Sowing Seed and Saving Seed

Another strong line of wind passed through today, bringing with it nine tenths of an inch of rain.  I walked through the garden and noticed the rain softened the soil to coax the Henderson Bush Lima Beans I planted out of the dirt.  I've got the itch to plant more as quickly as I can.  For the next two days, if it is dry enough, I'm going to be planting more beans, peas, squash of various varieties, and okra.  I hope to fill up the garden.

I do have a slight problem with space.  We have a couple of rows that I'm waiting on the seeds to be ready for harvest for saving.  Planting open pollenated heirloom varieties give you that option.  You can save the seed year after year from these.  You can't do that with hybrids.  Below you can see a full row of about seven different varieties of leaf lettuce.  We at SO MUCH lettuce this year.  The plants are blooming now and will soon have lots of seeds.  We'll save them, dry them, label them and will be ready to plant them again this fall.

And here is a row of monstrueux de viroflay spinach.  We'll be saving the seed from these plants as well.

The only problem with this is that I need the space that these plants are occupying to plant the spring/summer crops.  Not to fear.  I have a plan.  I will work up the row that was the walking path between the spinach and lettuce and plant into the walking path.  Once I harvest the spinach and lettuce seeds, I'll cover that with a 4 inch layer of wood chips and THAT will be the new walking path.  It serves another good purpose in that it rotates the land.  The walking path that was fallow this year will next be in crops.  The land planted in crops this year will next be a walking path.