Category: Seeds

How Do We Get New Plants?

October 3, 2024

Environment, Gardening, Landscape, Mother Nature, Plants, Propagating, Seeds

Colourful samaras on an Amur Maple. Photo: PeaceSignsPruners

The gardeners’ world has become like the fashion world: every season there are new releases, new ‘must-haves’, new colours and shapes! If you’re on social media the algorithm has picked up on your like for gardens and you are deluged with ads for the latest plants as well as influencer posts declaring their love for the new and nifty.

How do we get new plants? Well, there are a few ways. There is the time honoured tradition of exploration and discovery. It’s seems almost unbelievable but there are still places on this Earth where humans have rarely walked. The deepest corners of the Amazon, the heights of the Andes or the meadows of the Alps, to name a few, all hold plants never catalogued. You have to be a real plant nerd to keep up on these things. Here’s Kew Gardens’ list of the most exciting discoveries of 2023. A tree that grows underground? How fantastic!

Plant exploration and discovery does not hold the prestige it once did but there are still intrepid scientists out there. When the New World was still new to Europeans, fortunes could be made by introducing new plants. Have you heard of ‘Tulip Mania’ in the 1600’s? The tulip, introduced from Turkey, had some interesting and exotic varieties. Collectors went a little crazy and the price rose astronomically, fueling a financial collapse when prices finally bottomed out. Read more about it here. Or how about Victorian Fern Cases? When a glass box was designed to keep Amazonian species alive, collectors went a little crazy for ferns. You were nobody if you didn’t have a Fern Case with an exotic specimen. Read more about that here.

Another way that we get new plants is by selection. This has been used since ancient times, when the first farmers noticed a grain that produced better and saved seed from it for replanting. It can be applied to any plant. Imagine a family farm that grows a tree for the horticultural trade. They grow nothing but, say, Amur Maple (Acer tataricum subsp. ginnala), ten thousand of them in the field. The farmer notices that one tree has brighter samaras (seed pods), a more vibrant pink than most. It’s got a nice form and habit: straight trunk, not too large a canopy, good fall colour. This tree is different, it’s special with those bright seed pods. So the farm begins to propagate it from cuttings, to clone it and make exact replicas. And so, Amur Maple ‘Ruby Slippers’ was created. The document here states that the finders started propagating in 1991 and the tree was trademarked in 2004.

There is money to be made by selecting superior plants. Once patented a small fee will go to the farm for every sale. It can be big money when it’s a plant that can sell to a large audience. It is also a process that one has to invest time in, the plant must be cloned and the offspring must be watched to show that the DNA is consistent. The grower must allow the tree to become old enough to produce seed. Rushing to market can lead to professional embarrassment; anyone remember a variegated weigela released that refused to stay variegated? Once the shrub rooted in, all the branches it produced were plain green. The plain branches were much more vigorous than the variegated so one had to continually prune out the unwanted branches. This left a puny shrub that usually died.

We get new plants from breeding and crossbreeding. This is taking the pollen of one plant and applying it to the stamen of another, creating a hybrid. In the modern age this can also mean taking genes from one plant and inserting them in another. The point is to get the best qualities of both plants. This can be a long process; one must allow the offspring to develop, test them to see that they have the desired qualities and test again to see if the seed the offspring develops stays true. The processes began to be understood in the 1800’s, when Gregor Mendel starting working with peas.

Breeding plants can be very profitable. These plants can be patented and the breeder receives a royalty each time one is sold. It is a meticulous, painstaking process. There is always a goal: bigger blooms, better disease resistance, better leaf colour. All the crosses, all the parents, must be recorded and the outcome recorded. The new plants must be grown and observed. If the outcome is not achieved, the breeder must continue with more cross pollination, adding a different parent. And so on, until the goal is achieved.

Have you ever saved seed from your garden, planted it and got something totally unexpected? You might have bred a new variety and you could make a bunch of money!

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Are You Saving Seed?

August 27, 2024

Environment, Gardening, Mother Nature, Plants, Propagating, Seeds

Purple Fountain Grass (Pennisetum) Photo: PeaceSignsPruners

I know we’re just enjoying this year’s bounty and beauty. Are you thinking about next year? Are you planning on saving any seeds? Patience is key in saving healthy seed. You may have a lovely little seed head now but is it mature and viable?

Consider that a seed is like an egg in a bird’s nest. The seed coat is the shell, inside is endosperm which is like yolk and there is an embryo or little spark of life. The egg, when laid by momma bird, does not have a baby bird…yet. The mother must sit on the egg to keep is warm for the embryo to develop.

So it is with plants. The seeds need to be attached to the mother plant for a little while to develop properly. Now it is a bit of a fine balance: critters and birds want to eat the seeds, wind wants to blow them to a new home. It is the yellow, soft cucumber that will have viable seed, not necessarily the small one you choose for eating.

How can you tell? With peas, beans and flowers like milkweed the pod becomes brown and brittle. The ornamental grass pictured, purple fountain grass (Pennisetum) will get very beige and fluffy, then the small seeds will pull off quite easily. Most flowers develop a bulge right under where the flower petals were which will dry and eventually split, revealing the seed. Sunflowers hold their seeds in the centre head.

If you are anxious to save a certain seed perhaps protect it by wrapping the developing head or pod with something breathable: paper, muslin or horticultural fleece will work well. Staple or tie it around the seed head to secure. Do no use plastic wrap or bags; moisture can be trapped leading to mold or the sun on the bag can super heat the contents essentially frying what’s inside. Cut the stem and bring the seed inside once you think it’s mature.

We have to have a word here about what’s worth saving. Some seed will not be what you thought you were saving or the seed may be sterile. Seed must be pollinated to become viable. Yeah for the pollinators, we really need them! Plants can only be pollinated by those in their genus and often species; apple (Malus) cannot by pollinated by cherries (Prunus) even though they are both in the rose family. Squash are notorious for allowing pollination from their close cousins, so zucchini (Cucurbita pepo) can be pollinated by pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo) but not by butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata). The seeds you planted should only produce zucchini but the seeds you save could produce some odd cross-pollinated squash. If it’s tasty you can trademark it, name it and make a million dollars.

Some of your well loved plants are hybrids or F1 hybrids, meaning they are like the offspring of zucchini and pumpkin crosses. They can produce wonderful new additions to our gardens but they may not be what you want when you save their seed. Many of the modern petunias, for example, are hybrids; the seeds are either sterile or produce something you do not expect. If you’re really in love with one of those plants it is better to take cuttings (clones) soon and keep the plant like a houseplant through the winter.

Seed suppliers protect their stock by growing related plants far apart: separate fields or separate greenhouses. They may do fertilization by hand, then cover the flower or developing seed head to prevent other pollen from entering. As a homeowner with a small garden it’s impossible to segregate plants, even if you have some in the front yard and some in the backyard the pollinators can fly that far.

Here is an excellent article from U of South Dakota Extension that helps explain the ins-and-outs of seed production. For over twenty years the book ‘Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners‘ has been our go-to. Happy to see that there is a revised edition out.

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Chaos or Control?

May 30, 2024

Design, Environment, Gardening, Landscape, Mother Nature, Plants, Seeds

Photo by Rose Mwandishi on Pexels.com

There’s a new gardening trend making the rounds of social media. It’s called chaos gardening. In it’s purest form you take a bunch of seeds of what ever you wish to grow: herbs, grasses, flowers, vegetables and/or fruit. You mix them up and then toss them around willy-nilly. Water and wait. Really! It’s that simple!

This is the antithesis of formal gardening. If you’re not sure what a formal garden is think palaces. The gardens of Versailles are one of the best known examples. The gardens are severely structured with straight lines, precise hedging, clipped and shaped topiaries and perhaps a maze. They ultimately were created to showcase the power and prestige of the owner, demonstrating their control over Mother Nature.

Chaos gardening is allowing Mother Nature to rule. Whatever sprouts and grows goes! A chaotic garden will be a jumble of plants, colour and foliage. Peas will try to climb up milkweed or other tall flowers, beans may just grow along the ground. I believe the trend took off in the last few years as people became more interested in reducing (demanding) lawns and supporting pollinating insects, with a move first to natural or meadow gardens. Chaos gardening is the meadow freed from all restrictions or designs.

Nothing can ever be too simple, right? There are a few issues that must be dealt with for success. A basic rule of planting seeds is that they are buried to a depth three times their width. So, if you wish to grow winter squash (a large seed) and lettuce (a small seed) something is not going to be happy enough to sprout. If may be necessary to divide your seed stash into sizes. Fling around the large seeds, then cover with a light layer of soil. Broadcast medium seeds then cover with a light layer of soil. Finally, your small seeds can be cast about.

Photo by Freddie Ramm on Pexels.com

What you choose to grow is entirely up to you. I lot of what I’m seeing is people using up their seed stashes, vegetable or flower seeds that may be many years old. That’s fantastic, but you may get spotty germination. Some people are looking to create wildflower or native gardens. I’d advise that you not buy the wildflower mixes in box stores and some garden centres because they may not be formulated for your area. If you want a lot of this garden to come back next year choose hardy perennials seeds, native seeds from a local grower or self-seeding annuals. Do a little research because what just barely survives for me on the Canadian Prairies may be considered invasive in the warmer climate of southern Ontario or BC. Think of kudzu, the plant over-taking the southern US. Originally introduced as a pretty, fast growing vine from the Orient it is now clogging waterways and strangling trees.

I’m not sure chaos gardening is for the new gardener. Would a new gardener recognize a cucumber plant? Would they know to go looking for zucchini under the big mound of leaves? I’m still not sure what the parameters are for weeding. Does one accept all plants? Dandelions? Stinging Nettle? If you’re in a short season climate like mine we will not be able to broadcast seed for long season crops like tomato, pepper and some herbs and expect to get a crop. Us cold-climate gardeners will still have to start those seeds inside late winter and plant them out. Do we toss the pot into the chaos garden and then plant where it lands?

I’ll be watching some of the social media accounts engaged in this; it will be interesting to see their successes and failures. If you’d like to learn more here’s a article after chaos gardening appeared at the vaunted Chelsea Flower Show in England and here’s one from one of my favourite blogs The Spruce. Is this a trend you’ll try? Or do you like a bit more control in your borders?

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Category: Seeds

How Do We Get New Plants?

Are You Saving Seed?

Chaos or Control?