Saving Pea and Bean Seeds
One of the biggest risks when saving seeds in
a diverse garden is unintentional hybridization. Say you're
growing two varieties of okra relatively close together, the way we did
last year. If you try to save the
seeds from those okra plants, bees will have moved pollen between
the two varieties, and you'll end up with a mixture of different types
of okra when you sprout your saved seeds. None of the offspring
of the cross-pollinated okra will look like either parent, and chances
are most of them will be substandard.
Luckily for us, some vegetables are primarily self-pollinating, so they
don't have the hybridization problem. Peas and beans are two of
the easiest self-pollinating varieties for beginning seed savers since
you can usually plant different varieties right next door to each other
and still have each variety breed true (meaning that the seeds sprout
into plants just like the parents.)
The actual process of saving pea and bean seeds is also simple.
Some people set aside a whole row just for the purpose, but I don't go
to all that trouble. I inevitably miss picking some pods on each
pea plant, and by the time I find them the pods are too woody and old
to be tasty. Alternatively, with my bush beans, I pick the first
heavy flush of beans, then let the next flush go to seed. In
either case, I let the pods ripen on the vine for a month or two until
the pods turn brown and dry up. Then I pick all of the dried
pods, shell out the peas and beans, and put them in a bowl or open jar
to finish drying for a few weeks. When I stumble across the seeds
again, they're ready to be sealed in homemade paper packets, or just
sealed into a canning jar. Don't forget to label the variety and
year!
| This post is part of our Seed Saving lunchtime series.
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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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