Seed saving at La Mariais

We made a start this year with seed saving.  I have grown quite a lot of heritage seeds in the last two years and saving the seed is not only a way of cutting next year's seed buying bill as well as having seeds to swap with friends and at seed saving events but is also a political act.  Many seeds now available in the big stores are F1 hybrids which means that the seeds produced won't give you the same plant ... you are therefore obliged to buy new seeds every year.  By buying 'open pollinated seeds' you can avoid this problem. And by buying heritage varieties you will be helping to increase diversity.  To date I have bought many seeds from the organic company 'Biaugerme' - but there are others - notably 'Kokopelli' and 'Germinance'.

Some images from our seed saving exploits:

Some harvested seeds left to dry for a week before putting
in labelled envelopes.



The good doctor JO teasing seeds
from their pods ....

Here he is again ... a nice peaceful contrast to the
heaving of buckets of clay earth into the house for
rendering .................



Two wwoofers ... they spent quite some time in
the garden saving seed .... it can take some time!!

We left a couple of radish plants to go to seed.
After harvesting, they were left to dry in the sun
before taking the seed out of the pods.

Seed pods of 'Cresson Alénoise' before being
harvested.

We have collected huge amounts of fennel seed
which will be great for replanting, swapping
and for cooking ......

Marigolds or 'soucis' have been great - they self
seed freely everywhere and their petals have brightened
 up our salads ... collecting the seed is really easy
and we now have prolific amounts ....

Have managed to collect loads of chard seed -
it's one of the easier ones ......