Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Led by Andrew.

The girl¹ doing the writing on the blackboard, she talks so quietly!

Girl in the middle back: Stage voice: Somebody is going to have to share a flier with somebody. (Lot of people in the room but I think they had enough.)

One of us in the audience: Avocado can grow six months or more after the seed in there.

Guy in audience: Red Delicious apples once actually were.

We are going to talk about:
Garlic
Beans
Tomatoes
Corn
Squash

Mostly what we want is different from what the industrial market is trying to do. Relying on large-scale agriculture, corporations or government, to produce seeds that meet our needs will not work.

Clearly people have saved and shared seeds without knowing or using western scientific classifications, but we will use them because they are useful.

Family: Cuarbitucae (squash, melon, gourds, cucumbers)
  Genus: Cucurbita (squashes)
    Species: Cpespa[??] (zucchini, most pumpkins, summer squash)

Isolation of the plant to prevent pollen from moving to one to another.

Strategies to prevent seeds from crossing with each other and giving you things that you don't expect and don't want

If you don't care about saving seeds, you don't care about what pollination does.

Female squash flowers, you can see the immature fruit from the beginning. So you can take the male flower, strip off extra parts, and stick it in the female flower. Then cover it to

Intensive, but some people who are really into saving lots of seeds will do that.

Girl presenting: Some companies are packaging seeds in plastic, including seeds of change, but it is known to reduce germination significantly.

Kale and brussel sprouts all capable of cross-polinating, and producing hybrids. Which you generally don't want. But they are insect pollinated, so as long as you keep at least all but one covered with a mesh to present insects from going there.

But putting the cage over it does cut down on sunlight. You can do alternate day covering [the cabbages, or maybe i just wrote cabbages when i meant covering].

Isolation by time can be trickier.

Corn is really hard to isolate by distance. The light pollen blows a long way. Farmers use the rule of at least two miles.

One advantage of planting around here!

Though a man at Red Gate Farm says, even though it blows long distance, it can dry out, and not be fertile.

Process of saving seeds starts when you have more plants, so that you have genetic variation within the species/variant you are trying to grow. In corn for instance, at least 200 plants. Better to grow in blocks, so it all pollinates each other.

Tomatoes and potatoes can pollinate each other
The slimy stuff (that I hate) on tomato seeds are to prevent it from sprouting.

So, rotting tomato seeds: cut it across the middle, on the horizontal. With cherry tomatoes you can throw them in a blender, the seeds will mostly survive.

A sieve, really fine colander, and dry them out on a ceramic or glass plate.

Layer of mold over the top, that's what you want. It starts to smell pretty bad. That's how you know it's working.

Annuals (tomatoes, squash, corn) -- produce seed in one season
Biannual (carrots, onions) -- those need to be either left in the ground or harvested and replanted, and then they will go to seed. This can be more complex.

There are perennial onions, "potato onion" that alternates between small bulbs produce large, large bulbs produce small.

1 ^{(She's definitely younger than me but could certainly be called a woman and I probably should. But when a younger friend introduced a newly mutual acquaintance who was born the same year I was, according to Facebook, as "the woman you just met" it was jarring. My peers are boys and girls. Men and women are old. I think I have to face that I'm old.)}