We were delighted to welcome back our friends from the Heritage Seed Library at Garden Organic for a workshop on seed saving. This took place at the Community Garden for the benefit of our regular volunteers.
Lucy and Hannah gave us an overview of the Heritage Seed Library project before moving on to the process of collecting and saving seed.
We then headed off around the garden to find candidate plants for seed saving. It’s important that seed is collected at the right time; the seed needs to be ripe and should only be collected on a dry day. We picked some French beans whose pods had gone brown and crispy, as well as some Sweet Banana peppers and Tiger Tom tomatoes.
Tomato seeds need special treatment, as they are surrounded within the fruit by pulp which will inhibit germination. In the wild, nature gets around this problem by enlisting the help of birds to digest the seeds and ‘clean them up’ before they fall to the ground and are ready to germinate. For our purposes, the pulp can be removed more easily if the seeds are first fermented for a couple of days in some water. Then the seeds must be fully dried before storing in a paper envelope in a cool, dry environment.
Lucy had been with us earlier in the year for a seed sowing workshop, at which we sowed red orach seeds. It was satisfying, therefore, to collect seeds from the resulting plants during this workshop, so that we can continue the growing cycle with them next season!
If you’d like to learn about seed saving, we will be running this workshop again for the general public at The Hive, Worcester’s Central Library, on 22nd October from 1:00 – 3:00 pm. Attendance is free of charge, but please book your place on The Hive’s website.