A Successful Experiment

I remember reading about 10 years ago how Monsanto was suing small farmers to protect its patents on genetically modified seed.  No seed saving allowed.  That was their property.  I'm not big on genetic modification.  Call me old school.  That's one of the reasons why we plant open pollinated, non-hybrid heirloom seeds.  Each year we're able to save our own seeds.  Some seeds require different processes or techniques for saving the seed.  

Over the years we've saved many different seeds and had great success.  Off-hand, we've saved the following seeds: carrots, lettuce, cowpeas, squash, tomatoes, kale, spinach, dill, parsley, peppers, okra, etc.  Funny thing is, we've never saved the simplest one.  The seed we all learned to grow in Kindergarten by planting these in some dirt in a Dixie cup.  Yep, green beans!  This year we aimed to do that.  We showed in an earlier post how we saved three varieties of snap beans: Contender, Italian Roma and Purple Teepee beans.

In the midst of the drought, we aimed to test germination of the saved seed.  Let's see what happened.  

Well, you know if you are seeing blooms, it's all good.  The purple bloom above is from the purple teepee beans.  The bloom below is from the Contender beans, or it could be the Italian Roma beans now that I think of it.  You can see the tiny bean pods developing.

Nearly every bean germinated, so I would say the experiment was a success.

We're already harvesting a few.  In the basket below, the Purple Teepee beans are at the top (of course!), the Contenders are to the right and the Italian Romas (my favorites) are to the left.

Our goal each year is to have fresh picked green beans for Thanksgiving Dinner.  Looks like this year we've achieved our goal.  With our experiment being a success, I now know that I have enough seed saved so that I don't need to purchase green bean seeds for this spring.  The only hard part in saving seed is having the discipline to save your seed and not eat it all!