Seed saving leaflet for beginners - free to download!

I'm going to do a little seed swap in my shop over Easter, and thought it would be an opportunity to encourage some of our local gardeners to think about seed saving. I've had a look through the forums and I can't find what I'm looking for.


borrowing one of Joseph's photos

I want to be able to print off a leaflet to give people very basic advice on seed saving. It therefore needs to be no bigger than 2 sides of A4 paper. Has anyone already made or found such a leaflet online? There are some awesome free resources out there, but nothing brief enough! This thread on Permies gives some links to many free publications
Thanks!

Hmm, nobody?

Looks like I may have to do one myself. So what do I include (or miss out)

Plants come from seeds, seeds come from plants
People select seeds to get better plants
You can do it too.

Landrace, Heritage, Open pollinated, F1 types explaination

Differences in Annual/biennnial/Perennial plants

Seed collection
dry seed/wet seed

storage

further information sources

I found this that might help with some suggestions:


source

Ooh, nice idea! Might be worth it, if you have the space, to very briefly debunk some of the myths about seed saving (like the idea that plants from your own seeds are somehow dangerous, etc.)

This is what I've got so far. Still need to fill in the specifics a bit, but really - "harvest ripe dry seed and store cool and dry" covers the rest pretty well! A bit of formatting and a few pretty pictures...

Simple Seed Saving

Plants come from seeds, seeds come from plants. Over the years ordinary people without education saved seeds and came up with the vegetable varieties we have today. Plants grown in our area gradually adapt over generations to become plants that actually like it here rather than wherever in the world the seeds are currently grown for sale. They may not be identical or named varieties that crop all at the same time, but they may actually grow better!

You can save seed too! By saving your own seed you will have plenty of fresh seed to grow in future, or swap for other seeds. By saving seeds you save money as you don’t have to buy new seeds!

Plant types:
F1 hybrids. These are a careful cross between two selected uniform parents that give particular characteristics in their offspring. Seeds saved from these will not be true to their parents, but may be perfectly good plants in their own right.
Open pollinated. These will usually be a named variety that has been selected somewhere in the world by someone who thought it was a particularly good one. Seeds saved from these plants will grow true to the parents unless crossed by another variety or close relative.
Heritage varieties are the same as Open pollinated except they have been continuously grown for a number of decades – sometimes centuries.
All these above seeds will have limited genetic variation as they have been inbred to get consistent results.
Landrace variety is a mix of varieties grown in a particular area for a number of years. They will be adapted to that soil and climate and may have considerable variability to cope with changing conditions.

It is easy to save seed: just let your best plants flower and leave the flower heads to set seed (or fruit) harvest the seed when fully dry (ripe) and store the seed carefully till time comes to sow again.

(Differences in Annual/biennnial/Perennial plants)
Some plants grow and come to seed in the same year (annuals) These are the easiest to save seed from. Examples are lettuce, sunflowers,

(Seed collection
dry seed/wet seed

storage

further information sources)

I've attached what is the first draft of my final version. It may need a little reformatting - I haven't tried printing it off yet!

It is very simple, very brief. I want to encourage people to start saving seeds not scare them off.

If anyone has a moment I'd appreciate some feedback.

Particularly if you haven't saved seeds before: would this make it seem like you could? What is missing?

Yes, It looks like the printer isn't clever enough to know that I want a leaflet, with pages 1 and 4 on the same page, sigh! So I'll have to rearrange the pages out of order (unless anyone knows a trick?).

Nancy Reading wrote:Yes, It looks like the printer isn't clever enough to know that I want a leaflet, with pages 1 and 4 on the same page, sigh! So I'll have to rearrange the pages out of order (unless anyone knows a trick?).

Nancy, I sorted it for you! Good to go. Found one typo and that's it, better than most of my clients, lol.

Thank you so much Tereza! I'll print some off later and try and infect some minds.....

Looks good! One possible thing to add would be a short list of easy vs hard crops to save seed from. Otherwise, someone who's new to this might think "ok, I like carrots, let's save carrot seeds!" and be terribly disappointed when no seeds are formed on their commercial F1 male-sterile carrot plants. (Ask me how I know this scenario is likely...)

Looks pretty good!  

Eino Kenttä wrote:Looks good! One possible thing to add would be a short list of easy vs hard crops to save seed from. Otherwise, someone who's new to this might think "ok, I like carrots, let's save carrot seeds!" and be terribly disappointed when no seeds are formed on their commercial F1 male-sterile carrot plants. (Ask me how I know this scenario is likely...)

Oh dear! That would  be so frustrating to have lost a year!
I did put a note under F1 hybrids:

Beware that some strains carry male sterility, so limiting the crosses that can be made.

Maybe that isn't clear enough, because if you have no male you can't have seeds so you need a non f1 female at least....

Perhaps if I reword it to:

Beware that some strains carry male sterility, so a non hybrid carrot is needed as well for seed to be made.

Does that sound better?

Yes, that sounds better, but for carrots (and other crops with cytoplasmic male sterility) I wonder if it'd be better to simply not use commercial F1 hybrids in seed saving, since you'll have the same problem the next generation. The troublesome cytoplasmic genes are maternally inherited, so you'd have to maintain a male-fertile line separately to have something to pollinate your male-sterile main population. Feels like a lot of trouble for a DIY seed saver...

On a side note, this is exactly what the big seed companies are doing. They keep a "maintainer" line, that's almost identical to the male-sterile parent of the F1 they want, except it's male fertile, and each generation cross the maintainer line and the male-sterile one, to keep a male-sterile version of the line they want to use as a female parent for their F1.

Eino Kenttä wrote:Yes, that sounds better, but for carrots (and other crops with cytoplasmic male sterility) I wonder if it'd be better to simply not use commercial F1 hybrids in seed saving, since you'll have the same problem the next generation. The troublesome cytoplasmic genes are maternally inherited, so you'd have to maintain a male-fertile line separately to have something to pollinate your male-sterile main population. Feels like a lot of trouble for a DIY seed saver...

Yes, It's difficult to know where to draw the line. I wanted to keep everything very simple, to encourage people. Once they get started they can hopefully learn more about genetics and F1 issues, cross fertilisation and self fertilisation and so on. I could make a stronger warning, I hadn't realised that it was that persistent.

Final version (maybe!)

I've made the wording on the F1 plants stronger, added in a few commas, captions on the front page photos and the Permies Farmer on the back.
Thanks everyone!