A Seed Saver's Garden

[Decoy1]

November 11 and I'm still not done with seeds! Ha! I'm inching closer though. Definitely played a game with myself - done, oh wait not quite, ok done, no but almost there, yadayada.....it's the peppers that really hung me up. I had a full banana box of them to do, mostly small stuff (!), and I got a bit too reliant on outdoor refrigeration to hold them for me until I was ready. Tackled them this week, the whole box minus about 4 large Ziploc bags worth. (The hot wee ones, which I'm not looking forward too....) Sheesh, that was a job. I hang my head in shame that I lost 5 - 10 % of them, I just prioritized computer work too much doing seed entries for 2025. Some went bad. Anyway, that's that.

There were some star performers in there for sure though. 'Piquillo', 'Kampanaki', 'Portuguese Goat Heart', 'Morron de Fabrica' and a variety called 'Sonora'. That's a big pepper that one. Oh, and 'Bola', those were really mega producers. More a paprika pepper though. All mostly sweet. The 'Ajo Mochero' little yellow hot peppers did really good too. I'd say the 'Wiri Wiri' peppers were amazing, cause they were, but it wouldn't be fair because I overwintered that plant. I can't realistically compare to the others. I'll be so glad when this pepper seed job is totally done.

I'm also trailing behind on dealing with pepper seeds but have nowhere near as many as you. I only save seeds from the ones I've successfully bagged, but seem to think you've said elsewhere that you're happy to let them open pollinate and haven't found much, if any, crossing. Is that an accurate memory and am I right in thinking that you've not experienced crossing?

It would be hugely helpful to be able to ease up on the bagging of flowers as it has to be done relatively early, and quite frequently the bagged flower doesn't set and simply drops off in the bag. I do grow my peppers rather close together and I have wild bees nesting not too far away so perhaps I'm particularly prone to cross-pollination, but I've read that it's often considered that there's about a 7% chance of crosses occurring. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences on this - and apologies if you've explained very fully elsewhere.