Gardening – Preparing for the apocalypse!

As her mum packed away the groceries, my granddaughter asked if she was preparing for the apocalypse. 

Perhaps we could start preparing by saving our own seeds.

For centuries people guaranteed food year after year, regardless of world events, by saving their own seeds.

Save only open-pollinated, non-hybridised and non-GMO seed. Save seeds from the fruit, vegetables and flowers you enjoy the most. And start small with the easy seeds: beans, tomatoes, asparagus, parsnip, lettuce, sunflower, artichokes, and spaghetti squash. And flower seeds of marigold, calendula, and sweetpeas.

Choose vigorous, disease-free plants. Check regularly for seed development. As seeds ripen, they change colour often from greenish to brown or black, or in the case of asparagus, bright red.

So, let’s run through a few of the seeds that I save. Parsnips are top of the list; they are biennial which means they must be over-wintered before producing seeds their second season. After flowering, when the dried seeds are brown and crisp, I cut off the stalks and store them in brown paper bags, ready for autumn planting.

I keep an eye on the lettuce and let some varieties go to seed. Birds love the seeds, often stripping them as they ripen. I scatter seeds where I want them to grow, often transplanting some of the seedlings as they pop up. The seeds can also be stored in bags and, if you include some of the stalk, they will continue to ripen.

Beans I leave on the plant until the pods are dark brown and crispy. Once picked I shell them, picking the largest and plumpest, pop them in a plastic bag and into the freezer for three or four days to kill any bugs or weevils. Once out of the freezer I make sure they are very dry before storing either in glass jars or paper bags for spring planting.

With tomatoes I just squeeze seeds out of the ripe fruit onto paper towels and let them dry. Once paper is crispy dry, I store them and when planting just lay the paper strips into the soil. This year I grew the lovely big green tomatoes and had a bumper crop as the birds didn’t recognise, they were ripe!

I pick the sunflower seed heads and artichoke flower heads when they are ripe and store them in a cool dark place where the mice can’t get at them.

Children can have fun sprouting the pips from oranges, apples and lemons, as well as the seeds out of plums and peaches.