"Filled with advice for the home gardener and the more seasoned horticulturist alike, The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving provides straightforward instruction on collecting and saving seed from your favorite heirloom and open-pollinated plants. Seed Savers Exchange and the Organic Seed Alliance bring together decades of knowledge to demystify the time honored tradition of saving seeds using lush photographs, clear instructions, and easy-to-comprehend profiles on specific crop types. Whether interested in simply saving seeds for home use or working to improve varieties of beloved squashes and tomatoes, The Seed Garden provides a deeper understanding of the art, the science, and the joy of saving seeds."--

Includes index.

Why save seeds? -- Section I. The art and practice of seed saving. The botany of seed saving -- Setting seed: mating systems and pollination methods -- Staying true: seed saving and variety maintenance -- Cultivating for seed -- Harvesting and cleaning seeds -- Seed quality and storage -- Planning the seed garden -- Section II. The seed garden: Crop profiles. Determining population size and isolation distance -- Common name directory -- Crop profiles (alphabetical by scientific name) -- Appendices.