For both the success of many finicky garden seeds and for economical reasons, Jennymarie Jemison of Joy Max Jardín says, “Spinach grows easily from seed, so it’s one I never buy as a transplant. For the price of one transplant, you can grow a whole season of baby spinach, gradually thinning a densely planted row of seeds as the seedlings grow in, eventually leaving a row spaced 4 inches apart from mature plants. A flower you must try from seed is the zinnia. I call it the ‘gateway drug’ of the flower garden. You’ll be hooked after one summer of endless, easy-to-grow blooms and they will attract pollinators for all your tomatoes as a bonus.”
The JMJ seed collection is curated with seed varieties that do well in Austin’s challenging conditions, and she includes instructions for when and how to plant them for the best results. She also shares info on how to collect seeds at the end of the season so you can plant them again next year – and then share with the Seed Savers and librarians. Below she shares three tips for gardeners wanting to start planting from and saving their own seeds. – Jessi Cape
1) When shopping for seeds, look for the words “open-pollinated” or “heirloom.” With both, you also need to research any cross-pollination that may occur between varieties and make sure you have enough space between them to keep them “coming true,” which means that the seed you collect will produce a plant that is “true” to the plant that produced it. Many specialty seeds are “F1” or “hybrid,” which shouldn’t be saved from your crop. Those seeds are often fantastic but they have been bred carefully for the desired result, pollinated by human intervention, and you cannot trust that those seeds will come true in the field. For that reason as well you should research your transplants if you want to save seeds from, say, a prized eggplant or shishito. Quite possibly they are F1 varieties and seeds saved from those plants will be less vigorous and impressive than their parents.
2) When starting seeds, make sure to read the entire seed packet carefully. Many times, they will tell you a germination time with a specific temperature, like 3-5 days at 80-85 degrees (zinnia). There are clues there for how to grow that seed so it germinates quickly. You can tell that it likes it hot, so if you tried to plant it in early spring, you’ll be waiting a long time for it to sprout outside and you’ll be a lot better off starting them inside on a heat mat under some grow lights until the days warm up. It also tells you that once it gets to the mid-70s outdoors, you can go ahead and sow directly in the ground outside because the days get warm very fast and those seeds will sprout in no time. Direct sowing really is ideal because it involves the least effort. All you really need to do is plant as close to that ideal temperature as possible, at the correct depth and spacing (info you’ll find on the seed packet), and then keep the soil moist and protected from critters until your seedlings get going.
3) When it’s time to start saving seeds toward the end of the season, stop watering your plant. Let it dry out and the seeds mature. Stop harvesting flowers or crops. Annual plants will then naturally start to prepare for their last stage of life, producing seeds. Food crops become inedible at this point, “bolting” and shooting up to flower and produce seed. Once the seed pods or petals containing the seeds are dry and the seeds fully formed, you can collect them and store them somewhere cool and dark for up to three years.
This article appears in April 22 • 2022.