Hey there!

Well, although to many it may feel like summer has barely shown its face this year, it is now time for us to turn our thoughts towards the crops that will be succeeding our summer crops as those are harvested, or simply die off from a lack of warmth and too much wind! In many ways, this is actually a relief for the southern grower... the more temperamental warm-weather crops which have not preformed too well this year, can be replaced by the old reliable staple crops that will see you in to the autumn and winter.

However, with the rest of the summer on shaky grounds at best, it would pay to start planning and sowing seeds for your autumn / winter crops as soon as possible. If they haven't reached a decent size by the time the frosts come, they'll likely stop growing and then bolt to seed in the spring when it warms up. The ideal situation for autumn crops is to have them reach a decent size by the time the weather cools off, whereby your garden becomes your refrigerator, filled with crops that you can pick when you need them or as they reach full size. For example, so long as a cauliflower plant has a few decent sized leaves on it by April, they have the ability to form a large and delicious head even in the depths of winter. Our 2011 Autumn Seed Catalog is avaliable now, featuring all of our varieties which can be planted in the next month or so. Email otepoti.urban.organics@gmail.com to recieve a copy of the seed list if you haven't already.

For me, this fickle summer has been a lesson in resilient gardening. I was lucky in that I was too busy early in the season to establish too many proper summer crops. I have a few pumpkins, beans, corn, tomatoes and zucchini's, but they aren't dominating my garden space. For the bulk of my gardens I opted for hardier veges - carrots, potatoes, yams, oats, quinoa, brassicas, peas, beets, and so on... while this was a gamble, as a hot dry summer would have proved a challenge for some of these cooler climate crops, the gamble paid off... the summer turned out pretty disappointing, and my cool weather crops are happy as larry! But at the end of the day the lesson learned was in the value of diversity in the garden. By growing a good mix of things, you're guaranteed a reasonable harvest of one form or another. I think that many southern growers are lulled into the idea of growing lots of warm weather crops - inspired by TV shows or magazines produced further north - and invest too much gardening time and space into things which will not produce a reasonable yield. There's only so much time and effort you want to put in to get three semi-ripe tomatoes. Sometimes sticking to the good old fashioned staple crops, while perhaps not as glamorous, can pay dividends in the long run.

Also, its about the time of year that we need to start thinking about seed saving for summer crops - beans, squash, brassicas, etc. as well as biennial crops such as carrots, beets, leeks, swedes and so on which have matured from last year. There are a few golden rules of thumb that all of our seed savers should be keeping in mind. These are:

1. Maintain Genetic Diversity. Like humans, plants can become inbred, or a variety weakened by a lack of genetic diversity. For most crops, seeds should be saved from a minimum of 10 plants to ensure that there is enough variety left in the genes to withstand future challenges. These 10 plants need to be all of the same variety.

2. Avoild Cross Pollination. All of the seeds from the Symbiosis Seed Exchange are 'open pollinated' varieties, meaning that they are stabilised within their own variety. Many beginner seed savers are tempted to try out crazy cross breeds between varieties to see what happens. More often than not, this results in a train wreck of genetics, rather than the super-mega-franken-vegetable you were envisioning. The seed saving process is much more reliable, and rewarding, if you ensure that only one variety of a particular species is flowering in your garden at one time. Also be aware that some seemingly different vegetables can cross pollinate. For example, beet root and silver beet are both the same species. As are broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kohl rabi and some kales. As you can imagine, a broccoli x cabbage cross might not be too useful to the home gardener. So be vigilent!

3. Select the best. Of course, we want our vegetable varieties to be the best they possibly can be. Home scale seed saving is a golden opportunity to actually improve vegetable varieties beyond what is achievable at the larger scales. It is of utmost importance to save seeds from the best plants that your variety produces. It may seem like a sacrifice to let the best go to seed - however just remember that if you do it this year, ALL of your plants next year could be of that calibre!

4. Let the seeds ripen properly. There's no use harvesting immature seed - they won't work. Let the plant complete its full process of seed maturation, and collect seeds when they are ripe. After harvest, make sure that your seeds are properly dried out and then store them in an airtight container in a cool, dry, dark place.

If you follow those tips, and check out our online gardening guide, you'll be well on your way to saving high quality vegetable seeds to use for yourself and share with our seed savers network! If you have any questions about how to save seed, feel free to jump on our discussion forums to ask questions or discuss topics of interest.

Also, if anyone has any photos of their gardens, or garden related projects like composting, seed saving, preparing beds, green manures, pests and disease, etc, it would be super mega awesome if you could post them on our website, or email them to me so I can upload them to our gardening guides! Yeah.. photos are sweet.

Good luck for the rest of the summer season, and don't forget to start thinking about your autumn / winter gardens soon!

Cheers,
Bart Acres