So I was growing some cabbages in the greenhouse this winter. They did well; harvested the main heads and then they regrew secondary heads (at least most of them). Instead of a third round of heads they started producing flower stalks. I decided to let them go, and now it looks like I have seed pods forming, at a very early stage.
I thought I’d let them grow out their seeds and see what they produce, but never having grown brassica seed before, I don’t know some of the details I think I need to know. And online searches turn up tons of info on growing cabbage seeds and where to buy seedlings, but nothing on raising the seed itself (thanks Google, once again your haste to push ads means you only return useless info).
So I thought I would ask here. The sorts of questions I have are: how long to go from pollination to mature seed, Do I need to collect the pods before they are mature to prevent them splitting and shooting the seed out (like beans), Any special drying/cleaning steps? And anything else that I have not thought of?
So if there are any cabbage family seed growers out there, please let me know.
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Well I dug around some in my gardening library, and found “The Organic Seed Grower” by Navazio. Forgot I had this book. It has good descriptions of how to grow and harvest seed from most all common garden plants, including cabbage/Brassicas. Thought I would post what he says about cabbage:
The flowers tend to be self sterile on a plant, so one needs multiple plants flowering at the same time to get successful pollination (may have lucked out there had 4 plants flowering and bees had access). Cabbages seed forms in a pod similar to beans/peas (called siliques), and they will split and shoot out their seeds when ripe (it’s called dehiscing). To prevent loosing much of your seed (and having a forest of cabbage next year) the pods should be harvested when most are at a yellow to tan color, before they are fully ripe but also before they eject their seed. And left to dry/ripen in a covered place with sheet or the like under them to catch any seed that are ejected.
Hope this info can help someone. If I get seed I will follow up with how they grew after the next season…
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Put the ripe pods on a paper towel to dry. In high moisture climates, they will decay if left on a ceramic or glass surface.
Other than that, they are very similar to harvesting seed from turnips.
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