Why Save Seeds
When you look at a seed, especially an heirloom seed, you see more than the potential for a tomato plant or a head of lettuce. Rather, you can see generations of farmers cultivating, planting, and selecting the best of the yield—not to eat, but to save in order to harvest the seeds for the following year.
Seeds were so important to our ancestors that at weddings, both the bride’s and the groom’s families would present the newlywed couple with a gift of some of their own family’s seeds.
When immigrants set out to the New World and were limited in the things they could bring across the ocean, they often smuggled seeds with them, not only as a means to begin a new life, but also as a way to connect back to the old one.
If not for generations of seed savers, we would not have the variety of seeds available to us today. And, if not for dedicated seed savers today, many of the wonderful and unique heirloom plants would have become lost forever.
In most cases, you can save seeds from plants classified as annual (those whose life cycle lasts only one year) and biennial (plants whose life cycle lasts two years). The seeds you save from your garden have already become accustomed to your climate, your soil, and even the insects in your area.
Saving garden seeds at the end of each growing season can be a great cost-saving measure. It also assures you that the delicious tomatoes you loved from your garden, or the beans that produced so well, will still be around next year.
