My Biggest Mistake Saving Seeds

I was about to host a #supersowsunday discussion session on Clubhouse, and as thumbed through my seed binder, it became glaringly evident that I made a major mistake saving garden seeds. I need to backtrack and share what started me off on the wrong foot.

Back when I first started vegetable gardening at this house, I remember buying a pack of tomato seeds from Burpee that was labeled “Rainbow Mix.” I believe it was in 2010 because my oldest son was old enough to be blasting his face with the water hose. This pack of seeds produced some of the most delicious tomatoes I’d ever tasted. Inside the packet were  Omar’s Lebanese, Dutchman, Djena Lee’s Golden Girl, Golden Sunburst, Aunt Ruby’s Germany Green, and Black Russian. It was such a great mix! The only problem was that I couldn’t tell the difference between the Dutchman and Omar’s Lebanese, and as I saved seeds from the tomatoes, I failed to label them properly. I wasn’t sure which were Omar’s and which were the Dutchman. Then I added other pink and red beefsteak varieties into the mix and ordered “Omar’s Lebanese” from a seller on eBay, which grew out completely different from any of what I’d previously grown. Was it even Omar’s? How could I know?

Fast forward 11 years, and I’m sitting on the sofa with my seed binder and dozens of little plastic bags labeled “Pink Beefsteak 2012”, “Musta been good”, “Red Kiss Summer 2012”, “Red Beef Yummy 2015”, and on and on. Basically, every time I’ve eaten a tomato that made me swoon, I’ve saved a new little bag of seeds. There’s no way I can possibly tell what each one is, and there’s no way I can plant each one out any given summer.

While the initial mixed seed packet and newbie exuberance for saving seeds weren’t exactly mistakes, my failure to consistently label my tomato sprouts, plants, and saved seeds all the way through the growing season has lead to so much disorganization. I’m interested in starting more seeds to share/sell, so I need to know what it is I’m growing. People like to know the story on the variety they are planting.

So this year, I’m going to start anew! I bought labels in bulk and will be labeling every single tomato plant. I also picked up two great bits of advice at the #supersowsunday discussion: 1) sketch out a map of the garden and note where each variety was planted, and 2) include a little writeup on how the seed grew inside the bag with the saved seeds. This still doesn’t solve my problem with what to do with the plethora of saved sees over the past decade. Some are likely no longer viable, so it might be time for a healthy purge. I’ve been listening to “Decluttering at the Speed of Life” by Dana K. White, and I should probably apply her principles to my seed stash as well.

Happy planting, friends!