Organic Garden Seed
I am going to be selling some seeds I saved from my produce garden and need some pointers?
I have Witham Butternut Squash seeds that I saved from a squash harvested in fall ’09
I am selling them and I am kind of new to the whole thing.
I never use fertilizer or pesticides on my plants, can I tell buyers these seeds are organic.
The seeds died nicely, do they need to be soaked before sowing?
Did you isolate the squash before the flowers opened? Squash, even Moschatas such as Butternut, cross pretty easily with other squashes. So if you did not take the proper steps to isolate the squashes you kept seed from they cannot be guaranteed to be pure and thus are not really sellable.
Before selling you need to do a germination test which is simple. get a plate, a paper towel and a plastic bag. get the paper towel damp put 10 seeds on it and place the seeds and towel in the plastic bag and put that on the plate in a warm spot. wait no more than 7 days and count how many seeds germinated. if under 70% germinated you have a bad batch of seed which cannot be legally sold as seeds must have at least a 70% germination rate to be sellable.
If you are not certified organic don’t call the seeds organic. Call them sustainably grown, chemical free, natural, etc., but don’t call them organic, as this could lead to problems if a certified organic grower bought the seeds thinking they are organic and finds out they are not gets decertified.
No they do not need to be soaked before planting and absolutely do not do this before selling the seeds or you will kill them
Get the book Seed to Seed by Susan Ashworth before you save seed again as it sound like you probably made several newbie seed saving mistakes and this book will set you on the right path to the fascinating world of seed saving
Organic Garden Seed
Seed saving – how to save money in an organic garden
How can we make sure that all the seed we sow in our organic gardens will germinate and give us plants? Wise gardeners store their seed, year after year, especially rare heirloom seeds. Of course, seed saving also saves money. But old seed often disappoints.
If in doubt about old seed, it’s always wise to pre-germinate a test sample. Soak ten seeds overnight and lay them on damp kitchen paper in a warm place in a plastic bag. After a few days, count what percentage are showing signs of life. To do this scientifically you should use at least 100 seeds. But that might be your entire supply! Ten is good enough as a rough guide.
Don’t waste the seed that germinates, of course. Sink it in a pot of weak compost, with its growing tip just visible, and water – ideally – with diluted kelp solution. Kelp is a great help to any young seedling.
If only 20% of your soaked seeds show life you’ll know that – if you plant five seeds from your remaining supply in every module – there’s a good chance at least one seed will germinate.
If nothing germinates from your seed test, the seed is clearly dead or uselessly dormant. Eat the remaining seed! For example, in granola or as a topping for home-baked bread, according to the seed type. Of course, not every vegetable seed is palatable or wise to eat, and obviously you’d shun commercially pre-treated seed. As the late John Seymour of self-sufficiency fame would tirelessly say: ‘use that good old mother, Common Sense!’
Seed viability is the true test
Then, when we sow it en masse, we can adjust the quantities of seed accordingly, as we’ve seen. That advice saves a lot of wasted time, but… it’s limited.
Why? Under ideal germination conditions, we might get, for example, 50% germination of parsnip seed that has been saved very well but is several years old. Textbooks say you cannot germinate the seed of parsnips, lovage, angelica and other umbellifers if it’s much more than one year old and has been stored at room temperature.
(That said, seed is full of surprises. One year I grew a large plot of parsnips, and a lot of other umbellifers too, from seed that was verifiably five years old and had been kept in my sock drawer.)
Why indoor seed germination can give misleading results
If you germinate the seed of umbellifers, and several other plant species indoors, the results can be misleading. Because parsnips don’t take kindly to transplanting. They have to be planted in situ, outdoors. So how can we test their likely performance outdoors without wasting a lot of seed?
Answer: test the germination of such seeds in sub-optimal conditions. The kind they’ll actually meet – outdoors. Scatter your seed on damp kitchen paper but put it for eight days in a cool, dark place with harshly fluctuating temperatures, say, from just above freezing to 28oC. Or whatever represents the true conditions in your garden.
For example, your garage in spring? Any seedlings that emerge will give you an index to the true percentage viability of that seed! You can now sow the balance of the seed outdoors with confidence. (Or not.)
Develop your own new heirloom vegetable variety!
Here’s another benefit of testing seed under challenging conditions. If you pre-germinate seed under those conditions, and plant out only the seedlings that survive, you will get very sturdy plants indeed. When they grow, save the seed from them. Provided they are open-pollinated (ie. not F1 or other hybrids), and you save the seed from them year on year, and grow it on, you may go on to develop – and stabilise – your very own unique variety. One that is acclimatised just to your micro-climate.
Lo, you have become a plant developer! And your stabilised cultivar is now on its way to becoming a legitimate ‘new heirloom’. Your very own.
Around 75oF is the ideal germination temperature for almost any edible temperate plant. Aubergines, peppers, Tomatoes, squash and other hot-climate plants prefer 85oF. But they’ll still germinate well enough at 75oF. Either way, we’ll know in around eight days if that batch of seed will give us eg. 75% germination or just 15% germination. Or none.
For a free big 6000-word ebook Lazy Secrets for Natural Gardening Success, brimming with new gardening tips, go to: http://www.gardeningguild.org/lazy
About the Author
Dr John Yeoman, PhD lectures at a UK university and, when not out jogging with his tortoise, is an amateur plant developer and passionate heirloom seed collector. His gardening books include Self Reliance (Permananent Publications, 1999) and The Lazy Kitchen Gardener (Village Guild, 2003). He founded the centre for natural Gardening Ideas, the Gardening Guild, which now has members in seven nations.
How do I keep cats out of my garden?
I live in a town that is full of stray cats and outdoor cats. And my neighbors adopt cats for the Humane Society, so there are even more right around our property. We have a veggie garden, and I want to put in a second one. The trouble is, these cats all seem to think my garden is a toilet, so it is always full of cat poop.
Is there any way to keep them out of the garden? Preferably something that doesn’t involve chemicals (the garden is entirely organic; the seeds aren’t even treated)? I’m at my wits’ end with these critters.
expensive method that keeps ALL animals from your garden..
http://www.petfooddirect.com/store/product_detail.asp?pf_id=207100102&dept_id=1076&brand_id=1001&Page=
homemade methods:
string old scratched ( or new if you have no scratched) CD and hang them above the garden. the flashes of light run off birds, rabbits and some cats.
Coleus Canina aka the-pee-off-plant or the Scardy cat coleus is a plant that has a odor that cats, dogs and foxes avoid.. easily propagated they will over winter indoors and should be planted 1-2 yards apart.
Plant Rue. its a pretty blue flowering plant and cats dislike the smell.
Organic Lettuce Gardening : Organic Lettuce Seed Planting