Saving Red Romaine Lettuce Seeds

One of the many benefits of purchasing seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds from THIS WEBSITE is that along with every order they send you a packet of free seeds.  In Louisiana, we call this "lagniappe," and it means 'a little something extra. It's always a treat to get something for free, right?  Getting an extra packet of seeds gives you a unique opportunity to try seeds that you might not otherwise try.  It is also a nice gesture of goodwill that makes you want to continue doing business with them.

With my most recent order, the free packet of seeds was a package of Lemon Queen Sunflower Seeds.  I'll plant those as soon as the torrential rains stop.  My order last year contained a packet of Red Romaine Lettuce Seeds.  We love fresh garden salads with a mixture of several varieties of lettuce and this seemed like a neat thing to try to add some red color to our garden (and salad bowl), so I planted a row of them. Here is a photo of some mature red romaine lettuce I took back toward the end of February:

Red Romaine Lettuce

Since this variety is an heirloom variety that is open-pollinated (non hybrid), you can save the seeds from year to year.  We like to save seeds from items we like and keep them stored for later use.  We'll show you how we saved the seeds from the red romaine.  We keep picking off leaves and enjoying salads until you notice the plant bolting (going into the seed production stage).  When the plant starts to put on seeds, I find the lettuce to get kind of bitter tasting.  Pretty soon you'll see the plant send up a shoot with flowers on it.

Red Romaine getting ready to flower

We allow the plant to completely flower and begin to dry up.  You will see white, dandelion-type, feathery things sticking out of the dried flower buds.  Just like a dandelion, the "wings" have an individual seed attached to the base and as it catches the wind, it will break off from the flower bud and fly across the landscape on its 'wings' or parachute until it lands, depositing its seed where it will grow next year.

The flowers of the red romaine

Except with our red romaine lettuce, we won't let it do that.  We want to interrupt that process and capture the seeds before they take flight.  I take each flower in my hand and using my fingernails, I pinch the wings and pull up.

Dried flower ready to yield seeds

When you pull, the flowers have a single, tiny seed attached to each wing.  I suppose you could break off the seed from the wing, but that is far too tedious of a job for me for right now.

Seeds of promise

I stored the seeds in an airtight container like an old ibuprofen bottle, ensuring that the seeds stay dry, cool, and out of sunlight.  I'll make sure to label the bottle.  This fall I'll pull out the bottle and after I work up a row, I'll pinch some of the seeds between my thumb and index finger and sprinkle into the furrow.  The red romaine will spring up from the ground and yield more healthy salads for the family.

Seed Saving

When I finished up with just the seeds that I had gathered, I had roughly the same amount of seeds saved that I started with when I got the free packet of seeds from Baker Creek.  That's what I call the gift that keeps on giving!!