Starting with the easy ones: beans, peas and a paper bag of calendula

10 August 2024 · 3 min read

The first rule I was given was to start with plants that do not cross easily and whose seed is large and obvious, and that pointed straight at the bean bed. Bush beans pollinate themselves before the flower even opens, so the seed from any pod is true to the plant, and the pods tell you when they are ready by turning papery and rattling when shaken. I marked eight plants at the end of the row with yarn in late June and did not pick a single pod from them. They were done by the first week of August.

Shelling was a pleasure: dry pods split along the seam with a thumbnail and the beans fall out glossy and hard. Eight plants gave 214 seeds, which I counted because I had no idea what to expect. That is enough to sow the bed twice over with plenty to spare. They are spread on a paper plate on top of the refrigerator for another two weeks because even pods that rattle hold more moisture than storage wants.

The peas were the first lesson. The pods were dry and I shelled about a hundred seeds, and a week later I noticed small round holes in perhaps one in ten of them, with a tiny dark beetle in a few. Pea weevil, which lays eggs in the developing pod and hatches out of the dry seed. The holed seeds will mostly still germinate, I am told, but the beetles will spread to the rest if left, so the whole lot went into the freezer for a week to kill anything still inside, then back onto the plate to dry again.

The flowers were easier and odder. Calendula seed forms in a tight ring where the petals were, and the individual seeds are curved and ridged like small brown caterpillars. I snapped the whole heads off when they turned brown, dropped them into a paper bag, shook the bag every day for a week, and tipped it out: a cupful of seed and chaff that I did not bother to separate. Marigold heads work the same way and give long black needles with a pale tuft. Both are so generous that I am already wondering what to do with the surplus.

Every batch gets an envelope with the name, the date and the number of parent plants, because the one thing I am certain of is that in March I will not remember any of it. A shoebox has been cleared for them in the hall closet. It is a small start.