The Farm Guide

Every spring you head out to the garden store to buy seeds. Why? Don’t plants make their own? Isn’t that, from a vegetable’s point of view, the entire point? But instead of using what the plants provide, you go through the hassle and expense of buying little envelopes that may only have six seeds in them. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way. Many seeds can be saved from the plants in your garden and used the following spring.

Of course, not every plant’s seed can be saved, so growers need to keep a few things in mind. First, hybrid plants won’t produce viable seeds. Similarly, plants that are pollinated openly are subject to mixing with other plant varieties and producing, again, worthless seeds. The latter scenario can be avoided by planting different varieties long distances apart, but this is impossible in the average suburban garden. For more advice about which plants to harvest seeds from, talk to your local garden expert. Beans, carrots, corn, onions, and heirloom or native varieties of peppers, tomatoes, and melons are all excellent candidates for saving. The seeds of most herbs or ornamental flowers also work well.

In addition to finding the right plants, growers must guard against harvesting diseased seeds. Many pathogens can be transmitted to seeds, and plants grown from them will have short, unproductive lives. Also, avoid picking produce that is under or over ripe. Usually, fruit that is ripe for eating will not have mature seeds, but waiting too long can cause seeds to spoil. Again, garden shop experts can help you determine when a certain fruit is healthy and ripe.

Harvest seeds at the very end of the growing season. Most plants cease producing fruit once a few seeds have reached maturity, so pick produce for eating first and for saving last.

Now that you have a few plants to harvest seeds from, you’re probably wondering how to keep them viable all winter long. It isn’t enough to stick a tomato in the refrigerator and hope- seeds must be prepared and stored properly. Fortunately, the processes for doing this are simple.

The easiest way to prepare a seed for storage is to dry it. Simply place the harvested seeds on a screen and allow them to dry out, blowing of the chaff as it separates from the seeds. This is the method of choice for bean, pea, and flower seeds, all of which are fairly dry to begin with.

Seeds from tomatoes, melons, and other fleshy pods are too difficult to separate from their pulp for the dry method to be effective. Instead, use a wet process. Crush the fruit lightly and put it in a jar or bucket with a little bit of warm water. Stir the mash occasionally and allow it to ferment for a few days- four should be enough. By this time, all of the good seeds should sink to the bottom of the jar while the bad seeds, pulp, and other undesirables float to the top. Simply pour off the gunk and dry whatever is left. Since fermentation actually kills viruses and separates good seeds from bad ones, you will be left with nothing but strong, viable starters for next years plants.

Once the seeds are dry, put them in a container that will keep them that way all winter. Glass jars, envelopes, and plastic baggies are all perfectly good options, but unless you like surprises, be sure to write the type of seed on each container. Put the seeds in the freezer for two days to kill off anything that might damage them, and then move the seeds to some place dry and cool. Refrigerators are great, as is a shelf in a cool pantry.

Although you will not be able to grow your entire garden from saved seeds, it can be a good way to keep heirloom and native plants going from year to year. Just a little work at the end of the season can save your wallet and your nerves from a trip to the seed store.

“There is nothing like a garden fresh cucumber.”

“Have you ever had a string bean plucked right from the garden? The taste is indescribable.”

“We used to pick the tomatoes, and take big juicy bites out of them, before even stepping out of the garden!”

I think I say these statements every time I cut into a store bought vegetable. Well, this year, I won’t have to wish for fresh veggies, I can actually eat them...right from my own backyard. My husband and I are ready to garden! But I won’t be going about this blindly. I come from a family of green thumbs. My aunt is a gardening extraordinaire. She lives just outside of Boston, in a very urban area, but has a garden that is about 12 ft. x 20 ft. in her front yard. I always smile at the opposing sites when we visit - my aunt’s flourishing green nirvana, with a backdrop of endless storefronts, cars parked everywhere, and a plethora of traffic signs. But her veggies flourish and her flowers brighten the gray street - and I swear that when people are in the middle of that garden, you can barely hear or see them through all of the greenery.

Mention a farm and images of great wheeled machines rolling across a field spring up. After two centuries of evolution, tractors have become a farmer’s most reliable tool and an icon of American agriculture. As inventors around the world slowly put ideas together, farm machinery grew from a useful novelty to a necessary workhorse. New inventions regularly replaced older ways as better methods and products pushed tractors to a position of unequaled importance on the farm. Modern tractors, though, look very little like their ancestors, and tractor technology faced a bumpy road before it reached its full potential.

Before tractors roamed the prairies like the mechanized beasts of burden they are, real livestock and the sweat of farmers were the primary sources of energy on the farm. The mechanical technologies they powered were crude and supplied mainly by local blacksmiths. While this was sufficient for small farms at the beginning of the 19th century, change was coming. The American expansion westward found vast tracts of land just asking to be planted, and an increased demand for produce provided incentive to do so. To meet the demands of the agricultural expansion, farmers were faced with a choice: work ever harder for uncertain results, or get clever.

During his two-year sojourn in the woods at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau raised beans, not necessarily for profit (although he did sell his harvested crop for a good return on his investment) but for more philosophical reasons: “They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus . . . I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work.”

Thoreau’s bean field was an ambitious project—2½ acres of rows totaling seven miles in length. This sounds like an exaggeration but is not. If one does the same calculations Thoreau must have done (he was a land surveyor, among other things), one arrives at the same seven-mile figure. 2½ acres = 108,900 square feet. He says the rows were fifteen rods (275.5 feet) long and were three feet apart. This gives a width of 440 feet (275.5 x 440 = 108,900) and 146.66 rows (440 ÷ 3 = 146.66). Total row length, then, was 36,298 linear feet (275.5 x 146.66 = 36,298) or 6.87 miles.