With yet another fresh layer of snow piling up on the ground, it doesn’t feel much like spring. Despite the snow, though, this is the time of year when gardeners get planning for planting, which starts next month!

Usually, gardeners rely on seed catalogs for their seeds each year. But there’s a new trend emerging in gardening: seed saving! (Well, seed saving is a very old practice, but it’s just now being re-remembered.) Seed saving is the practice of letting some of your plants grow through to maturity, when they might not be too tasty anymore but they do have fully mature seeds. These seeds can be harvested and saved through the winter, then planted in the spring.

The advantages to saving your own seed are many: it’s less expensive than buying from a company each year; you can choose seeds from the healthiest plants, which will grow into new plants with similar traits that do particularly well in your area; you help preserve the genetic diversity of food crops (which is rapidly dwindling, as this image from National Geographic illustrates); and usually you end up with more seed than you can use in your own garden, so you have enough to share with friends, neighbors, and the greater community!

Last year, we saved seed from kale, ground cherries, peas, beans, calendula, and bachelor’s buttons. Now, we’re packaging it up for distribution. Some of the seed has already gone to a seed lending library in Concord, MA; some will be traded at a local seed swap; some will be available at the farmers’ market; and, of course, some will be grown here at Burgess Farm to keep our favorite varieties on the table!