Farm-saved seed

Use of organic , home-grown and/or farm-saved seed... 

Only sclerotia-free seeds should be used. Contaminated farm-saved seed should be cleaned or not used ... 

Hybrid varieties are produced from the first generation (FI) of a cross between two lines of Basic seed. The harvest from a hybrid crop is unlikely to exhibit the same characteristics as the original cross and so should never be used for farm-saved seed. 

Over the past ten years we have saved seed from basil, tomatoes, parsley, chard, Stutz supreme melon, arugula, cilantro, onions, watermelons, garlic, and potatoes. In the educational sense, it s fine to save seed. To see your favorite vegetable mature, flower, and make seed is experiential learning at its best. In the farming sense, however, saving seed is often a pain in the neck. 

I am about three-fourths of the way through the catalog, dazzled by the pictures of plump hybrids and beautiful open-pollinated vegetable varieties, but when I start adding up the bill for my choices, I get into triple digits very quickly, and I start to think that maybe we should just grow and save our own seed at the student farm. 

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