Post Punk Kitchen Forum

i want to try and save some seeds from my garden this year for next year's garden but honestly i dont have a clue what im doing.
so far here is what i have done. i have a big sunroom (ie lots of light) and i took a window screen and propper it up on two chairs.

i have dumped things on that to dry. i have some cloves of garlic and some peas from snap pea pods on it. they've been there for at least 2+ weeks so im assuming they are done drying.

now what the heck do i do with them? can i store them somewhere until next spring? (the garlic i will plant this fall) did i do it wrong?

i feel lost and confused.
here is a picture if it works

LP I'm unsure of your location, but here in IN I plant it in the Fall (around October) for a Spring 2012 harvest. I also plant more in the spring for a Fall harvest. Once the bulb has dried in a cool dry place, reak up individual cloves and stick 'em in the dirt. Here's a link to growing garlic:
http://www.naturalhub.com/grow_vegetabl ... garlic.htm

As for other seeds, read the seed scuttlebutt thread. I'm super DIY when it comes to seed saving. I save all kinds of seeds, even seeds from grocery store produce to see if I can get the plant to grow again.

i guess im most confused about the peas i dried. can i put them in a zip lock baggie for next year (like you talk about peppers in the seed scuttlebutt thread)??

i live in MA. i wouldnt plant peas in the fall to harvest in the spring would i?????
i thought you plant those in early spring for a late spring/early summer harvest.

errrrr....gardening hurts my brains

Yep, LP--they should work unless they are peas that you grew by a major seed distributor. You can plant peas in MA a couple of times a year: first in early spring when the soil is workable, and then right about now for a fall harvest. Planting in Fall for a Spring harvest is a no-go because they aren't in the same family as onions or garlic. Peas LOVE 65-75 degree days! Try to find a university extension garden info on gardening in your area. Gardening shouldn't hurt your brain, it should excite you--you are sticking it to the man and growing your own food!

Your seed drying area looks great! They like a warm, airy space to dry in, but out of too much direct sun is better, if possible - but not a big deal. Leaving the leaves on the garlic will help the bulbs dry faster and better too. I always leave the bulbs intact until I go to plant. Then by planting only the largest cloves you'll end up with bigger bulbs next year.

Peas and other seeds: For seed-saving, you want to avoid hybrids (the description might say something like "F1"), as they won't come true. Look in the catalog and see if it says OP, for open pollinated, which is what you want. All of the sugar snaps in the Territorial catalog are OP. If you save seeds from the squash family or cabbage family, they interbreed within their families quite readily and you may end up with some weird things, like winter squash crossing with zucchini. Kale is generally safe, but lots of the Asian greens/mustards are very promiscuous.

my first harvest of garlic i got the whole cloves out but for the rest of them i waited too long and the tops completely died and fell off so i basically had to root around in the dirt to find them and i think i may have injured some of teh bulbs in doing this and so when i rinsed them off a lot of the individual cloves seperated.

where do you get a kale seed??? i have lots of kale growing and no seeds. will the plant go to seed later before it dies???

now lettuce, THAT i have plenty of seeds for, im not gonna post a picture of our "lettuce" plants. they bolted almost immediately and are almost taller than me now HAHAHA

Lisa, it's best not to rinse garlic with water as the bulbs won't store as long after a thorough wetting. Normally just brush the soil off after the bulbs have air dried for a couple of weeks. And they're ready to be harvested once the outer leaves die; if you let the tops dry completely the cloves will begin separating, allowing soil to filter in.

Kale will send up flower stalks generally in the spring of their 2nd year. You can harvest the flower buds before they open and they taste fantastic, a lot like mini broccolis. Any you don't harvest for eating will eventually form long, thin seed pods which you can harvest when they start to dry.

When I went to a seed saving seminar, the instructor saved all her seeds in those tiny manilla coin envelopes. Made them easy to label (because you may know which is which now, but by next spring, it may not be so easy to remember what's what) and tidier to store (she had card boxes kinda like this that she filed her envelopes of seed in alphabetically). Granted, she had hundreds of varieties, so ziplocks would have been chaos.

i was just coming in here to say what hdog said- paper envelopes. if you put them in a ziplock before they're totally dry, they might mold. if it's paper, it's no big deal.

ooops! ok well lesson learned for next time! :-D



wait! what? "2nd" year? is my kale perennial???

i assumed it was an annual!!

[quote="LisaPunk

wait! what? "2nd" year? is my kale perennial???

i assumed it was an annual!![/quote]

It may be an "annual" in your climate. They're generally treated as biennials.

i will have to look into this before i start ripping things out!
thanks!