Saving Seeds

Gardening and home improvement projects saw a huge rise in popularity this year. Thanks to the pandemic quarantine, many people turned to these projects as a way to spend their new found time at home. With summer gardens now coming to an end, saving seeds may be the next step you’re looking for.

We planted an extensive Victory Garden this spring. At its peak, I was growing over 50 different varieties of fruits and vegetables in our small backyard. We even began referring to our garden as our “practice farm”. I grew a few varieties I probably won’t grow again. Some of them just weren’t what we were expecting. One way to ensure you’re growing the same variety next time is by saving seeds from your existing plants.

Depending on the type of fruit or vegetable you plan on saving seeds from will determine the best way to save the seeds. No matter what type of plant you’re saving seeds from, you want to choose the best fruit or vegetable from the harvest to get your seeds from. Be sure to only collect seeds from disease free plants. After all, you want to re-grow the best don’t you?

Cross Pollination

If you aren’t growing your garden in a controlled greenhouse environment and hand pollenating them, you’re going to get cross pollination.  This is what happens when pollinators take pollen from one plant and carry it to another.  Different varieties of the same family can cross pollinate (like the squash family – pumpkins, zucchini, patty pan, etc.), they won’t cross pollinate with other plant families (a zucchini plant won’t cross pollinate with a bean plant).

Cross pollination won’t affect your current crops. It’s the seeds you collect to save for next season that will be changed by cross pollination. That means, the fruit you grew this year, won’t be the same next year if they’ve been cross-pollinated. Corn is an exception to that rule. As a result, emerging ears of corn will look a bit different.

You can help control cross pollination by tying a lightweight pouch over an emerging blossom, hand pollenating it, and re-covering it until the fruit begins to emerge.

Tomato & Cucumber Seeds

Fruits like tomatoes and cucumbers have a gel like coating surrounding their seeds. Consequently this gel casing makes saving seeds a little tricky. You will need to separate the seed from the casing first. The easiest way to do this is to soak or ferment them in water.

1. Choose one of your best tomato or cucumbers from the plant you wish to save seeds from.
2. Cut open the fruit and carefully scoop out a section of the seeds.
3. Place the gel coated seeds in a jar or glass with a little water and let them ferment for 1 – 3 days. Be sure to keep the jar or glass in a safe area at a temperature around 70 – 80 degrees. (I keep mine on the windowsill in my kitchen)
4. After the seeds have fermented, add more clean water to the jar or glass and give the seeds a little stir.
5. Any pulp or light seeds that float to the top should be scooped off and discarded.
6. The good, viable seeds will settle to the bottom. These are the seeds you want to save. Rinse the viable seeds off with clean water and set them in a sunny place to dry.
7. Once they’re fully dried, put the seeds into an envelope or baggie and label them with the variety and date.

Cucumber seeds are good for about 5 years, but some varieties of tomato seeds can last for more than 10 years!

Squash Seeds

Squash plants are one of the easiest seeds to save. If you’ve ever carved a pumpkin, then you already know how to remove seeds from a squash plant.

1. Choose one of your best squash fruits from the plant you wish to save seeds from.
2. Cut open the squash and scoop out the seeds.
3. Rinse the seeds under running water in a colander and begin picking the seeds from the pulp.
4. Lay the seeds out in a sunny place to dry.
5. Once they’re fully dried, put the seeds into an envelope or baggie and label them with the variety and date.

Herb & Lettuce Seeds

Herbs and lettuces require similar techniques for saving seeds. Depending on the size of your garden, choose 1 – 3 plants to let “bolt”. Bolting is what some varieties of plants will do when they go to seed.

You can see from my Romaine lettuce that when lettuce bolts, it grows straight up in a funny cone shape. Once it stops growing, a flower bolts up at the top. These flowers will bloom and after they die, the remaining product is a little pouch of seeds.

Herbs work the same way. Most herbs like Basil, Cilantro, Thyme, and Oregano will also bolt flowers and bloom. If you see flowers forming on your herbs, they may taste bitter. Be sure to trim your herbs regularly before they bloom to prolong your crop.

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These Cilantro blooms are the perfect example. I let this one plant go to seed and after the little flowers bloomed and died, what was left over were these little seed balls. Be sure to let these dry on the plant before harvesting for seeds.

Seed Tip: In case you didn’t know, Cilantro seeds are actually Coriander. You can save the Coriander seeds to use in your cooking, or plant them and grow more. Either way, they make a great addition to your kitchen.

Additional Seed Saving

These are just a few varieties of fruits & vegetables with techniques on saving seeds from them. To get a complete list, of seed saving techniques, check out seedsavers.org. They have some great tips on saving seeds from just about any variety of plants. They even have a great Seed Saving Chart available for download.

I hope you had a great harvest from your garden this year, and I look forward to hearing about the seeds you’ve collected and planted next year!

Happy Homesteading!