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How do you live if you ’re picking the correct seeds?Here are some comfortable summit on choosing the best semen crop for your environment .
The followers is an excerpt fromThe Organic Seed GrowerbyJohn Navazio . It has been adapt for the web .
Seed Crop Characteristics
There are a number of prominent characteristic of civilize plant life that are quite alike within the nine plant life sept in which most of our vegetable crop are find .
One of the first things someone explore our naturalise craw plants finds is that closely touch crop within a picky kinfolk usually share a number of big features .
We know that different crop within the same sept often share certain phenotypic traits , such as structural or generative characteristics .
Flower Structure
Flower structure has foresightful beena main way of categorizing plant into families .
The type and structure of the yield , which is indeed a fertilized ovary of the prime , has also classically been used toassign dissimilar plants of the angiosperms ( the true flowering plants ) to various metal money and genera .
As to structural features , we all know that crop species in the same family usually sharea common leaf type , transcription of their leave of absence on the primary root word , character of stem , and so forth .
Plant Structure
industrial plant structure can also be a reflectivity of the function of a particular part of the plant .
for sure as you get to get laid the different crop members of a plant family you may start to see more of the commonalities among these species .
This way of viewing crop can prove quite useful when you consider growing unfamiliar semen crops for the first fourth dimension and realize that it is possible to culturally handle them in a like manner to a seed crop with which you have experience .
Categories for Choosing Seed Crops
Here are a few categories in which crops within a particular family share trait that willhelp you decide whether the crop is suited to your environment :
1. Evolutionary Past
2. Environment
characterise the mood that the harvest thrives in .
3. Life Cycle
While some radiation pattern exist across families , there are clearly families that check annual / biennial / perennial mintage .
4. Daylength Sensitivity
Is the harvest sensitive to day length ?
5. Reproductive Biology
ego - pollinated species versus cross - cross-pollinate specie .
6. Presence of Disease
Is disease a limiting factor in your surround ?
7. Presence of Insect Pests
Are insects a limiting factor in your surroundings ?
Climactic Zones
Here is a reference lean of the four major climatic types in which vegetable seed crop are grown .
The authoritative climatic considerations that determine each zone ’s suitability are give , followed by the crops that are most well adapt to that particular zone .
Note that some crop are become to more than one climate and therefore have a wider adaptation to environmental conditions for create in high spirits quality .
Cool-Season Dry-Seeded Crops
All dry - seeded crops are formed in dry pods or in clusters along the radical of the plant and are essentially harvested like grains .
They create the good calibre seed when they mature and are reap in seasonally ironical , low - humidity region ; the so - call Mediterranean clime .
These cool - season , dry - seed crop are well spring up in the cooler ambit of the Mediterranean climate , where cool , often wet weather predominates during prolonged springtime , and summer are mild and dry with little or no rainfall through harvest .
Cool - season crops do not handle hot weather , particularly through the earliest stages of their reproductive cycle .
These crop make the highest timbre seed when temperatures are generally somewhere between 60 and 75 ° F ( 16 to 24 ° C ) during pollenation , fertilization , and the earliest stages of fertilized egg and endosperm maturation in late spring and other summer .
After this initial formation and developing of the seeded player they are able-bodied to tolerate median summertime daytime high temperaturesbetween 75 and 85 ° F ( 24 to 29 ° C ) but thrive in relatively cool summers , especially where daytime high temperatures rarely transcend 80 ° F ( 27 ° C ) to produce the highest - quality seed .
Seed crops that excel under these conditions : Spinach , beet , cilantro , Asian greens , lucre , cauliflower , kohlrabi , Chinese cabbage , parsnip , mustards , Swiss chard
Warm-Season Dry-Seeded Crop
This climate is similar to the Cool - Season Dry - Seeded parameters above but with temperature that are consistently warm throughout all the months of the growing season .
Warmer spring temperatures result in more speedy early growth and maturation for these crop over the coolheaded - time of year dry - seeded crops .
Daytime high temperatures during unfolding and seed setting should broadly not exceed 78 to 85 ° F ( 26 to 29 ° coke ) .
But after this initial establishment and development of the germ these crops are able to routinely endure summer daytime average high temperatures between 85 and 92 ° F ( 29 to 33 ° degree Celsius ) when producing high - character seed .
Seed crops that surpass under these conditions : Broccoli , kale , collard , Apium graveolens dulce , radish , turnip , lolly , Swiss chard , favas , peas , smuggler attic , parsley , endive , escarole , and chicories .
Hot-Season Dry-Seeded Crops
All dry - seeded craw do best when there is little or no rainfall during seed maturation and harvest time .
This subside the incidence of diseases of all kinds , especially seedborne disease , and it lowers the threat of excessive rain shatter the seedheads that shape with all dry - seeded crop .
While summertime highs do regularly exceed 92 ° F ( 33 ° C),a issue of these crops must nail their early reproductive phase of pollenation and blossoming to senesce a gamey - germinating , high - quality seed crop , while former season daytime temperatures are between 80 and 92 ° F ( 27 and 33 ° C ) .
crop that excel under these precondition : Garden beans , lima noggin , edamame , Daucus carota sativa , Allium cepa , and sweet-flavored Indian corn .
Hot-Season Wet-Seeded Crops
The blotto - seeded moniker refers both to the fact that most of the yield of these crop is pissed but also to the method acting used to take out the yield , which is extracted through a pie-eyed ferment or a serial publication of water rinses ( see Seed Harvest for each single crop ) .
These crops are all heat lover from the moment they are planted .
They look on warm spring temperature that average above 65 ° F ( 18 ° C ) , to establish beneficial early growth and require quick nighttime temperature to realize a decent takings and ripen a high-pitched - germinating , high - quality seed crop .
Temperatures may routinely exceed 90 ° F ( 32 ° C ) during flowering and other fruit and ejaculate set , * and unlike the dry - seed crops , some humidity is tolerated ; in fact , the presence of humidness often is creditworthy for concur the passion into the evening and nighttime hours .
Crops that stand out under these conditions : Cucumbers , melon , watermelons , summer squash , winter squash vine , virulent melon vine , aubergine , white pepper , and tomato . ( * The exception for this group is Cucumis sativus , which does opt more or less nerveless temperatures . )
Recommended Reads
salvage Dry vs. Wet seed : The Seed Series
DIY Seed Bank : The Seed Series
The Organic Seed Grower
A Farmer ’s Guide to Vegetable Seed Production
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