Varieties
Heirlooms through the gate: peas, French beans, tomatoes, lettuce
Runner beans take the most care, but most of the seed in my tin comes from crops that pollinate themselves and forgive a crowded plot. These are the heirlooms that have come to me through the gate over the years, and how each one is saved.
Packed 8 September 2024Re-checked 2 March 20256 min
Why the self-pollinators are the place to start
When a friend asks where to begin with seed saving, I tell them to start with French beans, peas, lettuce or tomatoes, not with runner beans and never with squash. These crops mostly pollinate themselves inside the flower, often before it opens, so a variety saved on a crowded allotment usually comes true the following year. A few metres between varieties, or a row of something else in between, is enough for most of them in ordinary gardening terms.
Heirloom matters here too. An old variety kept by gardeners for generations is open-pollinated, which means its seed grows into plants like the parent. Many modern packets are F1 hybrids, a first cross between two parent lines, and their seed does not come true; you get a spread of the grandparents instead. A cherry tomato I grew from a bought packet in my first year gave me plants of four different kinds the next summer, one of them excellent and the other three not.
French beans and peas
French beans are the easiest seed on the plot. I grow three climbing heirlooms up the fence at the back: one with speckled pink seeds, one with a small white seed that my neighbour's mother brought from Cyprus, and one with purple pods that turn green in the pan. Different varieties stand at least a couple of metres apart with a row of beetroot between them, and I have not seen an obvious cross in five years. The pods stay on the plants until they are the colour of straw and the seeds rattle inside.
Peas are just as simple, though they need more plants for the same amount of seed. I save the old tall peas that grow to head height and need hazel sticks, because they are hard to find now and the flavour is the reason I keep them. The main enemy is the pea moth, whose caterpillars eat into the seeds inside the pod. Sowing early, so that the pods have formed before the moths fly in June and July, avoids most of it, and I sort every seed by eye before storing. A pea with a small hole goes on the compost.
Tomatoes and the jar on the windowsill
Tomato seed is saved wet. I choose ripe fruit from two or three plants of each variety, halve them, and squeeze the seeds with their jelly into a jam jar with a splash of water. The jar sits on the shed windowsill for two or three days until a grey skin of mould forms on top and the jelly round each seed has broken down. Then I fill the jar with water and stir; the good seeds sink, and the pulp and floating seeds are poured away. Two or three rinses leave clean seed at the bottom.
Drying is where people go wrong. Wet tomato seed spread on kitchen paper sticks to it like glue, so I tip mine onto a china plate or a sheet of baking parchment and leave it in a warm room out of direct sun, stirring it with a finger every day. After a week it rubs apart and can be stored. Most tomatoes pollinate themselves, but some old varieties, especially the potato-leaved ones and those whose stigma pokes out beyond the petals, can cross, so I grow those at opposite ends of the plot.
Lettuce: patience and paper bags
Lettuce is the crop that tests patience. You have to leave a few of the best heads uncut and let them bolt, which means they send up a flowering stem well above knee height, look ridiculous, and shade their neighbours for most of the summer. The small yellow flower heads open a few at a time over weeks, and each one turns into a tiny puff of white down with seeds attached, like a miniature dandelion clock. Lettuce pollinates itself, so varieties can grow a few metres apart.
The seed ripens unevenly, and the goldfinches know exactly when. I cut whole flowering stems once about half the heads have turned fluffy and put them head down in a big paper bag in the shed, where the rest of the seed finishes and drops. Then comes the fiddly part: rubbing the heads between my palms over a tray and blowing gently to lift away the chaff. It is a job for a still September evening with a mug of tea on the shed step, and it never gets every scrap of fluff out.
- French beans: at least six plants, more if the row allows.
- Peas: ten or more plants, because each one gives little seed.
- Tomatoes: fruit from at least two or three plants of each variety.
- Lettuce: four or five heads left to bolt, never just one.
Leaving out the difficult ones
Some crops I do not save at all, and I say so at the table when people ask. Courgettes, squash and pumpkins cross freely within their species, and a courgette seed saved on an open allotment can grow into something nobody wants; now and then a crossed squash produces bitter fruit, and bitter squash should never be eaten. Growers who save them tape the flowers shut and pollinate by hand. Kale and cabbage need a second year to flower and cross with almost every relative on the site, so I leave them to people with more room.
Carrots and parsnips are another case. Carrots cross with wild carrot, which grows along the railway banks and the rough grass by the River Lea, and the wild parent quickly spoils a variety. Onions and leeks need a large number of plants to stay healthy from one generation to the next. None of these is impossible, and a careful grower with space can manage them, but on half a plot shared with runner beans I would rather save five easy crops properly than ten badly.
Written from the notebook in the shed, on half a plot in Walthamstow.