Growing and Seed Saving Instructions
So you have seeds from Iran, and you’re wondering how to best grow them. Well, me too! I have grown these plants for 1-3 years each, and I have so much more to learn about how to take care of them. I have catalogued my experience of growing these crops here, and I look forward to integrating your experiences into this body of knowledge! Check out the form on this page and tell me about your growing experience.
Starting Seeds
I start most of my seeds in a little plastic greenhouse. If you aren’t planning on planting out up to a quarter of an acre, you don’t need anything this big.
I use purchased seed starting soil mix to start my seeds and water every day or whenever the soil surface dries out.
I space most of the herbs on the farm 8 inches apart in 2 rows that are 10 inches apart. If you are growing herbs just to eat, you can space them a little bit closer. If you want to save seed, you can space them farther apart.
These flags are marking a selection of cilantro: 30+ plants that bolted the latest
Saving Seeds
Growing and eating heritage plants is super important, but it’s the seed saving that makes our impact palpable for generations. For training and mentorship in seed saving, check out the Hayati proram.
Isolation of varieties
If you want the variety of plant that you’re growing to stay consistent from year to year, you have to keep it from cross-pollinating with other plants of the same species. Here’s a resource that talks about this. At the farm, I rely on isolation distances to keep different varieties of the same plant from cross-pollinating.
Making selections
As you are growing your plants, you may notice some individuals display different qualities than others. Some plants may be shorter or taller, some may flower earlier or later, some may fruit more and some may fruit less. Sometimes, this is due to inconsistencies in the care/sun/water/space these individuals receive. For example, one eggplant plant that is growing far away from the other plants and getting more sun is likely going to outperform the others. Sometimes, however, the qualities that we prefer can be attributed to the genetic makeup of the plant. When that is the case, we can select for those traits by saving seeds from those plants. I use flags to mark the plants that I want to save seed from so I don’t forget which ones to come back to at the end of the season.
Bottlenecking the Genetic Potential
On the flip side of the concept of making selections, we must be careful to not save seed from too few plants as well. If out of 300 plants on the farm, I only save seed from one or two, I am greatly reducing the genetic diversity of future iterations of that crop. One rule of thumb that I use is to select from at least twenty plants of each variety when making selections. This resource can help you determine how many plants you should save seed from.
Letting the Seed Ripen
Ok, your plants have begun setting seed! How do you know when to harvest them? In our climate at the farm, it doesn’t rain significantly all summer, which means I don’t have to worry about a rain storm ruining a seed crop. I can let the herb seeds stay on the plant and ripen until the plants die, either from naturally drying out or the frost killing them. If I were to harvest the seeds earlier, there’s a greater chance of harvesting seeds that are not viable- meaning that the percentage of them that will germinate is smaller. On the flip side, some plants don’t do a great job of holding onto their seeds once they’re ripe (I’m thinking about dandelions offering their seeds to the wind). That, combined with rainy weather, may lead you to harvest seed earlier than you would like.
Threshing, Winnowing
Threshing is the process of getting the mature seed out of the plants, winnowing is the process of separating the plant material from the seed. This year, I learned that most of the herbs I grew are best threshed by being stepped on. Afterwards, I have used either screens with different size holes and the wind/my breath/a fan to finish the winnowing process.
Storage
Once you have removed most of the plant material, you can store your seeds in a clean, dry, and dark environment to keep them as viable as possible until you share or plant them again.