irritate monsanto...save seed

i had a chat with rebecca ( the coordinator at the community garden ) about starting a bed of asparagus in the community garden towards the end of the garden soiree Saturday…she said she was okay with that since there was an unused bed at the back of the garden…i brought it up because the “berries” on the asparagus plants are mostly ripe and now is the time to gather seeds for the spring ( i like to try to grow everything from seed even though it costs me in time and trouble when it fails [and it does fail] because it is closer to the way an ecosystem does things…i have already put out eastern gamagrass seeds[ along with elephant garlic and Jerusalem artichokes ]and northern tepehuan teosinte at home and on campus…we’ll see how that works out ) there are a couple of methodologies out there for preparing the seed so i gathered some berries and i removed the tops of a couple of plants…the tops i hung up in the basement to dry …after which i will have to soak them in water for an hour or so to free the seeds from the desiccated berries…i also picked a handful and stuck them in a baggie and when i got home i proceeded to mash them to remove the seeds ( out of curiosity as much as anything else having never seen an asparagus seed ) the berries hold from three to five seeds which are tightly packed in some since the seeds seem to be of a fairly uniform size while the berries vary quite a bit…i washed them off and spread them out to dry and to and tomorrow they will go into the newly established seed box in the shelter’s basement along with the stash of saved hopi blue maize seeds, the eatern gamagrass seeds, and the industrial soybeans i plan on planting next year to test my “one generation of seed viability and then instant mutation” hypothesis about seed companies ( bayer, Monsanto, pioneer…take your pick ) engineering the death of seed saving by engineering plant sterility after a single crop grown under license…that should be interesting even if i am completely wrong…asparagus is a cool weather crop that starts early so i will be pulling the asparagus seeds out of the box and starting them indoors late next winter so i can get them out as soon as i see the asparagus in the pgp show itself…i want to give them the longest possible season to establish themselves…then they’ll need four years until we start to harvest…I never said perennials were a short term project…so…seed saving season is here…more on the asparagus when i start it .