Real Seeds

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Those of you who order from Real Seeds, how many of you follow their ethos and save your own seed from anything you grow, and how many simply re-order from them?

I save some - but not the more fiddly ones, or those prone to crossing.

I feel a bit guilty at not saving, I’d feel better if I was in the majority.

I don’t need to but Magentaspreen at the moment. But since I grow only a couple of tubs of giant peas, I don’t feel I have enough pods to save any. Otoh, one packet lasts about 4 years.

I've been a seed saver for about 15 years. I was a seed guardian for the Heritage Seed Library before I left the UK and I've sold seed to Real Seeds that I'd saved from one of their varieties that they had taken off their lists as they didn't have any.

I save from most of my tomatoes and I grow about 50 varieties a year. I save from onions, leeks, peas, beans, beetroots, parsnips, carrots, lettuce and a whole host of others. For those that cross pollinate you have to isolate or choose one variety to let go to seed each year.

In my mind for things that you can't both eat and save from like beetroot, I choose 10% of my plants, the best ones, to not eat and to leave for seed. 3 beetroot plants can give you enough seeds for over a decades worth of seeds for you and probably half your village. So you don't have to do beetroot very often. Same with parsnips. However their seed won't last that long so you have to do that every 4 ish years.

I incorporate it into my growing, I actually have to stop myself from saving seeds as it becomes a bit of an obsession.

Hello MereDintofPandiculation,

I would recommend Real Seeds. I bought seeds from them some years ago after they were in a recommended as a seed supplier in Gardens Illustrated magazine.

I have also referred to the following books in the past. The Seed Savers’ Handbook comes with a recommendation from the late great Geoff Hamilton.

Happy gardening and happy seed 🌱 saving
TheSustainableGardener 👩‍🌾

That wasn't really Mere's question @thesustainablegardener. She's clearly already buying from them and I'm sure she knows all she needs to about saving seeds.

And you don't need to sign your posts. Your name is at the top.

I know there’s lots of Real Seeds customers here, from the number of recommendations it has. But so far only two responses, one who saves all seeds and the other who saves some. So it looks like I’d better pull my socks up!

My 'some' is quite variable depending on how things grow and how busy I am that year. Tends to be things like achocha and beans that practically save themselves.

I saved giant peas last year, but it may well have been that I overlooked a pod. Magentaspreen I don’t save, just allow it to self seed. Asturian tree cabbage I’ll let develop seed if it flowers, and Quilquina I harvested seed from I haven’t had many of their seeds recently- I tend to be very late ordering. Certainly missed out during that dreadful period when they were opening on a Saturday morning and closing (sometimes by Sunday) when they’d accumulated as many orders as they could pack in the week.

Same. I save big, easy seed only, tbh.
Other fiddler things I'd just rebuy.

Some things I deliberately just leave to self seed, mainly leafy stuff. I have a gazillion amaranth and sunflowers coming up this week which is good as load of carefully sown and pricked out amaranth and sunflowers got slugged earlier in the year.