In my opinion, learning to save seed from your own home-grown crops is one of the most crucial skills to become competent in! Don’t just take my word for it, here are some of the ways that saving your own seed can benefit you.
Saving seeds from your veggies is an investment in the future
Economy – You will save money because you don’t have to buy new seed each year, you will have a guaranteed seed source from your own produce.
Start out with open pollinated corn and you can grow from your own seed
Genetic Improvement: adapting them to your environment – By saving seeds from the most prolific, most flavourful, earliest producing or whatever you value, over time you can develop varieties adapted to your specific growing conditions.
Improving Seed diversity and security – by growing heirloom varieties and specialist vegetables not favoured by mainstream horticulture you will be helping to preserve the genetic diversity of our vegetable heritage
Beans are an easy crop to save seeds from and a great way to start a seed saving journey
Resilience - You will improve your own food security and guarantee your capacity to produce your own food. Remember during the Covid out break and resulting shutdown, there was an upsurge in people wanting to grow their own food and vegetable seeds became scarce.
Reduce reliance on commercial seed suppliers – there are a limited number of commercial seed companies in Australia. For example, the most common commercial seed companies around here include: Country Value; D.T Brown, Mr Fothergills, Johnsons Seeds and Garden Starters. All of these seed companies are based out of South Windsor (NSW) and are owned directly or through Mr Fothergills seeds by Harwood Capital Management Ltd which is based in London, UK. Oh, and Yates (another Australian seed company) are owned by a Japanese paint company.
If you do buy commercial seed, check the packet first
Chemical Free seed – some seeds such as radishes, some cucumbers and sweet corn are treated with fungicides such as thiram prior to being packaged by commercial seed companies.
Increase Biodiversity – allowing vegetables to flower provides food for and encourages pollinators to hang around at your place.
Brassica flowers attract the bees
Improved germination – seeds cannot get any fresher than when home produced, and fresh seeds have better germination rates.
It is really worthwhile to learn how to save, clean and store the seeds from your own home grown crops for all of the above reasons, but also because it is fun, and very satisfying to be able to feed your family and friends from seed which you have saved from your own produce!
