Seed Survival Series, Part Two

The importance of knowing the 10 different types of seeds & how to store and save them

This next installment of our deep dive into seeds is full of sources for you and deep intel into why we buy the seeds we do, and of course why and how we save seeds.

Listen, I didn’t want to be all in on seeds - they feel complicated. The feeling that I was less of a gardener if I wasn’t “good at seeds” seemed to drive me for a while, but now it’s practicality and the fact that they are honestly: better. Cheaper, stronger, and better plants are a result.

Seeing as for some crazy reason I chose gardening as my profession, I feel enormous pressure for my seeds to germinate. I just tend to be often distracted and very non-scientific about things, knowing they can fail and being okay with it. But when I’m trying to set an example, that’s not ideal. Also, waiting is hard. Delayed gratification? Hard. Protecting seeds from birds and elements? Consuming.

But the joy. Oh, my gawd the moment you realize your seeds germinated and those first two leaves have popped up (the cotyledon) - it is next-level butterfly in your stomach happiness. That’s some deep joy right there.

Seeds hold so much biology and wisdom within them that it’s quite hard to comprehend. I read a book about this from a friend, Jennifer Jewell, who is the podcast host of Cultivating Place and many gardening books. She goes deep into what exactly is encased in the tiny treasure box that is a seed. I love how their smallness - think a poppy seed - can help us to realize the comparative enormity of our potential and the microscopically small amount of physiology it takes to produce that.

Seeds have generations of adaptation within them. They have preferences and the mission to reproduce is set in stone. Your seeds from your garden will be more hardy to your space than mine. Seeds can remember, though not sentient, but almost.

The 10 Different Types of Seeds

Not all seeds are equal in quality, so I want to start here. Like food, seeds have heirloom varieties, can be organic, and can be “open-pollinated”, hybrids, or GMOs. In case you didn’t know, not all seeds can give us new offspring - often the grocery store produce has been modified so that the seeds do NOT yeild fruit. This is called job security for big ag. Okay, that came off opinionated, but truly all seeds should be able to bring in a yeild and not be tempered with in my humble opinion, and I do not want to dig into big ag today - someday maybe.