Last year was our first garden at the new house. We are renters and are lucky in the fact that our landlord hates yard work - he has been really wonderful in giving us free run of the front yard which is quite a substantial size. Because of this we turned the entire east portion into a raised bed garden. We did fairly well, but we also made some mistakes in not knowing quite how the light moved in our yard-in all honesty I should have paid more attention. Some of our plants like our tomatoes which were in a full sun location did amazingly well, while others like our kale which hardly got any sunlight due to a large oak tree- ended up stunted.
With spring approaching we will be pulling up the remaining lawn on the east portion of the lawn and simply making a full size garden from this portion of the yard (I will document this as we start the project). I have already made a list of vegetables and herbs which I will be growing in our Pacific Northwest zone 5 garden which will be mostly root vegetables, leafy greens, and medicinal herbs - not to mention one hot housed tobacco plant for a friend of ours.
In all the excitement of simply having a garden last year, I failed to do one very important things - Save Seeds. I have never saved seeds and have always just purchased the organic variety of various veg for the next garden - as I have learned, this is much to my detrament.
This months Urban Farm magazine had a really interesting little side article which I thought to share with you in regard to saving seeds, and how plants change according to their environment, passing this unspoken knowledge to the next generation (seed).
Saving Seeds:
"You're Really doing yourself a disservice if you're not saving seeds. Each plant becomes acclimated to your soil, to your microclimate and to your space spacifically, and will produce seed that will be rislient in your specific conditions.
The use of only open- pollinated seeds and learning to save seed are important elements to increasing yield overtime. Hybrid seeds produce plants that are either sterile or untrue to type. Open-pollinated seeds will produce plants that will be pollinated by insects or by wind and will produce viable, true seed. Cross pollination is possible, seed saving is actually less cimplicated in urban areas than rural areas. Corn, for example is wind pollinated. Its more difficult to get far enough away from other corn crops that can contaminate your seed in rural areas, than it is in urban areas.
Each year, successful plants in a garden make seeds with slightly different characteristics. Plants adapt to their environment. Seed grown in a certain locale will be genetically different than seed from any other area. See saved in a certain area becomes tailired to the area's specific conditions, leading to greater plant vitality. Seed saving not only increases the resilience of your plants, but it also saves money and fosters genetic diversity in our seed supply." - Urban Farm January/February 2013 pg 24 Biointensive Article.
