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  • Mother Earth Gardener

    Saving Seed

    Feb 13, 2018 4 minutes
    By Oscar H. Will III

    I’M OFTEN ASKED how many plants of a particular cultivar should be grown and harvested if you plan to save seed for growing out in subsequent seasons. The answer to that question depends completely on the purpose of your seed saving, and it mostly relates to probability, convenience, and expected outcome.

    When you think about a cultivar — say, your favorite open-pollinated roasting corn — you should stop to ponder the total number of viable corn seeds at any given time. And then back it up a generation (or 10) and consider how many corn plants went into producing all those seeds

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