A full-color resource explains how to gather, clean and store seeds for 300 different kinds of vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, trees and shrubs, as well as how to propagate and care for new seedlings. Original.

A complete seed-saving guide of 160 vegetables, including detailed info on each vegetable.

'No dig' gardening saves time and work. In this book, no dig experts Charles Dowding and Stephanie Hafferty explain how to set up a no dig garden. They describe how to make compost, enrich soil, harvest and prepare food and make natural beauty and cleaning products. These approaches work as well in small spaces as in large gardens

For over four decades, John Coykendall’s passion has been preserving the farm heritage of a small community in rural southeastern Louisiana. A Tennessee native and longtime master gardener at Blackberry Farm, Coykendall has become a celebrity in a growing movement that places a premium on farm-to-table cuisine with locally sourced, organic, and heirloom foods and flavors. While his work takes him around the world searching for seeds and the cultural knowledge of how to grow them, what inspires him most is his annual pilgrimage to Louisiana. Drawn to the Washington Parish area as a college student, Coykendall forged long-lasting friendships with local farmers and gardeners. Over the decades, he has recorded oral histories, recipes, tall tales, agricultural knowledge, and wisdom from generations past in more than eighty illustrated and handwritten journals. At the same time, he has unearthed and safeguarded rare varieties of food crops once grown in the area, then handed them back to the community. In Preserving Our Roots: My Journey to Save Seeds and Stories, Coykendall shares a wealth of materials collected in his journals, ensuring they are passed on to future generations. Organized by season, the book offers a narrative chronicle of Coykendall’s visits to Washington Parish since 1973. He highlights staple crops, agricultural practices, and favorite recipes from the families and friends who have hosted him. Accompanied by a rich selection of drawings, journal pages, and photographs—along with over forty recipes—Preserving Our Roots chronicles Coykendall’s passion for recording foods and narratives that capture the rhythms of daily life on farms, in kitchens, and across generations.

Discusses the loss of fruit and vegetable varieties and the genetically modified industrial monocultures being used today, shares the author's personal experiences growing, saving, and swapping seeds, and deconstructs the politics and genetics of seeds.

Farmers and gardeners have long appreciated a wide variety of plants and have nurtured them for meals, healing, and exchange. But diversity too often has been surrendered to monocultures of fields and spirits, predisposing much of modern agriculture to uniformity and, consequently, vulnerability. Today it is primarily at the individual level—such as growing and saving a strange old bean variety or a curious-looking gourd—that any lasting conservation actually takes place. As scientists grapple with the erosion of genetic diversity of crops and their wild relatives, old-timey farmers and gardeners continue to save, propagate, and pass on folk varieties and heirloom seeds. Virginia Nazarea focuses on the role of these seedsavers in the perpetuation of diversity. She thoughtfully examines the framework of scientific conservation and argues for the merits of everyday conservation—one that is beyond programmatic design. Whether considering small-scale rice and sweet potato farmers in the Philippines or participants in the Southern Seed Legacy and Introduced Germplasm from Vietnam in the American South, she explores roads not necessarily less traveled but certainly less recognized in the conservation of biodiversity. Through characters and stories that offer a wealth of insights about human nature and society, Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers helps readers more fully understand why biodiversity persists when there are so many pressures for it not to. The key, Nazarea explains, is in the sovereign spaces seedsavers inhabit and create, where memories counter a culture of forgetting and abandonment engendered by modernity. A book about theory as much as practice, it profiles these individuals, who march to their own beat in a world where diversity is increasingly devalued as the predictability of mass production becomes the norm. Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers offers a much-needed, scientifically researched perspective on the contribution of seedsaving that illustrates its critical significance to the preservation of both cultural knowledge and crop diversity around the world. It opens new conversations between anthropology and biology, and between researchers and practitioners, as it honors conservation as a way of life.

Seed activist Bevin Cohen takes a deep dive into the hows and whys of the modern seed saving movement. A great how-to guide, leading the reader step by step through the process of saving their seeds from 43 different crops. Seed savers of all levels will benefit from Bevin's easy to follow instructions.

Mouthwatering heirlooms, exciting hybrids, sensational herbs, colorful flowers - you dream of a garden overflowing with vibrant, healthy plants. Turn your dream garden into reality with seeds you save and start yourself! With easy ideas on harvesting, storing, sowing and nurturing your seeds into flourishing plants, this helpful guide gives you a sure path from start to success. In it, you get: A look at seed and plant anatomy and how pollination works. Simple suggestions for identifying seeds to save, and for gathering and prepping seeds for next year's garden. Guidance on germinating seeds, indoors or out, using scarification or stratification. Tips for transplanting, thinning, hardening off, and protecting seedlings from weather, pests and disease. Easy ideas for cross-breeding plants and creating hybrids suited to your garden and climate. A comprehensive directory of botanical names and harvesting, germination, and sowing data for hundreds of plants. The Complete Idiot's Guide To Seed Saving And Starting is an essential resource to reap richer results with plants grown from your own seeds!

Winner of the American Horticultural Society Award for Excellence In Garden Book Publishing Winner of the Silver Medal for Best Reference from the Garden Writer’s Association Filled with advice for the home gardener and the more seasoned horticulturist alike, The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving provides straightforward instruction on collecting seed that is true-to-type and ready for sowing in next year’s garden. In this comprehensive book, Seed Savers Exchange, one of the foremost American authorities on the subject, and the Organic Seed Alliance bring together decades of knowledge to demystify the time-honored tradition of saving the seed of more than seventy-five coveted vegetable and herb crops—from heirloom tomatoes and long-favored varieties of beans, lettuces, and cabbages to centuries-old varieties of peppers and grains. With clear instructions, lush photographs, and easy-to-comprehend profiles on individual vegetable crops, this book not only teaches us how to go about conserving these important varieties for future generations and for planting out in next year’s garden, it also provides a deeper understanding of the importance of saving these genetically valuable varieties of vegetables that have evolved over the centuries through careful selection by farmers and home gardeners. Through simple lessons and master classes on crop selection, pollination, roguing, and the processes of harvesting and storing seeds, this book ensures that these time-honored traditions can continue. Many of these vegetable varieties are treasured for traits that are singular to their strain, whether that is a resistance to disease, an ability to grow well in a region for which that crop is not typically well suited, resistance to early bolting, or simply because it is a great-tasting variety. In an age of genetically modified crops and hybrid seed, a growing appreciation for saving seeds of these time-tested, open-pollinated cultivars has found a new audience from home vegetable gardeners and cooks to restaurant chefs and local farmers. Whether interested in simply saving seeds for home use or working to conserve rare varieties of beloved squashes and tomatoes, this book provides a deeper understanding of the art, the science, and the joy of saving seeds.