Get the big picture of seed saving and save money on the seeds for the plants and varieties that you prefer to grow. Over time, seed saving is also a great way to adapt a variety to your climate and growing conditions. Getting an ideal variety of any plant for your growing conditions, especially with changing conditions, can be challenging but it is worth the challenge to have garden independence for a few favorite veggies, herbs, flowers, or fruits.
About 20 years ago, I began seed saving a Romanesco zucchini. In the first few years, it was hard to get mature seeds in my zone 3 climate, we had summer frost, and getting more than a handful of small zucchini seemed impossible. After a few years, I was successful in seed saving from one mature zucchini, and each year I managed to get just one or two more large zucchinis to the seed maturity stages. Today, I have a thriving, aggressive still-true to type Romanesco zucchini that thrives in my cold zone and cooler summers. When the seeds are planted in a warmer zone, by my daughter, the plants grow as vigorously and begin producing just as soon as commercial growers in her city. The seed company that I originally got this zucchini from no longer carries it, but as long as I save the seed I’ll not only have my favorite zucchini, but a zucchini that can grow in zone three and survive a touch of light frost, and just plain chilly nights, too.
Seed saving gives you accessible seeds, plants that are hardier and more adapted to your growing conditions, and security for next year’s growing season. Home saved seeds can be good for one to five years depending on the species of plant that you’ve saved seeds from.
Saving Tomato Seeds:
Tomato seeds can be saved from any type of tomato, cherry, slicing, or sauce. Simply aim to chose an open pollinated variety, or heirloom branded tomato from the store or market, to save seeds that should be true to type. Follow the steps in this, in-depth, article for more info on saving tomato seeds.
Once seeds are dry, they can be stored in a small paper envelope. Store fully-dry seeds in the freezer to prolong a high germination rate.
Saving Seeds from Beans, Peas, and Legumes:
These look like a fairly easy seed to save, but there are still a few things to keep in mind. First, let the pods stay on the vine until the beans are fully dry. Then, harvest and shuck the pods, and dry the seeds out fully. After the seeds are fully dry, put them in a glass jar and store it in your freezer. The freezer will kill any weevils or weevil eggs that might be hiding in the bean seeds.
Follow the same steps for peas, garbanzo beans, lentils, and pretty much any non-peanut legume you’re growing in your garden. Most of the time, beans and peas are self fertile and pollinate without the assistance of bees. So your seeds should remain true to type with minimal hybridizing.
Lettuce:
The lettuce plant produces small yellow flowers after it bolts, with fluffy parachutes on each individual seed. When the flowers begin poofing, pinch the seeds off and tuck into a paper envelop. Try to avoid letting the seeds be spread by the wind, as otherwise you’ll have lots of early spring, volunteer lettuces. Different lettuces will cross pollinate, so aim to only save from one “type” even if they’re different colors, for example, save from green oakleaf, red oakleaf, and speckled oakleaf will ensure you have an oakleaf type lettuce. But saving from a romain type and an oakleaf type at the same time could end up with a weird hybrid.
Seed Saving from Radishes and Brassica family plants
Radishes love bolting, but this means you can save the seed. At least, if you don’t eat the tender seed pods first. Once the radishes have gone to seed, wait until the pods are fully dry and brown, and hopefully crisp. This may take most of the summer.
Cut down the radish stalks, when the pods are yellow and dry, and strip off the pods. You should hear seeds rattling in the pods. Then, split or gently crush the pods and winnow to extract the seeds. Seeds can be stored in the freezer to avoid seed-eating weevils.
You can also use your home-saved radish seeds for microgreens if you have a lot.
Most brassica vegetables will form similar seed pods to radishes. Some brassica plants will flower in the first year, bolted or bolting broccoli and cauliflower can be left to form seed pods. Same with bok choi, collards, and some others. Kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, brussels sproutsย and a few others are biannuals and will need to be left in the garden overwinter before they flower and produce seed. Similar to radishes, harvest brassica seed pods when they are fully dry and the seeds begin rattling in the pod, then break the seeds out and winnow them. Avoid having more than one annual brassica and one biannual brassica going to seed at the same time, as brassica family can cross pollinate and create hybrid plants.
Melons:
You can save true to type seeds from melons by hand pollinating. Simply use an organza bag to cover the female flower before it opens, then take a male flower from the same type of plant or same plant, and use it to pollinate the female flower. Then, recover the female flower for another 24-36 hours, before removing the organza bag. Mark your select melon in another way (stake beside it, ribbon beside it), so you know which fruits you want to save seed from.
I like saving seeds from the second to fourth fruits set by a squash or melon plant, this helps encourage early fruit setting in later generations of plants. Sometimes the very first fruit doesn’t take or aborts on the vine, so I don’t count on that one for seed saving.
Melon seeds can simply be scooped out of the ripe fruit, rinsed clean, and spread out to dry on a paper towel. Once they are fully dry, you can store them with your other seeds, in a paper envelop.
Cucumbers:
Most of the time, the cucumber you eat is still under-ripe from the seed’s perspective. Even if you have a green or white cucumber variety, a fully seed-ripe fruit will be enlarged, and yellow. Like melons, you’ll want to hand pollinate the female flower and mark it, when you’re saving true to type seeds and have more than one variety of the plant growing.
Once you have a large, over-ripe and yellow cucumber, you can harvest it, cut it open, and scoop out the seeds like a melon. Rinse off the seeds, and set to dry on a paper towel. Once fully dry, store in a paper envelope in the freezer with your other seeds.
Seed Saving from Pumpkin and Squash:
If you’ve cut into pumpkins and squash you’ll probably realize the seed saving is pretty easy. If you only grow one variety of winter squash and one variety of zucchini you can safely save seed from both types of plants, without worrying about cross pollination. For peace of mind, you can plant them in separate areas. If you are growing multiple squash varieties that are the same type, like all winter squash, then you’ll need to follow the melon protocol for hand pollination to save true-to-type seeds.
Take your largest and most mature pumpkins or zucchini, and let them harden. Pumpkins can be hardened off in the field, zucchini and other summer squash can be stored for a week or two before cutting. Skins should toughen till they can’t be broken with a fingernail, this helps you tell when all squash have mature seeds. Then scoop out seeds, and clean off the strings. Rinse the seeds well and spread out to dry. Dry at room temperature, then store in your seed envelopes in the freezer until next year.
Peppers:
Don’t save seeds from green peppers, as these are normally under-ripe and the seeds are immature. Choose a solidly colored pepper, red or whatever color the ripe peppers should be if you’re working with interesting varieties or hot peppers. Cut the pepper open, wearing gloves if it’s a hot pepper, and scoop the seeds onto a paper towel. Remove any pith that’s attached to the seeds and let them dry. Carefully transfer seeds to paper envelopes and label. Use gloves when handling hot pepper seeds, every time!
Most night shade family plants are self-pollinating, and you can encourage true to type pollination by walking by and shaking your tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant. Chose a strong parent plant and healthy fruits to save seeds from. If you want to cross different varieties, you can do it using a paint brush.
Carrots and Other Bi-annuals
Biannual plants like carrots and parsley do not produce seed in their first year. Rather, carrots form a long and deep taproot, and parsley grows lots of leaves and does the same. Now, carrots we normally harvest the root and enjoy it, but if you leave a few carrots in the ground you will get carrot flowers and seeds the next year. This is the same with parsley, and parsley tastes even better it’s second year. Also, if you do the food-regrow attempts on a carrot root, you’ll get lots of leaves and if you plant it in the garden you can get carrot flowers.
Let the carrot, parsley, or whatever stay in the ground for the winter. In the spring, it’ll grow and send up flowers. Once the flower heads have dried out, carefully cut them and place them in a paper bag to fully dry. Then knock the seeds loose and gently winnow them. Transfer to a glass jar and store in your freezer/with your other seeds.
Carrot family can cross pollinate with wild carrot, so even with heirloom varieties there may be some variation in the seeds.
Any head-forming plant, dill, parsley, carrot, parsnip, and similar, once the flowers have formed seeds and mostly dried out. They can be harvested and let dry completely in a paper bag, before cleaning the seeds and storing them safely for next season.
Seed Saving From Corn:
If you want to save seeds from corn, you’ll only want to be growing one type of corn. The exception is an early tassling variety and a late tassling variety. Corn is wind pollinated, and it can cross pollinate with other corn plants up to a mile away. For safe corn seed saving, leave the cob of corn on the plant until it is fully dry and the husks are dry.
Peel back the husks and hang to dry out the rest of the way. After a month, you can strip the corn seeds from the cob, and then save them in your seed saving place. Freeze the seeds to protect from insects, and kill any eggs that might be in the seeds. You can somewhat select for desirable traits by gathering pollen and hand pollinating certain cobs, then bagging them for a few days, and then cutting the silk once you’re sure the pollination has taken.
Beets:
These root veggies are another biannual, so you’ll need to leave healthy, good-sized roots in your garden over winter (or store them then replant the roots in spring). Let them flower, and then save the seeds once the seed heads form and dry out.
Onions:
Most onions won’t flower until the second year. So save decent onion bulbs or replant bulbs that have started to sprout in storage. After they flower, you can let the flower head partially dry on the plant and then cut it into a large paper bag. Let the seed head dry completely in the bag until seeds start dropping freely, then gather and clean your seeds. Onion and allium seeds often only have good germination for one year after harvest.
Garlic:
Garlic is planted from existing cloves, in the fall. You don’t really save seed from garlic. The scapes will form garlic corns, but those are still clones of the initial garlic plant. Corns can be planted, but they take two years to form heads of garlic instead of just one winter and one growing season to form heads with cloves (at least with hardneck garlic).
Seed Saving from Sunflowers, Calendula, and other flowers:
Many flowers have large, noticable seeds. When you deadhead calendula, marigolds, nasturtiums, you may sometimes find heads with immature, green seeds. To save seeds from these plants, let one or two plants set lots of flowers and then don’t deadhead them. When they begin turning brown, harvest the seed heads, and place into a brown paper bag. Label your bag, and let the seeds dry. Then clean the seed heads, and gather up the seeds for next year.
Sunflowers are the easiest flower to save seeds from, you can simply harvest the entire head when ready and hang to dry or place in a large paper bag. When the sunflower head is dry enough to strip the seeds from, you can hand strip the seed head and store a portion of the seeds to replant, while saving the others for toasted sunflower seeds, bird feeding, or microgreens.
Seed Storing and Sourcing:
If you’re looking for new sources of open sourced and non-hybrid seeds, a local seed savers exchange can be a good starting point. We have had some challenges in the gardener’s seed supply with mislabeled seeds. I had a batch of carrot seed end up being beets instead. Study what plants are supposed to look like at the just germinated and young stage, to help you ID if you have the seeds and plants you expect. Some heirlooms do have good disease resistance, and locally saved seeds may be more resistant to the pests and diseases in your immediate area.
Once you have seeds to store, you can store them in the freezer to keep them in ideal storage conditions. If you’re worried about moisture, you can store your seeds with a moisture absorber or desiccant.
To test seed viability, use this test both with your home saved seeds and with any seeds that have been in storage for awhile. The germination rate may surprise you.
What is your favorite plant to save seeds from?
Do you have a favorite flower variety, vegetable variety, or herb variety that you always save seeds from in your garden? Do you just have a favorite plant that you save seeds from?
If you don’t have a favorite, comment the first plant type that you ever collected or saved seeds from! We love to hear from you.
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