How to save seeds from Asian greens
Although neither of the Asian
greens I tried this spring held together once the heat hit, Mark and I
both loved the taste of tokyo
bekana and want to
try it in the fall garden. I wasn't about to spend another $3 for
a tiny package that barely seeds one bed, though, so I decided to let
the spring crop go to seed and collect the bounty.
Asian greens definitely
fit into the easy
seed-saving category
since the pods dry on the plant and hang around for weeks until you
remember them. Snip off the brown seed heads when they are
brittle, then thresh them any way you feel like
it. Since Mom recently gave me this great pestle, it didn't take
me long to pound the seed pods into submission.
Shake
your container gently and the heavier seeds will settle to the bottom,
allowing you to lift most of the chaff off with your fingers.
Then blow into your box to finish the winnowing
process --- the light pieces of pod will float away while the heavy
seeds will stay put. I didn't winnow all that carefully since I'm
just going to be putting the seeds and debris back into the ground, but
you could also pass the seeds through a screen (like a flour sifter) if
you wanted them to be cleaner.
The one potential sticking
point when saving seeds from brassicas is that many will
cross-pollinate. However, Asian greens share their species (Brassica
rapa) only with
turnips and with rape (the plants that are used to produce canola
oil). As long as you don't have any other Asian green varieties,
turnips, or rape plants in bloom at the same time as your select
variety, you can save the seeds with impunity.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I wish I'd thought of this -- we went from snow to heat with no real springtime in between and my gai lan in particular bolted. Although I have to say, I did really well with Asian greens under my wee hoop houses early in the season -- I had komatsuna, gai lan, and baby bok choi under plastic in March and April when everything outside was still frozen. Then I made kimchee out of the bolted greens -- still fermenting in the basement. We'll see how it comes out.