Seedsaving oriental mustards!

[Welsh Wizard]

So today I finally got down to processing my Oriental Mustards.
I had mixed oriental mustards from an early sowing that I allowed to go to seed. I decided that I liked the mild red leaved "Red Streak" variety, so made sure half the 6 plants selected for seed were that type! The seed pods were starting to brown nicely, so I cut the plants down and hung in a dry spot for a week or so.

Today I finally got around to all the stomping and winnowing. 10 mins work stomping on the dried pods in a plastic bag then a little sieveing and winnowing gave a result being 52 g of mixed oriental mustard seed with almost no chaff left at all... a most pleasing result for very little effort. This is a huge amount of seed, given that Thompson and Morgan charged me £1.69 for around 2g! Now I cant wait to see if it will germinate. I have probably inadvertently selected for bolting but the plants are usually successionally sown in my patch and used up for salads before bolting becomes an issue.

The best part about the process was the whole family became interested in what I was doing sieving away, and the smell was gorgeous, really smelt like harvest time on a wheat farm!

With this much mustard seed I should make some Colmans mustard to go with the Sunday roast!

[rustylady]

Well done you, I love mustard leaves in salad

[Lovage]

Congratulations!!
I think we should all be saving more of our own seed then swapping and sharing. As you say seed can be quite expensive to buy and the packet contents very small!

Let us know how true to type your seed is - but there's nothing wrong with a bit of diversity anyway.

I've been saving seed of rocket, land cress and lambs lettuce for years and now usually let it self sow and move seedlings when required

[Welsh Wizard]

It makes a lot of sense, particularly for stuff like beans and peas which are easy to save and can be more expensive to buy. I just think that seedsaving "closes the loop" in gardening- there is no point my pretending I know how to really grow something if I cannot reliably reproduce the plant and increase my stock myself. If I rely on industrial seed production then really I am only learning half the plant's life cycle. Closing that loop will makes sense on a practical and philosophical level. Plus it is fun: Who would have thought that lettuce gone to seed would make such fabulous attractive sculptural towers?

Dont even get me started on those idiots who buy all their plants as seedlings from garden centres. Don't they know how easy it is to grow from seed is? A 3 quid for three straggly looking sweetcorn seedlings vs 50p for "kids" shopbought seed sufficient to get 30+ healthy organic seedlings?

The excuse of insufficient space just wont wash. How much space does a 36 cell seedtray take? About the same as a sheet of A4 paper? Are they really telling me they dont have space to put a sheet of A4 paper down anywhere on their property?

What have they got to lose? Even with appalling germination they will still have the same number of seedling far cheaper and with greater knowledge of the plant gained. Now the knowledge gained means they recognize the seedling and who knows maybe spot some volunteers next year to replant rather than compost.

I think there are a lot of people out there who have been conditioned to think that stuff they do or make themselves is inferior to something neatly packaged from B&Q or Tescos or Suttons. What you make or grow with your own hands may not be "perfect" but it will often have far more personal value. You are missing out on a learning opportunity if you don't try "closing the loop", the product you buy in will have all sorts of unsavoury chemical, pollution and community destroying effects associated with it. Often it will be junk with a pretty label.

Seedsaving just makes sense. I have now swapped my mustard seeds with my gardening family members which was a nice feeling.

[Lovage]

I do agree Welsh Wizzard

Do we have any more members saving their own seeds? would love to hear of your experiences and results

[annacruachan]

One difficulty for those of us in the west of Scotland is that August tends to be a very wet month, turning what were happily drying seed pods into a sodden slimy mess. Even a sunny September can't undo the damage.
I don't know if removing the pods and storing them in a dry place would work. Would they continue to mature, or just stay at the immature stage and not germinate properly? Does anyone know?

[Welsh Wizard]

Only one way to find out: give it a go! It is a small experiment to do but help is on hand from the finest seed sellers around: Real Seeds:

"Let the peas mature until the pods are brown and the seeds start to rattle. If the weather is very bad, pull up the whole plants and bring inside (for example hung upside down from the shed roof) once the pods start to wither, to ripen and dry further. Once the pods are really dry, shell the peas out. Dry the shelled peas further in a warm (but not hot) place, label with the variety and date, and store."

[rustylady]

One difficulty for those of us in the west of Scotland is that August tends to be a very wet month, turning what were happily drying seed pods into a sodden slimy mess. Even a sunny September can't undo the damage.
I don't know if removing the pods and storing them in a dry place would work. Would they continue to mature, or just stay at the immature stage and not germinate properly? Does anyone know?

If they're fully mature and starting to dry and go brown then you can cut them off and bring them indoors out of the rain to carry on drying. Just make they stay dry and have plenty of air circulating