You find a summary card #SeedSaving for printing & sharing, a great video on saving lettuce seeds, a selected article on how-to grow and a map link. This is a wiki-post: it will be updated & improved with more or new resources.
Seed Saving
Lettuce offers an ideal entrance to seed saving - or for inspiring potential new seed savers to join in:
If you save seed from only a few strong plants, worst case only one, next generation(s) will not suffer from inbreeding depression, which is perfect for beginners. The short plant life cycle of lettuce allows even the impatient minds of our times to re-connect to nature's "true magic" - abundance.
Generally however, seed savers aim to improve the quality of following plant generations by saving from an appropriate population and especially strong and healthy plants with preferred characteristics: E.g., if you live in a warmer climate, choose strong and healthy lettuce plants which bolt late, to foster the characteristic of bolting late; then mix and share your seeds with others who saved seeds from the same variety and selected for the same preferred traits. ( On May's calendar sheet you find detailed explanations #selection )
You are very welcome to print this card for yourself and eventually you want to give it to friends together with some seeds you have saved from your own plants as a gift that helps to spread the seed saving practice in an inspiring and personal way !
Please remember that there is a copyright on the image though, so share the digital version directly from here or with a link to this post - this helps to connect new seed savers to all the related information provided on this website.
Video
Permaculturist James Prigioni shared a great video on saving large quantities of lettuce seed, quickly, with the simple help of a tarp and a strainer.
How To Grow
Growing Lettuce is a detailed article on all you need to know about growing lettuce varieties from spring to fall on Mother Earth News.
Mapping
Growstuff (Direct link: Lettuce) allows us to connect to others who grow and save seed from the same species, for a start, and thus to support the co-creation of an important open source database.
Such mapping projects have the power to connect us both on a practical local level and raise awareness of being connected as "one global family, united in caring for food security".
If we put ourselves on a map to connect to other growers and seed savers, we support ourselves and the seed saving movement effectively:
The more of us join in, the sooner we can find seed savers next to us. Inspire friends and other local gardeners to save from the same varieties - and join the map.
In its early stages this project does not yet allow us to search by varieties, but the co-created database goes open source:
It can be used, by Growstuff, but any commons initiative too, to build yet missing features for more fluent and professional seed exchange of specific varieties on top of it, so it is a valid start !
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| Link repeated: Lettuce |
