Savior Seeds

by Barry Carter

Save your seed and they will save you!

I am not a very good seed savorer (yes, that's a real word). I always intend to save seeds but I don't always get around to it and when I do, sometimes I don't adequately label the seeds I have saved as you can see with these seeds I saved last year or the year before last (or the year before that):

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds00.jpg

Sometimes, however, I do label my seeds as you can see at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds01.jpg

Several ORMUS gardeners have reported that, when you plant seeds grown in previous ORMUS gardens, the benefits are cumulative. This means that each year for the first few years you should get greater yield than in the previous year from your saved ORMUS seeds. This seems to be true for plants that must be re-seeded annually but not for trees and other perennial plants that just keep growing from year to year. Trees just seem to keep getting larger fruit each year for the first three or four years. At:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/myplants.htm

you can see some examples of increased growth in second year ORMUS dill, cilantro and yellow squash. The squash plant grew from a squash that I left on the ground all winter. You can see a similar yellow squash that I left on the ground this winter in the lower right part of the picture at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds10.jpg

To the upper right of the squash you can see a tomato skin. Last year I had a volunteer tomato plant or two from tomatoes that dropped to the ground like this.

In the picture above you can also see some volunteer plants that grew from seeds that fell to the ground last fall from their parent plants. In the upper right and lower right you can see three or four sunflower plants. To the left of the sunflower plants on the upper right and to the right of the sunflower plants on the lower right you can see a couple of Reuben's Red Lettuce plants. Between the upper and lower sunflower plants you can see some dill plants that are a couple inches tall. They are a bit hard to see because the leaves are so narrow.

Also in the upper left quadrant of the picture above, you can see some volunteer garlic plants. They are surrounded by a couple of volunteer pieces of plastic on the right and below as well as a volunteer newspaper advert to the left. I had to pull the volunteer weeds in order to get a good picture of everything else.

You can see another squash that is getting ready to volunteer at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds07.jpg

Kale generally survives throughout winter pretty well and grows new seeds on the second year. My Russian Red Kale plants looked pretty good on February 3, 2009:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/2009-02-03-RedRussianKale01.jpg

but they did not survive the winter. You can see three or four of them toward the middle front in the picture at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/2009-02-03-Kale01.jpg

Back toward the back of this same picture are a couple of True Siberian Kale plants near the fence. These plants survived the winter and I took a picture of them on May 17, 2009 at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds02.jpg

Notice that the smaller Siberian Kale plant to the right already has flowered as you can see more clearly at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds03.jpg

I will either plant these new seeds down the fence somewhere or forget about them and notice the new kale plants they have produced on their own.

At:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds05.jpg

you can see some small dill plants that sprouted on their own near the big fun dill (BFD) plants last year. In the next picture you can see the seed head of one of the fallen BFD plants above some new dill volunteers:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds04.jpg

Sorry I did not get around to weeding this section of the garden yet. It may be a bit difficult to find the dill in the picture above.

You can see some volunteer onions that showed up in my garden at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds06.jpg

some beets at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds08.jpg

and the largest sunflower head, which I saved for seeds, at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/SaviorSeeds09.jpg

Three types of lettuce that volunteered in my garden can be seen at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/2009-05-13-lettuce02.jpg

My chive plants at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/2009-05-13-chives01.jpg

have been in this same place for three years now. I want to transfer some of them to a large pot so I can bring them inside next winter. They are about to produce new seeds in a few days.

Altogether, I have the following volunteer plants in my garden right now:

chives

kale

strawberries

sunflowers

onions

garlic

cilantro

Formidana Lettuce

Ruben's Red Lettuce

Brune D'Hiver Lettuce

dill

rhubarb

beets

sage

rosemary

lemon mint

Plus a couple of other herbs that I don't remember the names for. This is about eighteen different breeds of volunteer plants and it includes most of my favorites. I have planted some radishes from saved seeds but they are not above ground yet. Today I also planted three different types of carrot seeds that were in packets I purchased last year and in 2007. I also planted one packet of seeds that I got at a yard sale with a 2000 date on it. We'll have to wait a few weeks to see if everything germinates. You can see the seeds packets at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/2009-05-17-CarrotSeeds.jpg

I have not been able to collect any carrot seeds yet. Maybe this year.

I also have an apple tree that I cut down a year ago but new shoots are sprouting up from the stump and the roots. Some of these "root shoots" are over six feet tall.

My apricot tree also seems to have survived a late frost and it has lots of half inch long "apricots" on it. Also, my plum tree seems to have just dropped lots of blossoms and I expect lots of plums this year.