Editorial Reviews

Book Description:
Seed to Seed is a complete seed-saving guide that describes specific techniques for saving the seeds of 160 different vegetables. This book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its botanical classification, flower structure and means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for caging or hand-pollination, and also the proper methods for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing the seeds. Seed to Seed is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale. The author has grown seed crops of every vegetable featured in the book, and has thoroughly researched and tested all of the techniques she recommends for the home garden. This newly updated and greatly expanded Second Edition includes additional information about how to start each vegetable from seed, which has turned the book into a complete growing guide. Local knowledge about seed starting techniques for each vegetable has been shared by expert gardeners from seven regions of the United States-Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast/Gulf Coast, Midwest, Southwest, Central West Coast, and Northwest.

Customer Reviews

not thorough enough to be very useful by Eric Brown
I don’t know if there’s a better book on the subject of seed saving, but I’ve found this book frustratingly incomplete. There’s certainly a lot of information, but it seems like a lot of really important basics were left out. I would say for a majority of the plants I would like to save seed from this year I can’t figure out from the book whether the plants will cross with other things I’m growing or how far to isolate them if they would. I’m trying to figure out right now, for instance, if tabasco peppers (Capsicum frutescens) will cross with bell peppers and other Capsicum annum. The book has about a half a page of information on C. frutescens, which I think is a lot for such a minor species, but it still fails to give me that most basic information. I’d also like to know how many plants of each type I should grow to maintain adequate genetic diversity. The author mentions the importance of this, and there are a couple plants where numbers are given, but in most cases the reader is left without any numbers. I wish all this kind of information were covered more systematically, maybe with a simple chart or short paragraph at the beginning of each of the 20 plant families covered in the book.

Seeds for your garden by D. Davis
I was informed by a noted gardener this was the best book for those that want to save seeds. I am pleased.

Complex Reference Tool by Kevin C. Brown
I found this book to be very interesting, I found myself wishing that I could talk to the auther about her experiences in growing. I think an in depth description of each growing stage would be helpful but would make the book way too long….But isn’t that what a reference tool should be?

A good guide for the job by FRED NIKLAS
I think Ashworth has made a splendid job with this book, especially as there are none like it on the market. There`s a lot of good solid info, and everything you need to save seeds from a vegetable variety is easily found. All in all pretty much as good of a reference book as you can wish for.

A minor thing that irritates me, is that when after every vegetable some regional experts give their advice on growing the vegetable at hand, I get the feeling that even if they have not even tried some plants, they give the advice “They can`t be grown in this climate”. I myself am from Finland, and I still grow some of the vegetables they mention every season here!

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