The Organic Gardener’s Handbook by Frank Tozer

Of all the gardening guides I have ever found, The Organic Gardener’s Handbook tends to be one of the most broad in its scope and specific in its gardening insights. This book, written by Frank Tozer is a winner in its expansive knowledge, its engaging bouts of humor and its helpful charts and guides. Tozer covers so much general knowledge from experienced gardeners that it is quite amazing that any one person could compile such a book.

A few crop rotation options

Rarely do I renew any of the library books that I check out, but I have already renewed this book twice. It covers when, where, how, how much, why and every other question related to seeds, vegetables, gardens, tools and so forth. It covers intensive and less intensive gardening. It covers the many options in rotating crops and in planning out how to plant a garden. Because each area of the country experiences different weather patterns, Tozer finds ways to give advice while still making it universal. He does not say this works for everything, but instead says if your conditions are dry, hot, wet, cold etc. then you might want to consider doing specific things to ensure a successful garden.

Crops for different situations

Planting by height

Frank is quite funny at times. At one point he states that you can drop off your slugs at a competitor’s garden while in another section he mentions the use of compressed wood as one possible material for composting. He then goes on to say that he doesn’t know why anyone would think of composting compressed wood and doesn’t know why he is even writing it!

Spring Planting guide

The various guides that Tozer includes are quite helpful. He explores many facets of crop rotation, planting by size, direct sowing vs. transplanting, how to prepare transplants and when to plant crops in the spring vs. in the fall. By consulting charts and guides, a gardener can find ways to expand the season and grow things that work well for their climate.

Fall Planting Guide

For those who are new to gardening, as well as those who have established crops, The Organic Gardener’s Handbook provides a wealth of knowledge that can be of benefit to anyone who cares to read.

Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener by Joseph Tychonievich

For those of you who would really not want to learn all the fine details of why vegetable breeding works or would just rather not read a really long book about vegetable breeding Plant Breeding for the HomeGardener by Joseph Tychonievich is just for you.

 

 

This book is great for those who do not want long reads.

One of the first things that I look for in a plant breeding book is if the author includes specific factors to select vegetables for when seed saving. In one chapter,  Tychonievich discusses selective traits for vegetables such as beans, cabbage, corn, lettuce, squash and tomatoes. The trait that most interested me in this chapter has to do with tomatoes. Tomato acidity and sweetness are noted as a few traits, along with an interesting trait known as umami. Umami, a meaty glutamate that tomatoes produce, is one of the things that make them so popular. I wonder if there is any simple method by which a gardener can test umami like you can test acidity and sweetness?

Though PlantBreeding for the Home Gardener is fun and easy to read,  it also contains some more advanced techniques and thoughts that are worth learning more about. In the chapter entitled “Beyond the Backyard – Advanced Techniques” Tychonievich references ideas such as polyploidy and embryo rescue.

Polyploidy refers to the genetic makeup of a specific plant. A diploid has 2 copies of genetic code while a tetraploid has 4 copies of a genetic code. Sometimes crosses between diploids and tetraploids are possible and sometimes they are not. As plants with different genes exhibit different growth patterns and flowering crossing diploids and tetraploids can sometimes result in very interesting (and sometimes more productive) results. However, crossing diploids and tetraploids can sometimes result in triploids, which are often sterile.

 

 

My garden is currently growing Jerico lettuce
which was bred for heat-tolerance and not for beauty!

 

Sometimes when making a cross between two similar species of plants the embryo of the seed aborts, or falls off the plant, before maturing. Gardeners can save the embryo of a difficult cross by a technique referred to as embryo rescue. According to Tychonievich, embryo rescue is “one of the most powerful techniques for getting new hybrids between species”. The method for rescuing an embryo requires the gardener to remove the seed embryo from the plant then place it in a substrate that enables the embryo to grow into a small plant, which can then be grown to seed. The substrate often consists of a gelling agent (such as agar), a small percentage of sucrose (to feed the embryo), specific salts (Murashige & Skoog (ms) basal salt mixture) that can be bought online. Tools and recipes for embryo rescue can be found online.

 

What interests me most about embryo rescue is not to apply this technology and methods to making new hybrids but in saving the rare seed that we already posses. Sometimes old seed has a very difficult time germinating and once it does germinate the growth of the seedling can be incredibly slow. If the gardener has very little seed and the seed is rare, it may be worth looking into embryo rescue as a means to provide nourishment to the seedling. Later stage embryo rescue techniques could be used with such seed to imbibe increased vigor by feeding weak seedlings until they at least push off their seed coating. In one online source, the research geneticist Sandra Reed notes that later stage embryo development could occur in a simple inorganic medium (agar) supplemented with 2-3% sucrose (powdered sugar).

In summary, Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener has something for everyone. The majority of this book contains ideas that are presented in a very straightforward manner while some of its more advanced concepts provide inspiration for further research and development by the lowly gardener.

The Organic Seed Grower – A Farmer’s Guide to Vegetable Seed Production by John Navazio

In writing this book review I wish to warn readers that this heavy duty in-depth seed cultivation guide is not for the faint of heart. However, if you are truly serious about producing high quality vegetable seed, this is the book for you. The Organic Seed Grower is a straightforward guide for those who want to learn to prepare vegetables for winter storage and for those who are seeking to understand the nuances and methods of vegetable seed selection. This book is devoted more to seed selection and maintaining the integrity of existing varieties than to breeding new vegetable varieties.

The Organic Seed Grower should be shared with the world (=

As The Organic Seed Grower describes cultivating each vegetable variety, it provides the common name of each variety and includes information on topics such as the crop species, life cycle, mating system, pollination mode, ideal temperature for pollination and seed formation, reproductive cycle, row spacing, the isolation distance required between cultivars of the crop and other crops/plants that will cross with.

Each chapter also details the reproductive biology, the life cycle of the crop in the field, the harvest of seeds, the climatic and geographic requirements, growing of the seed crop including the various growing methods that can be used and the characteristics that can be selected for to maintain and improve the genetic stock of the variety.
 

Healthy carrot foliage leads to healthy carrot roots

Additional sections in this book elaborate on characteristics of biennial seed crops, maintenance of varietal integrity, adequate population size, seed crop climates, seed borne diseases and seed stock basics.

I especially enjoyed reading the sections on melons, carrots, beets, radishes and cucumbers. There is a chapter that includes Asian greens, but there is no chapter about artichokes.

One thing I found interesting in my reading was comparing the differences between carrots and radishes. I found it fascinating that the section on carrots tells how carrots can be selected for forking, shoulder type, cracking, root growth patterns and taste – while radishes can only be selected for root size, shape, color, leaf size, shape and seedling vigor. Perhaps the major problem we have with many of the radish varieties out there is that they are not being selected by taste!

Will we ever find a truly good tasting radish?

While reading The Organic Seed Grower I learned some new terms that I put into my own words. Here are six of the new words I am working to incorporate into my gardening vocabulary:

Cutting a cheek: You can cut off a cheek, or side, of a beet or other root crop to determine root color.

Stecklings: Roots that are stored to produce a seed crop.

By storing, or at least pulling carrot, beets, or other roots out to look at their skin, growth habits, color and taste the gardener can better control the genetic traits of his seed. When using this method, the majority of the vegetative growth (leaves and stems) down to the apical bud are removed to keep the root from transpiring water out of wilting leaves. The carrot (root) itself can then be evaluated and stored over the winter or culled (see below) for specific traits. The remaining carrots can be replanted in the ground even after taste has been determined by cutting and eating the bottom of each carrot.

Genetic Drift: The degree of deviance a population of a specific vegetable variety can experience if routine selection and culling of rouge or undesirable plants takes place.

Cull: To pull out or eliminate plants from a population because of a specific undesirable genetic trait or inferior quality.

Rogue: (verb) To remove inferior or defective plants or seedlings from a crop. This term loosely relates to the rogue plants that are being removed.

Lodging: Lodging refers to the tendency of a stem of a plant falling over. Lodging is an undesirable characteristic because when a plant falls over it can make the harvest unmarketable, if not unusable.
 

As a strong inbreeder, peas require minimal space to maintain

Here are some thoughts I have had since reading this book:

As with any good book, The Organic Seed Grower left me with almost as many questions and thoughts as it provided answers. For example, “could cutting a cheek possibly be done with other vegetable crops, such as spring radishes, to improve taste?” Also, “Using the steckling approach could a farmer use a brix meter to select a sweeter carrot variety?

Another thought I had was that cutting a cheek would not be the best method for determining carrot color because the skin of a carrot can exhibit a very different color than its core. Breeders that are selecting for carrot color would have a lot of work to do in preparing stecklings and tasting the carrots to determine the optimal carrot flavor, texture, and color.

My new found knowledge will definitely aid in my selection of better carrot varieties.

Gardening When it Counts by Steve Solomon

Should you want to be a self sufficient gardener and you have some time on your hands, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Gardening When it Counts by Steve Solomon. This book does a good job overviewing many of the techniques required to be able to live off the land, as long as your climate produces a moderate amount of rainfall. Though I do not agree with everything Steve Solomon says, I feel that he has very helpful thoughts on various subjects of gardening and the general ideas in his book are good.

A Definite Good Read, but filled with opinions

The general premise of Solomon’s book is that there may be a time in the future in which Gardeners are faced with an inadequate source of irrigated water and/or fertilizer but will most likely have access to seed and land. One of the chapters that covers this subject, entitled “Watering… and Not” includes a very helpful table with plant spacing (based on average rainfall) and plenty of helpful ideas when planning out growing vegetables with minimal water.

Along the same lines, another chapter entitled “What to Grow and How to Grow It” contains pictures of roots on a 1 foot grid from Weaver’s Root Development of Vegetable Crops. These root pictures are very helpful to gardeners because they show how to grow crops based on how their roots grow and the amount of space each root system requires. The “What to Grow” chapter also included some very helpful hints on growing, including what to expect from specific vegetable varieties and some information on inbreeding depression.

To refute a point Solomon makes about seed companies - my lettuce (lower right) is very strong viable
 seed from SESE while my beets (top right and barely visable) seem to be growing poorly from seed sold
by Territorial. Both packets were planted the first season after receiving seed packets and the beets received
 more sun. The germination of the beets was poor and I will have to work on this beet variety to keep it going.
Territorial has sold me some high quality seed in the past. I use this illustration only to make my point.

There is a chapter that highlights making a good balance of nutrients in the soil and another chapter that highlights the use of raised beds based on berms rather than on borders. There is a chapter about seeds and growing seed as well as a chapter about composting.

Overall, if you have read and enjoyed any of Carol Deppe’s books or are interested in some basic fundamentals of sound gardening – then this is the book for you. Even though I did not agree with a few of the things Solomon wrote (raised rather than lowered gardens for dry climates and his negative views on Southern Exposure Seed Exchange) I would have to say that the book had some good ideas that were based on years of experience in a couple climates.

Update: I just found you can access an ebook edition that has some of the pages - if you would like to preview it before you dedicate any finances to this text.

Gardening for Geeks by Christy Wilhelmi

Occasionally I will encounter a gardening book that will present completely new or detailed information that is not found in many other places. But for the most part, when I pick up a gardening book, I often find the book catalogues the ideas presented by others in various books and publications rather than introduce a new concept. Although Gardening for Geeks by Christy Wilhelmi fits much more into the second category than the first, it is still worth a read. Much of what I read in this book, although compiled from other works, included some good summaries of already existing reading material.

 

It was definitely worth looking through this book.

 

Even though many of the gardening methods presented in this book, including square-foot gardening, are really good sometimes I wonder how much they get what happens in my region, such as the high potential for insects and disease to completely wipe out a bed of lettuce or tomato plants. It is not that writers of gardening publications are purposefully misguiding readers, but when you live in an extreme climate it can be easy to feel that garden book authors just don’t get it. That being said, some of the biointensive methods, such as the French Intensive, hexigonal planting  and the 60:30:10 method really interested me. Even without knowing much about the French intensive method before digging my 24 inch deep mostly compost beds, it seems as if I am doing many of the same things that the French intensive method promotes.

The most helpful bit of information I learned about was from a book called How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons. According to Jeavons (as cited by Wilhelmi) a gardener can make their garden much more sustainable if they grow utilizing a 60:30:10 formula for sustainability. The premise of this sustainability formula is to have the land produce food for both the gardener and the garden. Apparently it should be able to produce enough food for one person by utilizing only 4,000 square feet of garden space. The way this formula works is to commit 60% of garden space to crops that return large amounts of carbon and nitrogen back into the soil such as grains, fava beans and cover crops to create mostly biomass to be composted and some food. At the same time, 30% of the garden should be designated for high-calorie crops, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips and Jerusalem Artichokes. Lastly, Jeavons says that 10% of the garden space/time can be devoted to tomatoes, peppers, squash, lettuce, carrots, etc.

 

My high-calorie sweet potato crop knows no bounds as it grows into the alley. (=

While I have slowly moved towards a method like John Jeavons’ biointensive method I never thought that it could be related to biomass. Many of the 60 and 30% crops deserve more time and room in the garden because they are much less work for the organic gardener in relation to pests and disease than because they “environmentally friendly”. Though most intensive gardeners may scoff at the idea of dedicating so much of their plots to corn and potatoes, perhaps they will decide to raise more grain and high-calorie crops when times get tough and they require a garden that is more self-sufficient.

 

The Roots of My Obsession by Thomas C. Cooper

Due to the demands of my busy schedule and the occasional setbacks that gardening presents I have frequently been forced to stop and ask myself, “Why am I doing all this work to keep these plants alive?” Even after improving my gardening techniques to decrease the maintenance my garden requires I still wonder why I do it.  I recently discovered that I am not alone in my thoughts when I found a book devoted to why other people garden, entitled The Roots of My Obsession.

A fun read that is suitable for those with a short attention span. =)

 

My general experience with the book was good. As you would expect, the narrative from each of the 30 authors is so diverse that it keeps the book fairly engaging throughout. The main theme that many of the gardeners repeated was that, at some time (after having some major setback with their gardening) they decided to persevere and overcome their deficiencies. Even with all of my setbacks, these fellow gardeners have provided me with hope that, even as a slow learner, if I keep planting and trying I will eventually learn enough to grow plants well.

Having worked in the soil for a few years, I could really relate some of the quotes from The Roots of My Obsession. One author, Claire Sawyers wrote said that, she often picked places that were most suitable for growing vegetables. A plot of land suitable for growing vegetables was definitely one of the criteria for me when looking at buying the house that my family currently lives in. Another gardener, Margaret Roach noted that “the root of ‘humility’ comes from the Latin humus for ‘earth’ or ‘ground’”. I could relate with this because working in and learning from my garden always adds an element of humility to my life. The last quote I really liked was by Anna Pavord, who stated that “a good garden delights more senses than any other art. You can smell it, touch it, listen to it, look at it, eat it.” I could follow along with Ms. Pavord all the way until she said you could “hear it”. Perhaps I can hear the wind whistling through my plants, but most of the time I consider it a problem if I can hear birds, caterpillars, or mice munching down on my produce. I do however agree that the gardening experience is definitely one that engages many senses at a time.

Overall, The Roots of My Obsession turned out to be a pretty fun read. By compiling this book the author, Thomas Cooper, provides a multifaceted perspective on each individual’s gardening experience. It is definitely a good book for those who, like me, ponder upon why they garden.

 

Fertile Valley Seeds

Carol Deppe, the renowned author of The Resilient Gardener and Breeding Your Own Vegetable Varieties just released her 2013 catalogue from her small seed company (Fertile Valley Seeds). She runs the company once each year to sell off any excess seed she produces. So what does Carol have in her 2013 catalogue?

For squash she sells a supersweet Delicata, a Sweet Meat (C. maxima) squash and a Costata Romanesco summer drying squash. She also sells a very hardy multi-purpose flint corn variety called Cascade Ruby-Gold. The beans she sells include a Gaucho bush bean, a Black Coco bush bean, a Hannan popping garbanzo bean and a Beefy Resilient Grex bush bean. The Grex has a fascinating story of a cross that I never knew was possible. Carol also sells some Kale, a tasty romaine variety, a multi-purpose radish, an Indian Spinach, an edible Amaranth, and a Oregon Giant Sugar pea.


Carol Deppe developed the Hannan (Garbanzo) Popbean

For full access to Carol Deppe's catalogue you just need to email her a request for a copy of it. Her contact information is located on her website. She only sells her excess seeds once a year, so if you even think you might be interested make sure you email her. Last year I made the mistake of waiting a week to place my order and she ran out of seed before she could get to my order.





Founding Gardeners

While there are many books that can be categorized as either “informational” or “inspirational” there are very few books that are both. I found Andrea Wulf’s Founding Gardeners to be both informational and inspirational in every way. Wulf tells the story of how various gardens and farms shaped the life of those who signed the constitution. These gardens not only provided inspiration for the founding fathers, but also taught these men to be good stewards of their land as they looked forward towards the future of what America would become. As the author notes, “It’s impossible to understand the making of America without looking at the founding fathers as farmers and gardeners”.



Founding Gardeners is a great book!



Inspiration for gardening came to the founding fathers in many ways. I was surprised to find that as Jefferson and Adams sought for inspiration for their gardens while touring English gardens, they found these ornate gardens were filled with mostly American, rather than English, plants. This not only gave these men ideas in how they might use native plants to design their gardens back home, but also somehow encouraged their desire to establish the new nation.



Later, after the United States became more segmented and disjointed as a nation, the founding fathers turned to gardens to help them ease the tensions they worked to unite the nation during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Apparently, after the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were deadlocked on the decision of how congress would be organized, a group of them took a morning off to visit John Bartram’s nursery. After visiting the nursery, where they saw plants from all thirteen colonies growing among each other, these same constitutional delegates were able to return to their duties with a renewed desire to approve the Connecticut Compromise, the plan in which enabled for the establishment of the two houses of congress we know today. Though I knew that gardens could be inspirational and a place to relieve myself from the stress of everyday life, I had no idea how important a walk through the garden could be to those men who founded the United States.



One crop the colonists grew was wheat.



Many of the founding fathers looked at their farms and gardens as a reflection on themselves and sought to do all they could to care for their land. They not only cared about their land, but recognized that it needed to be replenished to remain healthy. Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison all sought to incorporate amendments such as manure, seaweed and river silt to their lands in an attempt to keep it fertile and healthy. Though Washington seemed to be the foremost expert on utilizing manure, after seeing the effects of successive tobacco farming on Virginia’s depleted soils Jefferson, Adams and Madison were quick to follow. Near the end of the book Madison gives a landmark address where he identifies the relationship between trees and healthy air, contour farming and erosion protection and emphasizes the importance of giving as much back to the soil as possible. The founding fathers cared about their land because they believed that as each farmer took care of his land, the crops would support him in protecting his rights in America’s new nation.

As the founding fathers looked forward to the future of the United States they were encouraged by the opportunity for growth that expanding westward provided. Each new area of the country that was explored provided the founding fathers with hope and encouragement as they learned about the many flowers, fruit, vegetables and trees now available to them. The westward expansion also provided for the expansion of the Agrarian, or farming, class. As fertile land became available, it provided the opportunity for individuals without fields of his own to claim his or her freedom by establishing farms in new territories. This was the hope of many of the founding fathers – that as citizens of the United States lived off the land they would be able to retain their inalienable rights and remain a free people.



I am grateful for the very ground I garden on



To anyone who enjoys history, gardening, or both I would highly recommend Founding Gardeners. This book is well written, informative, engaging and inspirational. It really helped me to understand how the enjoyment found in gardens could provide the founding fathers with a sense of inspiration, responsibility and a hope of the future of America. Having read this book, I am imbued with greater respect for the small seeds I plant and the soil I turn in my humble garden.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Because of the very limited time I have to devote to sitting down and reading I decided I could listen to CDs about gardening while driving around for my job. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver is about a family who sought to live for 1 year off of mostly local and home-grown food in the Appalachian area. Other than the author’s somewhat irritated agnostic views on the religious, her ability to border on becoming preachy, and her extremely long-winded descriptions of her thoughts about her experiences, this book was alright. The book includes fascinating descriptions of how Kingsolver’s family grew a large garden, gathered food, and how they raised livestock for their own consumption. I greatly enjoyed descriptions of her family – especially the excitement that her youngest daughter had for the miracle of life. The one animal this book describes in detail is the turkey, and the text would be most helpful for anyone who would like to raise turkeys for themselves.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was occasionally interesting.

From time to time, the book becomes quite preachy – though occasionally the facts are a little interesting. Looking back on my experience with Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I would say that this book is not for everyone. At times the book can really drag and I would not recommend it to anyone who possesses no interest in how a family could live for a year off of locally-produced food. If you are planning on buying a farm that you plan to live off of or if you would like to create a self-sustaining colony of turkeys, then this book might be for you.

The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants



While looking at some other books about gardening and vegetable breeding, I happened upon this book by Jane S. Smith. It tells about Luther Burbank, a plant breeder who lived the majority of his life in California around the turn of the 20th Century. Burbank was given the opportunity to follow his passion and, despite how others feel about him, helped to show that, with concerted effort, one can make a living breeding plants. Although parts of the book were laboriously boring, other parts were quite interesting.

What Luther Burbank is widely known for is for the developing of the Russet Burbank potato – the most common potato in the U.S. He happened to find a seed pod growing on another potato variety and, by saving the seeds and planting them selected a potato variety that produced, and kept well, peeled easily, was decently dry, and happened to be resistant to potato blight. One other really fun story was when Luther Burbank grew out thousands of plum trees in a single season by grafting them to almond seedlings.



A very interesting read



Of all the quotes from this book the one I related to the most comes from an address Burbank gave to the American Pomological Society in 1895 on “How to Produce New Fruits and Flowers”. During his address he noted that we must, “listen patiently, quietly and reverently to the lessons, one by one, which Mother Nature has to teach… she conveys her truth only to those who are passive and receptive”.

As I came close to the end of this book I thought about whether Luther Burbank was a good or bad for long-term gardening. I believe he was both. He made it possible for seed breeders to make a living by supporting patients on plants and by hybridizing plants. What large companies have done with this have been to work harder to protect current varieties than actual help society with the varieties they produce. The unintended consequence of hybridization is losing seed stock to varieties that may grow better- for only one season. Another negative consequence of Burbanks efforts are that, in creating new and better varieties, no one is willing to preserve the seed of old varieties that may enable the future survival of many plant species.

The positive consequence of Burbanks work is that we now have, from his efforts, many beautiful flowers as well as big, flavorful fruit. Additionally, many Americans have access to fruits and vegetables from around the world that were introduced by Burbank himself. Luther Burbank defined what it means to be a high-quality plant breeder and worked hard to ensure that many of his creations were both a source of nourishment and beauty for society.

The Seed Underground by Janisse Ray

To prepare properly for my Thanksgiving, I decided to find another gardening book. It required extensive searching through Pima County library’s catalogue to find a book that would hold my interest over the holiday. All of Thanksgiving morning I was painstakingly cooking a turkey while preparing candied yams, mashed potatoes and two purple sweet potato pies (including the gluten-free crusts) from scratch. Once company had left and I was finally able to relax I was at last rewarded with another kind of meal I could really dig into: Gardening stories.

This book was a great read!

The Seed Underground: a growing revolution to save food is a narrative told by Janisse Ray which includes her experiences in seeking to save vegetable varieties. Many of her chapters include the experiences of other farmers and food growers seeking to save vegetable varieties from extinction. Additionally, the book includes some helpful information about seed saving, growing specific vegetables, and some very insightful thoughts about how the business of vegetable growing and seeds are treated within the United States.

From the previous knowledge I had gained while reading Seed to Seed and Breed Your Own vegetable Varieties, I only needed to skim the The Seed Underground chapters that  are devoted to planting, growing, and saving seeds to find anything I may have not already learned. The intention of this book, however, is not to provide helpful gardening information. The real substance of the book is gleaned from Ray’s narrative - which explains how vegetable varieties are being taken from us and what individual gardeners are doing about it. As I read the experiences of each gardener, I was able to relate with them, as I too seek for the best veggie varieties to grow in my area and work to adapt my plants for my climate and needs.

Of all the stories Janisse told, I related most to the Ms. Fishman, who the author called the “Sweet Potato Queen.  Ms. Fishman had saved many varieties of sweet potatoes to both preserve the varieties and in order to feed her family. She noted that she didn’t grow many other vegetables – like okra – because her family didn’t enjoy eating them. Additionally, I thought it was neat to read about the gentleman who has over 50 varieties of Jerusalem Artichoke. What saddened me was to read about how many different varieties of vegetable are being lost to the world – often forever. My heart really went out to Ray when she talked to a tomato grower about her problems with growing tomatoes in a southern climate and when she felt perplexed that publically funded universities were researching hybrid tomato varieties which in turn support the profits of private companies.

All in all I really enjoyed Janisse Ray’s The Seed Underground. It is definitely worth a read and worth applying what this book seeks to inspire its readers to do – to save endangered seed from extinction and sustain seed varieties in your area - so that when the day comes that others want to control your life you can say, “No thanks- I’ll choose to keep my freedom by growing my own food!”

Seed to Seed

One of the things I enjoy about gardening is the vast amount of knowledge needed to grow just one vegetable. It is truly miraculous that, despite all of our blunders as gardeners, a plant will sprout, grow and - at times - flourish. The last book I read by Carol Deppe about Breeding Your Own Vegetable Varieties sited the book Seed to Seed as having information that I really wanted to know about growing melons. Seed to Seed turned out to have all of that information and so much more!

 The book Seed to Seed is written by Suzanne Ashworth in collaboration with the Seed Saver’s Exchange. The first part of the book is a wonderful read that overviews the importance of seed saving, explains how botanical classification works, elaborates on pollination and flower structure, gives ideas on maintaining varietal purity as well as proper techniques for cleaning and storing seeds.

The second (larger) section of the book goes over all the major vegetable families and gives information about many common and rare vegetable varieties. Each plant section contains an introduction to the plant, its botanical classification, a section on pollination crossing and isolation, a section on seed production harvest and processing, and seed statistics. The individual plant sections also contain recommendations from master gardeners in each region of the United States. These gardeners suggest appropriate planting dates and often elaborate on how to care for the plant in the specific area.

So, here is a little of what I learned from reading this book:

A perfect flower contains both the male and female parts of the plant in one place and is able to pollinate itself. An example of a perfect flower is a tomato flower.



Ozark Pink Tomato Blossoms mutate in Tucson's late-summer heat



A monoecious plant is one that has two separate flowers for male and female on the same plant. Two examples of monecious plants are melons and cucumbers.



Cucumbers and melons exhibit monecious flowers



A dioecious plant is one where each plant has either male or female flowers and both are needed to pollinate. An example of this is spinach.

 

Dioecious  female spinach requires a male spinach plant



 A self-incompatible flower is one in which requires bees or people to pollinate it, as the flower is perfect but will not form seeds if pollinated by itself. An example of a self-incompatible flower is broccoli or cauliflower.

 

Brocolli flowers are self-incompatible



Additional fun things I learned included the word “rouge”, which means to remove off-type plants and guidelines for using hot water to kill pathogen on seeds. Reading about the vegetable varieties made me eager to try out some new vegetable varieties such as the Jelly Melon.



Seed saving is a valuable skill worth developing!


Saving seeds from your garden can allow you to become more self-sufficient. Perhaps your local nursery won’t be as happy about you producing your own seed, but your finances will, and along the way you can develop skills that will enable you to be prepared for things to come. As I harvest my own seed my hope is that, if I had to, I could support my family from the food I grow.