squash pie

nothing's more revolutionary these days than growing your own f%$in food, except possibly remembering to save some of the seeds from the stuff you grew so you can do it all again next year without having to place $100 seed orders. this year i actually used food stamps to buy some of the seed...wonder how many people ever do that?

there's a pie in the oven filled with squash, basil, leeks and tomatoes. brian made cupcakes and cookies and the house smells of them...
i have containers everywhere full of seed heads, pulled while harvesting tomatoes. it's the tail end of farming season here in zone 6 and it's time for seed saving.

a method that seems to work pretty good for most things i use goes thus:

1. pick your seed heads when they're mature, but not overly dried out or moldy. (mold is the enemy of seedsaving).

2. bring them out of the rain and humidity and let them dry out real good indoors (or at least not out in the weather). this was always a slow impatient process in memphis which took weeks, but here things dry out effortlessly in this climate. don't bother doing anything else until the seed heads are dry.

3. get ahold of some collanders, and strainers of various sizes, and some large bowls. hull things that need seedpods removed, then roll them around in the collanders and strainers working your way down in size, until you separate the chaff from the seed. the extent of your effort depends on whether you are planting your seed or using it for culinary purposes. the less crap left behind, the better.

4. once you are reasonably happy with what you have left, you need to think about your long term storage solutions. paper seed packages seem to work best because there's no danger of condensation. an nice environmentally friendly method that seems to work for me is taking the used envelopes out of my recycling bin, cutting them in half, and making pouches that end up being roughly the same size as a standard seed packet. a nice thing about this method is if you use window envelopes, you can actually see what's in there.
if you have lots of small glass jars, you could use those, but don't seal them up tight unless you are sure the seed is optimally dry, and beware of condensation in certain climates. condensation=mold=no germination.
at any rate, i would never never ever put them in anything plastic. that's an almost certain guarantee that they'll mold.
whatever they're in, make sure you label them so you'll know what you have later. you'd be amazed how mysterious those mystery jars of brown crispy things will look come next march.

5. some times you have to watch out for bugs. this seems to be a big problem with beans. there's not much you can do...if you are growing organically you don't want to get into the business of fumigation. about all you can do is try to keep things as clean as possible, and definitely take the time to remove seedpods from things like beans and brassica seeds...those pods always have some kind of insect that will ruin your seed saving projects. just keep an eye on things and if you have tons of one type of seed, make several small batches so if some of it goes bad, you don't lose the whole lot. just check up on things from time to time...if something's getting moldy or "webby" see what you can salvage out of that batch before it takes over.

6. don't forget you have all these seeds at planting time!

seeds are amazing. aside from being symbols of life itself, they're a tool you can use to sneer at the evils of corporate farming...nothing says freedom like growing your own squash, tomatoes and herbs.

*as jb would probably say, there's fancier ways of doing this if that's what does it for you. if you come across this, and get motivated, there's much more technical info on seed saving out there, including heirlooms and hybridizing.
this is my relatively unscietific approach to preserving the bounty of what comes my way, that seems to work well most of the time for the things i usually attempt to grow. i don't bother with a lot of the details that more scientifically minded folks would use because frankly i don't have a lot of time on my hands, and i'm not trying to maximize profit...i'm not developing new strains of anything. i'm just saving my seeds so i can grow the same stuff again next year.
word.