Seed saving, first grow the plant.

[forestdale]

Seed saving is simple and very rewarding, it’s also very frugal.   If you do this right your first seeds will be the last seeds you buy, unless you want to introduce new vegetables, or different varieties, into your garden. 

When you buy your seeds try to get organic non-hybrid seeds.  I’ll explain why.  Open or self pollinated seeds, or heirloom seeds, were always used in the past.  These are seeds that have descended from their original plant parents.  They grow true to type every time you plant them, depending of course, on the conditions you provide for them.   On the other hand, hybrid or F1 seeds have been modified by seed companies to produce certain traits.  For example, hybrid tomato seeds have been developed so that the skin is tougher to withstand supermarket conditions.  They are also generally smaller than open pollinated tomatoes.  They are “designer’ tomatoes that provide all the qualities that a supermarket wants to market them profitably but with few of the qualities that backyard growers want.  The important reason from the frugal gardener’s point of view though, is that hybrid seeds must be bought every time you want to grow the plant because even if you saved the seed from the previous year, it wouldn’t reproduce true to type.  The hybrid seed may have several parents and you could get any number of tomato types – the hard skinned tomato, the small tomato, it could be anything, but it won’t be the perfect tomato pictured on your hybrid seed packet.  Saved green bean hybrids may produce strong, tall vines but no flowers, saved seeds from other hybrid vegetables may produce bitter or malformed vegetables.  Hybridising gives seed companies guaranteed profits and it takes the power to control your own garden out of your hands.

As you can see, if these seeds will be the last you buy, it is an investment in the future food you’ll eat.  Make sure you get the best quality, organic, open pollinated or heirloom seeds you can afford.  You’ll get a much greater variety to choose from in an organic or heritage seed catalogue but try to buy from a seed company close to you.  Not only will that give you seeds best suited to your local conditions, you be supporting local industry, and that is a good thing.

Plant all your seeds according to the instructions on the package and only plant one variety of each vegetable, otherwise you have to separate them to prevent cross pollination.  Never plant more than you need as tending a big garden can be hard work if you don’t have enough time to do it.

"Food plants, grown organically, that have adapted themselves to your garden over generations of seed saving, will perform noticeably better in your kitchen than generalized hybrid plants, grown by chemical methods far away from your region, and subject to transportation and storage.”  Seed savers network site.

 

[forestdale]

NOW…SAVING SEEDS.

I’m presuming that your organic, open pollinated vegetables have grown to their full potential, you’ve been enjoying the rewards of your vegetable gardening all spring and summer and now the growing season is coming to and end. At some point you need to pick your best vegetable – be that a tomato, bean, lettuce, whatever. Don’t think you can get away with using a floppy horrible vegetable that no one wants to eat. You must choose THE best one, the one that looks the most delicious because it’s those genes that you’ll be saving for next year.

DON’T PICK THE VEGETABLE YET.
Wait until it has reached full maturity. Collecting seed too early will cause you grief. The seed won’t grow properly; you must wait until it’s fully ripe.

WET & DRY SEEDS
Some seeds will be wet, they include tomatoes, zucchinis, melons, cucumbers etc. All those that come with juice or vegetable matter on them. They will have to be cleaned and dried out completely before storage.

Dry seeds include peas, beans, carrots, lettuce, most herbs, corn etc. These are left out to dry completely – usually a week or two, and then stored.

SEPARATING SEEDS WHILE THEY DRY
I buy a pack of white paper plates, write the name of each seed type on the plate and dry the each seed type on their own plate. That way they stay separate and I know what I’ve got. Make sure they are out of the wind and not where the cat will sit on them. If you can put them in the spare room and forget them for a week or two, that would be ideal.

SIGNS TO LOOK FOR IN VEGETABLES THAT ARE READY TO HAVE THEIR SEEDS HARVESTED
Peas, beans and big seeds in pods will start to dry out and then change colour from green to brown. You can pick peas and beans at this stage, take them to your seed collecting table, and on a piece of white paper or white paper plate lay the vegetable on there and allow it to dry more before you open the pod. This might take a few hours or two weeks, depending on your climate.

When the pod is really dry, open it and remove the seeds. I wrap my seed in unbleached paper that I make into the form of a little envelope. I label the envelope with the seed name and the date. Ideally, you should have kept the original envelope the seed came in, and store it in that. Then I place the seed package in an airtight container.

Other vegetables, like lettuce, parsley and carrots etc will develop flowers that will develop into seeds. When they are ready to harvest, the seed heads will start to look dry and some of the seeds will fall off. When I harvest dry seeds I generally take a brown paper bag and cover the seed head with the bag and secure it with a rubber band. Then I cut the stalk and take the seed head to my seed collecting table. I don’t open the bag for a few days and when I do, generally, the seeds have spilled themselves nicely into the bag.

Many seeds will have a lot of rubbish with them as well as the seeds. You need to gently pick out the seeds, don’t store them with pieces of stalk or dry leaf. Pick out the seeds, only place the seeds into a seed envelope, date it and store as normal.

Make sure they are completely dry before you store all seeds as they could develop mildew and rot in your storage jar. You will need an airtight jar because you’ll be storing it all year and air and insects are the two things that can wipe out your plans to reproduce your crop again next year. I use a 1 litre canning jar that I can see through. It contains all my seed envelopes and I store the jar in a dark cupboard in my walk in wardrobe – it’s the one cupboard in my home that stays a fairly consistent temperature. You could also use glass baby food jars that you could label with each vegetable type or pill bottles – all these containers need to be washed completely clean and left to dry thoroughly.

I’ve read through the instructions in the following links and they are perfect. Instead of typing out instructions for each seed type here, please go to the link and follow the instructions.

Let me know if you need specific instructions or help with other aspects of seeds saving that I haven’t covered:

Bean, pepper, lettuce, pea, tomato
http://www.seedsave.org/issi/904/beg...html#anchor005

Corn, Cucumber, Muskmelon, Radish, Spinach, Squash and Pumpkin
http://www.seedsave.org/issi/904/exp...html#anchor006

Beet/Swiss Chard, Cabbage Family, Carrot, Escarole/Frissee, Onion, Radicchio/Endive, Turnip/Chinese Cabbage.
http://www.seedsave.org/issi/904/expert.html#anchor014

[QuilterMom]

Thank you, thank you!

I'll be printing this out and adding it to my gardening notebook.

[crzynrse]

Thank You very much, I wanted to try some organic vegi's this year and was looking for this info!!
Thank You Rhonda

[ShawnaRae]

Thank you for the detailed info. I plan on more seed saving this season. From last year I saved peas, beans, sunflowers and marigolds. It is a wonderful feeling to hold those seeds and know where they came from! I wanted to mention a mail order seed supplier, seeds of change, all organic, open pollinated seeds. This year they switched to a plastic, resealable seed package. Great for saving seeds in, and all of the original info right on it. I thought it was neat-o! Well, thanks again!