The Promise of the Seed

I am a gardener, and when it’s fall, preserving the harvest is so rewarding. My garage is lined with crates of squash and pumpkins brought in from the field. The pantry is stocked with jars of home-canned salsa and spaghetti sauce. Medicinal herbs are drying in the closet in preparation for making herbal salves. But there is another form of preservation that is equally important—seed saving.

As the plants die back, I am busy collecting and drying seeds from vegetables, herbs, and flowers. However, the only seeds that can be saved are those that are heirloom or open-pollinated. This is because, unlike hybrid varieties, heirloom seeds produce plants that are genetically identical to the parent plant, maintaining the same characteristics over the generations.