How To Save Heirloom Seeds For Your Survival Garden

When you begin a survival garden, you will be taking a big responsibility for your own food supply

. Once you have learned how to save seeds, you will have moved another step towards self reliance. The next thing that is important to learn is how to save heirloom seeds for your survival garden.

Many people that have gardening skills, and understand how to save seeds may think that saving seeds from heirloom varieties is done the same way. That is not the case though, there are special things that you will have to pay attention to when learning how to save heirloom seeds.

Heirloom seeds are plant varieties that have kept their traits through open pollination. Large scale agriculture does not use heirloom seeds for food production, they use hybrid seeds, and genetically modified seeds. Varieties of produce that are considered heirloom varieties have been grown for centuries, and is becoming more and more popular.

Many heirloom varieties have been passed down from one generation to the next, unchanged through history. These types of vegetables have outstanding taste, because they have been picked for their extraordinary qualities throughout the ages to cultivate. Heirloom plants have adapted over a long period of time, so the plants can withstand whatever weather and soil they are planted in. Heirloom plants are also normally more resistant to disease and pests, along with extreme weather.

Without heirloom seeds, the government and the seed companies would have total control over all seed distribution. This puts people that want to be in control of their own food supply system in a very bad place, so they must rely upon heirloom seeds to keep control. Even if they use hybrid seeds, they cannot save the seeds, because the plants grown from seeds saved from a hybrid plant will not come back true to the variety it came from. Often the plants grown from seeds that were collected from hybrid plants grow produce that is not edible.

Heirloom seeds are open pollinated, which means insects and bees bring pollen from one plant to the next, and that is what creates the seed. If 2 types of heirloom bean plants are planted next to each other, then the insects and bees can mix the pollen, which is called cross pollination and the seeds produced from these plants will not grow plants that are true to the original heirloom variety.

This is why, if you want to keep the heirloom varieties true, you will have to keep distance between different varieties of the same kind of plant, so the insects and bees will not mix the pollen. This is not as hard as it sounds, it just takes careful garden planning. So when you are ready to learn how to save heirloom seeds, take the extra precautions to keep your heirloom varieties true.

by: Lance Cantarano

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