest is often here anyway, mid April. And then you see this little, pretty, but very small blue flower heads. They turn into seed like that. And the difficulty with Lamb's lettuce is if before you know it, most
of that's on the ground, before you've gathered it yourself. And so, you need to watch
it and pick the whole plant carefully, before quite
all the seed is dry and then you'll get most of it, you put it over a sheet and rub it out. And then again, put it somewhere dry, like on a plate, and then store it. Now we're getting into the realm
of the even more difficult. This is Brassica mustard. So all brassica plants,
so that's your mustards, cabbages, kales and so
on, they all need more than one plant, and
they all get quite big. This was five mustard, it
was green manure actually, that's what I was growing it for, White mustard, Sinapis
alba, and I let it flower, looked pretty, that's a great
thing to do, good for insects. And then a good six weeks later, the pods finally dried and we picked them, trod on them to break them
open and then winnowed them in the wind to get this
pretty clean sample. So that was two summers
ago and then last October, it's already a year old, I
sowed it for the second time, came up really well, I
think 'cause it was fresh. You know, I know how old
that is and it is still good, and I'll back this one to grow well again this autumn when I sow it once more. And yeah, salad rocket,
that's the salad rocket that I was mentioning at
the beginning of this video. That's what it looks like. Look how much I got from it. But it was about three
square metres of salad rocket that we'd picked over the winter, and that I'd then left to flower. Didn't need that bit of
ground as it happened. Very pretty white flowers,
and got all that seed in middle of July. So you saw the advantage of that. I'm pleased to say it's growing true. You know, there's always
that slight element of doubt with anything
that cross pollinates. But if you, you know, do it carefully, like I've been explaining,
there's a very good reason for it, which is you'll get
stronger, healthier plants. And I hope you enjoy the whole process of saving your own seed and then growing the subsequent plants. (bright gentle music) So it's now June in the following year, and we sowed some of the
Boltardy beetroot seed I'd saved in this video. We sowed it 25th of February, transplanted it here multisown, in clumps. And I really didn't know what to expect, so I'm pretty pleased. The roots are still pretty
variable, but they're okay. Now this is coming out of a clump of four, they're in clumps of mostly four here, we've pulled one or two already. I'm just pulling some to give you the idea of what they're like. And the shape is actually
much more uniform and consistent than it
was from the parents. Well, not the immediate parents, but in the genes of the
bloodline, so to speak. So I think I've still got a bit of work to do to get this back. We'll need to save some more seed from ones we select from here. And we're getting similar
indications from the carrots too that they're nice and
orange, they hadn't crossed, it looks like with the wild
carrots and smooth skinned. So, yeah, it's an encouraging
note to finish on. Homesaved beetroot seeds. (bright gentle music)
