One of our gardening goals this year is to raise some heirloom variety seeds so that we can keep the seeds ourselves instead of buying them every year. When I looked at a regular gardening catalog, it was confusing as to which seeds are hybrids and which are not. Hybrid seeds can not be saved and planted again so I wanted to stay away from them. Instead I decided to order vegetable seeds that I knew would be easier to obtain and harvest the seeds from such as tomatoes, green beans, peppers, sweet corn and peas. We placed our order with Seed Savers. They have many interesting plants that I've never heard of before and it will be fun to try these new (old) varieties.
I was a little hesitant about placing my order before I completely understood about cross-pollination and how it may affect the plants but I went ahead and ordered anyway. When we received the seeds I was very happy to see a section on each envelope with instructions on how and where to plant the seeds so as to avoid cross-pollination. It also included instructions on how to save the seeds. A book we would recommend about this subject is Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth.
The next post should be about honeybees. E has a goal of starting a hive this year and has been busy researching. He'll post his findings soon.
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