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 Member Pages |
Seed to Seed
Review by Steve Christman 5/26/00
Section I contains chapters on pollination and flower structure; maintaining varietal purity; seed cleaning methods; and seed storage techniques. Section II provides specific methods for saving your own seeds from 150 different vegetable varieties. The vegetables are grouped by family, and each family entry includes a list of included species and their botanical names. (This part has been extremely helpful to me in sorting out the confusing relationships among the beans and among the brassicas.) For each vegetable family, Ms. Ashworth provides a discussion of pollination characteristics and techniques and tells which vegetables will cross with each other and which can be grown near each other without crossing. For each variety, there is a section on botanical classification; pollination, crossing and isolation; seed production, harvest and processing; and seed viability and longevity in storage. In order to get seeds that will "come true" the flowers of some vegetables must be isolated from neighboring relatives. This book shows how to use cages, nylon bags and even masking tape to prevent unwanted cross-pollination. Black and white photographs show details of flowers, seeds and techniques. There's a bibliography of selected references, a list of seed-saving organizations, and a glossary. This book is easy to use and (I believe) absolutely necessary for beginning seed savers. Steve Christman 5/26/00
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