Blooming Biennials

Last week’s Garden club workshop on seed saving was successful. Last Thursday, a half dozen of us convened in the rooftop garden after dinner, to discuss seed saving while enjoying the early evening sunshine. After a 20 minute discussion on plant genetics, heirloom seeds, and differences between industrial and organic agricultural practices, we got down to business in the garden.

In the rooftop garden here at the Food Security Institute, we have several common food plants that have gone to seed. Right now our carrot plants are in full bloom, with flowers that size of softballs blooming from the ends of four foot long green stalks. Most of us had never seen a carrot that had gone to seed before. Why? Carrots (and cabbage, beets, turnips, celery, leeks, and parsnips, to name a few) are biennial plants. This means they only produce seeds in their second season of growth.

The carrots in our rooftop garden were planted last year, left in the garden over the winter, and then flowered in their second year. In most areas of North America, winters are too cold to leave biennials in the ground, as the cold temperatures will kill the plants. Gardeners in places like Manitoba have to dig up their biennials, store them in sand or dirt in a root cellar al winter long, and re-plant them in the spring if they wish to save their biennial seeds. Fortunately for us on the BC coast, we usually can skip these steps. I think that perhaps this particular crop of carrots might be especially cold-resistant, after having survived our last winter! I am looking forward to saving seeds from these carrot plants, and testing that theory next year.

We also examined some lettuce, spinach, radishes and collard greens that had gone to seed. After the garden tour, we sat down with some of last year’s dried collards, cabbage and mustard plants to practice removing the seeds from the dried seed pods. We spent the remainder of the workshop chatting and removing seeds. After the workshop, everyone got to take home some seeds to plant in their own gardens. A fun and educational evenings was had by all. The next Renfrew Collingwood Garden Club meeting will be on Thursday, August 13th, at 7:00 pm. Please come join us. Beginners, experts and everyone in between are all welcome.

-Posted by Shannon