Customer Reviews

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is very practical and easy to understand. It's more encyclopedic in style rather than conversational, so if you aren't sure that you'll be saving seeds from your garden this year, you'll probably find it kind of boring. If you are slightly interested but unconvinced, I would recommend Carol Deppe's "How to Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties" instead. Her enthusiasm for the subject carries over into her writing style, and she includes lots of entertaining anecdotes and information that will be useful even if you don't decide to save seeds.

But if you know you want to start saving seeds, or enjoy saving seeds and want to get better, this book will be indespensable.

The book is mostly about vegetables, with a few grains and herbs also described. For each type of garden plant, several topics are covered:
--A general description (where it originated, how it is used in different cultures, etc.)
--Botanical classification
--Pollination (such as wind vs. insects), crossing and isolation
--Seed production and harvesting
--Seed statistics (% germination, how many seeds in an ounce, how many varieties offered in major catalouge)
--How to grow the plant from seed
--Regional growing recommendations for 5 very generalized regions (Mid-Atlantic, Southeast/Gulf Coast, Upper Midwest, Southwest, Central West Coast, Maritime Northwest) These are very brief, but useful.

I wish I would have gotten the book sooner, because I don't have too much gardening experience and I would like to have a big garden (well, as big as my yard will allow...) The regional recommendations often include when you should plant a vegetable indoors and when to transplant or direct seed outdoors. It would have been nice to do the last few week's seed starting with a little less guesswork.

This is the complete and definitive seeds saving guide for 160 non-hybrid vegetable crops, with detailed information about each vegetable. It is technical but clearly written so that the reader can understand the intricacies of maintaining varietal purity and proper seed harvesting, drying, cleaning and storing of seeds. Botanical classification, flower structure, pollination method, isolation distances, caging, and hand pollination techniques are included. If you're looking for information on saving ground cherry seeds, you'll find it here. Sources for supplies and seed saving organizations are listed in the back.

This is the definitive source on seed saving and is invaluable to growers interested in conserving unique vegetable varieties. This book should sit on your shelf next to a copy of Carol Deppe's "Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties" because saving seed is the basic method of plant breeding. When you save the seed of your biggest tomatoes rather than your smaller ones, you are practicing plant breeding by selecting what genetic material to perpetuate. The seeds from your big tomato will produce plants that also will produce big tomatoes.

I don't know if there's a better book on the subject of seed saving, but I've found this book frustratingly incomplete. There's certainly a lot of information, but it seems like a lot of really important basics were left out. I would say for a majority of the plants I would like to save seed from this year I can't figure out from the book whether the plants will cross with other things I'm growing or how far to isolate them if they would. I'm trying to figure out right now, for instance, if tabasco peppers (Capsicum frutescens) will cross with bell peppers and other Capsicum annum. The book has about a half a page of information on C. frutescens, which I think is a lot for such a minor species, but it still fails to give me that most basic information. I'd also like to know how many plants of each type I should grow to maintain adequate genetic diversity. The author mentions the importance of this, and there are a couple plants where numbers are given, but in most cases the reader is left without any numbers. I wish all this kind of information were covered more systematically, maybe with a simple chart or short paragraph at the beginning of each of the 20 plant families covered in the book.

This book presents a very holistic view of heirloom plants available by seed saver exchanges. The first few chapters enlighten the reader to the devastating aggricultural practices of commercial farmers. The main point I got was that seeds bought from major big box retailers are "infertile" after one season, forcing you to return next year to buy more seed. What an abhorable practice as this may be the only way to grow in the future if techniques from this book are not practiced. The rest of the chapters/sections are very well organized and present detailed descriptions for various popular varieties of plants on how to grow and subsequently harvest their seeds. The appendix gives further resources on how to obtain heirloom plants and contacts who might be able to help with your struggles and success.

It's wonderfully complete for seed saving. I've saved my own carrot seeds now! And the squash from last years saved seeds looks just like it should. This book covers all the techniques, issues and risks although I think it's very much geared towards multi-generation saving of entirely pure seed - you don't need to be quite so careful on the isolation if you just want to grow one generation of kale for your own use (mine came out okay in spite of only minor control of nearby brassicas), and saving seed with only two chard plants, not enough genetic diversity to preserve a variety for long, can by themselves produce enough seed so you'll eat chard every day for 5 years.

It's also a great reference for unusual vegetables, it's amazingly complete; you can find out about 4-sided bean or other tropical type vegetables. And it sorts out the different squash and pepper species very well.

The gardening information in each section hasn't impressed me much as useful or accurate; but we are in-between the zones they provide.

I think Ashworth has made a splendid job with this book, especially as there are none like it on the market. There`s a lot of good solid info, and everything you need to save seeds from a vegetable variety is easily found. All in all pretty much as good of a reference book as you can wish for.
A minor thing that irritates me, is that when after every vegetable some regional experts give their advice on growing the vegetable at hand, I get the feeling that even if they have not even tried some plants, they give the advice "They can`t be grown in this climate". I myself am from Finland, and I still grow some of the vegetables they mention every season here!

When I was growing up, my family and extended family bought vegetable and flower seeds every year. I always wondered why we didn't keep any of the seeds to plant the next year instead of buying more. I didn't realize that the seeds of these hybrid varieties would not germinate and produce plants. It's hard to be self-sufficient and self-reliant when you are dependent on seed companies for next year's harvest.

Seed to seed is the answer to the question of self-sustaining food production. This book provides instructions on how to grow vegetables from seeds, control pollination (and avoid unwanted cross-pollination), harvest and preserve seeds from the garden plants, and how to store those seeds for future gardens.

Keep in mind that there is no information on how to obtain fertile seeds from plants raised from seed company seeds. In order to practice the principles taught in this book, a gardener must use seed from open-pollinated varieties. Such seeds are available from seed banks or seed exchanges--like Seed Saver's Exchange, the book's publisher.

I'm sure that this book does not discuss every plant (and does not discuss flowers at all) that a gardener may want to grow, but the principles are sound and can be applied to plants that are not found in the book. All in all this is an excellent reference that will help produce self-sufficient gardeners.

This book is a perfect reference for anyone interested in seed saving from vegetables. I purchased this book not knowing a single thing about seed saving and have learned heaps of useful knowledge from it. This is truly THE essential book for seed saving, but the majority of the content in this book is most likely to be used as reference for when the time for implementing the ideas approaches. And also, there are loads of pictures which really help for visual learners, a great example of the good pictures is the section on seed saving from tomatoes using the fermentation technique.

Well, this is a superb book and has quality, and quantity of things to seed save from. Highly recommended. 5/5

This is an advanced gardening book for the gardener who want to save seeds from non-hybrid plants. The book covers well over a hundred types of plants. However, some plants are not included for some reason. Overall, it is an excellent resource for gardeners.

This is the most authoritative and in-depth book on seed sewing, growing, and saving that I have ever read. It is not a picture book or a basic introductory book - rather this is the book you go to when you have a specific plant, and you're not sure how to start the seeds, or how long the seeds will keep in storage, or how exactly to capture pollen and hand pollinate plants when your natural pollinators are absent.

It has an overview of seed propagation and breeding information, including things like how pollination works, and what the different kinds of pollinators are, different kinds of seed processing techniques, how to store the seeds, and then it goes into an in-depth, family by family, plant by plant, everything you ever needed to know guide. This was very useful when I wanted to grow corn, and everyone said you can't grow corn if you only have a few plants. What I found was, you can grow corn, you just have to make sure you help the pollination along (and she shows you how in illustrations), and you probably won't get good results from any seeds you save because corn plants need a wide variety of genes to be healthy. But growing seeds from a packet - only a little hand holding needed.

I have also found that this book has useful information on growing plants, and which varieties work well in which region. When I was looking up corn, it talked about which varieties to grow in New England, what problems are prevalent in New England, and how to deal with the various pests in the area. When I wanted to save my sunflower seeds for a tasty snack - she showed me the best time to pick the flowers, how to keep them away from the squirrels (and blue jays, and other critters), and how to dry them so the seeds were easier to separate. When I was curious as to why some of my black beans actually looked like the nearby empress beans, this book had the answer, and also what to expect if I actually wanted to try to plant them.

The only thing I would wish for more of is illustrations. She gives descriptions on how to pick and process each type of seed, but sometimes I wasn't sure if I had the right plant, or if it was THIS part or THAT part. In some cases (such as the corn pollination), there were illustrations to help, but sometimes I wished for more.

If you are looking for a single reference book on seed sewing, seed saving, plant breeding, or seed varieties that are best for your area - this is the book for you. A very well done, very authoritative and detailed book.