Saturday, February 20, 2010

I'll be seed-saving this year....

Right now my raised beds are pretty much covered with snow and ice.  Under those 9 raised beds is fertile soil somewhere.
This year I plan to start saving seeds and tomatoes are one of them.  I've learned that I need to keep the plants of any one variety at least 5' away from another variety so they don't cross-pollinate and they have to be open-pollinated varietes and not hybrids.  To that end I've had to re-plan my garden.  Those tall green poles at the corners of six of the front beds are sturdy fence posts from which I will wire and twine.  I'm ordering 15 plants this year from Territorial Seed which ships PLANTS, 3 of each of only 5 varieties so I can save seed.  I will put a trio at each of the outside poled beds and the beds with poles in between will be peas.  I can put the short determinate Oregon Spring in the back of one of the back beds since they won't need the tall poles and wire and twine.
Besides the Oregon Spring, which can be planted outdoors FOUR week BEFORE last frost date (Hooray!), I plan to plant 3 main season Rutger's CS Space Select, 3 San Marzano Gigante 3 which are sauce tomatoes, 3 Brandywine heirlooms (which I hear are the tastiest) and 3 Delicious heirlooms this year.  That should give us lots of tomatoes and lots of extras for saving seeds for the next year or two.  I'll keep you posted on my progress thru my planting efforts once again this year, complete with pictures.

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