I've been saving my own seeds for a decade now. It all started with some lemon boy tomatoes and it's just grown from there. After those first tomatoes came peas. And with those peas I learned something, plants can adapt to their environment very quickly. You see that year I had nothing but a greenhouse and I wanted to grow peas. As you may or may not know peas do not like the heat so that season my peas look like the victims of torture. Growing in the heat of the greenhouse mangled and sparse. The seeds I gathered from those Laxton Progress that I had tortured performed surprisingly well the next season in the greenhouse, and the next generation performed better yet and the children of those plants better yet still. I was really impressed at how fast the peas learned to cope with the new growing conditions. I suppose that's why the father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, worked with peas, they sure seem to learn fast. Of course as time went on I started saving more and more varieties of more and more vegetable types. I'll save anything I can get my hands on, seeds from grocery store heirloom tomatoes that magically appear on the shelves, seeds from my own plants, seeds from starts I bought at the nursery. I don't take seed saving as seriously as some, primarily I just save seeds so that I have a large stock pile to experiment with and because it's fun. I'm not conserving heirloom varieties or selling my seeds, my approach is relaxed and simple, as is much of my gardening. I do reap the benefit of the adaptation of my plants saving my seeds year after year though. If you're new to the idea of seed saving you can start with the information I present here and grow with your own experience to a point where you may choose to conserve heirloom varieties, sell true seed types, or even breed your own varieties. My relaxed approach is simply, a save it and see what happens style. I don't worry about random crosses or whether the plants that result from my efforts breed true. I enjoy my random accidental squash hybrids, garden surprises are great, because usually you can eat your mistakes. Here's the basics of what I do, I see seeds as either wet or dry and process all the wet seeds in the same way and I process all the dry seeds a similar way. Wet seeds: so any seed that's inside the vegetable (hmmm I think having internal seeds is the definition of fruit, well regardless), such as tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers, I leave on the plant until well past peak edibility. For some things, cucumber for example, you may have never seen a truly ripe one. A ripe cucumber is often orange or deep yellow in colour. Here is a great link with specific info on different crops to guide you though. Once I feel the veggie is ripe enough I pick it, scoop the seeds and all the goo that comes out with them into a mason jar and I cover this with water. I put a lid on the jar and keep it near my sink. I label the top because I often forget what's in each jar and try as I might I can not tell most tomato seeds apart by the end of the process. ...You may see mould or yeast form on the surface of the water... I allow these seeds to sit until they ferment. You may see mould or yeast form on the surface of the water unless your jar is tightly sealed which is totally fine and possibly beneficial. You may see the jelly or pulp the seeds came out with dissolve. It should take about three days time to start seeing something happening. Now's the time to rinse your seeds, A mesh colander is the easiest way to rinse them. The water should smell gross, at little like compost because things are rotting. If you find there's a lot of debris still stuck to the seeds place them back in the jar cover with water and let them sit a few more days, rinse again. Once you're satisfied with how clean the seeds are place them on paper towels to dry (alternatively you could place them on a stretch piece of screen, Old window screens on their frames work quite well). Let them dry thoroughly before you try to store them or there's a good chance they will mould and be of no use. If you're unsure if they are fully dry you can place them in a paper bag or a mason jar with a coffee filter in place of the snap lid. Hold the coffee filter in place with a mason jar ring. You can store them in mason jars (any jar really) or you can purchase various types of seed packs for storing them. You can also get seed saving binders if you like. Store your seeds in a cool dry location. Some people like to store their seeds in the freezer. That can work well for long term storage and there are special seed packets available for long term freezer storage. You can also use a cooler bag to store your packages or jars of seeds (these storage recommendations work great for end of the year seed sales grabs too). One exception to this method for me is peppers, I do not ferment pepper seeds. Hot peppers are usually thin enough that I just allow them to dry on the plant, sometimes leaving them in the green overwinter, I just break open the dry pepper and retain the seeds. With sweet peppers wait for people right now is cut them open remove the seeds and allow them to dry before storing. Dry seeds: I'm generalizing dry seeds but I'll try not steer you wrong. Most things are annuals producing seeds their first year in the ground, but there are definitely some biennials in your garden, carrot and beet for example don't usually set seeds in the fist season. Biennials will need to be overwintered if you want to collect seeds from them. A number of dry seed crops will require some space, and a good deal more time than when you're simply seeking the produce. You might be surprised at the size of some common plants when they are flowering. Particularly a lot of the greens we grow develop huge flower spikes, mustard greens can grow up and over 6 feet tall when allowed to go to seed. Another surprising one is radishes, tall slender spikes of often pink flowers that solitary bees love, followed by fat edible pods. There's sort of three categories of dry seeds that I deal with, pods (peas, beans, broccoli, radishes to name a few), seed heads (carrots, mustard greens, Swiss chard are examples) and seed heads with flying seeds like a dandelion (mainly lettuces). ...Just about everything in a pod needs to be picked before it's completely mature... Just about everything in a pod needs to be picked before it's completely mature because once it is those pods split and scatter the seeds everywhere. With peas and beans overripe pods can be collected for drying. Leave the pods intact until fully dry, drying on screens or in paper bags works well. You can also leave peas and beans longer, until the pods start to dry on the plants but it won't be much longer after the stage the pods will start to split and scatter the seeds. Sometimes the pods will stay intact on the plants all winter. With other members of this group let the oldest pods (lowest on the plant) turn brown, once this happens it should be safe to pull the whole plant out of the ground and allow it to dry upside down some of the pods may split and scatter seeds but something about killing the plant seems to interrupt this. If it's too much plant, and you don't have the space to hang the whole thing, gather smaller clusters of the seed pods and hang in bundles to dry (you could also use screens to dry them on or put them in large paper bags to dry). So with the bigger pods like peas and beans you can remove the seeds from the pods by hand and it won't be too time-consuming, but with the smaller ones like mustard greens, broccoli and others, harvesting the individual seeds would be a monumental task. Instead grab a large paper bag and try this: place the pods and stocks and what not in the bag, with your hands in the bag vigorously roll the pods and other plant materials between your two hands. This should break most of the seeds free from the pods. Shake the bag a bit and most of the seed, being heavier than the other materials, will end up at the bottom so you can skim the other plant materials off the top before storage. Don't worry, you're not a factory and you don't need to get all those debris out, there not going to hurt anything. Radishes are the exception in this group, you'll want to pick the seeds out of the foam like interior of the pods by hand. I find this to be too much work for radishes personally, but I like to let them go to seed because the pods are pretty tasty when you pick them at the right time. Seed heads are a lot less work than things in pods, at least they are in my opinion, the biggest issue with seed heads is telling if they're ready to be harvested. Pick them too soon you're going to have a bunch of duds, wait too long and a lot of the seeds are just going to fall off in your garden before you can get to them. If you get them at the right time you can just hang them upside down for a little drying time, or toss them into paper bags for a little additional drying. Once fully dry they should be crumbly feeling to the touch and come away from the stocks, break the seeds off the seed head in a similar manner as described for smaller seeds pods. Carrot seeds, in particular, are not going to look like what you buy commercially. They are still going to have their hairy outer shell unless you further process them. Check out this link for more information on carrot seeds. ...When it appears that the majority are falling away from what was once the flower pull the whole plant up... Lastly we have the dandelion like flower seeds (I'm sure they have a proper name that I am unaware of), as with the flower heads above it's a game of timing. Usually the outer flowers of the cluster or the lowest flowers on the plant are going to be the ones that ripen first. Keep an eye on these, when they start to shed seeds take a paper bag and tie it loosely around the entire seed head. Leave this alone a week or more, peek in on it and see if the seeds are falling off. When it appears that the majority are falling away from what was once the flower pull the whole plant up and shake the seed head into the paper bag. If you shake the paper bag really hard you'll separate the fluffy parts from the seeds, if you want to get the fluff out before storage (which I recommend), blow into the bag and the fluff will inevitably fly in your face but it will separate from the seed. Now let me get you a brief rundown on the tools you might want for seed saving: Glass jars (for storage and for fermenting your wet seeds) Seed envelopes (for storing your seeds) Mesh colander (for cleaning your wet seeds) Drying screens (Old window screens were great these are for drying all sorts of seeds) Paper bags (for the collection of storage of and drying of seeds) Paper towel (for drying your wet seeds) Other tools you may want: Cooler bag (for the storage of your collected seeds) Paintbrush (for the hand pollination of crops like squash cucumber and melons) Seed saving binder (for storage of seeds) That is my basic guide to seed saving and my method. I've kept things fairly simple if you want to learn further there are some great links below. Everything you could ever want to know is probably out there on the Internet but there are some great books as well, one of my personal favourite is "breed your own vegetable varieties" by Carol Deppe. It goes well beyond seed saving into breeding and genetics, giving you the tools you need to create your own new stable fruit and vegetable varieties. I may be a plant geek but I don't think anybody can deny that that's pretty cool.
Good luck and good gardening. -Samantha Young-Finch Links to additional seed saving info: http://www.seedalliance.org/uploads/publications/Seed_Saving_Guide.pdf https://www.planetnatural.com/seed-saving/ http://www.seedsavers.org/how-to-save-seeds
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