Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: spud on January 14, 2024, 12:05
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As the title says... I was wondering if anyone has such a thing going? seeds that just produce the product they want and keep on saving their own seed and sowing year after year?
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Up 'til last year, when I had to give up my allotment - I grew Mennonite climbing beans, a reliable heritage variety grown for eating fresh and drying for winter stews.
Peas can also be saved, I've grown and successfully saved a few heritage varieties over the years.
Also tomatoes that started off as Crimson Crush. Saving seed of these, each year - gave me slightly smaller fruit than the original size, but the plants still had a fair bit of blight resistance..
Tromba d'Albenga squash doesn't cross with other varieties, so you can save seed for that, as well.
I'm sure there are more...
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Spud, I am interested in seeing the answers you will get! Personally I have not been saving seeds long enough to provide much information.
I have grown several types of cherry and grape tomatoes from seed saved from grocery store cherry tomato assortments (unknown varieties). The results have been surprisingly good!
I will be growing some tomatoes this spring and summer from seed saved last summer from heirloom varieties. Also, I will likely grow some heirloom peppers from saved seed.
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If a variety is labelled F1, then chances are that it won't come true to seed if you save and resow seed each year.
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I keep tomatoes going, they are easy. Also done lettuce. Most plants though need a certain number of them to maintain the variety, like you need a minimum of twenty carrots or similar which takes up a bit more space plus they are more likely to accidentally cross with with other varieties than something like a tomato
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I grow "Sutherland Kale" . (Actually it's flavour and appearance is loose leaf, collard type cabbage, I think the name comes from a misunderstanding of the Gaelic for cabbage sounding like "kale"!) It's the 2nd hardiest thing on my plot, after red Russian kale!
I also have parsnips that started out as Tender and True (and garlic that I think was 'valour' once, although obviously that's not seed as such).
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Great to hear that there are so many saving their own landraces, its not simple as it takes up quite a lot of extra growing space as has been pointed out. I firmly believe we can do a better job than is presently been done by many of the seed companies, first thing i noticed was just how much more fertility home saved seed has, which is reason enough to keep going.
I will certainly be trying my main crops this season again, and hopefully get better at it.
Please keep posting if you've gotten experience to share, and i hope to see some interesting OP seeds in the seed swap if you've any to spare.
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Have you seen this thread spud? :)
https://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=138455.0
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I have a lot of tomatoes I grow regularly. Purple Ukraine, Lima Korai, Black Cherry, Aurora and Kenilworth King George are favourites, but I grow and save seed from around 15 varieties every year as a minimum.
My favourite peas are Stokesley, grow those every year.
Ditto Wizard field beans, Gigantes Greek butter beans and Red and White climbing French bean.
Also Palivec chillies.
To be honest if I listed them all it would take a very long time.
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Have you seen this thread spud? :)
https://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=138455.0
Thanks, I hadn't spotted it
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I have a lot of tomatoes I grow regularly. Purple Ukraine, Lima Korai, Black Cherry, Aurora and Kenilworth King George are favourites, but I grow and save seed from around 15 varieties every year as a minimum.
My favourite peas are Stokesley, grow those every year.
Ditto Wizard field beans, Gigantes Greek butter beans and Red and White climbing French bean.
Also Palivec chillies.
To be honest if I listed them all it would take a very long time.
I'm wondering if there are any varieties that have been making it on to your list every year for a number of years? Its great that you have been doing all this experimenting it saves lots of time to others if you had time to share your results, perhaps you do, im not great at keeping track of things.
I went to bush tomatoes several years back, but havent found the right (for me) beef steak variety yet. Would like to try a bush Brandywine type.
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I have a lot of tomatoes I grow regularly. Purple Ukraine, Lima Korai, Black Cherry, Aurora and Kenilworth King George are favourites, but I grow and save seed from around 15 varieties every year as a minimum.
My favourite peas are Stokesley, grow those every year.
Ditto Wizard field beans, Gigantes Greek butter beans and Red and White climbing French bean.
Also Palivec chillies.
To be honest if I listed them all it would take a very long time.
I'm wondering if there are any varieties that have been making it on to your list every year for a number of years? Its great that you have been doing all this experimenting it saves lots of time to others if you had time to share your results, perhaps you do, im not great at keeping track of things.
I went to bush tomatoes several years back, but havent found the right (for me) beef steak variety yet. Would like to try a bush Brandywine type.
Well I grow all the tomatoes I mention regularly. Black Cherry every year. I like to rotate the others as I have too many saved seeds to grow them all every year. I like to try new things too, so the number goes up every year.
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you are great, i must try the Black Cherry, they say it has great sweet/acid flavours...
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Black Cherry is widely available. A very good yield from it too. It throws side shoots a lot so need to keep on top of those.
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Black Cherry is widely available. A very good yield from it too. It throws side shoots a lot so need to keep on top of those.
I might even have some deep down in my seed box, home saved at that... my filing and records are just something else ....
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Just like to say I've not been active on the forum for a long time, it's nice to be back and see a lot of names I recognise are still here.
Have saved lots of seeds over the years.
Had a good Romano type pepper, which was saved from a certain supermarket purchase, produced great peppers for many years, until I forgot to save fresh seed.
Same with chillies, also peas, mainly Douce Provence, and heirloom tomatoes, such as Brandywine, Thessaloniki, Amateur, etc.
Have grown Sungold, which is an F1, but only for one season.