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My Kind of Savings
I’m the first to admit that I am not a wealthy guy, financially speaking. When I made the decision to pursue writing full time I knew it wouldn’t be easy and though I have had a few rough months here and there I have yet to go without the necessities due in no small part to my frugal nature and my love for gardening and growing my own food whenever it is humanly possible to do so. A combination of these two loves brings me to my topic for today – seed saving.
When it comes to education my focus has always been on getting people to grow something in the first place and that can often be such a task that I leave seed saving for another season. The truth of the matter is that I just can’t understand why more gardening people aren’t saving their seeds! Do they somehow prefer to spend three or four bucks (or more) on a single seedling that they could have started themselves for pennies?
Often one single vegetable or fruit can produce enough seeds to grow dozens of plants. This is true for tomatoes (my favorite fruit in the world), cantaloupes, watermelons, heck, it’s true for lots of stuff. Half of one cantaloupe from this season’s harvest yielded enough seed for me to plant a huge border of fruit at my community garden to benefit my neighborhood and the local food bank as well. There are dozens of seeds just waiting to be started in February. The space is there, why not use it to grow something to help feed others? It won’t cost me anything but the time to plant the seedlings.
One word of caution to anyone who plans to start seed saving – make sure the plants you are saving seed from are heirlooms! Hybrid plants do not always produce fruit that is true to seed. What that means is that the fruit or vegetables you grow from the seed of a hybrid plant will most likely not be the same as the one you started with because it was created by combining breeds for various characteristics. It is a good rule of thumb to grow heirlooms anyway as they have a lot more character and flavor than hybrids and they haven’t been bought out by Monsanto.
If you have always wanted to but you weren’t sure how to save seeds, fear not! I am working on writing a good primer for seed saving to be included here on MEG in the near future so stay tuned! It isn’t as difficult or time-consuming as you might think either so don’t let that thought even cross your mind!