Seed Savers Handbook Online

There are a multitude of varieties which cross with one another very easily. Even some species have been found to cross with one another e.g. A. caudatus and A. hypochondriacus. For most types, flowering occurs as the days become shorter. Being wind-pollinated, they will cross with one another if less than 400 metres apart at flowering time. The seed heads mature gradually from bottom to top. Careful selection is needed every time a plant is chosen for seed. Inferior individuals should be rogued, or pulled out, before they can flower and pollinate better plants. To maximise your seed harvest, shake the near-mature seed heads into a paper bag or onto a canvas while you do the rounds of the garden. If you are growing a fair-sized area, it is faster to cut the heads all at once when most of the seeds are ripe. The fully ripened heads tend to drop their seeds. Dry for a week and thresh the heads with gloved hands or feet on canvas as the chaff is somewhat prickly. The seeds may be lost when winnowing because the chaff and seeds are of similar size and the seeds are of a light weight. If you heap uncleaned seeds in a bowl and toss them, the light debris will concentrate on the top and can be blown away. Repeat this until only seeds remain.

For obtaining a new variety, start with seeds and select repeatedly from the offspring. A high proportion of the seedlings may revert to the spiky type which should be rogued out.
Large purple flowers will form on top of the thick stems. Only the best fruit, with an outstandingly large base, should be left to go to seed. Let them pass the edible stage - their scales will get hard and purple florets will cover the head.
Suppress the little side buds on the same stem to give more strength to the heads reserved for seed. In Brittany, western France, farmers bend the stalks down to protect the seed heads from the rain. The seeds are found in the seed case after the white thistle down has blown away. It is a prickly affair to retrieve the seeds because the calyx is spiny.

Asparagus can also be propagated by seed, but this takes longer than doing so from crowns because the plants need an extra year before they are ready for harvesting. To obtain seeds, leave the most vigorous female plants, with at least one male nearby. Following cross-pollination by insects, scarlet berries will form on the female plants in autumn. The ripe fleshy berries containing half a dozen black seeds are picked, crushed, washed and dried in the shade.
If you are an asparagus collector who wants to propagate from seeds and have more than one variety, be aware that bees will cross-pollinate them. Plant the seeds in spring in fine rich soil and transplant the seedlings the following year, choosing only the strongest. Select for the desired characteristics in the subsequent years.

Basella goes to seed as the weather cools down. Pick the berries when they are dark purple. They have only one seed in each of them. Rub them clean with gloves and wash them under a tap until the water runs clear. Alternatively, leave the skin and flesh on them. Dry on a wire screen before storage.

Basil flowers are coloured white through to purple. They have an abundant and pungent nectar, and rely on insect pollination; so one basil will cross with others. You will need to separate different varieties by as much garden space as possible – preferably fifty metresThe seeds mature from the bottom to the top of the flower, and capsules generally contain four seeds. Either cut the stalks or rub your hand up them when the top seed capsules turn brown and brittle.
Dry on a sheet of paper or in a paper bag. Rub well when the seed capsules are crisp and dry, either in between the hands or on a small gauged wire mesh to dislodge the four seeds contained in each capsule.
Place the crushed mixture in a large bowl and carefully whirl the lot until the seeds gather at the bottom of the bowl and the chaff on top. Pick out the bulky chaff with your fingers; the rest can be gently blown over. A very small gauged sieve will let the dust fall through but not the seed.

Accidental hybridization (crossing) rarely occurs because pollination happens mostly before the bean flower opens (i.e. automatic pollination). This explains why so many gardeners have been able to keep their favourite strains pure for decades.
Despite this different climbing varieties are best planted two metres apart to ensure a hundred percent purity. It is also a good practice to avoid planting two different varieties of climbing beans with the same coloured seed side by side because they will be hard to sort at harvest.
Beans grown for seeds are grown no differently than dry beans for home consumption, except that at an early stage those with leaf discolouration, bacterial blight or any other sign of disease should be rogued out. Select the finest individual plants and identify with a ribbon or similar tag.
Traditional gardeners say that cutting off the tops of the climbing varieties causes the lower bean cluster to grow larger. Some gardeners believe that seeds selected from the top of the bush will grow into plants with a predisposition to flower poorly at lower and mid-level.
If the weather is wet at harvest, the beans may be picked and dried randomly as they come to the yellow pod stage. With dwarf varieties, when the pods turn yellow brown, the whole bush can be uprooted and hung in a dry, airy space. Leave all the pods on the bush to dry completely. Pod out the beans from their shells. If you have large quantities, hang them in hessian bags and beat them with a stick.
Assessment of the dryness of the seed needs to be made during the next stage. Test the beans by biting with a gentle pressure. No impression should be made. Discard blemished and shrivelled seeds. Usually you will need to dry them for a further one or two weeks.
Store them in airtight containers on a dry day. Weevils lay their eggs under bean seed coats and the seeds will be eaten when they hatch. Freeze the dried beans in a jar for forty eight hours to kill weevils and their eggs.

he roots attain full size during their first year of growth and in the second year send up an angular seed producing stalk. The plant then dies off. This is typical of a biennial. However, in places where the difference of day-length between seasons is not marked, such as far northern Australia, beetroot may not go to seed at all.
In cold climates they are lifted for evaluation at the beginning of winter, stored in moist sand, then re-selected for replanting in spring according to their true-to-typeness, appropriate size and even colour. They will go to seed in the summer. To preserve the diversity of the strain, a good dozen (at the very least six) should flower together, especially if the variety is rustic and shows a lot of character.
To encourage larger seed balls on the lower parts of the branches, the top and side branches should have their tips, which have quite small seeds, cut off. Seeds can be picked individually as they ripen, or the whole stalk cut down and hung to dry further. Strip the branches by hand into a garbage bin or an equally wide container.
Each seed ball contains from two to six individual seeds. As they are hard to separate, you will end up with small groups of seedlings wherever you plant a seedball. Plant breeders have developed a strain of sugar beet with a single seed ball, so that there is no need to thin the seedlings.
Beetroot is pollinated by both insects and wind. The pollen is very fine and can fly long distances. Depending on wind direction and ferocity, commercial seed growers isolate beetroot from silver beet, sugar beet and fodder beets, that are flowering at the same time, by 250 to 500 metres. Few gardeners actually allow their beets to get to the flowering stage, so there is little chance of crossing.

To obtain a heavy flowering do not overfeed, or the plant will produce mostly leaves. The luminous blue flowers are almost constantly in bloom and attract bees. The seed capsule, containing one or two rounded seeds ,with an apex should be picked one by one when dry. They need only a little more drying to be stored.
Borage seeds throw true-to-type. Strict selection is not needed to maintain the quality of seed of the strain.

Broad beans are partly self-pollinated and partly cross-pollinated. Several hundred metres is a fair isolation distance to ensure purity if you happen to be growing more than one variety.
The first pods to form are best for seeds. They are to be found at the base and are larger than subsequent pods. Allow the pods to dry on the bush and choose those from the most vigorous individual plants. Such refined steps cannot be taken on a large scale where a whole field is combine-harvested and threshed.
Shell out the beans and dry on a rack until a bite on the seed will produce only a little mark. Thresh and store in a loose knit bag. The bean seeds will not need any winnowing.